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. The Foreign Legion is deployed, then we’ll know they are serious about killing ISIS. Until then, this is just more “mouse roar” similar to what Bath House Barry engages in.

  2. The Israelis have launched many, many retaliatory raids, but even they have never truly followed up to try to actually exterminate Hamas. Does anyone here think that France, or any Western nation, really has the balls to go after Da’ish in an attempt to kill them all?

  6. Wait till we unleash the Hurt Feelings Brigade upon them to explain that they were attacked for being too white, too privileged, too European… How many millionaire’s children have to go without food for a couple of days before the French learn that they cannot aggress upon people who are marginally browner than they are? How many SEC football teams must pretend they won’t play a game before Hollande resigns? How many safe spaces will need to be created in supermarkets to protect our children from seeing french cheese and wine? Expect more of this if you don’t start kissing hurt-booboo-feelings today!

  10. Miss Now wrote:

    How many SEC football teams must pretend they won’t play a game before Hollande resigns?

    Alas! The University of Kentucky Mildcats don’t have to pretend they won’t play a football game! Even when they suit up, they don’t play.

  11. Three potential rape victims unlocking the door to their assailants. Liberalism is a self loathing, idiotic mindset embraced by a generation of uneducated morons.

  12. Maybe this time bombing the same piece of desert will accomplish something? Probably not, and like always, it will only drive up recruitment. I think it’s time to admit American policy in the Middle East is a total failure, and another military campaign will be ineffective, even if it gives people the illusion of safety in the short term. France helped destabilize Syria by pushing regime change along with our government, and now they think they’re going to solve this with a few ineffectual bombing campaigns? 14 years we’ve been over there bombing, and policing, and were actually in far worse shape than we were in 2001. Why would any rational person think, “but this time we’re going to get it right!”? As long as the region remains poor, illiterate, and desperate, extremists will have an in, and will be able to supply a narrative, no matter how false, to explain why everyone is so miserable.

  13. You get a bombing campaign right only by bombing them into near extinction, by bombing them and bombing them and bombing them until the few survivors can do nothing other than scratch the dirt hoping for enough food to survive, and have no time or energy or resources to do anything else.

  14. And then they’ll reconstitute, and be able to further push the “Americans are out to kill us” narrative on the population, which won’t be too difficult since most of the civilian population will be dead, too. They want us to bomb them, and drop more soldiers. It helps them, and that’s been clear for at least 10 years. We have tried this every which way, and it hasn’t worked. There is no military solution to this problem.

  15. There is no doubt that is a primary driver of extremism. It was true for the rise of Nazism, and Communism, and it’s even more true in the Middle East.

  16. Hiroshima and Nagasaki: successful bombing campaigns.

    One day they were torturing and eating our soldiers… a short while later, they were playing baseball and listening to Elvis.

    You have to fight a war like you mean it.

  17. So, basically genocide? And that was followed by what? A long term occupation, rebuilding of the Japanese economy, total demilitarization, etc. This isn’t WW2, either, where we’re fighting nation states with educated populations, a technological base, etc.

  18. People like you who say “There is no military solution to this problem” will generally not admit to any problem having a military solution, so pardon us while we give your comment the due consideration it deserves, which is none.

  19. There are a billion poor, illiterate, and desperate people in both India and China. Why are they not hotbeds of extremism?

  22. Absolutely, 100% wrong, and dismissing other opinions such as you did is a sign of a closed mind. If there was a military solution I would be in favor of it, and maybe we’d have victory if there was one, since the military option is all we’ve used for the last 14 years? But of course your answer will be “we didn’t use enough bombs, soldiers? hammers….”

  23. I’m also detecting a “if those Arabs just pulled up their bootstraps, got jobs, and stopped being so lazy” argument in there too. According to a number of figures the ME will be the poorest region on Earth in about 15 years, and displaced even by Africa. I doubt we can bomb that situation into the ground, too.

  25. If you aren’t willing to fight in a way they understand, then what you are doing is needless brutality. We fought the Japs and Germans brutally. The succumbed to superior firepower in a way a sensible human being would. We have as yet to do that with the Middle East Crazies.
    We aren’t fighting like we mean it, and the crazies know it.

  26. You’re reading something between the lines that I didn’t write. Please stick to what’s actually on the screen, or else we’ll just conclude that you’re just inventing strawmen and respond appropriately.

