So I guess the time to politicize these attacks has come already. Pity.
But if anything the attacks prove that the whole surveillance thing isn't effective, not that we need even more of it. After all if a bunch of lowlifes and assholes are capable of setting this up without any triggers in spite of some of them already being in police databases for activities related to terrorism then clearly that approach is bankrupt. So, thanks for the 'rekindling', now please shut it down. And divert those funds to old fashioned policework, which seems to have worked pretty good in the past (RAF, IRA etc).
So I guess the time to politicize these attacks has come already.
This complaint has never quite sat right with me. This was, fundamentally, a political action -- a foreign "nation" (entity?) attacking another nation's civilians. It seems a pertinent time to have the debate on what should be done in response, as well as what preventative measures should be taken in the future -- even if you are vehemently against certain preventative measures.
This statement is about a career government official cynically using the murder of a large number of people for his own ends, just as the murderers cynically used those people for their ends. Yes, it's both political. But it doesn't do any good, what would do good rather than using this to hasten the big brother state to the next level would be to attack these problems at the root. But that would require an entirely different viewpoint, one which I'm not sure America is ready for because it would ask too many questions about deeds in the recent past. If anything a good case could be made for a link between the Iraq invasion and the murders in Paris, my guess is that if the one had not happened the other wouldn't have happened either, but that's just my opinion and not something that I can prove.
First off, let me state my belief. The unrest in the middle east is not a direct reaction to the invasion if Iraq. It is but the final end product of European colonialism coming to a rock end. You cannot setup dictatorships then later decide they are bad and end them leaving a void. Even the current President is contributing to this power void by his actions in Libya and now Syria. Yeah invading Iraq had many bad results but we also do not fix things but turning tail and ignoring it.
ISIS and many in that area of world do not like Western nations because they see as us both immoral and a threat to their beliefs. We then feel guilt and don't take action because of "fears" it will further the problem while totally ignoring the fact that sitting back and watching is merely allowing them to establish their foothold and carry out wholesale slaughter which in turn makes the victims of ISIS hate us for not helping.
As per a government official being cynical, look at it from the stand point of his job. He thinks he knows what he needs to do but finds most avenues blocked because the government tends to take an authority given to it and abuse it to no end.
As an American I know there is a price to freedom and I want my encryption and such because I don't trust all elements of my government. I want that illusion of freedom preserved. When terror once again comes to our shores how many won't?
Why is there a difference between "terror coming to our shores" and the rampant gun violence we already have? Because it's framed that way by politicians and those espousing their agendas (sorry, i know this is a dog whistle for alex jones morons, but I can't think of a better word)
Treating IS as a virulent unstoppable philosophy is giving it far too much credit, and throwing our rights out the window in their name is and will be one of our nation's great shames. It's absolutely fair to treat people who would do either of those things with the contempt and judgment they deserve
Not really, actually. This violence was perpetrated by a nation, by something attempting to be a state. That means this is not individuals deciding to do something, this is a network organising these attacks. Yes currently that network is pathetic, but there is an army behind it attempting to learn how to do this better.
In history, one can find examples where an enemy shut down an economy by killing civilians, and that doing so is not very hard. Essentially a western economy cannot operate with a weekly terror attack, it would simply freeze (well, in practice that situation lead to a civil war, because a LOT of people get screwed because of the distrust these attacks generate, and to a lesser extent by the security measures). So nation states are extremely wary of these sorts of things.
In a way states respond strongly because people respond strongly. Because too few people are willing to carry out their jobs as normal when they get openly confronted with a 1/1 million chance they'll be gunned down.
In Western Europe, this is a lost fight. The problem, at one point, decades ago, was that islamic ideology does indeed push these sorts of attacks. Raids is what they called it 1500 years ago, but they're not all that different. Send out a small force whose sole intention is to kill everyone they find, who have at best a small chance of returning alive. So you can make a very hard to refute argument that this is indeed "islamic", and muslims are very sensitive to criticism that they're not religious enough. Criticism of muslim attacks was silenced in the muslim community itself. Then they replaced pretty much all teachers in a lot of schools. That's how it started. That's how violence preachers got into schools and mosques, into city hall and ... And yes, it is really organized from islamic religious infrastructure. Even that is not new. Did you know that a "prayer house" is "masjid" in arabic ? What does "mosque" mean ? It translates roughly to "fort". Mosques are not for prayer (though, like forts, they often have prayer spaces).
Right now these people in the "banlieues" in Paris, Bordeaux, Brussels, Rotterdam, ... are embedded into those locations and can only be dislodged by a war. They're also looking to start a war, to dislodge everyone else. They are pushing their own people into poverty, by constantly pushing notions of muslim superiority into the kids, then throwing them into the street. Society, not even their own limited society, doesn't agree with muslim superiority : they have no skills, they're aggressive because of this superiority shit (the hate preachers weekly "scandal" doesn't help either), and they have no respect for the law or local customs. So very few people hire them, and never into positions that would require them to be trusted. So in the real world, they are an underclass (exceptions exist of course).
That muslims who are taught constantly about their superiority are an underclass is according to them, of course not the result of not having any skills, and generally being aggressive morons that everybody moves away from. You see this is a vast conspiracy. Not one of the traditional western conspiracies, not a right wing conspiracy (although they're involved), not a left wing conspiracy (although they're involved), it's not the Jews (although they're REALLY involved), it's not whites (although ...), it's not the illuminati (although they're involved).
You see, it's a conspiracy of EVERYONE against their own little group directly.
The problem is that these are groups of a few hundred 15-35 year old muslims, and all they do is complain about it, maybe have a few kids, and generally hang out jobless in the street. They are useless, they have no prospects, they can't be trained and there's about to be millions more of them in half a decade or so.
A civil war in Western Europe is coming, it is a done deal. It is like a comet hitting the top of the atmosphere : not much damage yet, maybe it's even pretty. But the explosion is coming soon no matter what anybody does, and it'll be like nothing you've ever seen before. It is a matter of time, and nobody knows how much.
> This statement is about a career government official cynically using the murder of a large number of people for his own ends
Which sort of takes for granted the idea that the government official's position -- which no one doubts precedes the attacks -- is not honestly held for the reasons presented, and that the official does not honestly believe that the attacks represent the kind of problem that adopting the policies he advocates would help prevent.
It doesn't seem to me that this style of argument serves much except to win kudos from people who already agree with the ideas behind it and oppose the policies being advocated.
It could very well be that he in fact holds these reasons for honest reasons and truly believes them. But at the same time the opposition (IS) also believe all kinds of stuff for reasons held dear to them and the populace are caught - literally - in the crossfire.
