Europe Again "At War"

[CharlesHarris]

A thoughtful op-ed by a retired US intelligence analyst
http://observer.com/2016/03/europe-is-again-at-war/

It’s time to admit the extent of Europe’s problem with Islamic radicalism. This isn’t mere terrorism any longer, this is guerrilla war.

By John R. Schindler • 03/23/16 12:00pm

...Yesterday’s coordinated attacks on Brussels have woken Europeans, yet again, to the threat that exists in their midst—a grave danger politicians seem to have no idea how to handle.

The bombings at Zaventem airport and the Brussels metro at current count killed 31 and injured 270—over 300 casualties in all. Belgium is not accustomed to such a bloodbath. Its army contingent in Afghanistan suffered only 15 casualties, with just one killed, during that U.S.-led war. It’s been over 60 years since Belgians died violently in any numbers. Their battalion serving in Korea lost 101 killed and 478 wounded in action between 1950 and 1953. This is a distant memory today.

Belgium is a small country. Relative to population, this would be equivalent to 900 dead Americans and a staggering 7,800 wounded. To say nothing of the symbolism of yesterday’s attack on the metro near Maelbeek station in downtown Brussels, right next to the offices of the European Union. Striking at the very heart of the European project, revealing its vulnerability to even a handful of ardent madmen, sends a powerful message that nobody can miss...

As always, the killers will have a support system in their community too. After all, Belgium is an outlier of a toxic kind, its angry Muslim population producing jihadists eager to fight for ISIS out of all proportion to its size. Yet its very status as a Jihadistan of sorts gave Belgium a degree of protection until very recently. While mass-casualty attacks struck across Europe since 9/11...—Belgium was left nearly unscathed. Radicals appreciated that Brussels, being lax in security matters, was granting them de facto sanctuary to plot attacks elsewhere. This was a deal that the terrorists sensibly saw no point in disrupting.

Belgium’s chronically dysfunctional politics have played a toxic role, as has the general Western European tendency to avert eyes and hope for the best.

None of this is new... when Belgian-based terrorists caused mayhem in France in the mid-1990s, including a wave of bombings in Paris, Brussels helped French intelligence catch the bad guys but undertook no serious dismantling of jihadist networks in Belgium. Over time this problem metastasized, and with the rise of ISIS in recent years, including hundreds of Belgian citizens going to the Middle East to wage holy war for the Islamic State, the threat has grown exponentially.

The game changer was last November’s horrific attacks in Paris, the bloodiest events on French soil since the Second World War... For the police, Molenbeek has been a no-go area of sorts for years, leaving jihadists free rein to raise funds, collect arms, and plot mayhem elsewhere.

It was thus no surprise that Molenbeek was where the police last week finally caught up with Salah Abdeslam, the last of the Paris attackers still on the run...
The depressing bottom line is that even the best intelligence cannot compensate for political failings on an epic scale.

...Belgium is no longer a safe haven for jihadists. Radicals will now attack Belgium as they have everywhere else, and the sheer number of jihadists in the country makes that a terrifying prospect. Belgian intelligence has long been short of funds and personnel and above all any political will to do anything substantive about the country’s vast jihadist problem.

Belgium’s chronically dysfunctional politics have played a toxic role, as has the general Western European tendency to avert eyes and hope for the best regarding the growing radicalism of whole swathes of young people in the Muslim ghettos that exist in most of their cities now...

Although more funds and better information sharing will surely help prevent some terrorism—and especially catch terrorists after they kill innocents—the threat is now so great, with Europe possessing thousands of homegrown radicals bent on murder, that mere spying cannot prevent all attacks “left of boom” as the professionals put it.

Maintaining 24/7 human and technical surveillance on just one target requires something like two dozen operatives, and even the larger European security services can effectively watch only a few handfuls of would-be terrorists at one time...—this was a big reason why November’s Paris attackers were not stopped in time— blunting the effective Western counterterrorism methods that have been honed since 9/11. The depressing bottom line is that even the best intelligence cannot compensate for political failings on an epic scale...

Europe has imported a major threat into its countries, one that did not exist a couple generations ago. It can be endlessly debated why this problem has grown so serious so quickly... due to Europe’s failures at assimilation of immigrants versus the innate aggression of some of those immigrants (and their children)?—but that the threat is large and growing can no longer be denied by the sentient...

Admitting the extent of this threat is the necessary first step, albeit one that the EU’s political class seems congenitally unable to address. Instead, the public is treated to the now-customary clichés about religion having “nothing to do with terrorism,” combined with ritual admonitions about “Islamophobia.” One wonders how much more of this organized dishonesty the European public can take.

