FRANCE AT WAR: Jets Strike ISIS Stronghold; Terror Suspects Raided

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Friday’s attack in Paris has prompted French authorities to take military action against the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa:

France bombed the Syrian city of Raqqa on Sunday night, its most aggressive strike against the Islamic State group it blames for killing 129 people in a string of terrorist attacks across Paris only two days before. . . .
While France has been conducting scores of airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq, it had been bombing inside Syria only sparingly, wary of inadvertently strengthening the hand of President Bashar al-Assad by killing his enemies.
But after militants with AK-47 rifles and suicide explosives vests shattered the peaceful revelry of Paris on Friday night, killing dozens of civilians in restaurants and at a concert hall, France seemed intent on sending a clear message of its determination to curb the Islamic State and its ability to carry out attacks outside the territory it controls.

The previous reluctance to hit ISIS in Raqqa, in other words, reflected the fact that the Syrian extremists were tacitly supported by the West since 2011, when the “Arab Spring” uprisings were orchestrated to overthrow the governments of Libya, Egypt and Syria. More on the French air strikes on Raqqa:

Twelve aircraft including 10 fighter jets dropped a total of 20 bombs in the biggest air strikes since France extended its bombing campaign against the extremist group to Syria in September, a Defense Ministry statement said. The jets launched from sites in Jordan and the Persian Gulf, in coordination with U.S. forces. . . .
French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said France had the “legitimacy” to take action against ISIS after Friday’s terror attacks in Paris.
Fabius said Sunday on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Turkey that the decision to conduct airstrikes in Raqqa against Islamic State targets was a “political” one and that France had to be “present and active” following Friday’s attacks.

Ace of Spades points out that Raqqa is “a city the jihadis have kept in reasonably good shape . . . a showcase city . . . their military headquarters,” so that the previous failure to target Raqqa would seem rather inexplicable. As I say, however, ISIS was tacitly supported in the effort to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria, which was part of the Obama administration’s “Arab Spring” policy dating back to 2011. That this policy has been a catastrophic failure, in effect arming ISIS terrorists, is something the administration and its former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, have been understandably reluctant to admit. Meanwhile, in France, authorities are rounding up the usual suspects:

French police launched more than 150 raids across the country overnight as part of a manhunt in the wake of Paris’s deadly terror attacks, NBC News reported.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls confirmed the raids to RTL Radio, according to NBC News. . . .
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that 23 people had been arrested — while 104 others remained for questioning — over a 48-hour period. He added that guns, bulletproof vests and even a rocket launcher had been seized.
“This is just the beginning,” Cazeneuve said. “The response of France will be total. Those who attack France, we will catch them and we will be unrelenting with them … Terrorists will never destroy the Republic, because the Republic will destroy them.”
Searches took place throughout the country, including in Toulouse, Grenoble, Bobigny and Lyon.

The hunt for the Paris terrorist Salah Abdeslam continues. There were reports this morning that Abdeslam had been cornered by Belgian police in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, but officials there said the raid failed to nab him.

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133 comments

  1. And once were forced to occupy the area, and rebuild it, we will be bogged down again, and in a fight with radicals. An air campaign alone will not change a thing.

  2. Yeah, I know wiki is lazy etc.

    However, the following is easy enough to verify:

    In March 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went to London to negotiate with Tripoli’s envoy, ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman (or Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja). When they enquired “concerning the ground of the pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury”, the ambassador replied:

    It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy’s ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once.

    Poverty is not the problem. “Extremism” in general is not the problem (mostly because it ain’t a thing). Muhammad is the problem, der; He’s a shitty role-model and his wannabe #1-fan-base is a constant source of misery. Eventually, we’ll have to build a cathedral from their bones. Sorry :^(

    Was Lincoln wrong to raze Atlanta? Was Truman wrong to nuke Nagasaki? Those men wound up and delivered some fucking hay-makers, KO blows, triple-fierce-flaming-shoryken-ultracombo-finish shit ; they did literally EVERYTHING in their power to stop their enemies. Whatever else you may say about their efforts, there is no room for disagreement regarding their resolve: they fought to win, period; Obama ain’t even tryin’ and most people are at least somewhat okay with that (mufuh was elected 2X, after all).

    The public ain’t ready to validate the kind of effort that would produce a mountain of dead civilian bodies tall enough to scare the shit out of the poor souls that are currently scared shitless of their own coreligionists, but that is what has to happen, my two cents.

  4. I don’t trust Obama either. We know he has lied, The lamestream media just doesn’t call him on it.

    The “system” depends on low level perpetual conflict. Never enough to get the job done, but always demanding more sacrifice.