I'd rather see some more introspection and a bit less clamoring for more budget and fewer restrictions from the intelligence community after this attack. And it is not as if this is the first spectacular failure of the intelligence services when it comes to actually preventing this sort of thing either (Which does not surprise me because I strongly believe that it is fundamentally impossible to protect an open society against these kinds of attacks without a substantial change of that society, after which we could probably no longer call it 'open').
> It doesn't seem to me that this style of argument serves much except to win kudos from people who already agree with the ideas behind it and oppose the policies being advocated.
Given France already possessed the desired legal capability and was warned by a friendly government about one of the suspects in 2014 and again in 2015...
I'm not sure how asking for the same measures that failed is a strategy of someone with genuine concerns. Why do you think that?
Yes, it is the urgency to advocate a certain agenda without taking the time to analyze the problem of his own failure carefully. If with all the resources at their disposal the needle can still not be moved there is a problem, and that problem will not be solved by doubling down on an apparently already failing strategy. So cool heads and long term planning is what's needed, not hotheads and (predictable) reactions to further run us off the rails.
The most dumb thing one can do is repeating the same operation over and over again expecting a different outcome.
He disagrees with me, but also, he's not actually saying anything new.
That's my problem with what he's saying it is just 'more of the same' rather than a new course in reaction to what happened because there appears to be a bug in his system after some reflection.
His response is not one that has anything to do with what happened in Paris and why, this was his position last week and it is still his position this week, hence my use of the word 'cynical'. He's even trying to blame Snowden for the Paris attacks.
More of the same will definitely not get us out of this mess, it will likely only make it worse. Let's see him argue for more up close and personal contact with would-be terrorists, infiltration, covert operations and so on. But more dragnet surveillance seems to be a broken strategy, given the evidence available.
But this persons believes that if we do what he thinks is right, he can prevent attacks like this from happening in America. So it seems like the perfect time to talk about it. It's not like he's trying to push some completely different policy about say wall street regulations with terrorist attacks as the context.
Also, I'm sure if it was brought up randomly, with no linkage to a current terrorist attack, you and others would be saying "There haven't been any terrorist attacks on (countrys) soil in X years, so whatever system we have now is working just fine"
That's the whole problem, he's pushing the same policy that he was pushing last week, the week before that one and two years ago. More surveillance. Because that will work, this time. Only it very much appears that it does not work and more people will likely die if we go down that road and lots of people will have their rights further trampled. The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on cancer... If anything is declared a 'war' then you have to be very careful that your emotional state isn't used to make you decide things that are not in your own or even societies best interest. This is one of those occasions.
But he hasn't been able to implement his "more surveillance" policies, because he's been consistently blocked. Also, how will more people die under a state with more surveillance?
Seems evident at least that strategy is failing. Why not accept that they exist and open a dialogue? Best case, they're ambitious sociopaths using violence as an aesthetic. Worst case they're zealots. At any rate, they've clearly bought equity in the geopolitical conversation. If they cannot be bought out, we will need to weigh our need for safety against our values. Because eradicating them will mean murdering many, many, many non-combatants.
>a foreign "nation" (entity?) attacking another nation's
IS would be properly categorized as a non-state actor.
>It seems a pertinent time to have the debate on what should be done in response, as well as what preventative measures should be taken in the future
This is basically one of the main functions of the UN. While people are free to discuss these things all they like, it would probably be worthwhile to come to the table having an understanding of international law and the use of armed force (i.e. the laws of war). Though the UN has only existed a brief time, there is plenty of precedent regarding: when a state may respond to the use of force (from state or non-state actors); what type of response is permitted (i.e. proportional); and what if any preventative measures are permitted.
IS controls the territory, but they don't actually control the citizens on that territory. This attack had as far as I can see it two immediate goals: to make it harder for people to flee from IS by provoking western countries to close their borders to refugees (which goal they appear to have achieved) and to serve as a recruiting poster for the future wave of terrorists by striking an opponent right in the heart of their country to serve as a show of capability.
IS controls the territory, but they don't actually control the citizens on that territory.
However, the same could be said of the current, US recognized Iraqi government. In common parlance it essentially comes down to whether the Western powers that be recognize you as a state, and as Hollande has claimed France is at war with IS, there is certainly a case to be made.
France would still be subjected to international law. So let's watch where this concept of war with non-state actors breaks down.
1. IS is responsible for the use of armed force violating France's territorial integrity.
2. France responded with use of force (bombing) against IS targets in Syria, violating Syria's territorial integrity.
You see there is no IS territorial integrity, that is the problem with being a non-state actor. Although France was attacked by IS, France can not follow IS any where it likes.
So the legal question is:
1. Did France have a lawful right respond with the use of force against IS in Syria?
Likely yes, because: a.) some of the individuals most responsible for the acts in Paris and potentially planning future attacks are operating in Syria; and b.) Syria is not likely to stop IS attacks from originating within its own borders.
Now lets take the extreme example of a potential IS teenage recruit in the US, do you think France will lawfully be able to bomb the IS recruit in US borders under those facts? Not likely.
Take the middle of the road real life response in Belgium, where some of the Paris attack planning may have originated, notice France did not bomb in Belgium like in Syria and instead worked with Belgium to do police style raids.
2. Was France's response (bombing) proportionate to IS's use of force?
I don't think there will be many who argue France's use of armed force was disproportionate to the Paris attacks (someone will), but in the case of IS you see where it could be a slippery slope. Hypothetical: the mastermind could be hidden among an otherwise entirely civilian population, and if it were shown bombing killed thousands of civilians to get 1 IS member there may be some issues of proportionality.
> However, the same could be said of the current, US recognized Iraqi government.
Lots of people have said that the current, US recognized government of Iraq is a make-believe state, and that the strongest claim to actually being an effective state in that area is the notionally-subordinate government of the Kurdish region within Iraq.
So, yeah, the same is often said about the current, US recognized government of Iraq.
> as Hollande has claimed France is at war with IS, there is certainly a case to be made.
War between states and non-state actors is not new, though the most common case is between a state and an internal non-state actor. Perhaps the defining attribute of the modern "wars against terrorism" is that they are wars between states and external non-state actors (or, at least, non-state actors that have a substantial external component relative to many of the states that are fighting them.)
That's true, but the Iraqi government isn't trying to stop their citizens from fleeing to other countries and IS has done just that by using good old FUD to taint the refugees by association.
IS is more like North-Korea or the former USSR in this particular respect.
>It seems a pertinent time to have the debate on what should be done in response,
Some would say that it is especially poor practice to take drastic legislative action when emotions are high as they tend to be in the wake of a terrible event such as the one that took place in Paris Friday.
>even if you are vehemently against certain preventative measures.
