Have to laugh at those that wishfully believe that jihadist attacks are purely down to "the Brits" and Americans evil actions overseas. We will leave aside Belgium for the moment (and not just today's events but the recent killing of Jewish children there) and consider which states have now been mentioned by aq and isis as targets
sweden
switzerland
getting a reality check at last, are we?
but this is a perfect summary
http://hurryupharry.org/2015/01/14/being-an-islamist/
It's too simplistic Clive, and it doesn't work like that.
What tends to happen is you get the aggrieved generation who experience or witness something who react. They pass an orthodoxy into the inheriting generations. Sometimes it gains traction, sometimes it disipates as it fails to travel. In this case it's gaining traction. As the results of those early exchanges play out in deaths, abuses, arrests etc the original spark that prompted the initial uprising loses its meaning as newer contemporary causes come to replace them. Effectively the whole thing starts to fuel itself
I'll give you a really simple example of the same thing working. A few years ago Margaret Thatcher died. Upon her death though, a number of people held celebratory parties. It was noted at the time that nearly all those doing so were too young to remember her or even been alive to have been affected by anything she did. Somehow therefore, an orthodoxy had been passed from one generation onwards and you get a sort of cohort conformity in line with an expectation that starts to verge on duty
There are other examples of where a touchstone moment sets in train a chain of events that similarly leads to the establishment of a terrorist justification/ freedom fighter (lets not forget how these people view themselves, as that is an important component).
Martin McGuiness openly said that before bloody Sunday he struggled to recruit in Derry. After bloody Sunday he never struggled again. Now it is clearly implausible to suggest that everyone who joined the IRA was motivated by bloody Sunday, but once the fire has been stoked, new events take place which assume the mantle of motivation
This is what I think has happened now. A lot of the new generations of Jihadis can't have been that old when 9/11 and Iraq happened. I can understand that perhaps a 10 year old who's lost his family to a drone strike in a Baghdad slum might become radicalised. Indeed, I'd call that logical at one level, but the emerging threat is western Europeans who seem to be buying into some kind of terrorist brand, but it seems inconceivable that someone, or something isn't stoking them, and similarly, it's equally inconceivable that they've been on the direct receiving end in a way that perhaps my hypothetical Baghdadi has
The people who fuel this (hate preachers, social media, foreign governments etc) are exploting what they can and directing their victims/ soldeirs in any direction that they're prepared to go. I think it's also worth remembering what the whole strategy and structure of AQ is about though. Their original objective was to allow local jihadis to select their own targets without any centralised command and control, and prosecute a war according to their definition. It stands largely to reason that people will try and target what they're most familiar with and better equipped to deliver (something in their own country) and this is how, I suspect, what we'd think of as non-beligerant countries, are now getting caught in the cross-fire. I'm tending to interpret it as evidence that the poison has spread and that the whole conflict is now being framed east versus west, and muslim versus christian. It's expanded beyond the traditional bogeymen of Israel and the US now
These latest French killers admitted that it was Abu Graid that proved the touchstone however in their case, and therefore I don't believe you can simply divorce history from this and hope to retain an understanding of what's happening. Equally though I can accept that perhaps we're moving past that point now in the name of pragmatism, and perhaps need to face up to the grim realisation that regardless of what has happened in the past, the present and the future is where we need to be looking. Even if we have contributed to our own threat, if we don't start doing something soon, we could be contributing to a whole lot more through inertia
Having said all that, and i for one wouldn't discount the importance of our own hand in this, I think it's equally simplistic to argue that had Iraq, or Abu Graid not happened, everything would be tickety boo. I don't doubt for one minute that the agent provocateurs would be looking for other examples to recruit off, as inded they were throughout the 60's and 70's. The simple fact however, is that an unjust war, waged in what looked like the suspicious pursuit of crude oil, involving hundreds of thousands of deaths, as well as documented abuses, made for a particularly compelling narrative and an open goal to exploit. We did make that job particularly easy for them, and allow them to develop a decade long narrative that I doubt we can put back in the bottle now. The ongoing Arab/ Israeli conflict certainly spawned hijackings and demonstrations, and of course Lebanon, but it never really threatened global conflict
Even if we do conclude that we've more than contributed to the status quo, I'm not really sure that outside of an academic understanding, such a conclusion survives the "so what?" question. So what if have. We screwed up etc But there are important things to get right now coming down the road, and we would be well advised to start that process now
