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COMMENTARY Jeffrey Gillespie: Après nous, le déluge Comment DailyTidings.com Writer Posted Nov. 20, 2015 at 12:01 AM Posted Nov. 20, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Social News In May. this columnist wrote a piece in which he referred to the Syrian crisis and the migration of refugees into Europe as having the potential to be a “potential conveyor belt for the beast of terrorism to enter and strike at the belly of Old Europe.” On Nov. 13, a series of such coordinated attacks hit Paris, and nearly 130 people died tragically. The responsible parties were Islamic terrorists under the banner of Daesh, the bloody and lethal ISIL terrorist network. Of course, the faithful accusations of barbarism and brutality in the name of religion, followed. Western leaders and their proxies in the Arab world called for renewed bombing campaigns and actions in Syria to “prevent” such tragedies from occurring again. President Hollande of France described the actions as an “act of war” — in fact, much of the language he used in his speech seemed designed to invoke the NATO charter — and he explicitly called for a “grand coalition” of countries to go after militant jihadists in Syria. Albert Einstein famously said that madness is defined as doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. Since perhaps World War I (a little over a century ago, now), global power has been defined by blowing the enemy all to hell. We can rest assured that the Western press — caught up as usual in the eye-mopping and maudlin calls for revenge that are so much the trend whenever some unfortunate white European gets caught in the karmic crossfire of their own blasé indifference — will make little or no mention of the number of people who have died in Libya, Syria, Iraqm or Yemen on any given day in the past week. Magazine covers will not feature a blacked-out background with a single candle lighted for those who die in Damascus or Beirut. None of your hipster friends on Facebook will change their photos to the colors of the Yemeni flag in solidarity with the innocent dead there; such a move might be seen to have terrorist sympathies at its core. And, of course, within three days of grimly condemning the attacks in Paris, President Obama was all smiles while enjoying a visit with King Salman of Saudi Arabia, during which the U.S. sold $1.3 billion in smart bombs to the Saudi government. While many eyes in the Anglosphere and Western Europe have been focused on the next economic bubble, the real orb to which we should be giving our attention is the bubble of military imperialism. Standard military policies of the sort long described by men such as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski as “the less evil of two evils” are no longer working. Bombing people into submission, while workable, was never really a long-term option. Now we have reached a point where the global elite is pouring gasoline onto the flames of war and then blaming the flames for getting bigger. The smoke from those flames has reached continental Europe; the result is a sort of perverse take on the attack formation of the German blitzkrieg: an assault spearheaded by refugees who are fleeing from a war that we started. Within the Trojan horse of that human crisis, a core group of dedicated jihadists, whose sole motivation is to attack and take lives among the citizenry of their host countries. There will be more attacks. There will be more war. The possibility of a diplomatic solution, while slim, can work only if the United States is willing to make some real power concessions of the sort that could rebalance the world. Don’t expect any such authentic diplomacy to be forthcoming. After all, 2016 is an election year. Ashland resident Jeffrey Gillespie is a Tidings columnist and freelance writer. Email him at gillespie.jeffrey @gmail.com. DailyTidings.com Writer Posted Nov. 20, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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