Since not everyone agrees, some might say it's a good time to re-assess our positions on counter-terrorism. I haven't changed my mind on Orwellian surveillance. A single terror attack isn't likely to change my mind. I still feel okay calling Brennan's action shameless opportunism because this is a position that Brennan has held for a long time. Brennan is not adding anything new to the discussion, he's simply repeating old worn out rhetoric in hopes that people will accept it while they're in an agitated state. It remains unproven in my eyes that more surveillance means fewer terror attacks. It is also dubious to assume that more surveillance, even if it did imply fewer terror attacks, would be a preferable condition.
> The new bill, which allows intelligence agencies to tap phones and emails without seeking permission from a judge, sparked protests from rights groups who claimed it would legalise highly intrusive surveillance methods without guarantees for individual freedom and privacy.
> The surveillance measures authorized by this law are wildly out of proportion. Large swathes of France’s population could soon find themselves under surveillance on obscure grounds and without prior judicial approval.
> The Turkish authorities warned their French counterparts twice in the past year about one of the attackers, Ismaël Omar Mostefaï, a 29-year-old French citizen who was known by the authorities as someone who had radical Islamist beliefs, an official said on Monday.
> The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, in line with government protocol, said the government never heard back from France and only received an “information request” about Mr. Mostefaï after the Paris attacks.
> During an investigation, the Turkish authorities identified Mostefai and notified their French counterparts twice – in December 2014 and June 2015 – the official said.
> “We have, however, not heard back from France on the matter,” the official said. “It was only after the Paris attacks that the Turkish authorities received an information request about Omar Ismail Mostefai from France.”
I'm just going to leave this here since I suspect most people aren't aware that France passed legislation enabling what is effectively total population surveillance as well as was warned about one of the attackers, repeatedly, while they had this capability.
Similarly, while I understand it doesn't "sit right with you" there is really no debate to be had. The facts are pretty clear the problem is operational, not the scope of the powers available.
France had the surveillance authority, was warned twice about at least one of the terrorists, yet failed to act. This isn't a problem solved by providing them with more power but rather with operational and management changes. If they can't do it with total authority to spy on anyone they can as well as with warning from a friendly government...yeah.
Similarly, such changes are not political acts but simply the acts of responsible managers that do not require publicity.
It was the same deal here with the Boston bombers. Mooks already hot on the radar due to passage of information from other friendly intel operations manage to somehow organize and perform a large scale attack. It's almost as though preventing terrorism isn't the main focus of these totalitarian programs or something. Anyways, if anything, failures of intelligence like these should elicit budget cuts and re-strategizing rather than re-investment into a proven failed avenue-- a failed avenue that, when functioning properly, deprives the population of human rights, and when failing, fails silently and violently at the expense of the same public that was also hurt during the "successful" period.
A sober approach is to accept that there is no way to prevent people from killing each other; after all, even in prison people manage to kill each other.
> It's almost as though preventing terrorism isn't the main focus of these totalitarian programs or something.
I suspect that the main focus is preventing as much terrorism as operational constraints permit. Some of the people fingered as "possible terrorists" are not terrorists at all; maybe their friend or their brother is trying to recruit them, so they show up as a possible. How much are you willing to infringe on those peoples' lives in order to prevent terrorist attacks? How much of that will society put up with?
The problem is that you often don't know someone is a terrorist until they actually do something. You may suspect, but you don't know. But you also suspect 10 times as many people who never do anything ("10" being a made-up number, but I'm pretty sure it's more than 2). What's your threshold for cracking down? How many innocent people do you jail to prevent 130 innocent people from being killed?
And then you have to keep them jailed, which under the current laws would not work for very long. There is a very short window of time between 'could be a terrorist' and 'blew himself up in a crowd' where such an intervention would work and would legally stick. But there is a much longer window of time (decades,typically) during which one can make sure a mind is hardened against the process that turns a young, promising person into a suicide bomber. We're much too focused on that very small sliver of time and totally neglecting the decades preceding.
Ah I'm not advocating budget cuts but I do think a certain understanding that ignoring intelligence from friendly governments is the kind of thing that ends your career.
Similarly, the organization needs to adjust to avoid similar lapses in judgement in the future.
"Masterminded" or "sophisticated" would be to assassinate Hollande in the stadium.
There does not seem to be a very strong "theme" in the attack, which would have been sophisticated, like targeting predominantly Jewish population, or a group that offended the Islamic fundamentalist sensibilities.
Among other things you might be missing are the reports that Iraqi intelligence had warned Western governments shortly before the attacks that they had information, non-specific as to the target, of attacks ordered in one or more Western nations involved in anti-IS operations by the IS to be carried out imminently. [0] Its not that attacks like this could not be carried out locally without a remote command, its that there are reports of specific information indicating that this was not carried out locally without a remote command.
That makes sense with 1 or 2 people, but when you start talking about 9+ people willing to blow themselves up that typically requires some prodding. Then there is target selection, and bomb making abilities. I know the bombs were 'simple' in relative terms, but making that many for the first time means they were very lucky or someone experienced helped. They also needed money for guns and other equipment.
That's right: nine assholes IN A ROOM. You'd have to be stupid to plan something like this online, even with encryption. For one, the implementation of the encryption could be wrong. Second, the computer on which the encryption is running could be compromised.
First let me say I agree that mass surveillance is wrong and even if it did help, I wouldn't support it. But, the attitude that our side tends to have towards people who believe surveillance is worthwhile is not helpful. Responses like this are not constructive:
> So I guess the time to politicize these attacks has come already. Pity.
Believe it or not the people pushing for surveillance are not villains out of a movie or TV show. They see a tragedy like Paris and they really believe that more surveillance would help prevent these kinds of things in the future. They may be misguided and wrong from our perspective, but that doesn't make them evil.
When it comes to political issues it's very helpful if you can avoid reducing your opponents to caricatures. Usually they are motivated by the same thing you are; they want to fix a problem. It's just they disagree about the solution, or sometimes even what the problem is.
And either way complaining about people you disagree with "politicizing" a tragedy is absurd. Immediately after the tragedy is exactly the time we should be taking steps to prevent it in the future.
> Believe it or not the people pushing for surveillance are not villains out of a movie or TV show. They see a tragedy like Paris and they really believe that more surveillance would help prevent these kinds of things in the future.
Having the character genuinely believe that their harmful actions will serve the greater good is pretty much the most frequent advice to writing believable villains in any context, including for movies or TV shows.
> Immediately after the tragedy is exactly the time we should be taking steps to prevent it in the future.
Immediately after the tragedy is when we should start taking steps to understand why it happened, and how (and at what costs) similar tragedies could be prevented. Jumping based on emotionally-driven haste into steps intended to prevent recurrence without due consideration is a great way to maximize the effect of the Law of Unintended Consequences, and to prove the adage about the paving material used in the road to perdition.
