Mali: Lesson III

Abstract: The USA has to realize that enforcing civilization, worldwide, is a matter of security, not just high principle.
Yes, it was uncivilized for the USA to attack Afghanistan in 1979 and Iraq in 2003. However, it’s civilized to help the French as much as possible to defend the secular Malian republic and the Malian People.
As far as fighting a long war, the USA itself was born no earlier than 1776 from a conflict that had started earlier than 1756. Rolling back fanatical invading Islamists since 721 CE, and other invaders before that (Huns, Goths, Vandals, etc.) has been Francia’s main business. Not for the pusillanimous, right! If civilization is not strong, civilization is nought.
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“U.S. Weighing How Much Help to Give France’s Military Operation in Mali” say the New York Times’ David Sanger and Eric Schmitt in Sat, Jan 26 cover article. Let me discuss.

The historico-geographical context of the Mali war is global, spanning a small planet, and a very long history.

French Mirage 2000 Thirsty Over Chad

New York Times: “WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is debating how much more aid it can give the French military forces who are battling Islamic militants in Mali, weighing the benefit of striking a major blow to Qaeda-linked fighters in Africa against concern about being drawn into a lengthy conflict there.”

Oh poor little scared USA, plausibly dragged into lengthy conflict, never had a war longer than 11 years. Let me explain to USA how the civilization that gave birth to the USA a millennium later arose to start with. Well, through a lengthy conflict. Actually the present civilization arose through several lengthy conflicts, and would not have existed without them (after all after defending by themselves against invasions, starting in 400 CE, the Franks finished the conquest of Europe, something Rome had given up on).

Franks’ Mirages F1, Mali: Civilization, Tradition.

Several of the French quirks that irritate the Wall Street Journal, such as nationalizations, or controlling the Church as an organ of the secular state, were invented, or amplified in a terrible war against invading fanatical Islam in 721 CE to 750 CE, the first phase of a war that never really stopped.

So, speaking of lengthy conflict, that’s nearly 1,300 years of conflict. More, if one views Francia as part, and official heir of the Roman state, which she was by 400 CE. The first Muslim attack against Rome was led by Mahomet himself, mounted on a horse, at the head of his army. The Romans did not offer battle, and a disappointed Mahomet returned home to Mecca, where he promptly died…

In the early Eight Century Berber and an Arab armies, having recently embraced the war religion of Islam, wrestled Spain from the (divided) Visigoths, ruling over a divided country.

How? The population of Spain was divided in (more than) three Judeo-Christian sects and ethnic groups (including the Basque). The Visigoths did not believe that Jesus was as much of a god as his “father”, an idea traced to the bishop of Alexandria (Egypt), Arianus. So they were Arians, and not liked by the Catholic Orthodox, who made the majority of Spain, and believed in the Trinity, that is, that Jesus was god just as much as his dad.

The Jews, numerous in Spain, also did not like the Visigoths who ruled them, and some cooperated with the invading Muslims. The end result of all these acerbic divisions was that the Muslims seized Spain. Then they proceeded to kill a fifth of the Catholics (from church records).

The occupiers and decimators then got very strong, because they controlled now a huge new territory. Yet, in 718 CE, the Muslims failed for the third time, under the enormous walls of Constantinople.

In 721 CE, the Muslim armies invaded Francia. (Yes, Francia. I corrected Wikipedia which ignorantly called the place “Gaul”.) The Muslims followed the old plan to finish Constantinople from behind. Grecian fire, a mystery, but highly efficient weapon, had annihilated a Muslim fleet of more than 2,000 warships besieging the capital, thus going around was in order.

The Muslims tried to seize Toulouse, besieging it for three months. They confronted the army of Duke Eudes, the Duke of Aquitania, and put it to flight. They chased it, and fell into a trap. As they contentedly feasted, celebrating their victory, Eudes rushed back and the Muslims were taken by total surprise.

