THE GRIM FAMILIAR FACE OF THE TERRORISM vs WAR BUSINESS

When our media pundits escalate the carnage of terrorist attacks to the level of full scale war, where we can further unleash our sophisticated air-power and drone assassinations, we only lock ourselves deeper into a war addicted society.   The common U.S. citizen rarely sees what war and violent death really look like up close.   The recent killings by terrorists in France appear to bring it closer to our Western society, but as long as our war industry and homeland security dominant institutions seem to keep it at bay, far away in foreign lands, we are willing to pay protection money federal taxes, and look the other way.

  Perhaps 130 now the recent Paris victims, maybe a Syrian refugee among the ISIS assailants.

Shots start at the Bataclan, a concert hall with a capacity of 1,500 people, three men attacked a sold-out performance of the Eagles of Death Metal, an American band.   89 died – from NYT

People wounded are taken away by emergency personnel near the Bataclan music hall, Paris

Terrible, but also predictable, and now we can mount even more disastrous wars in Iraq & Syria, where sprouts the Islamic State, out of our previous invasions & interventions.   The collateral damage of our war-making response to the 911 attack, spilling from Afghanistan to Iraq and ever onward, continues to mushroom.   We pay attention to Paris, but every day every week, comparable innocents die, at the hands of terrorists, and often times immolated by our own hi-tech weaponry efforts to destroy those we’ve labeled terrorists and their communities.

Forty in Lebanon, the day before the Paris attack—Arab innocents largely ignored by the regular media.   Just try doing a google search of international news stories that focus on the Middle East—the casualties of terrorism & war occurring daily country by country.   You will not be able to keep count.   No one is accurately compiling these numbers.   These deaths are of minimal importance.   In the 15 years since the turn of the Millennium they are most likely in the millions.   And the victims often get blamed, “You lived in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

151112-Beruit attack 40 killed - twin suicide bombings in the Burj al-Barajneh neighborhood of Beirut, Lebanon. Photo - Bilal Hussein-AP

Beirut, Also the Site of Deadly Attacks, Feels Forgotten—11-12-15NYT

“When my people died, no country bothered to light up its landmarks in the colors of their flag,” Elie Fares, a Lebanese doctor, wrote on his blog. “When my people died, they did not send the world into mourning. Their death was but an irrelevant fleck along the international news cycle, something that happens in those parts of the world.”

At daily mass today our local parish priest gave a beautiful strong homily, on the need to put Christ in the place of our reliance on war as the solution to terrorism.   He made the practical point that the terrorist attacks in Paris needed to be countered with clear investigations, and rounding up the perpetrators—not by sending attack jets to inflict collective lethal presumptive judgement, on far away villages in the Middle East.   He knew this is not a popular view.

Yet God is father of us all, and the rush to war is opposite to the way of following His Son, Jesus.

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And once again global oil dependency enters into the war equation.

U.S. Warplanes Strike ISIS Oil Trucks in Syria—11-16-15 NYT