To be fair, there are people out there who are pushing for surveillance and war because it is financially beneficial (see: the major rise in weapons company's stock prices since the attack). You have examples of intelligence higher-ups who leave govt work and go on to open private security consultancies where they are paid enormous sums; they reap quite a windfall for their roll in pushing surveillance. They may not be cartoon villains but its hard to argue they are trying to do whats right for the country, and coincidentally it also will make them fabulously wealthy.
How is this politicizing exactly? Is CIA directory John Brennan running for an office that I'm unaware? It seems his commentary on surveillance is pretty relevant to the discussion here.
Also, "being in a database" is not enough and doesn't point to the failure of the concept of surveillance. In fact, it points to the failure to properly surveil.
It's politicizing because he would very much like to roll back on the restrictions on his apparatus placed post Snowden, in fact, Snowden is blamed for the attacks in the most thinly veiled way here.
> Also, "being in a database" is not enough and doesn't point to the failure of the concept of surveillance. In fact, it points to the failure to properly surveil.
Hence my suggestion to divert funds to the police rather than to the intelligence services.
Because the first thing someone dismissing a pro-Snowden article will do is bring up the author. Of course Greenwald will defend Snowden. So it comes down to what the meat of the article brings. And Greenwald does a very nice job.
Those restrictions directly affect (in his opinion) his job. It's not like he's scoring points for his local constituents, or trying to nuke a bill sponsored by opponents from another political party. He's saying this "hand wringing" is having an impact - pretty obvious statement from someone in the direct position to know.
Effectively he's saying 'If I had had my hands free these attacks might not have happened', and that's several bridges too far in my opinion. There is no proof that it would have made a difference, in fact with the tools currently at his disposal given the scope of these attacks it is fairly clear it just doesn't work.
Those terrorist plots (real ones, not ones all but executed by the authorities) that were foiled were foiled either by coincidence or by personal bravery of one or two people that happened to be accidentally on the scene.
Maybe, I'll concede that much, if a total surveillance state were operational where each and every one of us had a continuous cops eye following us attacks like these could be prevented. But that's in my opinion not world worth living in. Open societies are vulnerable to small numbers of assholes working in a coordinated fashion. And that's something that will be very hard to fix without changing that society for ever so let's not run down that path before the victims of these crimes are even in the ground and think things over for a bit.
> Those restrictions directly affect (in his opinion) his job. It's not like he's scoring points for his local constituents,
The points he is trying to score are with politicians to untie his hands and give him more power. So yes, that is what he is doing. He conveniently ignores France already passed and implemented his "Dream" of being able to engage in highly intrusive surveillance methods without judicial oversight.
> The new bill, which allows intelligence agencies to tap phones and emails without seeking permission from a judge, sparked protests from rights groups who claimed it would legalise highly intrusive surveillance methods without guarantees for individual freedom and privacy.
> The surveillance measures authorized by this law are wildly out of proportion. Large swathes of France’s population could soon find themselves under surveillance on obscure grounds and without prior judicial approval.
> The Turkish authorities warned their French counterparts twice in the past year about one of the attackers, Ismaël Omar Mostefaï, a 29-year-old French citizen who was known by the authorities as someone who had radical Islamist beliefs, an official said on Monday.
> The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, in line with government protocol, said the government never heard back from France and only received an “information request” about Mr. Mostefaï after the Paris attacks.
> During an investigation, the Turkish authorities identified Mostefai and notified their French counterparts twice – in December 2014 and June 2015 – the official said.
> “We have, however, not heard back from France on the matter,” the official said. “It was only after the Paris attacks that the Turkish authorities received an information request about Omar Ismail Mostefai from France.”
If you take the cynical position that politicians permit events like this to happen, by ignoring warnings or even collaborating with FBI informants, in order to then affect the changes they desire, then it is clearly terrorism.
However, even if you take an optimistic view that in these events: that every actor is doing his honest due-diligence to prevent attacks... it is still terrorism if you are knowingly using the fear created by these events to affect your change.
A few specific attack failures does not necessarily mean bulk signals intelligence is useless.
Frankly, both regular policework (HUMINT, usually) and SIGINT have to be employed. The question is how to limit the SIGINT so you're actually ethically collecting and analyzing what matters and what directly concerns a target, rather than slurping up everything and storing it for later scanning or "just in case".
It is useless against small numbers of dedicated fanatics who are willing to give up their lives to murder defenseless people. See also: Boston, Bali, 9/11, Paris and many more. Even if some get caught they will adapt their tactics until they get through. An effective response would/should take a different tack than just more surveillance of the whole population.
> So I guess the time to politicize these attacks has come already.
The attacks are inherently political, they can't be "politicized".
Now, its true that they are being exploited to push positions that those pointing to them were pushing long before the attacks, but it only makes sense to call that "politicizing" an event when the event itself isn't political to start with (and, even them, "politicizing" isn't really the issue, what these critiques usually try to do -- but only by implication -- is to suggest that the use of the event in the policy debate is disingenuous or shallow.)
I don't think you can conclude the attacks are proof that surveillance has failed unless you know with certainty surveillance has failed at stopping most attacks. Surveillance organs could have stopped anywhere from zero attacks to all but the ones we've witnessed.
That's not to say surveillance is the answer, but its saying it may be an answer depending on effectiveness and our willingness to make this bargain.
With the amount of fanfare surrounding those attacks that were foiled where the government all but helped push the trigger you can bet that if there were more we'd hear about them, they are desperate for justifications for their activities and nothing would help them more than foiling a major plot like the one that just killed a large number of people.
So do you think the lack of fireworks since the London and Madrid attacks are more about the terrorists being lazy and not wanting to attack rather than their being foiled?
If they're half-way clever about it they'll hit in places that are perceived as 'soft'.
Note that this is the second attack on Paris. The UK is a harder target because you have to cross a border that is not as easy to traverse as a road and the Spanish police has gotten a lot more 'up-close-and-personal' with wanna-be terrorists than they were before. Belgium it turns out is an easy place to hide for these characters and that's one reason I suspect Amsterdam would be more likely than Madrid simply because it is physically a lot closer. It is also why I doubt the effectiveness of the 'double screening' for airline passengers announced today, none of these guys traveled by plane.
Even so, that doesn't rule out another attack in Spain - or even Madrid - nor does it rule out an attack in London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen or anywhere else in the Schengen zone. Weapons and easily radicalized youths aplenty.
It's a matter of time before the next attack, but that doesn't mean we should sit still. It means the plan of attack needs to change, possibly radically so, but not after sufficient reflection on why the current approach does not appear to work as well as it should.
So I'm still unsure if you think a lack a multiplicity of attacks is due to their not wanting to attack despite their statements or if or their inability or curtailment due to current methods of mitigation.