The invaders suffered an enormous defeat. According to Al-Maqqari, Duke Odo/Eudes had an army of 300,000, and the Muslim death toll was an astounding 375,000 on the invading Ummayaad troops. It is fashionable to say these numbers are inflated, as it allows to belittle the triumph of the Franks. But why not to believe the only eyewitnesses reports we have? The astounding figures give an idea of the scale of the confrontation.

In any case, all historians agree that the battle of Toulouse in 721 CE was, for sure, a gigantic defeat, and the turning of the Islamist tide, the first catastrophic defeat that the Arab, Syrians and other Yemenites had ever suffered.

The Muslim invaders had taken decades to conquer the Catholic Roman cities of the Maghreb. They had suffered reverses, until they allied with savage Berbers from the hinterlands. But never, ever, did the Arab islamist armies suffer a devastating defeat, on land before Toulouse.

They tried another method, good old fashions razzias: after seizing Narbonne and other cities they dashed all the way to Autun, not far from Paris (725 CE). But they could not hold territory.

The rest, as the commons say, is history. Exasperated and troubled, the Caliphate in Damascus insisted, and launched an even more formidable invasion, incorporating in the army crack soldiers recruited all the way to Yemen (learn, White House, that, even then, the terrorists came from afar!).

This time Duke Eudes was defeated, in a terrible battle next to Bordeaux (eyewitnesses say we would never be able to determine how many died, so many there were). The South West of Francia got ravaged.

But Charles Martel, “major of the Palace” had had 11 years to constitute the most formidable army since the heydays of Rome. To pay for it, he had nationalized the Church. The gold paid professional soldiers handsomely, to provide for their families. Charles’ formidable army had been busy conquering Germany, all the way to Frisia… a nice way to train.

The Muslims reached the region of Tours. They spread far and wide, in at least a third of Francia, pillaging, and bringing back lots of goodies and enslaved captives to a central camp, by Poitiers. Meanwhile, they kept surveillance on the Roman road between Tours and Paris. Roman roads were made to carry armies.

The Muslims had annihilated, in Syria, nearly a century before, the main Roman army, 160,000 men. After that, throwing to the winds the most basic laws of war, they had hunted and killed potential Roman soldiers all over the east. In a few decades half the Roman empire had been conquered, and all of Persia.

Charles Martel did not take the road. Suddenly he appeared half out of the woods, on a hill, just where he wanted to be. The Emir called back his troops from far and wide. They took eight days to all come back (so some may have been 200 miles away).

The Muslim cavalry charges broke on the “ice like” wall of the Frankish phalanx, bristling with lances. The Franks had better armor, better swords and battle axes (they were heir to 1,500 years of Gallic metallic superiority). Duke Eudes attacked the Muslim camp, freeing prisoners, threatening booty and camp followers of the Muslim army. The crazies with god were routed, and not buried. Frankish heavy cavalry successfully pursued them, for weeks, killing countless numbers. The whole place was named the “Alley of the Martyrs” by the discomfited Arabo-Berber invaders.

Five years later, the Muslim invaders were back, with another giant force, combining a land and sea attack. They thought they were ready for Charles’ mighty phalanx. But this time Charles had joined to his phalanx an enormous heavy cavalry with giant horses (737 CE). Fighting with lances and battle axes standing on stirrups made the “EUROPEAN” knights unstoppable. Yes, that’s when the word EUROPEAN appeared first.

The Syrian and Arab army destroyed, Arabs supported by the Persian took over, and the Caliphate was displaced to Baghdad (750 CE), close to the Iranian plateau. (Conventional historians do not point this out.)

So how does this connect to Mali?

First Muslim terrorism against the West was invented by Mohammed the Prophet himself. Islam was presented as a specifically anti-Western war machine (that can be read in the Qur’an, where the Romans are specifically mentioned, and the strategy to attack them).