So, Europe is now at war again. The threat is less terrorism than a low-grade insurgency, a guerrilla war... that hangs over much of the continent as thousands of jihadists, made proficient killers by ISIS in Syria and Iraq, return home with visions of killing “infidels,” their former neighbors. There will be no parley or negotiation with ...the death-cult ideology that drives ISIS fighters, which...makes as much sense as trying to divine the finer political points of the Manson family.

We should expect more guerrilla-like attacks like Brussels yesterday: moderate in scale, relatively easy to plan and execute against soft targets, and utterly terrifying to the public.

At some point, angry Europeans, fed up with their supine political class, will begin to strike back, and that’s when the really terrifying scenarios come into play... “We’re just one Baruch Goldstein away from all-out war,” explained a senior EU terrorism official, citing the American-born Israeli terrorist, fed up with Palestinian violence, who walked into a Hebron mosque in 1994, guns blazing, and murdered 29 innocent Muslims.

When that violence comes, a practically disarmed Europe will be all but powerless to stop it...Belgium’s army has only two brigades and six infantry battalions, some 3,000 bayonets in all. That tiny force would have trouble exerting control over even one bumptious Brussels neighborhood in the event of serious crisis.

Back in 2012, Switzerland conducted military exercises premised on conditions in Europe getting out of control, between migration, radicalism and economic decline. They repeated those exercises the following year, and since then the Swiss, who have a knack for preparing for all contingencies, have warned that Europe’s burgeoning interlinked crises may result in major war. Such warnings were pooh-poohed by EU bien-pensants at the time; now they seem prescient.

What happens next is the main question. It’s difficult to miss that Central Europe, whose illiberal leaders have been castigated by Brussels for their unwillingness to accept Muslim migrants, singularly lack the terrorism and radicalism problems of their EU neighbors to the West. Their standing fast on the migration issue seems wise now. Belgium, along with much of the EU, has given itself a political crisis that lacks tolerable solutions. After the Cold War, with the birth of the European Union, many Europeans believed they had achieved the “end of history.” Issues of war and peace had been settled; henceforth Brussels would debate nothing more worrisome than agricultural subsidies. But history has returned, as it always does. And when politics fail, violence follows, and violence on a large scale becomes war.

[NorthernRaider]

Charley as unappealing as it is for our American friends but Europe started fighting again the day the Cold War ended, Not just Irish / Basque/ Cypriot / Bosnian conflicts but the dreadful and crippling effects of Euro Socialism which has led to mass migration on an unprecidented scale, growing civil unrest, a growing migrant community that has no intention of integrating, economic corruption and ineptitude that saw the Irish, Icelandic, Greek, Italian, Portugese economies collapse and the others take a severe pounding. Millions of Europeans are treated as second class citizens in their own countries and any objecting see them dismissed as racists and bigots, they are also only ever seen as endless sources of revue to be taxed as much as possible to be wasted on bloated welfare and other hair brained skills. Examples such as British couples no longer being able to get onto the housing purchase ladder or even Council house waiting lists is classic, I saw a TV doc where one young British couple with two infants in a one bedroom flat were told the waiting list for a house was 3.5 years. Three point five years and there third child they were told that waiting list was now over 11 years. But the Lib Lab Cons just keep letting millions more people pour into the UK. Resentment, frustration and anger is growing and ALL of the mainstream political parties are equally guilty for creating the mess and being unable to deal with it. This is leading to a rise in Far Right, Anarchist and Far Left Political groups and we all know EXACTLY where that will lead. If you see Europe as a cake with enough ingredients to feed 600 million people and you add another 4 million, then 3 million, them 5 million etc all wanting a slice of that cake SOMEONE is going to go hungry.

[NorthernRaider]

FYI Britain army is under 80,000 troops of all types now, thats not enough to even protect the home counties, as for the cops they are so politically correct and politicised they will probably just focus on protecting the ruling political elite who pay them, and spend their time going after political dissidents rather than enemies of the state.

[CharlesHarris]

NR, I hear you and was afraid that was the case.

Political correctness and the takeover of Virginia politics by liberal Democrats (really Socialists) in Northern Virginia and Tidewater, combined with high taxes to support the non-working, dependent voting class, were the primary reasons I moved to West Virginia.