I understand we can expect more attempts and sadly more attacks and we need to take more innovative measures, but I wonder if you think current methods have been a complete failure or have succeeded in thwarting other attempts we are mot privy to. For one plans dont go from 0 - 100 instantly, they develop over time. So any plans could be intervened any time in between and we may only get to hear about the late stage interventions, or, perhaps were ineffective and the terrorists kind of really lazy baddies who aren't opportunists.
I suspect their resources - boots on the ground if you wish - ready to be activated are rather limited even though the supply of potentials is very large. This attack apparently featured 9 people, that's a relatively large number and it would not surprise me at all if that's a substantial portion of the resources that they could activate right now. But given time new idiots will step up to fill the vacancy. Give it a few months or a year. Just long enough to get everybody to forget to be more watchful.
Sleeper cells are a very old concept. Go about your daily business and wait for a pre-arranged signal, go to a place, pick up instructions and weapons, do the deed. It could go from 'innocent dude working in a bakery' to 'hey, that's my brother that blew up 20 people' in less than 48 hours.
And that's precisely how they should do it if they wanted to stay under the radar. This recipe could be repeated just about forever without much chance of interference, and even that wouldn't matter much as long as once every year or so a group would make it through.
The window in which one should catch a would-be terrorist is between 0 and 19 years of age, not in the last 2 days before they execute a plan. That is playing very bad odds.
Given their stated intentions, why would there be so few "boots on the ground"? Are our current intelligence strategies and mitigating policies keeping them at bay?
One possibility is they only catch people at T -1, or not caught at T 0, or there could be many more caught at T -X.
In the U.S. the ATF isn't disbanding just because we haven't seen manor action by supremacists. And just because we haven't seen any announcements does not necessarily mean the ATF aren't doing their work or aren't successful.
Because radicalized youths that are brainwashed enough that they are willing to blow themselves up are fewer in numbers than radicalized youths that may one day be brainwashed enough to blow themselves up. It's a process and it takes some time and I'm pretty sure plenty of them fail to 'graduate'. The biggest group that poses serious risk are the ones that have been to the training camps and return to their old home-grounds. The ones that have never left are much lower on the risk scale, and those exist in much larger numbers. Not totally without risk, but nowhere near as bad as the ones that spent months with IS, AQ or whatever other group of idiots there is out there in some trainingcamp where they learn to shoot their AKs and how to set off your bomb vest.
Look at it another way: if they could field let's say 100's of attackers simultaneously, don't you think they would? Or do you think they'd keep them in reserve for the next 10 years possibly being discovered? I can't rule it out, obviously, but I think the time between insertion and activation would have to be kept small to avoid losing control of the assets once placed. I'll do some reading up on this, it is an interesting question.
I don't know about that. Or, in other words, it remains to be seen. So far there have been thousands of Europeans or at least European residents who have been willing to travel thousands of miles to do battle (with pretty high odds of becoming casualties) so it's not so much that they have not been "brainwashed enough" and, additionally there are thousands in the ME who would dearly desire to do harm in the EU and elsewhere but are and were thwarted. Or else they are pretenders who don't match their rhetoric.
If they want but can't field hundreds in the EU (or other non ME/NAf regions) does that not speak to current intel and ops being successful?
Your original assertion was "But if anything the attacks prove that the whole surveillance thing isn't effective, not that we need even more of it." To me, your responses seem to indicate the opposite [however that does not speak to the future]
> So I guess the time to politicize these attacks has come already. Pity.
You're disparaging Brennan for taking a political stance on the issue, then in the same breath also taking a political stance about the issue ("Shut it down, this proves it's ineffective!").
This isn't directed at you in particular, I've always found the idea that there must be some enforced waiting period between a horrible thing happening, and the response to that thing, to be a bit nonsensical.
For instance, any time there's a shooting, the respective pro/anti gun control folks start at each other with things like "the blood hasn't even dried yet!"
Okay, so? If the argument were for ensuring decisions were made with a cool head, I could understand that, but it never is, usually it's an attempt to make a non-sequitur snipe at the other side for their sincerely held beliefs.
The alternative to there not being a "time to politicize the attacks" is that the government doesn't act on them; which is absurd.
There are many better ways to argue for putting thought into legislation than taking potshots at people's debating positions. The idea that something "shouldn't be politicized" is another way of saying that the government should never do anything about it.
Get two people in a room talking about something, and you've got politics - moreso when we're talking about laws.
"The blood hasn't even dried yet!" - meaningless, emotionally manipulative pap.
"We should think long and hard before making knee-jerk decisions" - sanity.
I don't think it is that simple. Just assume that you yourself is a government official like a Brennan.
So, people expect you to protect them and make sure that no terrorist attacks happen. So, how exactly do you do that?
You mention some formulas that "worked" in the past, I don't think they worked - so many people died at the hands of RAF and IRA. And the times have changed, some of these old formulas do not work anymore - people can communicate without meeting in person.
So, what do you propose Brennan should do? Honest question.
I propose that he openly admits failure to do much about this sort of attack in the little window of time remaining between the activation of some terrorist cell and their actual attack.
The effect of that admission would be that he would be replaced by someone who would claim the opposite, that it is of course possible to do something.
The whole problem lies in the timing and the fact that our societies are extremely easy to attack by a bunch of cowards with machine guns. That there is no simple last minute defense - a silver bullet if you wish - is a harsh reality but one that we're going to have to deal with if we really want to solve this problem.
So my suggestion - also made elsewhere in this thread - is to concentrate on the formative years of these people, rather than on the last two days of their lives. I suspect (but obviously can not prove) that that would be a far more fruitful, if less spectacular and less financially lucrative, avenue. Once someone has made up their mind to harm society it is extremely hard to stop them.
I agree that we should "concentrate on the formative years of these people".
But the thing is, it comes with the disclaimer that, it will take 15 or more years to work, and we don't really know that it will work at all. And nobody will get elected on the 15-year promise when there is a boatload of other candidates that promise an easy fix.
Anyways, my point is, that government official has this, damned if you do, and damned if you don't, position. It is not clear at all what he (rather, we) should do.
> But the thing is, it comes with the disclaimer that, it will take 15 or more years to work, and we don't really know that it will work at all.
It's the best plan I have, and I'm not even in a position to put that one into practice but most of the other stuff I hear seems to mostly revolve around either killing people or nabbing them on the way to the venue and those don't stand a chance. Hence my assertion that we'll see a lot more of this before we can put an actual stop to it. Even stopgap measures are going to be very hard to come by.
> More politics: there are a dozen states in the USA that have declared today "we refuse to take any Syrian refugees"
There are a number of state governors that have said that, which might actually mean something, if the US Constitution allowed state governors the authority to make that kind of decision, rather than reserving it exclusively for the federal government.