  29. And destabilizing the region for oil rights, creating sectarian conflicts, pursuing regime change…we’ve been sabotaging the region since the 50s.

  30. Probably not. The root causes thing the DimoKKKraps like to throw around is pretty much a steaming pile of bovine waste. Sick minds produce sick philosophies. And even dumber people follow them.

  31. 1. Hit self in head with hammer.
    2. Blame racism, Republicans, anti-Islamic bigotry, and resistance to letting tens of thousands of violent camel-bangers into your country.
    3. Repeat.

  33. They have a unit there mostly to Police Djibouti’s border. They also do training there as well. Djibouti is a semi-permanent station.

  35. I think it’s time that the progressives just admit they don’t know what they’re doing. Go away, kiddies. Time for the adults to take over.

  37. Um, constant bombing, drone strikes, for at least the last year, and let’s not forget Special Forces/JSOC operating in 18 countries, arming militias to fight extremist groups in Africa, etc. It has been said time and time again that we might win a tactical victory by eliminating a source of money, or weapons for them, but their ideology goes unstopped, and recruitment continues.

  38. The admittance of all those “refugees” into European countries is akin to a person eating gravel–its completely indigestible.
    The various migrations of people in human history weren’t composed of (1)virtually all men of typical military recruitment age without accompanying wives or children, (2) a significant portion of whom are “culturally hostile” to the West motivated by Wahabist takfiri ideology, (3) people with little or no skills who will be immediately put onto welfare rolls with low prospects of removal, (4) people who have no known relatives already in the country. All these factors used to be considered when letting people into a country

  41. I respectfully disagree, and think the situation here is vastly different, and more intense military campaigns will only play into their propaganda further, and accomplish little. Dragging us into a ground war is also exactly what they want since it will drive recruitment, and big us down. In a sense they need us to keep bombing them to stay alive. If we stopped they would probably dry up, and die.

  43. It goes back further than fifteen years.

    March 2, 1973. The assassination of U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel on the direct orders of Yassar Arafat. Nixon knew exactly who gave the orders within hours.

    That was just one time when it was decided that perpetual war was better than the safety of the American public. And better business, at least for those government approved companies.

    Or we could talk about Guatemala, the United Fruit Company, and the CIA in 1954.

    Or perhaps we could talk about American support for Saadam Hussein after the Iranian revolution.

    The geopolitical game is rigged in favor of the “movers and shakers” while everyone else pays in blood and gold.

  44. Certainly not defending progressives, but every one has fucked up in that part of the world for the last 50 plus years. And if by adults you mean the Republican Party, I think I’ll pass.

  45. I remember, shortly after ISIS became a household word, seeing news photos of an ISIS convoy. It was entirely made up of white pick-up trucks and it stretched for miles. I wondered why we did not send an A-10 Warthog to engage them. We could have killed hundreds of their fighters and eliminated their transportation with a single aircraft. It would have been a repeat of the Highway of Death from the first Gulf War. But no, all those Toyotas rolled on unmolested. That is when I knew that we did not even WANT to win.

  46. If you to want go all the way back, our problems in the Middle East started during the First World War, but in my opinion the decisive event that has lead to this catastrophic situation is the Iranian coup in 1953 that installed the Shah, and lead to the Iranian Revolution. I was referring to our military campaign since 2001 which has bled American lives, and treasure, and made the region more hostile and radicalized than before. In light of that how can anyone say lets do more of the same, but this time with more intensity?

  47. We might win a tactical victory by taking back an oil field, destroying a munitions depot, etc. but they quickly get back what they lost, and no matter how many bombs we drop their recruitment continues, and keeps increasing.

  49. You don’t understand either the Jihadist mind, or the chiliastic mindset of the jihadist. Either you give them the kind of war they understand, or your wasting time, material and lives. Their lives as much as ours. We left them alone for many years, and we got it anyway. The one way they understand, they have never gotten. All that’s happened in the ME over the past 40 years is piddling stuff. War to the knife, and the knife to the hilt, is the only kind of war they understand. They also respect power as well.

  50. Actually, I meant in regards to everything. Everything.
    Really, progressives’ record of failure is remarkable. I’ve never seen a group be so consistently wrong about so much.

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