Five years ago the terrorists in the Sahara desert were 200. But the Sahara was left at their disposal, and they are financed by drug trafficking and feudal Wahhabite regimes from Arabia. So around Mali alone they are now 10,000. Leaving a territory to terrorists enables them to grow.
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New York Times: “The immediate issue is whether and how to supply American aerial refueling planes… any refueling would probably be approved only with restrictions.
“The discussions center on cost, and the concern about whether this becomes an open-ended mission for the French in Mali,” one Defense Department official said. “What does that mean about our commitment?” “

Is big bad Pentagon scared? France fought Qaddafi on and off for three decades, nearly killing him at some point in Chad. Instead of worrying whether France is going to fight too much, the leadership of the USA ought to worry about the fanatical Islamists in, say, Egypt (they are in power there!)

New York Times: “Most of the reservations about whether President Obama has the legal authority to engage in military operations were resolved, officials said, after it was determined that the main targets were linked to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. But the degree to which President Obama wants to get involved in Mali is still an open question, presenting the president and his national security team with the latest in a series of decisions about how heavily to intervene in remote conflicts.
Also in play is the depth of the American commitment to France…”

There is nothing very remote about Mali. Florida and Senegal are geologically identical: they used to be part of the same plate.They are facing each other across the ocean, six hours of subsonic flying will get you there from USA territory, it’s about half the distance to Hawai’i from washington, DC.
Lose Mali, lose West Africa (including Nigeria).
Commitment this, commitment that, commitment to, our commitment… The USA seems to have lots of problems with the concept of commitment. Do the USA need to be committed?
As far as being committed to France, well, ought a son be committed to his mother? Camus said yes. I concur.

New York Times: Mr. Obama’s aides say that the model under way in Mali now — with the French taking the lead, and a force from the region backing them up — is exactly what they want to encourage. But some officials say they believe the French went into Mali hastily, in the words of one official “before they understood exactly what they were biting off.”

France has fought in the desert for centuries, and won quite a few. There was nothing hasty about the French counter-attack. Left alone, left to seize Bamako, which they could have done in one day, the followers of the fanatical terrorists would soon have been millions (they indoctrinate children as young as 12 as soldiers).

It’s a strange sight to see those warriors, crazed with god, driving the largest trucks, on which they mount tanks’ gun turrets… why did nobody think of this before? Because never before warriors so little attached to their own lives thrived in such great numbers.

New York Times: “White House officials say they want to understand the broader political and strategic plan to end the conflict before they get more involved.”

There is nothing to understand strategically, while the house is burning down: destroying the terrorists is the immediate goal. Another immediate goal should be to make sure the black Malian forces do not exert reprisals against the white, Tuareg or Arab “Malian” rebels. That is where pacifying officers from the West could help.

More subtle, but long term necessary, is giving the Tuareg a state (“Azawad”?), or secure autonomy (but say, Algeria, Morocco, will not like it).

New York Times: “But since France entered the conflict in early January, there has been little time for strategic planning. The United States has begun transporting a 600-member French mechanized battalion and its gear to Mali, and is providing intelligence information, including satellite imagery, American officials said on Friday. “The spigot is opened all the way,” one official said. So far that help has been provided at no cost to the French.
But the refueling would bring the American involvement to a new level, directly supporting military attacks. And for Mr. Obama, who devoted part of his Inaugural Address on Monday to a celebration of the end of a war in Iraq and the winding down of the American commitment in Afghanistan, the prospect of getting involved in a conflict against a shadowy enemy far from the United States is unwelcome.”

There is nothing far, anywhere, in this world. North Korea is closer to the USA than England and France were under Napoleon.

One has to distinguish wars one should not have done (Afghanistan since Carter attacked it on July 3, 1979; Iraq since the West has been messing with it, that is since before Rumsfeld shook hands with Saddam Hussein December 20, 1983)… And wars one should do.

The only reason the enemy is “shadowy” is that the USA is unwilling to trace the money back to the feudal oil states it supports. Because they are part of the world’s plutocratic order. It is of course troubling to see Socialist France attack with wild abandon the mignons of the world plutocratic order’s feudal branch.

New York Times: “In the case of Mali, one official said, American intelligence assessments have concluded that the Islamic extremists have little ability to threaten the United States. “But they can threaten the region,” he said, “and that’s where the argument for American involvement comes in.””