If the governors can find a way to refuse health insurance to millions of their residents to spite the feds, they can certainly "refuse" refugees by some method, if only holding it up in courts for a year or two.
> If the governors can find a way to refuse health insurance to millions of their residents to spite the feds, they can certainly "refuse" refugees by some method, if only holding it up in courts for a year or two.
Well, holding it up in courts has them losing until a decision is made, since they don't have actual physical control of immigration (this is sort of the opposite of the case with Medicaid expansion, where they had to actively do something to achieve it, and so, even if the cases challenging it hadn't been decided before the mandate went into effect, they could have effectively stalled it until the a decision.)
The newspapers here run polls with leading titles such as 'Do you think we should close the borders for further refugees after the Paris attacks?'... Geert Wilders jumped up another couple of seats after the attack and Islamofobia is on the rise. We're doing just great, it's almost as if we've partnered up with IS on some aspects of their agenda.
There's also the problem that if the surveillance is effective, they (the CIA et. al.) still can't necessarily run out and stop everything they know about without tipping their hand about how much they know, causing the adversaries to change their strategy and rendering any future surveillance ineffective.
So, they either need to wait for a truly catastrophic attack, or find a better way to foil attacks without making it look like they knew something they shouldn't have been able to know.
That's of course, assuming it does work, which is probably pretty charitable.
So, you're suggesting that if surveillance works, then they can't act. But also if it doesn't work, they can't act. It sounds like the American people would be better served spending that money elsewhere if it can't actually buy us anything.
> And divert those funds to old fashioned policework
Not just policework, intelligence with covert agents. That's what most intelligence agencies have been giving up in favor of electronic surveillance, and we see now how ineffective it is.
French intelligence complained about too strict legal framework and lack of resources. French people are really sensitive when it comes to their individual freedom and don't want surveillance state.
> One key premise here seems to be that prior to the Snowden reporting, The Terrorists helpfully and stupidly used telephones and unencrypted emails to plot, so Western governments were able to track their plotting and disrupt at least large-scale attacks. That would come as a massive surprise to the victims of the attacks of 2002 in Bali, 2004 in Madrid, 2005 in London, 2008 in Mumbai, and April 2013 at the Boston Marathon. How did the multiple perpetrators of those well-coordinated attacks — all of which were carried out prior to Snowden’s June 2013 revelations — hide their communications from detection?
"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." -- Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff January 20, 2009 – October 1, 2010
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Benjamin Franklin - 11 November 1755
...said in reference to the financial crisis, on the topic of regulation and reform. A lot less nefarious when you're talking about energy, health, education, tax policy, and regulatory reforms.
He also went on to say "Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."
As for your (IMHO) cliché Franklin quote - that was in reference to a tax dispute.
"He was writing about a tax dispute between the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the family of the Penns, the proprietary family of the Pennsylvania colony who ruled it from afar. And the legislature was trying to tax the Penn family lands to pay for frontier defense during the French and Indian War. And the Penn family kept instructing the governor to veto. Franklin felt that this was a great affront to the ability of the legislature to govern. And so he actually meant purchase a little temporary safety very literally. The Penn family was trying to give a lump sum of money in exchange for the General Assembly's acknowledging that it did not have the authority to tax it."
A cliche is more than a maxim with which one disagrees.
Franklin also said in Poor Richard's Almanack, "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power." (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Poor_Richard%27s_Almanack) This was 17 years before the line in his "Reply to the Governor".
But it does take the weight away from them being a window into how politician's mind works.
Without knowing the context it sounds like a politician stating outright what they seem to be doing all the time, which is exploiting a crisis to impose something that benefits few at the expense of many, while the context is the opposite.
I'm sure politicians have this exact thought in either case, but the quote isn't the bullseye it might seem.
Although “the legislative environment is very hostile today,” the intelligence community’s top lawyer, Robert S. Litt, said to colleagues in an August e-mail, which was obtained by The [Washington] Post, “it could turn in the event of a terrorist attack or criminal event where strong encryption can be shown to have hindered law enforcement.”
Few states will countenance speed limit reductions that would reduce auto deaths that kill tens of thousands of Americans every year, but we'll allow our basic rights out the window to prevent what looks like a rounding error on that?
This absurdity is actually what's responsible for any of terrorism's effectiveness. It's basically a hack designed to provoke an absurd overreaction. On that count, it succeeded with flying colors in 2001 - I'm hopeful that we've learned enough in the intervening years (both in terms of the war and police state) to prevent repeating our mistakes.
Not to mention the fact that Isis killed 224 people when they bombed the Russian plane on Oct. 31st and no one seemed to care. When they kill 100 indie rock fans in Paris though, it's time to repeal personal liberties as fast as possible? Why is this incident different than the Russian bombing?
Neither incident should influence policy since as you say, while horrible, there are a lot of other things killing orders of magnitude more people that don't get "addressed" the same way this is.
People need to stand strong and resist the urge to be reactive.
> Why is this incident different than the Russian bombing?
Well its quite well known that certain events create more "buzz" than others.
The plane crash is mostly limited in impact to the bereaved who are probably mourning rather than tweeting. At least in the UK the travel chaos afterwards caused more "buzz" than the actual event itself, perhaps because angry tourists are more likely to tweet/Facebook.
The attacks in Paris directly affected thousands who will have all communicated that experience directly to friends and on social media. It went on for hours and was watched by million. For most people it did have more impact, however shallow that may have been.
I think this is a direct effect of how large the media portray an event to be. MH17 was a much larger 'event' in the media than the Russian plane crash recently (probably due to a bomb placed by IS). The number of casualties were roughly equal.
So I don't think it has as much to do with the event itself rather than with the degree to which the media put it on the front burner and what the nationalities of those involved are. A rule of thumb seems to be that the further east something happens relative to Greenwich the smaller the font will be. Ditto South of Spain. To the media some lives are fairly clearly more valuable than others.
Well, excepting the "freedom fries" nonsense from a while back - the French have never really been portrayed as an enemy of the United States. Russia (and Putin especially) most certainly has. I'm guessing that generally the American population is discounting the deaths of innocent Russians to the same degree that it's discounting the deaths of innocent Iraqis, Afghanis, Syrians, Palestinians, Yemeni, etc., etc., etc.
> Not to mention the fact that Isis killed 224 people when they bombed the Russian plane on Oct. 31st and no one seemed to care. When they kill 100 indie rock fans in Paris though, it's time to repeal personal liberties as fast as possible? Why is this incident different than the Russian bombing?
Because it's the French government responding to the Paris attack, and it's the Russian government responding to the Russian plane bombing. That makes a fair amount of difference in the character of the response.