  5. No dummy, we’re not the Nazis, we’re the people who KILLED the Nazis. There’s a difference, though I’m not surprised you can’t see it.

  8. It’s not possible to take you seriously. Since the musloids are working to get nukes, it’s coming regardless of what we do.
    Also, any response MUST be completely out of proportion to what they do. The only thing they take seriously is power and it demonstrated. Unless you show them that everything they do will bring a crushing response you will simply get more of what you’ve already seen. So far all we’ve done, under Bush and the bigger idiot we have now, is more recruitment because all we’ve done is piddle around. Piddling is your way, and you can see the results.

  10. You didn’t pay much attention if you think Reagan’s admin was not involved in ME politics post Beirut. And what will collapse the country is it’s spiritual bankruptcy.

  12. They did it because their religion demands war with infidels. There are only two ways you can end this. First by utterly destroying the basis for their religion and killing any so called fundamentalist. Second, by a complete quarantine and not allowing Islam out of the region to which they are restricted. neither of these methods are going to be nice, but if you want effective, you do what is effective. All that’s happened so far is simply piddling with them, and that simply allows, and encourages, recruiting.

  13. We don’t have to create sectarian conflicts. They did that themselves. They were doing it long before there was a United States, and will be doing it until Islam is completely debunked and destroyed.

  14. Yet the ME has been most peaceful when those corrupt brutal rulers were in power. The Turkish Caliphate pretty much sat on the Levant and Maghreb and there was very little internecine conflict then. If you tried you’d be seeing the local sultan and expounding upon the error of your ways while you were frog marched to the center of town for your appointment with the headsman.

    Assad and Saddam both kept the peace inside their countries and protected religious minorities. Both were brutal and corrupt, but they sat on the extremists hard and kept them under control. That is the only way the ME can be ruled. It’s either that or we kill anything living between the Med and the Chinese border.

  15. Hirohito saw that the nation faced annihilation and that annihilation would basically be at their own hand and he ordered the fight ended.

  16. I was in ’72-’74 on a 2×6 reserve enlistment. Spent time in the med on Courtney (DE-1021) homeported in Naples with an ITASS noodle (the experimental version of the later TASS). The keel of the ship was buckling because it no longer had the weight of the weapon Alpha mount (predecessor to ASROC) on the keel, so they sent Courtney along with sister Dealeys, Hammerburg and Lester back to CONUS for decommissioning. Was sent to Sylvania (AFS 2) next and went to college after that.

  18. The problem is European elites don’t have much choice. Europeans absolutely refuse to breed and the population is getting old. Their future economic prospects without immigration are very grim as very few young people will be alive to keep the welfare state funded.

    As terrible as it sounds, Western Europe is dying of old age and the elites know it but have no solution to the problem other than desperately importing whoever they can and hope Europe’s magic dirt tames them.

    Same thing here. European descendants are dying and refuse to breed. Soon this nation will be just another Hispanic American hell hole like Venezuela.

  19. All of this doesn’t mean sh*t until they take the only step that matters, kicking out the Muslims who are already there . . . all of them.

  20. They are being promised paradise with 72 virgins for murdering us. Do you think that getting a 9-5 job down at the local plant would dissuade them from this?

  21. That micro-aggression was so hurtful that it caused me to leak wiper fluid…and it was the good stuff…Rainex! Why are you so mean? Are you a toaster oven? The kitchen counter privilege you exude would explain a lot… Bet you get real quite during basketball season…IYKWIMAITYD

  25. You didn’t read the article very carefully.

    This is the first paragraph:

    “There is a military solution to ISIS and it will undoubtedly be successfully applied in the coming weeks, but there is not a military solution to terrorism Islamist and otherwise, according to Nikolay Khramov. Those who think otherwise are deluding themselves consciously or unconsciously.”

    You have asserted there is no military solution. The above does not agree with that.

    OTOH, without a harsh quarantine of Islam, which is a backing of the military solution, then there would be no military solution for any of it. The two must be implemented together, and the part that is military must be harsh, and ruthless. The problem is that you, like so many, are too soft hearted to implement anything that is needed, so you simply call for surrender.

  26. I’m not interested in speculative guessing games. All I can say is what I believe should be done under the conditions that exist right now today.

    Plus, your argument is repetitive and tiresome. We know what you think. Can’t you just shut up about it at some point?

  30. Proportional response…that’s funny.

    A lesser known Sherman quote:

    “War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.”

    If you don’t understand that, ask an adult to explain it to you.

  31. Clearly…NSWC Crane has probably taken more hits in the last month than the entire middle east in the last year…

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