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“This is an attack not just on Paris, not just on the people on France, but an attack on all humanity and the universal values we share.”

Comment.

Or, as the French would say, Comment?

10 comments… add one
  • ... Link

    Apparently the values aren’t exactly universal.

    Other news from the day:

    Obama declared ISIS completely isolated

    Obama Administration to allow many more Syrian refugees into US

  • ... Link

    Belgium now closing its borders, according to BBC.

  • TastyBits Link

    Somebody needs to inform these terrorists that they are not respecting other people’s safe space.

    The fearless college students should lead the charge. They seem to believe that they can shame their way to victory. Let them have at it. I am sure the terrorists will be quite impressed.

    (Is a safe space required to be continuous, or can it be spread-out? I am sure the terrorists would put their head in one safe place and their other body parts in another.)

  • ... Link

    TB, you’ve got it all wrong. The campus protesters will protest on behalf of the terrorists. After all, they’re brown, and the people they’re killing are white. And we all know whites are the true evil.

  • steve Link

    Universal for the US and Europe, mostly*. Not universal in the Middle East, including Israel. We, and the Europeans, have killed a lot of civilians, but for the most part it has not been intentional. In the Middle East, it is pretty clear that such killing is intentional. They are bringing that to our part of the world. As we are allies with France, and do hold common values and radical Islam as a common enemy, I think we should provide them the support and cooperation we are able to offer. If these attacks were performed by disgruntled second generation Muslims, they are going to be pretty hard to stop as the second gens will know how to blend in better.

    Wonder if this leads to mass deportations?

    Steve

    * Intent does matter, but I have to wonder how much it matters to the family looking at their dead kids from an accidental bombing, or a hospital worker looking at fellow dead nurses and doctors because of an error. We are also culpable in the sense that we have engaged in pre-emptive war, and we certainly lost any sense of moral high ground with the practice of torture. If terrorists had captured and tortured Americans in 2000, I think we could have said that the prohibition against torture was a universal value in the West, just as we would have agreed that pre-emptive war was wrong. Not now. This may be an attack on the values to which many of us aspire, but not so much on those we have practiced.

  • steve Link

    Lest I be misunderstood, I am all for capturing/killing the bad guys here, I just don’t think there is much of a case for a battle of values. This is just good old US vs THEM.

    Steve

  • mike shupp Link

    There are, I gather, a couple of sites in the Middle East which ISIS and other militant Moslems think will be the site of climactic battles between Islam and “Crusaders” in the near future, a la the Armageddon which some Christians anticipate.

    It’d be nice, I find myself thinking, to land on those spots in large numbers, we with our French and British and even some Arab allies, and announce our willingness to duke it out with any of the local guys who think those sites are going to be Moslem victories. We’ve got the manpower to stick it out, we’ve got the necessary wealth to keep on fighting, we’ve got better generals and better trained troops. We’ve spent 15 f***ing years fiddling around in the Middle East, so by God, we’ve got the necessary sticktoitiveness.

    And after a couple of years, the local militants are going to be a bit less militant, the eager imported jihadis from America and Europe and South Asia are going to be a little less enthusiastic, and their numbers are going to be considerably less — and no one outside their dwindling numbers is going to care. Most of use might even think the world is better off with fewer militant Moslems about.

    Or so it seems to me. I can’t convince myself that any present or future US President is going to embrace such ideas.

  • PD Shaw Link

    A suitable assertion of universal values to bind together allies and alienate the enemy.

  • steve Link

    “And after a couple of years, the local militants are going to be a bit less militant”

    They have been at this since at least the late 70s. We have not. Thinking they will give up after a few years of us showing our might is foolish. They haven’t done that anywhere. Also, figure out how we will pay for this.

    Steve

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