And France currently has personal liberties that could be repealed. Russia? Less so.
Terrorism in France: 159 casualties since 1 year. Car accidents: 300/month. Suicides: 200/week. Tobacco: 200/day [1].
And France is sending a nuclear aircraft career on the Mediterranean, bombing a foreign country and further depleting our economy. Given the first profiles of terrorists show European-grown desperate adults, if anything were to be done, it would be to build more schools, have more job opportunities for everyone and more hope for everyone growing up here.
In Paris, car accidents: 39 deaths/year, homicides: 101/year, and Terrorism more than 147/year. Tobacco is a personal responsibilities problem and a life reducer more than a killer. If find those kind a comparison stupid because you don't even account for externalities and the fact that terrorism has more impact on social fabric than anything else.
If we speak only about economy, terrorism in Paris could make France loose several point of PIB, we are extremely reliant on tourism, this absolutely dwarf any foreign operation.
This type of comparison is quite common and I admit to simply not understanding the associated logic. The implied message is that terrorism should be shrugged off as part of everyday life, at least until the implied risk catches up to these other daily risks.
I don't think accepting 200+ intentional civilian deaths per day is a winning argument.
It sounds like we're succombing fast to the fear of terrorism. I cannot understand declaring war: It's reducing our civil liberties, bombing a foreign nation, spreading new hate and new orphan children, and accelerating our own economic crisis. Isn't that the dismay that terrorists want?
If we were purely rational on number of casualties, we'd be working on preventing our own 2-nd generation immigrants from considering becoming terrorists, using better education system and economic development. Or we would just proportionally jail all smokers who kill as many people per day as terrorism in a year. So we're not acting rationally, or the rationality of fighting back is taking over the consideration of the cost, and I'm not understanding why that's so important.
Rejecting the notion that we should do nothing is not the same thing as agreeing we should 'go to war'.
Personally I think the tactical approach (border checks, security checks, pervasive surveillance, drone attacks, special ops, etc) has huge costs ($$$ and in lost civil liberties) with little or no return on the investment (and arguably a net loss).
The core conflict is one of ideas: liberal democracy vs sharia, individual rights vs. communal strictures, equal rights vs patriarchy, and so on. Curiously, the belief in individual freedoms, tolerance, and in particular prohibitions against government preferences towards religion make it extremely difficult for the government to actively oppose ideas that are based on religion -- even when those religious ideas are diammetically opposed to the foundational principles of the system of government.
Even in public debate, where the actions of the government aren't in play, we have a difficult time with the notion of public criticism of religious beliefs, never mind criticism of extreme religious beliefs. Even stranger, in some circles it is completely acceptable to harshly criticize Christianity, for example, but it is off limits to be critical of radical and extreme Islam. Strange.
We have to figure out how to engage in the realm of ideas over decadal time spans if we ever want to justly declare 'mission accomplished'.
Most people value the ability to drive 5 mph faster more than they value the right to not be constantly monitored by the government. Sorry you had to find out this way.
Do you have statistics that actually justify your statement? For some reason, I doubt that there has ever been a poll that directly seeks to determine whether more people care about speeding, or about surveillance overreaches. Without such a poll, this is just a meaningless appeal to the masses.
So your point is unfalsifiable? If you don't have evidence and accrued data, then your assertion seems like a point without value then. ("Sorry you had to find out this way.")
That's not what unfalsifiable means. If it were false, we would see evidence, such as speed limits being lower and actually respected, and strong widespread opposition to government surveillance. I think the word you're looking for is "unfalse".
"not able to be proven false, but not necessarily true."
You are unable to provide evidence, i.e. data, to support your claim (yet again). I cannot prove a statement false if there is no evidence to call into dispute. You do not have any concrete information that supports the notion that more people, in a direct comparison, would care about speeding, as opposed to government surveillance. Your statement is an unfounded assertion, not an accurate measure of what is just, valid, and/or righteous.
Without evidence, your statement merely explains what you want, not what society as a whole is looking for, or what policies should be put into place.
What you are calling "evidence", I am calling an unfounded assertion. You insist that polls aren't/can't be valid indicators of public preference, and you don't have hard data regarding the preference "in reality" for being able to speed over government surveillance. It's not that I don't "like" your evidence, it's that you haven't presented any.
Then, still without evidence or justification, you imply that others are out of touch with reality for not seeing things from your point of view. ("Sorry you had to find out this way."; "I am not so out of touch...") How delightful. Perhaps you'd be more persuasive if you actually demonstrated how the current state of surveillance reflects public opinion and desires rather than just declaring that as self-evident.
"As far as I know, there’s no evidence the French lacked some kind of surveillance authority that would have made a difference"
This is really all that should need to be said. Opportunists will jump on any event to push their own personal agenda, even if what they are pushing wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference in the outcome of said event.
During the Cold War Pravda said the US's military-industrial complex existed due to America's nascent imperialism. All mainstream talking heads, commentators etc. in the US said US military bases only ringed the world because of the threat of teh Soviet Union. Of course, when the USSR dissolved itself, NATO expanded east, and US bases didn't close, but open in countries it could not have been in before. As some Russians say "Everything the communists said about here was false, everything they said about the West is true".
The militaruy-industrial complex has found its own form of product-market fit. Arm Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban to eliminate Afghanistan's seculat government. Work with the mullahs to overthrow Mossadegh's secular parliament in Iran. Arm Islamic fundamentalists to undermine Assad's Syrian government. Then put military bases in, and bomb in some of the countries in which these Arab nationalists live. Well after a decade of US military occupation of "Saudi" Arabia, and some decades of arming him against secular threats, Osama and company attacked the Pentagon etc. ISIS just responded to France's month long bombing campaign with bombs of their own.
Then we're told we the people have to be spied on...when I was young Nixon was having burglars break into the Democratic campaign headquarters, then using the FBI to cover it up. The FBI which was bugging and intefering in Martin Luther King's campaign for all people in the US to get the freedoms which the law said we all were supposed to have.
It's a self-reinforcing circle. What the hell does the US have military bases all over the world for? Not for any good purpose, I have as much suspicion of the US and French's governments intentions in Arab countries as the Arabs do.
> Well after a decade of US military occupation of "Saudi" Arabia...
Having a base in a foreign country is not the same as an occupation - especially when the base is there with the permission of the foreign country, because they want your support against other foreign countries.
The "permission of the foreign country" is the puppet dictatorship that the US put in to rule that country. A country which is named after the puppet dictators family.
It was as clear an occupation as you can have.
Obviously the 15 Saudis who flew planes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center had different ideas from you about the US's former military occupation of their country. Which resulted, within two years after 9/11, with the US ending military occupation of "Saudi" Arabia.
