It was Friday, the 13th or a Black Friday. A group of seven terrorists in three groups on behalf of ISIS carried out an extremely well coordinated terrorist plan with consummate ease. The first attack was carried outside the stadium where a France-Germany friendly football match was in progress with the French President Francoise Hollande among the spectators. That was a ploy to mislead the police while others carried out the attacks meant to kill. The main target was the Bataclan Theater where a concert was on where 89 people were killed. The other deaths occurred in three restaurants. In the carnage, 129 people got killed, many hundreds injured. Of the 7 terrorists, 6 died from suicide bombs while the police killed the 7th.
Paris has never seen such horror since the Nazi occupation during the Second World War. France was shocked and numbed and so was the rest of the world, as the carnage in Paris became "breaking news" in media worldwide. The French President's response, like President Bush's after 9/11, was: "France is at war." President Obama immediately committed the US 100 per cent behind France and provided it with immediate intelligence to allow its military to carry out air strikes on ISIS strongholds in Syria. Support for France was widespread, particularly among its allies. Nevertheless, till the time of filing this article, the resolve of France's allies has been limited to statements. It is yet to match the support the western nations had shown to President Bush's call for war on terror after 9/11.
One reason for the difference is of course the fact that the carnage and the tragedy in the Paris terror attacks notwithstanding, the magnitude of what happened on 9/11 was humungous and still one of its kind in the history of terrorism. Second, in President Bush's war on terror there was a country to attack to seek retribution. In case of President Holland's call to wage war, the enemy is physically located in a country that it had invaded under US leadership, changed a despotic regime, claimed it had established democracy and left the country to the new regime not too long ago. Finally, another invasion of Iraq to finish off ISIS would only expose that the allies, France included, are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children as "collateral damages" that is one major reason that created ISIS to seek retribution for the "collateral damages." Â
In fact, the invasion of Iraq has been under critical examination in the US in the weeks and months leading to the Paris carnage. One of the war's main planners British Prime Minister Tony Blair in an interview recently admitted that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a "mistake" but nevertheless defended it on the issue of regime change. Nevertheless by admitting the" mistake", Tony Blair unwittingly also admitted to the following. First, the "mistake" killed 200,000 innocent Iraqi men, women and children (some estimates put that figure close to half a million!). Second, the UK/USA and their allies, including France, invaded Iraq on deceitful reasons for which they have not yet been held responsible.
These questions are now being raised and becoming stronger. Excuses of regime change for the invasion and "collateral damages" for deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children to achieve that change are now being challenged even in the United States itself. CNN recently aired a documentary before the Paris carnage introduced by Fareed Zakaria titled "The Long Road to Hell: Americans in Iraq" that exposed the deceit committed by the US and the allies in invading Iraq, namely the fact that there was no WMD (weapons of mass destruction) in Iraq and false intelligence was deliberately created to justify the invasion. The documentary has also established like a simple math that ISIS has emerged as a direct consequence of the invasion of Iraq.
The documentary quoted Richard Clarke, counter terrorism Czar in Bush White House, stating that war crimes charges could justifiably be brought against those in the Bush administration who were in charge of the Iraq war. Excerpts from the elder President Bush's upcoming autobiography released recently also hinted in the same direction but put responsibility upon Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Carl Rove, et al suggesting his son was not in control. The son nevertheless acknowledged he was in charge of the Iraqi invasion. The French President's call for global alliance for war against ISIS notwithstanding, the worldwide support for the victims, is therefore not leading to the kind of material support that the allies had given when President Bush had called upon them to join the war on terror.
Public opinion in western countries including the US, while unequivocal about wiping out ISIS also these days are conscious about the hundreds of thousands of lives lost as "collateral damages" in a war fought on fraudulent grounds. Thus while seeking retribution for the Paris victims, France together with the western countries must also consider the growing demand worldwide, including their own, for holding countries and leaders whose fraudulent decisions have led to the deaths of the hundreds of thousands of innocent Afghan, Iraqi and Syrian men, women and children responsible for their actions. Even as the world mourns the Paris victims, innocent Iraqis and Syrians are dying as a result of the air strikes of the western powers.
Unless these reasons are addressed, new suicide bombers will strike new objectives in the countries they hold responsible for the humungous "collateral damages". The terrorists now have base in the western countries, in Europe and France in particular and do not need to pass securities at airports/borders to get to their targets. Three of the 7 Paris terrorists were French citizens. Therefore, to identify these potential terrorists before they act, law-enforcing agencies/intelligence alone would find their work like looking for a pin in a haystack. They would need Muslims already living in the West for assistance. In the United Kingdom, Canada and the US, Muslims who want ISIS defeated as much and indeed more than non-Muslims in the western countries have cooperated with law enforcement in isolating the ISIL supporters in their midst because, first, terrorism has no place in Islam, and second, these acts give Islamophobes reasons to target their lives in their adopted countries that sadly also influence these western governments against them.
President Obama, speaking in a G20 meeting in Turkey after the Paris carnage, while supporting the French air strikes in Syria on ISIS "ruled out the introduction of substantial number of ground troops" to wage a war. The President's statement should caution France not to repeat the ways followed by President Bush that gave birth to ISIS. France must not also forget that there were no Islamic fundamentalists let alone Islamic terrorists in Iraq before his country joined the US led coalition and invaded Iraq in 2003.
ISIS has no friends. The Paris carnage in the wake its other unbelievable acts of terror including beheading of western hostages has only made the world more determined to fight this terror group. Thus the world is behind France while it seeks retribution for the Paris carnage. But unless the "collateral damages" are also part of the equation, the war on terror will become more complex and dangerous. And if the West is serious in seeking an end to this war that is already the longest one ever in modern history, they must work with the Muslims as allies because without them on board, there cannot be any end to the war on terror.
The value of human lives should not depend on colour, nationality or religion. With that in perspective, France and its allies must see how many lives the terrorists against whom they seek retribution have taken and how many have died in collateral damages.
The writer is a retired Ambassador.
serajul7@gmail.com