How will France react to the attack on Charlie Hebdo Magazine?
Will the French Government under-react, failing to pursue an investigation or mete out justice?
Surely they cannot post police outside every paper and news channel and editor and reporter's home. Will there be consideration of a roll-back on firearm ownership restrictions to provide the only robust response to small arms attacks (individual immediate action)?
Will the French Government react to the attack either domestically with increased domestic surveillance of Muslims? Or internationally with deployments against ISIS/other extremists as they have in the past? Will they pressure the US to react in an international way-as they have (and we have supported) in the past?
What would be an over-reaction and was that the intention of the attackers in the first place?
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2015/01/french-newspaper-attacked-paris-gunmen [login to see] 36139681.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-09/shots-fired-hostages-taken-in-town-northeast-of-paris.html
And it probably wouldn't hurt to have full-body scans and mandatory shoe removal before anyone is allowed into any government building.
PS - If you think that "ignoring patterns is pretty stupid" then you must admit that a great percentage of the actions of the US governments (both Republican and Democrat) for the past 40+ years has been pretty stupid.
PPS - If you really want to see how security screening is supposed to work, take a flight out of Tel Aviv some day.
As I see it "Smart" terrorists here would want to provoke a significant over-reaction from French Authorities domestically to unify more Muslims against the French Government. Their true intent was to snatch attention and invite reprisals for a longer team strategic unification against the Government.
"Dumb" terrorists are just angry someone said something rude about the Prophet and are carrying out their duties as true believers to avenge him.
The clue that i think points to 'smart:' they had an ex-filtration plan. They want to live (generally a smart thing-the dumb true believers are the suicide-rs) and they want the cops looking for them, aggressively and offensively in the French Muslim community.
Thoughts Gentlemen? SFC James Sczymanski LTC David S. Chang, ChFC®, CLU® LTC Paul Labrador SPC (Join to see) 1SG (Join to see) CSM Michael J. Uhlig SGM Erik Marquez PO2 William Allen Crowder 1LT John Martin CPT Zachary Brooks SMSgt Minister Gerald A. Thomas Maj Chris Nelson
In fact I liked the debate so much I made a new topic about it:
https://www.rallypoint.com/answers/what-is-the-operational-purpose-behind-the-charlie-hebdo-paris-attacks
LTC David S. Chang, ChFC®, CLU® Maj Chris Nelson SPC (Join to see) PO2 William Allen Crowder
What is the Operational purpose behind the Charlie Hebdo/Paris attacks? | RallyPoint
Unlike my other discussion question interested in the reaction of France and the US to the attacks and some of the news-source based discussion questions of what actually occurred and one debating the proximate motivations of the attack, this thread is about the Operational purpose. The Strategic is policy outcome (most Jihadists want a Caliphate) Tactics win battles (or terrorist attacks) and Operations link Strategy and Tactics. The...
From the information available so far, it appears that the three males were long-time losers, drug dealers, and violent criminals. If they had any "real" ideological motivation at all it probably didn't extend much past "Hey, if we kill a bunch of people and claim to be doing it in the name of Islam they people will think we are heroes and not simply a bunch of dorks.".
Face it, leaving your ID on the seat of your "get away car" (which you abandon) isn't exactly the hallmark of a rocket scientist. Once the murderers actually accepted the fact that they weren't going to be able to hog the TV and Internet limelight there really wasn't much left for them to do but die and hope that they didn't look like idiots while doing so. [NOTE TO EMULATORS - "Running full speed and shooting on full automatic directly towards a whole bunch of people who already have their guns out and pointed towards where you are is NOT considered to be "A Smart Move".]
The consensus where I am living now is that you could have had the same sort of thing happening here several centuries ago (if there had been any "WhiteFolks" living here then) but that the removal of "blasphemous libel" from the criminal code has reduced the possibility. [ASIDE - The US has never had "blasphemous libel" or "blasphemy" as part of its criminal codes.]
While a significant portion of Muslims living outside Muslim countries think that mocking Mohamed should not be allowed, the percentage who think that people should be killed simply for doing so is incredibly small. [Unfortunately an incredibly small percentage of a very large number can also be quite a large number.]
PS - Mohamed's biography reveals that he did not get upset over those who reviled and mocked him. In fact Mohamed offered to conduct the funeral for a man who had been extremely outspoken (and in opposition) about Mohamed.
PPS - Face it, some of the "FundieChristians" would find some depictions of Jesus "blasphemous" and take pot shots at those who display them.
IF, and quite frankly I don't credit it (but I admit the possibility), the "OpsPlanners" were hoping that the French government would act the same way as the US government would - they failed, the French government simply went about the task of tracking down and dealing with a bunch of murderers. In fact, given that the murderers killed a wounded policeman in cold blood, the French police were remarkably restrained.
Assuming (not necessarily a safe thing to do) that the screamers, wailers, moaners, and finger-pointers that pass for politicians and "commentators" these days can be prevented from working up mass hysteria (possibly so that they can sell more copies of their book on how to survive the coming apocalyptic and catastrophic societal disintegration while making huge profits and improving your sex life - but I might just be being cynical here) then the "terrorists" will lose and they will lose simply because "we" cannot be beaten unless "we" surrender.
