Western Wake-up Call: How to Process the Paris Attacks?                                   

Once more, the soundbites and images come flooding through the television screen.  Once more, the words “dead” and “injured” appear side-by-side in the rolling headline below the pundit’s bust.  Suicide bombers, eight of them, took over a hundred Parisian lives this Friday evening.  The same type of attack killed dozens in Lebanon earlier this week.  Horror and fear are permeating French communities to the extent not seen since World War II.  The Middle East is withstanding war and crisis on a catastrophic level.  The West's War on Terror has certainly entered a new chapter.

Journalists hesitate towards speculation on this latest attack, but we know the facts already.  We know what caused this attack and what has caused attacks like this one on Western cities in the past: a policy of "exporting democracy" to Middle Eastern countries.  Decades of military occupations, regime changes, financial aid to groups who "share our interests," total devastation of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and we wonder what might motivate terrorists to commit heinous acts like those that have just taken place in Paris.  Granted, the actions of Islamic extremists are irrational, carnal, and murderous, but there is a direct correlation between the desire to commit or incite violence against the West and the West’s ongoing and unwanted involvement in the Middle East.

It is arrogant, and has been since the days of the Bush foreign policy doctrine, to assume that America is morally obligated to export its democratic values and philosophies to a region of the world with its own separate history, culture, political process, religion, economy, geography, etc.  Barring the individual motivations for a few radicalized human beings to commit such violence as has been endured in France, the real reasons the West has seen such attacks is the West’s own fault.  The headlines truthfully categorize the violence as the worst that’s taken place in France since World War II, but will anyone honestly discuss how Europe has otherwise failed to protect its people and maintain democracy since World War II?  When will we Westerners, who proclaim to be more civilized and righteous, actually start acting like it and stop bombing, invading, and meddling with an already crippled region?

In the United States, a country whose ties with France extend back to the founding of our own nation, a debate is currently raging amongst the Republicans running for president over how to combat ISIL.  The front-runner Ben Carson has lied about his sources, who he claims informed him of “China’s involvement” in Syria; Donald Trump, at a rally, promised to "bomb the sh*t" out of ISIL if elected; Lindsay Graham promises 10,000 ground troops in Iraq.  These are the would-be so-called diplomats and commanders-in-chief of our country?  They don’t have a clue as how to solve the problem.

Furthermore, they only seem interested in continuations of Bush foreign policy which are senseless, cost-ineffective, immoral, neo-conservative policies that have only angered and emboldened terrorists since they have been implemented post-9/11.  These kinds of men, their policies and ideas of "exporting democracy and Western values" have not kept and will not keep us safe. So, instead of "punishing" ISIL as President Hollande of France has vowed to do, why doesn't he divert his efforts towards making France a more diplomatic, tolerant community, instead of an aggressive, militaristic, conflict-exacerbating  state like the one the U.S. has become?

Are You Addicted to War?  Then Why Is Your Country?

What happens when you buy a laptop, a shirt, a new car, a tennis racket?  You want to get the most use out of it as you can, don’t you?  You want to wear, drive or swing whatever it is you have spent your hard earned dollars on as much as you possibly can before you have to get rid of it or upgrade.  In other words, when people invest money into something, they have an “interest” in that particular something.  They feel obligated to take care of it, and find it hard to depart with a product without getting the full use or satisfaction out of that particular product.

The same principle of human psychology applies when, on a national scale, we commit ourselves to war.  War costs money and the United States of America spent a lot of it when we sustained (and continue to sustain) our 14-year-long, and counting, military involvement in the Middle East.  The difference in price between the U.S.’s war(s) in the Middle East and the price of a tennis racket is equal to the difference between how difficult it would be to part with a tennis racket, and how difficult it would be to part with something on which you spent 4 trillion dollars.

Politicians, media pundits, fellow bloggers, and others will say that we remain entrenched in our battle stances because of our “interests” in the region.  Well, the longer we stay there, the more money we spend, the more lives we lose in that forsaken desert, and the more our “interests” will grow.  Looking back, for example, to the moment Isis overtook Ramadi in May of this year, how ridiculous does it now seem to hear pundits and politicians pontificate about how “American lives were lost" to take a particular city during the Iraq War and Iraq insurgency,? 

There appeared to be this need to keep Ramadi because of the blood, money and oil we poured into it.  What more people, especially those in charge of our military, our finances and our political system need to understand is that the urgency for action in the Middle East comes not from its inherent problems as an unstable region, but from what the U.S. has already committed economically, militarily, and emotionally.  In many ways, our expensive wars are less like a casual shopping spree and more like a terrible gambling addiction.  Know when to fold ‘em America.