The primarily working class people here in the past traditionally voted Democrat, because of the influence of the labor unions, but Obama's energy policies have completely gutted the coal economy and the hillbillys have heard clearly Hillary's speeches that she plans to put the coal companies out of business, it is safe to assume that they will no march in lock-step with their union bosses anymore.

While I think Trump is a complete idiot, if he is the only candidate running against Hillary, I'll first vomit in the voting booth and then do my duty...

The Republicans care nothing for the middle class working stiff, but only for milking the cow for the government contracts supporting the military-industrial complex which Ike waned us about. Similarly the Democrats are no longer the party of Harry Truman or John F. Kennedy, but have been thoroughly taken over by Communists and don't even try to hide it anymore...

I think what we need here is for the Tea Party to formally organize and evolve into something akin to UKIP like a USiP.

My buddy in Italy finds the whole shebang amusing and tells me, "and you thought Italian politics were bad?"

[NorthernRaider]

Trouble is that both Left and Right have both become ridiculous and neither serve the needs of the common man, and the middle ground Liberals are so obssessed with being all things to all men they ended up being of no use to anyone, its the system thats busted once over the left and right used to balance each other out, but no longer.

[MaryN]

It is getting quite difficult to decide how to respond to the "gathering storm" that seems to be on the verge of engulfing Europe. I can see that the refugee/immigrant situation is a large part of the problem at the moment, but the rising tide of dissatisfaction with politicians is just adding fuel to the fire. Now with the threat of terrorist attacks becoming quite serious, I honestly don't know how to deal with it. I can sit here quietly in my home - nicely out of the way in the countryside - but somehow I feel the situation requires action on my part, and I don't know what it is. I am going to continue revising my food supplies, home security etc etc., but...but... but.

The coming Referendum will allow many people the chance to let off steam at the politicians and the political landscape, but I'm not sure that it will immediately or dramatically halt the difficulties. My gut feeling is that we are heading for a war situation, and I have no plan for dealing with that.

[NorthernRaider]

How to plan for it is the million dollar question Mary, the only thing I can suggest is try and imagine getting up tomorrow morning and find the power, gas and water are off, the TV schedules are cancelled and the government has implemented martial law, Then plan accordingly.

[CharlesHarris]

http://nypost.com/2016/03/27/brussels-is...integrate/

…What happened in Brussels was a co-production by adepts of two sick ideologies.

The first one is Islamism in its many versions... The other co-producer, the mushy and politically correct “liberal” ideology that has seduced segments of opinion in Western democracies, can and must be combated by all those who wish to protect the democratic system in an increasingly dangerous world. In Brussels, it started in the 1960s when the postwar economic boom created a shortage of workers. Like other Western European countries, notably Germany and France, Belgium had to import workers on a massive scale. That, however, wasn’t simple because of Belgium’s own peculiarities...

Created as a buffer state between Germany and France in 1830, Belgium was not the natural expression of a nation’s desire for statehood…the kingdom is made of …the French-speaking Walloons, the Dutch-speaking Flemish and German speakers. From the start, the maintenance of balance among the three has been the central problem of Belgian politics.

Since most factories were located in the Walloons’ area, the owners were careful to import workers from French-speaking lands, which, at the time, made French-controlled North Africa an attractive source of labor. The Walloons also had a low birth rate, while the Flemish had large families. One source of concern for French speakers was the capital, Brussels, with its 19 districts divided across linguistic lines. The Walloons feared that their depopulated districts would be repopulated by Dutch speakers. They offered rent-free or subsidized housing to immigrants from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia who knew no Flemish but could plod along in kitchen French.

By the 1990s, most of the factories had disappeared, but the immigrants remained. By then Islam was Belgium’s second-largest religion, now accounting for over 700,000 people or 6.2 percent of the population. Of these, almost half live in Brussels, counting for 28 percent of the total population of the city, and guarding the demographically declining districts from “falling” to the Flemish.

One of the districts is Molenbeek, now infamous as the Belgian capital of jihadism, where more than 100,000 mostly North African Muslims live and where the perpetrators of recent terrors attacks against Paris and Brussels lived and hid. With their state designed across communitarian lines, the Belgians did not encourage integration, doing everything possible to prevent the immigrants from losing their original “identity.” …Belgian specialists in multiculturalism opted for the label “Islamic” as an identity badge.