Let's make the absolutely unwarranted assumption that 0.10% of the world's Muslims subscribe to the raving loony version of Islam. That would mean that there are around 1,500,000 people attempting to force 7,125,000,000 people to do something that they don't want to do. A ratio of 4,750 "occupieds" to 1 "occupier" is NOT considered to be a "good ratio"
As I see it "Smart" terrorists here would want to provoke a significant over-reaction from French Authorities domestically to unify more Muslims against the French Government. Their true intent was to snatch attention and invite reprisals for a longer team strategic unification against the Government.
"Dumb" terrorists are just angry someone said something rude about the Prophet and are carrying out their duties as true believers to avenge him.
The clue that i think points to 'smart:' they had an ex-filtration plan. They want to live (generally a smart thing-the dumb true believers are the suicide-rs) and they want the cops looking for them, aggressively and offensively in the French Muslim community.
Thoughts Gentlemen? SFC James Sczymanski LTC David S. Chang, ChFC®, CLU® LTC Paul Labrador SPC (Join to see) 1SG (Join to see) CSM Michael J. Uhlig SGM Erik Marquez PO2 William Allen Crowder 1LT John Martin CPT Zachary Brooks SMSgt Minister Gerald A. Thomas Maj Chris Nelson
I really enjoyed reading America Alone by Mark Steyn. http://www.amazon.com/America-Alone-The-World-Know/dp/ [login to see]
I don't think Mark Steyn is right about everything, and he is controversial. I do think he makes really good points about big history. Big history is driven by three major things 1. Geography 2. Weather 3. Population. For the first two I really enjoyed Guns Germs and Steel. Steyn focuses primarily on the third, population. His central premise is that birth rates trump almost anything else at this point in human history. People born into a certain ideological system are very likely to follow that for their lives. There are those who question and change and grow, but they are the exception. Most will believe the same as their parents. So when virtually every country with liberal, democratic, western values is breeding BELOW replacement rate (2 kids per couple) their society is dying, slowly. When a society is breeding well above 2.0, they have to either 1. develop increased technology and wealth to support increased population (or population control like birth control) 2. have massive death (famine, wars, disease) or 3. emigrate. Cue massive migration over time from places that have too many people to places that have too few people (both sides need it economically), but people bring their ideas. People do eventually assimilate, it usually takes a few generations. If that assimilation clock is moving slower than the immigration and reproduction clocks, you have societal shifts inside countries.
So, people who believe in theocracy: that god's law must be made manifest in civic authority who immigrate to countries that no longer believe this and disagree. But the countries do believe in democracy. Well, the people who want theocracy start voting. And as they vote they start taking more of the representation, as they should according to Democratic theory. Well when believers in separation of church and state see believers in theocracy winning power through voting, what do they do? They vote to disenfranchise those people before it's too late. But remember those clocks- time is on the side of the believers in theocracy. What happens when a large plurality is heavily disenfranchised? Violence. Lots of it. Steyn forecasts the descent of Europe into Civil War, one side believers in Islam, the other neo-totalitarians interested in establishing a split society of increased stratification and disenfranchisement. He breaks down the rates for the countries and predicts the order of increased chaos, and its very interesting reading.
So what do I think of this specific attack? A leading indicator, much like the riots. do I think France will over-react? In the long term, yes, maybe not yet.
Amazon.com: America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It (9781596985278): Mark Steyn: Books
Amazon.com: America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It (9781596985278): Mark Steyn: Books
It certainly didn't come from 1914 when the French were fighting the Germans and the Americans stayed home and make money selling to both sides.
It certainly didn't come from 1915 when the French were fighting the Germans and the Americans stayed home and make money selling to both sides.
It certainly didn't come from 1916 when the French were fighting the Germans and the Americans stayed home and make money selling to both sides.
It certainly didn't come from before April of 1917 when the French were fighting the Germans and the Americans stayed home and make money selling to both sides.
It probably didn't come from before May of 1918 when the French were fighting the Germans and the Americans hadn't yet been in combat.
It certainly didn't come from 1939 when the French were fighting the Germans and the Americans stayed home and make money selling to both sides.
Possibly it came from 1940 when the decade long incredible stupidity of the French General Staff committed the French Army to fighting WWI battles against WWII opponents while the Americans stayed home and make money selling to both sides.
It probably didn't come from before 11 DEC 41 when Germany declared war on the United States of America (thereby resolving President Roosevelt's dilemma of how to get American capital to stop selling war materials to both sides (using "neutral" front companies which had "bought" formerly American companies [which were sold back to their original owners once the war was over and those "neutrals" had collected their compensation for the damage that the United Nations had done to their property {the companies incidentally included all the profits that they had made from selling war materials to the Germans}).
Possibly it arose because the French government "surrendered" in Vietnam after being beaten by the Vietnamese which the government of the United States of America never did. (Of course, the United States of America never "owned" Vietnam so any "surrender" there wasn't one that the government of the United States of America had anything to do with.
My question to you is "Have you ever worked with French troops?".
I also do not know where the mantra for the white flag started or when. As you have pointed out, they have a rich heritage as does the USA military. Both have flaws. If I offended, I apologize.
While I don't like totally false analogies, please let me quote an old friend of mine "You cannot understand the "French Psyche" until you realize that - while the French will admit that although Jesus was Jewish and spoke Aramaic - God is Catholic and speaks French.".
And, just to keep the balance "You cannot understand the "American Psyche" unless you accept, and don't try to reconcile, two things - [1] it suffers from a quite undeserved inferiority complex, and [2] it suffers from an equally undeserved superiority complex.".