Liberals sometimes say that law enforcement’s approach to the Mafia offers a model for how to deal with jihadists, even though the latter tend not to limit their demands to protection money. This past Sunday, Egberto Willies of Daily Kos claimed that if terrorist attacks were “treated as they should be, like organized crime, it would neuter ISIS. After all…the group is no more powerful than a large band of thugs with weapons.”
But crimefighting methods weren’t the main concern of Willies’s piece. Rather, it was his belief that “neocons” wish to exploit fear of terrorism in order to start a war which would “transfer wealth from the masses to the few owners of the defense industrial complex.” Willies also ranted that conservatives don’t take a back seat to Islamist fanatics when it comes to lethality: “America's right-wing mass killers and gang bangers have killed more people in the West than ISIS has.”
From the post (bolding added):
The act of terrorism in Paris, France, that killed 132 people and counting is tragic. What’s more tragic? The response by the United States' media and the neocon-driven Republican Party…
The drumbeat to force President Obama into overreaction mode is already at full force…
…Middle-class and poor Americans have been the pawns of western democracies and the American plutocracy, where everyone with the exception of them benefits economically from these wars.
“Lead from behind”…is a strategy that says everybody had better be a part [of] the game, a part of the solution. No longer will America be the world’s warrior and police force. No longer will all other democracies be able to build their social democracies, freeways, airports, and hospitals as America’s own infrastructure crumbles because we are spending to “protect” the world and enrich the plutocracy.
But that is not what the the neocons want…[which] is war led by America at all costs, a very efficient way to transfer wealth from the masses to the few owners of the defense industrial complex…
ISIS is not an existential threat to America, nor to any country in the West…If these types of attacks [like the ones in Paris] are treated as they should be, like organized crime, it would neuter ISIS. After all, ISIS needs to seem more powerful than it [is]. But the group is no more powerful than a large band of thugs with weapons. America's right-wing mass killers and gang bangers have killed more people in the West than ISIS has…
It is time for Americans to grow up...
ISIS has no Air Force. ISIS has no Navy. ISIS has no standing army. They buy weapons from the West. A war is simply a marketing bonanza for weapons manufacturers, who supply both sides as families on all sides are destroyed. Will we allow ourselves to be played again?