Once again, that’s an illusion, that they don’t threaten the USA. Indeed with French precision bombing in the middle of the night, it’s hard for them to concentrate on the USA (but they do threaten the USA when they talk on French TV!).

True the Islamic extremists have little ability to threaten the 48 contiguous states at this very moment, but if they come to dominate the region, they will.

New York Times: “The government of President François Hollande has said it will stay in Mali and the surrounding region as long as needed. The United States has been more hesitant about supporting the new government in Mali, which came to power in a coup mounted by an American-trained military leader.”

These are details. True, American trained troops in Mali were a disaster. But Mali is SECULAR REPUBLIC. One can have a republic, even after or during a coup, because republican institutions are not restricted to the (“elected“) upper governmental structure.

Another point is that sending an army to free a country from terrorists support We The PEOPLE of that country. When France sent an army and a fleet to the English colony of North America, she was not sending them to a government, but to We The PEOPLE of the USA.

New York Times: Mr. Obama talked on the phone on Friday with Mr. Hollande, but White House officials did not say whether the leaders had dwelled on the refueling issue… Several French tankers are providing air-to-air refueling for … Mirage and Rafale combat and reconnaissance aircraft… but officials in Paris would like to have American tankers ready as a backup if the ground operation faces stiffer resistance than anticipated, or an unforeseen crisis requires France to send more aircraft.
A White House statement said [Obama and Hollande] had talked about the need to quickly establish an African-led force in Mali, as well as the importance of Mali’s establishing a path to elections and to “restoration of democratic governance” in the country.
Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French defense minister, said:“The goal is the total reconquest of Mali, we will not leave any pockets.”But Gen. Carter F. Ham, the head of the Pentagon’s Africa Command, voiced more limited objectives.
“We would all like to see the elimination of Al Qaeda and others from northern Mali, realistically, probably the best you can get is containment and disruption so that Al Qaeda is no longer able to control territory.”

Well the best way to wage war is to win it. That is, if one is not just humoring a greedy military-industrial complex, and friendly rapacious feudal states in the Middle East.

Ultimately, Islamic terrorism is not compatible with the pursuit of an advanced technological civilization, and will have to be dealt with it thoroughly, that is, philosophically. That is, deal with it definitively, as we did, say, with Moloch, Gallic human sacrifices, or with Aztec terrorism.
But first the military side, the Dark Side, has to be taken care of. This is now.
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Patrice Ayme

Mali: USA Ought To Fuel France

Abstract: If there is one lesson that morally upright people in the USA should draw from World War Two, it’s the following. When the French Republic asks for military help, the USA ought to salute briskly and respectfully ask:”How much?” After all, a son such as Uncle Sam, should not leave his mother in distress.

This correct attitude is directly applicable to the situation in Mali and the Sahara right now. Mali is not Afghanistan. Afghanistan was an error, an irrelevant sideshow that the USA imposed on itself by (unlawfully, and secretly) messing up that forlorn country in the 1970s. (9/11 was an infortunate blow-back, after the conflict deliberately instigated by the USA, brought the death of millions of Afghans.)

The war in Africa is completely different from that error in Afghanistan. Africa is of extreme strategic importance. Africa is an enormous continent, it has enormous resources, a vast and extremely varied population. It is part of the geographical, cultural and historical center of the human world. It is contiguous to Europe. Africa has been neglected too long.

It’s clear where the Dark Side is, in this war. France had the right reflex by punching back hard as soon as the terrorists crossed the cease-fire line. France needs a bit more equipment to fuel her fighter planes optimally, as they patrol a giant territory.

Mirages Above Mali

No fuel, no war.

But it’s not just the USA. If there is one lesson that democracies should draw from World War Two, it’s that France should not fight infamy alone (with insufficient British help). At the very least, all European countries should join in.

How? As the French combat units reconquer vast swathes of territory, Malian troops in their wake are left to police the immensity. Their resentment against Tuaregs and Arabs is showing up; other Western countries’ soldiers could help the Malians and other Black Africans keep in touch with the philosophically, and strategically, correct attitude
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Idiocies are arguments that keep coming back to the fore first, among the poorly educated.

