“We need to remind them why they need US!”

“Today’s horrific attacks in Paris have moved us all, and the more we learn, the more our hearts ache,” said Governor Cuomo. “These were cowardly acts of evil by people who have inexplicably chosen to believe in radical hatred above all else.”

‘Inexplicable’; perhaps, for the pathologically dense.

One possible explanation comes in the form of a drone assassination in Syria performed a matter of a mere few hours before the Paris attacks, which British intelligence openly admitted would be expected to provoke blowback.

One interested in these elusive things called “facts” could also refer to ISIS’ own (alleged) statement on the Paris attacks:

Let France and all nations following its path know that they will continue to be at the top of the target list for the Islamic State and that the scent of death will not leave their nostrils as long as they partake in the crusader campaign, as long as they dare to curse our Prophet (blessings and peace be upon him), and as long as they boast about their war against Islam in France and their strikes against Muslims in the lands of the Caliphate with their jets, which were of no avail to them in the filthy streets and alleys of Paris. Indeed, this is just the beginning. It is also a warning for any who wish to take heed.

France? That effete land of art, fashion, and cheese?

As it happens, France, since electing the peacenik socialist François Hollande, has also reinvented itself as a land of bellicose military campaigns in North Africa and the Middle East.

It’s not as if they should be surprised. After all, if the Paris bombings were a reaction motivated by French foreign military adventures, we have seen this before. From the article:

This isn’t the first time France’s involvement abroad has led to terrorism at home. In 1995, Algerian Islamists set off eight bombing attacks that killed eight people and wounded 200 in Paris to punish France for supporting the government in that country’s civil war.

Hollande, for his part, sprung into action, declaring a state of emergency, a military-backed curfew in Paris, the closure of national borders, and closing schools, museums, libraries, pools, and food markets. Hollande swore to be “merciless” in response, as if this would somehow reflect a change in policy from France’s existing bombing campaigns.

Truth be told, Hollande badly needed such an event. His approval rating was hovering around 20% most recently, having made the dubious achievement of becoming even less popular than his predecessor. The last time Paris was attacked by Islamists, coincidentally also having identified French military campaigns as their motivation, Hollande’s performance earned him a temporary respite in his otherwise rock-bottom evaluation by French voters. Terrorist attacks, while regrettable, are capable of catalyzing the recalcitrant French to ‘rally around the rooster’, and thus they have a certain kind of value to the ruling class.

Immediately responding to the Paris bombings was that other prominent European head of state, David Cameron, who had characterized the day’s earlier drone assassination in Syria as an “act of self-defence”. Cameron wasted no time in mobilizing “police and security agencies”, maintaining the existing “severe” terror threat level, and warning the British people to be “prepared for a number of British casualties.” However, the article admits:

There is, however, said to be no specific intelligence indicating there is a direct terrorist threat to attack Britain. The heightened measures in the UK are partly to reassure the public [..]

Cameron’s haste may be explained in part by observing that he, like Hollande, faces severe headwinds to his re-election in the form of a referendum on the UK’s membership in the European Union, supported by his own party. Cameron’s standing among the European elite is threatened by this referendum, which the Dutch, Irish, and German heads of state recently took turns blasting. Cameron is also facing formal legal proceedings over his policy of bypassing a 2013 parliamentary refusal to authorize air strikes, having personally authorized drone strikes in Syria, having refused to explain Britain’s secret “kill list”, and having given tacit approval to earlier illegal airstrikes in Syria.

Explaining the inexplicable: Why Syria?

A truly inexplicable event is the Syrian war, in which the U.S., NATO, and GCC have converged to destabilize a country with no natural resources — save for a meager amount of oil production that would barely supply the Pentagon’s needs for one day — and zero clout on the world stage.

But maybe it doesn’t have as much to do with what Syria has or what it can do, but rather what it is in the way of: two competing state-sponsored natural gas pipeline projects:

Knowing Syria was a critical piece in its energy strategy, Turkey attempted to persuade Syrian President Bashar Assad to reform this Iranian pipeline and to work with the proposed Qatar-Turkey pipeline, which would ultimately satisfy Turkey and the Gulf Arab nations’ quest for dominance over gas supplies, who are the United State’s allies. But after Assad refused Turkey’s proposal, Turkey and its allies became the major architects of Syria’s “civil war.”

‘They hate us for our freedoms’

Mainstream media outlets repeat the comfortable myth that terrorist attacks are primarily motivated by the desire to impose Sharia law in Western countries. While the precise mechanism by which random acts of violence lead to a formal Sharia law regime is yet to be identified, it is perhaps more instructive to examine the statements made by the attackers themselves, which invariably cite not only their religious beliefs, but specific acts of military violence carried out by U.S., NATO, and/or GCC partners in Middle Eastern countries. Two recent examples are the statements following the Charlie Hebdo and November Paris attacks.

But let’s step back to the bigger picture for a moment:

It is not hard to imagine that every one of these attacks that senselessly kills children, friends, and loved ones creates motivation to retaliate among those remaining. ISIS recruiters offer a vision of utopia to a generation of young people that has only known war, poverty, and personal tragedy.

Explaining the inexplicable: How can terrorists be gaining ground versus the most powerful governments in the world?