That, too, was fraught with problems. To start with, many, many immigrants knew little or nothing of Islam as a religion which during over a century of French rule in North Africa had morphed into a fading collection of rites rather than a living religion. The Belgian multiculturalist elites, making a fetish of the concept of “otherness,” corrected that lacuna by financing courses in Islam, encouraging the building of mosques and Koranic schools and even subsidizing pilgrimages to Mecca. The welfare industry also had an interest in protecting the “otherness” of the immigrant community where unemployment was rising, reaching over 40 percent by the end of the 1990s. In some cases, four generations of a family could be found on the welfare register in the context of their cherished “otherness.” Radical Islamists of all ilks were welcomed to market their ideological wares.

In 1993, when France and most other Western nations banned the Algerian terrorist groups, Belgium welcomed them with open arms… The Belgian multiculturalist elite, , also secured European Union subsidies for Islamist propaganda in the shape of seminars and conferences and, ultimately, the creation of a European Fatwa Council… For the past two decades…Brussels has been the principal center for the publication of jihadist material in Europe.

In 2004, the Islamic Republic in Iran transferred its main propaganda unit, located in its embassy in the Vatican, to Belgium. The books published by Islamist groups in Belgium bear such titles as “Uniting the World Under Banner of Islam,” “The Virtues of Martyrdom” and “Imam Khomeini and Jihad.” Belgium’s liberals, meanwhile, took pride in being the “good” Western nation.

Belgium was one of few European nations to have never held Muslim colonies, unlike the …Dutch who built an empire in what is now Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country. Belgium…is also alone among Western European nations not to have a state-owned oil company and thus couldn’t be accused of “stealing Muslim oil.”

After the 9/11 al Qaeda attacks against the United States, Belgium, though member of the North Atlantic Treaty organization (NATO) and host to its headquarters, kept a low profile when the allies acted against the Taliban to dismantle terrorists bases in Afghanistan. In the US-led liberation of Iraq that followed in 2003, Belgium joined France… in denouncing “George W Bush’s illegal war.” So…accommodating, not unlike…the evil US or Britain. Belgium was sure it wasn’t a target for jihadists.

Then those same people the nation coddled set up a network called “Sharia4Belgium,” with the stated aim of transforming the kingdom into an Islamic emirate. They even wrote to the king of Belgium inviting him and his family to convert to Islam as soon as possible. It was not until 2015, when attacks in Paris had shaken the continent, that a judge labelled Sharia4Belgium a terrorist group and sentence its leader Fouad Belkacem to prison. Last year, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel admitted that his country had become a recruiting ground for the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Interior Minister Jan Jambon even provided statistics on the subject, indicating that Belgium produced the greatest number of jihadists relative to its population. At least 269 Belgians were fighting in the ranks of ISIS in Syria while 117 had returned to Belgium after a fighting stint in the Middle East.

The Belgian media have been full of news of homegrown Jihadists since 2013. And, yet, no one was arrested or stopped from travelling to Syria or questioned on return from the battlefields of the Middle East. A walk down the streets of Molenbeek, a neighborhood having the air and scents of the Casbah in Algiers, reveals many signs that the caliphate in Raqqa has a strong presence not far from the headquarters of the European Union and NATO…these Belgian neighborhoods have undergone what Qaradawi of the Muslim Brotherhood calls “moral cleansing.” Standard Islamic beards for men and hijab for women have become the rule. The archipelago of “otherness” created by liberal multiculturalism is now seeking to complete the circle by achieving political otherness as well.

America’s strength comes from its multiculturalism, but that’s only true only when all its people, all its races and religions, believe in the same values. Liberals fetishize separation, arguing that immigrants don’t need to learn English, don’t need to stop subjugating women with hijabs and arranged marriages, don’t need to become citizens. They encourage otherness rather than integration. They want immigrants to change the country, rather than the other way around. They say Islam is not the enemy — but that’s only true if Islam is a religion and not a political ideology bent on undermining democracy.

Brussels is the result of this distorted thinking. It’s what happens when immigrants are allowed to construct their own state within a state, not pushed to become part of a nation. Islam in its most violent form is already part of Europe just as much as a cancer belongs to the body it attacks…German Nazi anthropologist Sigrid Hunke, another grand lady of misguided European Islamophilia. In her book “Allah’s Sun Shines Over the West,” Hunke claims that Islam, not Judeo-Christianism, created modern Europe by shaping the Andalusian model and must at some point return to resume its work. Well, may be the prodigal son, invited back by Europe’s multiculturalist elites.

[NorthernRaider]

According to Sky at 21.15 hours info has leaked out that Isil are now planning on trying to kill as many Jewish infants, toddlers and school kids as possible in Europe.

[CharlesHarris]

Read the article, it referred to threats in Turkey, but not Europe, unless I missed something...