An (idiotic) slogan that keeps coming back is used by Johnnie Carson, who heads the Africa bureau at Obama’s State Department. Mr. Carson observes that Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) “has not demonstrated the capability to threaten U.S. interests outside of West or North Africa, and it has not threatened to attack the U.S. homeland.”

That specious reasoning was evoked by several historically uneducated Obama administration officials to refuse air refueling requests from the French Republic. Let me explain the importance.

The French fighter-bombers have to patrol and intervene in an area larger than Texas, and some have to do so from bases thousands of miles away. It’s a bit as if they patrolled Texas from British Columbia. So the need for air refueling of bomb laden French supersonic bombers is acute! Although the French have air refueling capability, they don’t have enough to do the mission comfortably.
The enemy is not a hop and skip away, as it is the case in Afghanistan, where the Taliban is at most 200 miles away from gigantic, fortress like, NATO air bases covering entire landscapes. (See technical note about Rafales and Mirages.)

Let’s go back to the pathetic reasoning of Johnie Carson with his weasel words and total lack of moral perspective:”[The terrorists] have not demonstrated threat to U.S. interests… not threatened to attack the U.S. homeland.” ??? Is not that the famous Washington reasoning used in 1940 about the Nazis? Is Johnie Carson trying to emulate the comedian Johnny Carson by poking fun at the Holocaust?

Right. Auschwitz was built by the Nazis, starting on 21 February 1940. Auschwitz did not demonstrate the capability to threaten U.S. interests outside of West or North Africa, and it did not threaten to attack the U.S. homeland.
So, I guess, that is why Washington did not do anything about it.
Washington is apparently concerned if and only if, it is threatened. In other words, by its own admission, Washington is all about self interest, not civilization. This is exactly the opposite of the French credo. That explains the difference in behavior of France and the USA in 1939.

France declared war to Hitler September 3, 1939, because France had had enough of that terrorist. 40 French divisions tried to break through the Westwall (“Siegfried Line”) in the following days. The first British soldier arrived to help France within a month. The Canadians landed entire divisions by June 1940, nine month later. The proverbial Americans arrived on June 6, 1944, 57 months later, as part of D Day. Yes, fifty seven months later. The Americans were not the majority of the landing force on D Day.

According to Mr. Carson, as the Nazis did not demonstrate the capability to threaten U.S. interests, the USA, as a society and polity, may as well have helped Hitler in 1939. And this is exactly what was done diplomatically and through all sorts of American corporations. The same courtesy was extended to Mussolini (this did not escape the Italian resistance, which would return the favor by hanging Mussolini from an American, Esso gas station in Milan).

The Ethyl Corporation of America sent 500 tons of a crucial additive, lead tetraethyl, an anti-knock compound, so the Nazi Air Force (Luftwaffe) could stay in the air, and keep on fighting the French (the Luftwaffe would go on, to lose 36% of its power during the Battle of France in May-June 1940). Meanwhile, the Congress of the USA passed an anti-French, anti-British law. President Roosevelt regretfully signed it into law.

As the Nazis had not demonstrated the capability to threaten U.S. interests, nor threatened to attack the U.S. homeland, the USA rejected the French demands for military help in 1940. The exact reasoning still used by Mr. Carson.

Waiting fifty seven months to help one’s parent is no moral rush. Yes, because without France there would have been no USA to start with, so France gave birth to the USA. (Although, in part because the USA defaulted on the multi-trillion dollar debt to France, this fact is not advertized.)

Waiting fifty seven months to help civilization is no moral rush.
Waiting fifty seven months to help humanity is no moral rush.

(OK, I am been a bit unfair, here, as the USA saw prior combat in Tunisia, Sicily, Italy; but, precisely, in that case, after the French had broken through the Hitler Line, south of Rome, the USA stabbed in the back general Juin; instead of giving Juin more divisions to rush into Austria, as juin had requested, the American command did the exact opposite, making sure the French could not rush towards Austria, thus extending the war by a year, and making sure half of Europe could be given to Roosevelt’s comrade Joseph Stalin!)