In Iraq, then Libya, then Egypt, former U.S.-backed authoritarians heading secular governments were deposed one by one. Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were victims of openly executed military regime change operations, while Hosni Mubarak was the victim of a series of events that led to the present U.S.-backed military dictatorship. The latter was accomplished through an alphabet soup list of NGOs:

Washington’s democracy assistance programme for the Middle East is filtered through a pyramid of agencies within the State Department. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars is channeled through the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), The Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), USAID, as well as the Washington-based,quasi-governmental organisation the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

In turn, those groups re-route money to other organisations such as the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and Freedom House, among others. Federal documents show these groups have sent funds to certain organisations in Egypt, mostly run by senior members of anti-Morsi political parties who double as NGO activists.

The Middle East Partnership Initiative – launched by the George W Bush administration in 2002 in a bid to influence politics in the Middle East in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks – has spent close to $900m on democracy projects across the region, a federal grants database shows.

USAID manages about $1.4bn annually in the Middle East, with nearly $390m designated for democracy promotion, according to the Washington-based Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED).

The US government doesn’t issue figures on democracy spending per country, but Stephen McInerney, POMED’s executive director, estimated that Washington spent some $65m in 2011 and $25m in 2012. He said he expects a similar amount paid out this year.

A main conduit for channeling the State Department’s democracy funds to Egypt has been the National Endowment for Democracy. Federal documents show NED, which in 2011 was authorised an annual budget of $118m by Congress, funneled at least $120,000 over several years to an exiled Egyptian police officer who has for years incited violence in his native country.

This appears to be in direct contradiction to its Congressional mandate, which clearly states NED is to engage only in “peaceful” political change overseas.

Egypt today remains under the U.S.-funded military dictatorship, which has recently effectively outlawed criticism of the regime.

We know where the military dictatorship gets its money and weapons. Where do terrorists get the money and weapons with which they can become an organized army, occupy territory, and train recruits?

“Nearly 200,000 U.S.-supplied rifles and pistols meant for Iraqi security forces are unaccounted for in Iraq”, August 2007
Machine guns and surface-to-air missiles went missing during the U.S.-backed Libyan revolution, September 2011
The Iranian military obtained surface-to-air missiles amid the chaos, September 2011
A “large number” of shoulder-fired heat-seeking missiles and 2,000 rifles and ammunition were stolen in Benghazi, Libya, September 2012
It later came to light that 400 surface-to-air missiles were stolen during the attack, August 2013
“Massive amounts of highly sensitive U.S. military equipment”, including highly armored vehicles, hundreds of weapons and night-vision goggles, were stolen in Libya, September 2013
ISIS stole between “millions of dollars” and $400 million from the Iraqi central bank in Mosul, money that had been previously airdropped into Iraq, June 2014
“ISIS has captured hundreds of US supplied upgraded Humvees, pickup trucks, tanks and armored vehicles, artillery pieces, and even reportedly a number of helicopters, not to mention huge stocks of ammunition and artillery shells” from the U.S.-backed Iraqi army, July 2014
“Billions of dollars have been taken out of Iraq over the last 10 years illegally”, according to investigators, October 2014
U.S. airdropped weapons into ISIS territory, allegedly by mistake, October 2014
ISIS obtained $40 million or more in funding from government and private sources in GCC countries, November 2014
Afghan central bank employees stole $1.4 million and ran, February 2015
Pentagon loses track of “more than $500 million in small arms, ammunition, night-vision goggles, patrol boats, vehicles and other supplies” given to the U.S.-backed Yemeni government
ISIS uses anti-tank rockets, shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles, Western assault rifles, and other equipment stolen from U.S.-backed Iraqi troops, April 2015
Iraq admits that ISIS captured 2,300 Humvees from its forces in Mosul, June 2015
Fed and Treasury admit that “the flow of billions of dollars to Iraq’s central bank” was shut off temporarily amid fears it was being funneled to ISIS, November 2015

As for training terrorists to execute large-scale military operations:

Inexplicability

The source of motivation for terrorist attacks is apparently not “inexplicable”. The means by which those attacks are carried out also does not seem to be at all “inexplicable”.

What may be the truly “inexplicable” and uncanny part of the process: the ability of Western governments and media to cultivate such mass ignorance that they are able to pretend to be mere victims of purportedly “inexplicable” attacks, thus enabling ever-ongoing seizures of extra-constitutional police and emergency powers that are unlikely to be relinquished voluntarily.

This process is presented as if it were an organic and inevitable progression, in which superhero leaders humbly request ever-greater powers to fight an endless series of increasingly dangerous bad actors. The reality is far from organic.

The Reichstag Fire in Nazi Germany was perhaps the template for this mechanism of permanent ’emergency’ escalations of state power, which has today evolved into a global phenomenon, fueled by ISIS and at the same time fueling ISIS through its reactions.

One could ascribe failures to stop future attacks on power elite ‘interests’ or on civilians to malice, or to incompetence instead, depending on your perspective.

What’s the answer?

Interpret the latest attack as another datapoint indicating failure of the policy, and reverse course. Withdraw from foreign military occupations, renounce illegal emergency powers and secret spying on citizens, convert payments to foreign militaries and governments into aid for war victims including resettlement domestically, and sweep away the hubristic ruling class ideology that enabled this global human rights catastrophe and policy disaster in the first place.

Which course will the U.S. and NATO governments pursue from here? Perhaps a course they could have chosen almost 10 years ago that would certainly not have trained and armed ‘friendly’ terrorists, would certainly have not motivated young people to join terrorist organizations with more anger-inducing tragedies, and would certainly not have deliberately destabilized an entire region of the globe through armchair regime change pursuits.

Unfortunately, all indications are that in response they are pursuing exactly the course that brought us to this point.

Only a madman would repeat the same courses of action and expect differing results. So are Western leaders mad, or are they openly pursuing the same results?