RUTHFULLY YOURS

Secretary of State Kerry said of Friday’s terror attack in Paris, “These are heinous, evil, vile acts. Those of us who can must do everything in our power to fight back against what can only be considered an assault on our common humanity.” President Obama used the phrase “common humanity” as well.

They are wrong.

“Heinous, evil, vile” yes; but there is no “common humanity” with ISIS and their ilk. The attack in Paris was an attack on Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite, which, in simple terms, is a modern standard of tolerance. President Obama actually called it, “liberte, egalite and the pursuit of happiness.” It was felicitous a slip of the tongue. To have liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness as government policy — whatever our personal social, ethnic or religious differences — requires tolerance. And tolerance is the specific contribution to humanity of Western democratic liberal governance. It is the antithesis of what Prime Minister Netanyahu called “medievalism” when he was in Washington last week. It is that which is under attack in the Middle East; that which was attacked in France.

In Erdogan’s Turkey, “protestors” could hold signs honoring the terrorists who had perpetrated the Paris attacks, as well as Osama bin Laden. No one was prosecuted under the articles of the Turkish Penal Code that regulate “praising crime and criminals.”

The two Turkish leaders do not hide their ambitions of building a “mildly Islamist” Sunni regime in Syria. Hoping that “mild Islamists” may one day morph into secular, pro-democracy crowds is an extremely dangerous deception, designed to advance Islamism. “Mild Islamists” often morph into jihadists.

It is the same Turkey which President Barack Obama said at the G-20 meeting was “a strong partner” in fighting IS. Have a nice sleep, Mr. President!

Alain Juppé, former French prime minister (1995-97), once said: “I would like to stress this point without reservation: France sees the Arab Spring as auspicious. The Arab Spring holds out tremendous hope — hope for democracy and the rule of law, hope for peace and stability, hope for better future in which every person can pursue goals commensurate with his or her needs, talents and ambitions.”

Ten years ago, in October and November 2005, a series of riots took place in the suburbs of Paris and other French cities. Rioters burned cars and public buildings at night. The rioters were mostly young immigrants from North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa who declared Islam as an inseparable part of their identity.

Russia’s options in Syria are poor. While Vladimir Putin intervened to save his client Assad and Russian access to warm-water ports, it is beginning to look as if air power won’t do the job for Russia any more than it will for the U.S. – and the Russians are using much higher volumes. In addition, it appears that Russia will suffer now from pushback, the first incident of which might have been the jetliner downed over Sinai.What can Putin do? Cutting a deal with Saudi Arabia may be the least of several not-very-good options.

Putin’s goal was initially to stave off the imminent collapse of the Syrian regime. Assad’s army was suffering from large-scale defections, and Iran and Hezbollah were proving to be less than capable foot soldiers. (As a reminder, the Iranians were poor soldiers in the field during the Iran-Iraq war and consequently turned to asymmetric warfare in the late 1980s.) The Russians have hinted that Iran made repeated requests for intervention. Syria likely asked for help and – minimally – approved and facilitated Russian aircraft, pilots and support personnel coming into the country.

The emission-cut pledges will cost $1 trillion a year and avert warming of less than one degree by 2100.
The United Nations climate conference in Paris starting Nov. 30 will get under way when most minds in the French capital will still understandably be on the recent terror attacks. But for many of the 40,000 attendees, the goal is to ensure that climate change stays on the global economic agenda for the next 15 years.

The Paris conference is the culmination of many such gatherings and is expected to produce agreements on combating climate change. President Obama and the dozens of other world leaders planning to be in Paris should think carefully about the economic impact—in particular the staggering costs—of the measures they are contemplating.

The U.N.’s climate chief, Christiana Figueres, says openly that the aim of the talks is “to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.” That outlook will be welcome among attendees like the delegation from Bolivia. That country’s official material submitted for the talks proposes a “lasting solution” for climate change: “We must destroy capitalism.”

Terror groups have for years waged a technical battle with Western intelligence services that have sought to constrain them through a web of electronic surveillance.

The Paris attacks, apparently planned under the noses of French and Belgian authorities, raise the possibility that Islamic State adherents have found ways around the dragnet.

French authorities say two of the attackers knew each other in prison, but it isn’t clear how the group communicated in plotting and coordinating the Friday attacks. Intelligence services have monitored communications from one terror suspect, Belgian Islamist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, between Syria and alleged associates in Belgium and Morocco.

LEADING commentator Janet Daley’s article in Saturday’s Telegraph ‘The West is at war with a death cult’ stands for everything that is woeful about European elites’ response to Islamic jihad.
It is a triumph of religious illiteracy.

The jihadist enemy, she asserts, is utterly unintelligible, so beyond encompassing in ‘coherent, systematic thought’ that no vocabulary can describe it: ‘This is just insanity’, she writes. Because the enemy is ‘hysterical’, lacking ‘rational demands’, ‘negotiable limits,’ or ‘intelligible objectives’ Daley claims it is pointless to subject its actions to any form of historical, social or theological analysis, for no-one should attempt to ‘impose logic on behaviour that is pathological’.

Despite this, Daley then ventures to offer analysis of and explanations for ISIS’ actions, but in doing so she relies upon her own conceptual categories, not those of ISIS.

Her explanations therefore fall wide of the mark.