Adolf Hitler declared war TO the USA, on December 11, 1941. The USA found itself at war, with Nazi Germany in 1942, contrarily to Washington’s plans, which were to do nothing bellicose in 1942. As that was in Washington’s best interest.

This attitude of the USA was, and is, not excusable. It reflects a military and cultural tradition born in the woods of North America. The USA was born, fighting Neolithic Indians. Later, even the war of the South against the North was a sure thing: most of the industrial basis of the USA was in the North, and the craziness of the “cavaliers” of the South could only bring their death, as it did.

So the tradition of the diplomatic service in the USA is not aware that war is serious business, and can turn into completely unexpected ways. Several of the major battles of WWII, when re-enacted in (computer aided) war games, nearly never turn the way they did happen. Thus it is best, not to play with war. Thus the Pentagon, aware as it is of these facts, will naturally disagree with State, and want to help the French hard and early, because the Pentagon knows that’s how democracies win wars: by being big, open, with clear war objectives, and being fully in one’s right. (In other words the exact opposite of the weasel war started by Carter’s CIA in Afghanistan in the 1970s.)

The Second World is full of totally unexpected turns of events, which went one way, but could have turned the other. For example if the Ethyl Corporation of America had not sent Lead Tetraethyl to the Nazis, the Luftwaffe would have been grounded, the French and British would have had mastery of the skies… Grounded the Luftwaffe was in front of Moscow in December 1941: it was so cold, only Soviet planes were in the air. The Nazis were not lubricated enough… They suffered their first strategic defeat.

I could go on like this, with a list of unexpected, and hard to expect, events of the Second World War. As it was, to win the war, the USA had just to join France and Britain in September 1939, and declare war to the Nazis. German generals would have done the rest, declare a national emergency, explain that the Nazis were endangering Germany, and destroy them.
There was an official plot that way, organized by Beck, the Wehrmacht chief. However the ambiguous attitude of some leaders of the USA and the UK undermined Beck (who was then betrayed by some of the Anglo-saxons he had asked to help; the plan was finally activated only in 1944… Way too late.)

Sufficient to say that the French army, having underestimated the Vietnamese Communists at Dien Bien Phu, found themselves encircled by an enemy that had, unexpectedly, dragged big guns through the jungle. The French asked the Americans for air support. Eisenhower refused. Conclusion: a “Communist” dictatorship, truly a form of communal plutocracy took control of half of the country, and the USA was involved in a 20 year war in Vietnam (which it took that long to lose)

The present situation in Mali was greatly caused by from the USA. The USA trained five units of the Malian army, and four of them defected to the invaders, with their brand new weapons and newfound skills.

The French (counter-)attack followed, within hours, the attempt to seize the rest of Mali: 50 French special forces dropped on the ground next to Konna, were supposed to help planes find their targets. They found themselves in combat as the Malian army retreated.

Within days of the French intervention with massive bombing, the Tuaregs, having reconsidered the situation in the light of new evidence, proclaimed that they were switching their allegiance to France. Even the American neoconservative historian Robert Kaplan is rallying. He said. “I have a new philosophy: If the French are ready to go, we should go”

This is indeed wise: ever since the Romans put the Franks in charge of defending much of their empire, and ever since the Merovingians outlawed slavery, armed human rights has been a sort of main business model of France… And it’s hard to imagine how it could be otherwise with a democratic republic (even islands such as Britain and the USa had to subscribe, to some extent, to that philosophy).
I personally think that the Tuaregs should be (somewhat) independent. De Gaulle, who did not know Africa, and could not care less, gave Tuareg territory to all the countries around at independence. But the Tuaregs have a very old civilization, that had an alphabet more than 1,600 years before Arabic appeared from their common root.

Naturally that would not please the neighboring countries (the Kurds have the same problem: they, too were at home, 2,000 years before the Turks showed up in the neighborhood.

All matter to negotiation. After all, South Sudan was created, as it should have been (making Azawad independent is very similar problem, in reverse!)

