A thoughtful perspective highlighting the risk of our reflex actions.
Terror can only succeed with our cooperation | Simon Jenkins | Comment is free | The Guardian
The warlike response to the Paris massacre by western governments, the media and the rest of the world has answered the dreams of Islamic State ‘The French are bombing the Isis captial Raqqa, doubtless proving that bombs from the air kill the innocent as effectively as guns on the ground.’
Think what your enemy wants you to do, and do the opposite. No maxim of war is so ignored.Since last Friday’s killings in Paris, the world has answered the dreams of Islamic State. It has drenched their deeds in fame, glorified its perpetrators with vilification and defined them as warriors not murderers. Deeds of the most squalid horror have been “nationalised” then internationalised. The whole world has been drawn into Isis’s web of fear. Its wildest fantasies have been realised.
The potency of terror lies not in the act but in the aftermath. The act is death and destruction, horrendous in itself. The response is what gives it political traction. As with Osama bin Laden on 9/11, Isis wants the world to go berserk, declare emergencies, tear up freedoms, persecute moderate Muslims and bomb Muslim cities. By capitulating to these desires, the west has vastly increased the power of the terror – and the likelihood of imitation.
Source: Terror can only succeed with our cooperation | Simon Jenkins | Comment is free | The Guardian