If "secure" communication schemes are made insecure, other methods will be used. For example, while it may be inconvenient for two people to drive halfway across town and meet face-to-face in a dark warehouse, they'd have no problem doing that if it was the only way to ensure secret communications. Especially when they're planning events that might take weeks or months to unfold, what's an extra 30 minutes of driving?
If you invest billions in surveillance, you will only achieve two things: having spent billions, and making sure that criminals communicate in some other way. You will have stopped no crimes, except the people who are stupid enough that they would have been caught anyway.
I think it is a bit dangerous to consider this a failure of the surveillance state. One fundamental problem is that intelligence agencies are seen as having been given or having taken on the impossible task of preventing any political violence.
While it's understandable to think that they have failed at this, given that the task is impossible, it's probably not a good idea to last the failure at their feet.
The French should consider consulting the Israeli's who have probably the most experience combatting Islamic terror. The Israelis are good at both hi-tech and HUMINT and doubtless other countries could benefit from their expertise, if they don't already.
However, it is noteworthy that in the end, the Israelis had to build a security fence around their country in order to combat terror. But this was for combating terrorists from outside the country.
Several of these French terrorist were French citizens and as such the Israeli the French could benefit from Israeli assistance.
This isn't really too surprising, nearly all Law Enforcement agencies have been using these as a pretense to undermine civil rights. And the argument is just as broken for crypto as it is for guns, people who are going to use a tool for ill, will do so regardless of laws disallowing such use. And while it would be possible to force vendors to put back doors in phones, it doesn't prevent anyone from sideloading a crypto app.
One of the best counter factuals for this debate is that our terrorists are using high explosives in suicide belts and fully automatic AK47's in their acts. Both of those things are supposed to be "impossible" to get by non-authorized personnel and yet they are. Those physical things have to move through channels that the authorities already have the right to search and seize (trans-border crossings) so why not fix that problem?
It is a sad situation, and I mourn for the people of Paris and all the people and in the future who have been and will be killed by extremists. But that pales in comparison to how much I mourn for the death of a free and equal society with guaranteed human rights.
Unless the French intelligent services were picking on people at random they already had information on the people they should be watching as evidenced by the immediate sweeps in the aftermath.
In many of these attacks the individuals are well known to the police and security services as they often have criminal backgrounds and have been in prison or custody of some kind. So either they are some sort of criminal masterminds, which I doubt, or the security services are completely inept even when they have a wealth of information or something more sinister.
So in my mind more intrusive intelligence is not really the answer.
It's like a big linear regression. He is arguing for a higher surveillance coefficient to the societal equation. There are hidden variables though. Machine learning taught me a lot about politics.
Saying that surveillance doesn't stop all terrorists so we should stop surveillance is like saying police don't stop all crimes so we should get rid of police.
Not all surveillance is bad but dragnet style surveillance of each and every person (abroad, because of course nobody would ever spy on American citizens) is apparently in-effective. Targeted surveillance could be an extremely effective tool against terrorism. As would be the more old-fashioned style operations (but with much more personal risk for those involved).
I'm not ready to concede that just yet, just like I'm not ready to concede that even though it is trivial for a bunch of people to acquire arms and to commit mass murder that there is nothing that can be done to put a spanner in their works long before they are even aware of that particular possibility.
Because if we do not solve this problem Europe will have a major civil war on its hands somewhere in the next two decades.
What about the US, then? We have a form of multiculturalism where minorities are on average oppressed, but integrate rather than lash out (usually).
I'm not saying we're a shining model or anything, but we have a ton of different cultures living together more or less harmoniously, even taking into account the habitual blacks vs whites squabble.
Humanity also has a pretty extensive history of conflict, even in more mono-cultural societies. Hell, you could take any mass of people, all from the same background, race, ethnicity, religion, etc (take your pick), put them on an island for a hundred years or two, and you'll get factions.
You'll get people fighting over how they think the place ought to be run. You'll get people fighting over who gets what and why these guys have all this stuff and we have less stuff. If nothing else, it comes down to availability of resources and numbers of people (along the lines of Dunbar's number and all that).
Sure, ethnicity, race, and religion are convenient signifiers of groups of people and usually when you have two or more groups with significantly different cultures, you've probably got two or more groups with some level of inequality and power imbalance so you're already halfway there. But even if you don't start out with cultural differences, they'll pop up eventually. Groups of people over a certain size will always have a harder time avoiding conflict when things get tough. It's almost in our nature to split into "us" and "them" just to manage it all.
Europe is currently pretty much ordered itself into nation states. It required some bleeding over the centuries. If you look at Swiss and Germans, they can hate each other and be internally fine. Both are using 2% of their GDP in defense to fend of each other proactively. There is balance of power, which result very little violence.
Now if both countries would import so much people from middle east that they would constitute something like 30% of the population of each country. Now ethnic Germans and Swiss seem to be "the same group" compared to Muslims. If shit hit's the fan, there is new pressure to readjust the borders. And move the people. Usually that stuff causes bleeding.
You could say that "if" is completely unrealistic right now. I agree. Nothing that has happened in Europe during past 15 years really warrants any policy change regarding immigration. The point was largely theoretical, just like your island.
That is absolutely absurd. And probably simply points to your own intolerance.
We have many proofs of example (I mean, such a sweeping statement should apply to any society with more than "one culture" whatever that even means).
And even if you were right, that it hasn't happened before, you could say that about anything that didn't work the first time. "It never worked before, so it is doomed."
No real progress in stopping multicultural violence has been made since slavery was abolished. People are less violent overall when life is comfortable. But Balkans war and Syrian civil war show that nothing fundamental changes with few generations of peaceful living.
You should look at the Balkans in a slightly different light. Under Tito Yugoslavia was held together much like a steel band can hold together a compressed spring. As soon as Tito's influence disappeared the spring reverted to its prior shape, and a lot of people decided to continue with their 'unfinished business', the feuds of many years past. There are other regions in the world for which such a description would be fairly accurate, Iraq under Saddam Hussain was another. Now both Sadam and Tito were not exactly nice people (to put it very nicely, both had the blood of numerous people on their hands) but they did manage to contain at least some local strife (with an iron fist and lots of casualties). Even today there is lots of animosity in the Balkans and Iraq is still embroiled in what can only be termed a civil war. A power vacuum is a dangerous thing.
But if anything the attacks prove that the whole surveillance thing isn't effective, not that we need even more of it. After all if a bunch of lowlifes and assholes are capable of setting this up without any triggers in spite of some of them already being in police databases for activities related to terrorism then clearly that approach is bankrupt. So, thanks for the 'rekindling', now please shut it down. And divert those funds to old fashioned policework, which seems to have worked pretty good in the past (RAF, IRA etc).