Yesterday, three masked men - which the French government and media have identified as French-born Algerians - attacked the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and murdered 10 employees (deliberately targeting the magazine's cartoonists). They also killed two police officers on the scene, one of whom was reportedly named Ahmed - so, a French Muslim.
The bodies of the slain have hardly gone cold before the Narrative Wars began. For some, this was a vile act of Islamic terror, signaling the need to defend the West from jihad. Far enough - except that many of these very people have been allied with jihadists and terrorists for decades, in places like Afghanistan, Bosnia, Serbia ("Kosovo" and "Sanjak"), Russia (Chechnya, Dagestan) and more recently, Libya and Syria. The way they spun it, these were the "good" jihadists, attacking the "enemies" of the West - you know, those folks who refused to submit to demands for unconditional surrender of their independence, economies, values, societies, faiths and traditions to the bankers, market speculators and the false god of Multiculturalism.
In other words, I'll believe the West is fighting against the jihad when I see it.
The bodies of the slain have hardly gone cold before the Narrative Wars began. For some, this was a vile act of Islamic terror, signaling the need to defend the West from jihad. Far enough - except that many of these very people have been allied with jihadists and terrorists for decades, in places like Afghanistan, Bosnia, Serbia ("Kosovo" and "Sanjak"), Russia (Chechnya, Dagestan) and more recently, Libya and Syria. The way they spun it, these were the "good" jihadists, attacking the "enemies" of the West - you know, those folks who refused to submit to demands for unconditional surrender of their independence, economies, values, societies, faiths and traditions to the bankers, market speculators and the false god of Multiculturalism.
In other words, I'll believe the West is fighting against the jihad when I see it.