The Paris Massacre Proves One Thing: America’s Imperial Arrogance Can Only Make Things Worse

Last Friday’s massacre in Paris, which followed hard on the heels of similar outrages in Baghdad, Beirut and over the Sinai, is an unmistakable sign that ISIS has now embraced the Al-Qaeda tactic of spectacular mass-casualty acts of terror. The movement’s acolytes have, in just 36 hours, murdered hundreds of people of all faiths and creeds on three continents.

As grotesque as these acts of terrorism have been, they are guided by a political logic: ISIS is looking to swell its ranks and funds by appealing to the most nihilistic impulses of thousands of young people vulnerable to its extreme ideology, and also to sharpen those divisions in the societies it targets that best serve its goals. In Iraq and Lebanon, ISIS seeks to re-kindle civil war between Sunni and Shia; in Paris its strategic goal is to turn European societies against their Muslim minorities — both dynamics from which experience has taught the extremists that they can profit.

Each new terrorist attack reminds us of the total failure of the War on Terror. After 14 years of disaster, the policies enacted by the Western powers should be thoroughly and drastically re-examined before digging us all deeper into the quagmire of endless violence.

How many terrorist attacks do we need to suffer through before citizens start demanding a radical shift of strategy? And how long before their leaders stop falling into the Islamic extremists’ traps?

Rethinking the war-on-terror approach requires developing a new paradigm that takes into account the collapse of the postcolonial world order. Every Middle East model of governance backed by an ideology has failed spectacularly, from Pan Arabism to Baathisim, simply because they weren’t able to offer a life of dignity to millions of Muslims. Yet, today, Western powers continue to bet on the bankrupt model of the authoritarian strongman such as Egypt’s President Sisi, accompanied by a fixation on militarized answers to the problem of terrorism. Shockingly, Western leaders seem to be coming around to accepting the Israeli vision of living in a permanent state of war.

Massive invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the bombardment of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, and Syria, years of operations that have killed senior Qaeda figures like bin Laden, Zarqawi, and Ayman Al-Awlaki — and even mid-level boasters like ‘Jihadi John’ — have done little to degrade ISIS, let alone destroy it.

Whether we live in Western or Arab capitals, the War on Terror has only escalated the risks to our security. Western news agencies may dutifully parrot official accounts of senior jihadists killed in airstrikes, but they rarely investigate the cost in civilian casualties among those unlucky enough to have the terrorists darken their doorsteps. Yet those casualties, callously branded “collateral damage” in U.S. military parlance, continue to boost recruitment and support for ISIS and likeminded groups.

In Western societies, the impulse to tighten security by putting entire Muslim communities under suspicion and subjecting them to greater surveillance, racial profiling and harassment is often self-defeating, since it alienates the very young people in those communities most vulnerable to radicalization — and whose cooperation is vital in isolating and neutralizing real threats. The Paris massacres are likely to increase such security measures, and a political drift to the right that embraces Islamophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric — and serves the terrorists’ goal of driving a wedge between European states and their Muslim citizenry.

Anyone who seeks safety in Paris or New York, Beirut or Baghdad, ought to be asking why it is that after more than a decade of “war on terror,” in which hundreds of thousands have been killed, millions displaced and trillions squandered, the enemy still seems to have the momentum.

The fact that European cities can be attacked by jihadists known to the authorities is too easily dismissed as an intelligence failure; the grim reality is that there are far too many young men and women in European cities who are embracing ISIS and its extreme worldview for the security services to keep track of. Instead, they are forced to devote their finite resources to those they judge are most ready to act — always an inexact science.