.
11/14/15, "There Is Only One Way to Defeat ISIS," Esquire, Charles P. Pierce
"We
must hold accountable our Middle Eastern "allies"—the states and
bankers and political elites—who persist in funding mass murder."
"Tough talk in the context of what happened in Paris is as empty as a bell rung at the bottom of a well.
Francois Hollande, the French president who was at the soccer game that
was attacked, has promised that France will wage "pitiless war" against
the forces that conceived and executed the attacks. Most wars are
pitiless, but not all of them are fought with the combination of
toughness and intelligence that this one will require....There is
no real point in focusing a response on the people whose religion makes
us nervous. States should retaliate against states....
It's not like this is any
kind of secret. In 2010, thanks to WikiLeaks, we learned that the State
Department, under the direction of then-Secretary of State Hillary
Rodham Clinton, knew full well where the money for foreign terrorism
came from. It came from countries and not from a faith. It came from
sovereign states and not from an organized religion. It came from
politicians and dictators, not from clerics, at least not directly. It
was paid to maintain a political and social order, not to promulgate a
religious revival or to launch a religious war. Religion was the fuel,
the ammonium nitrate and the diesel fuel. Authoritarian oligarchy built
the bomb. As long as people are dying in Paris, nobody important is
dying in Doha or Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia is the world's largest
source of funds for Islamist militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban
and Lashkar-e-Taiba - but the Saudi government is reluctant to stem the
flow of money, according to Hillary Clinton. "More needs to be done
since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for
al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups," says a secret
December 2009 paper signed by the US secretary of state. Her memo urged
US diplomats to redouble their efforts to stop Gulf money reaching
extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. "Donors in Saudi Arabia
constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist
groups worldwide," she said. Three other Arab countries are listed as
sources of militant money: Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
The cables highlight an often ignored factor in the Pakistani and Afghan
conflicts: that the violence is partly bankrolled by rich, conservative
donors across the Arabian Sea whose governments do little to stop them.
The problem is particularly acute in Saudi Arabia, where militants
soliciting funds slip into the country disguised as holy pilgrims, set
up front companies to launder funds and receive money from
government-sanctioned charities.
It's time for this to stop.
It's time to be pitiless against the bankers and against the people who
invest in murder to assure their own survival in power. Assets from
these states should be frozen, all over the west. Money trails should be
followed, wherever they lead. People should go to jail, in every
country in the world. It should be done state-to-state. Stop funding the
murder of our citizens and you can have your money back. Maybe. If
we're satisfied that you'll stop doing it. And, it goes without saying,
but we'll say it anyway - not another bullet will be sold to you, let
alone advanced warplanes, until this act gets cleaned up to our
satisfaction. If that endangers your political position back home,
that's your problem, not ours. You are no longer trusted allies.
Complain, and your diplomats will be going home. Complain more loudly,
and your diplomats will be investigated and, if necessary, detained.
Retaliate, and you do not want to know what will happen, but it will
done with cold, reasoned and, yes, pitiless calculation. It will not be a
blind punch. You will not see it coming. It will not be an attack on
your faith. It will be an attack on how you conduct your business as
sovereign states in a world full of sovereign states....
It
is long past time for the oligarchies of the Gulf states to stop paying
protection to the men in the suicide belts. Their societies are stunted
and parasitic. The main job of the elites there is to find enough
foreign workers to ensla...err....indenture to do all the real work. The
example of Qatar and the interesting business plan through which that
country is building the facilities for the 2022 World Cup is instructive
here....In Qatar, for
people who come from elsewhere to work, passports have been known to
disappear into thin air. These are the societies that profit from
terrible and tangled web of causation and violence that played out on
the streets of Paris. These are the people who buy their safety with the
blood of innocents far away....
These are a few things that will not solve the terrible and tangled web
of causation and violence in which the attacks of Friday night were
spawned. A 242-ship Navy will not stop one motivated murderous fanatic
from emptying the clip of an AK-47 into the windows of a crowded
restaurant. The F-35 fighter plane will not stop a group of motivated
murderous fanatics from detonating bombs at a soccer match. A
missile-defense shield in Poland will not stop a platoon of motivated
murderous fanatics from opening up in a jammed concert hall, or taking
hostages, or taking themselves out with suicide belts when the police
break down the doors. American soldiers dying in the sands of Syria or
Iraq will not stop the events like what happened in Paris from happening
again because American soldiers dying in the sands of Syria or Iraq
will be dying there in combat against only the most obvious physical
manifestation of a deeper complex of ancient causes and ancient effects
made worse by the reach of the modern technology of bloodshed and
murder. Nobody's death is ever sacrifice enough for that."...
......................
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