The attacks in France are a blowback from intervention in the Arab and Muslim world. What happens there happens here too.
The official response to every jihadist-inspired terrorist attack in the west since 2001 has been to pour petrol on the flames. That was true after 9/11 when George Bush launched his war on terror, laying waste to countries and spreading terror on a global scale.
It was true in Britain after the 2005 London bombings, when Tony Blair ripped up civil liberties and sent thousands of British troops on a disastrous mission to Afghanistan. And it’s been true in the aftermath of last week’s horrific killings at Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris. [2037 comments]
[TOP RATED COMMENT 1091] It was our fault. Should have known.
[SECOND 626] I'd wondered to myself how long it would be after the attacks before Seumas turned up and explained why it was all the fault of the West. I presume the delay is due to the fact that he's had to take his default article of blaming everything on the Iraq War and tweak it because France didn't take part.
Still, the time taken has paid off. This is a masterpiece of contorted logic, trying to explain that French foreign policy is what led to attacks on, er, cartoonists and a kosher supermarket.
[THIRD 578] So Seaumus, kindly explain why the terrorist attacks started BEFORE Iraq and Afghanistan?
Do you remember 9/11?
[FOURTH 555] I really don't know how the author manages to live in our society.
He hates it so much he does it down at every turn.
[FIFTH 466] .... France famously did not get involved in the Afghan/Iraq shitfest. The only areas they do tend to get involved (Francophone Africa) tend to be seen by most people (Muslims included) as generally the correct course of action. Certainly the intervention in Mali was justified.
[SIXTH 384] Seamus seems to be suggesting that everything that ever happens in the wider world is more or less a refraction of US foreign policy, i.e the Chomsky position.
All those theocratic states that are in crises for one reason or another have not arrived at such a position because of their own belief system, that concept does not compute for Seamus or Noam.
[SEVENTH 370] "It was our fault. Should have known."
It's a ludicrous article. Towards the end, Milne seems to have remembered the French were not involved in Iraq, so contradicting some of what he's already written, but he covers it with yet more bollocks and just carries on. [Guardian Cif] Read more