Meanwhile, please help provide those tankers to fuel the French Air Force. (Otherwise I will have to remind us who fueled the Nazi Air Force when the latter ferried the rebel army of general Franco into Spain, in 1936…)
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Patrice Ayme

French War In Mali

Finally! Friday January 11, 2013, Paris, Élysée: “Mali is confronting an aggression of terrorist elements coming from the North, with a brutality and fanaticism that the entire world knows” said the French president “I have therefore, in the name of France answered the demand of help from the Mali president, which is supported by the Western African countries. In consequence, the French armed forces have brought this afternoon their support to Malian units to fight against those terrorist elements.”

And, presto, France is at war again. This is the second military intervention of France in Africa, in one week. (The preceding one stopped an insurrection in the Central African Republic.)
And at least the FOURTH major French combat intervention in two years (Ivory Coast, Libya).

French Strike Mali [From Terrorist Video]

For those who are naive in these matters, historically, in the fullness of time, France is the primary military interventionist in the world. Ever. This started when the Roman empire put the Franks in charge of defending Germania and Gallia in 400 CE. After some initial difficulties that caused the fall of the Occidental part of the empire, the Franks annhilated the Huns, the Goths, the Lombards and various other critters. (The Franks also intervened in Britannia for centuries afterwards, before conquering the whole thing in 1066 CE).

The nations French military intervention created constitute the essential of the West: Germany (starting in 500 CE), much of Europe (by 800 CE), all the way to Eastern Europe, and including Catalonia and the reconquista of Spain (Charlemagne), England (1066), the reconquest of much of the Mediterranean from the Muslim invaders (South Italy, Sicily, etc.)… even the Netherlands is, to a great extent, a French creation (a 75 year war part of a 120 year French war against Spain)… And finally, of course, the USA.

Without gigantic French help, and even… incitation, the American rebels would have all been hanged by the authorities, end of the story. Nearly all their cartridges were even made in France. Even while being created, the USA defaulted, and refused to pay back even a cent to the French Treasury for the enormously expensive war that had given birth to it. Thus default presided at the birth of the USA. (Louis XVI was advised to follow suit, and default too; but he refused, as he was hell bent on making nobles pay taxes, something that the National Assembly of 1789 finally imposed!)

That’s one problem with war. When made out of principle, it can only pay back with principle. But that does not mean it should not be made.

It’s not just that the Franks (or the Gauls before them) are slightly demented supermen in search of somebody to fight. The very position of France at the crossroads of the three main trade routes of Western Europe, since the Neolithic, condemned any people thriving there to be pretty aggressive and open minded. That is why the occupants of France may have changed quite a bit, but the mentality persists.

Frankish intervention led to the unification of Western Europe under the body of Roman law and the Roman language, and a version of civilization (and weaponization!) that they called Christianity. Achieving what they called in 800 CE “the Renovation of the Roman Empire”. The Franks, were Germans who civilized Rome, while learning the proper way of making war, a state, and a melting pot, from the Romans.

War is inseparable from democracy, be it just because plutocracy hates democracy. Plutocracy tends to blossom all over, all the time, and one of its main variant is “theocracy”, where (mass) criminal acts are ordered by god(s).

The French government declared that the invaders of Mali are “terrorist” and “criminal”. Differently from December 31, 406 CE, when the Vandals, Alans and various others crossed the frozen Rhine by surprise, France was not surprised that the terrorists decided to invade the rest of Mali, in the hope that the international community would take months to get organized after Susan Rice lifted her veto against France at the UN, and the Security Council voted to allow armed intervention as needed.

The French Air Force has already conducted bombing missions. This is excellent. In the West Africa of my childhood, one had to fear only spiders, horribly poisonous snakes, crocodiles and furry predators. The danger presented by man was inexistent.

Western Africa was way safer than Europe. Shockingly, once, a taxicab driver got killed for his money. That had never happened before. It turned out, and it was pretty telling that, a young French tourist had done it.

Black Muslim faith was not distinguishable from Western secularism in most ways, and was distinctly more progressive in some important ways (having to do with socialism, nudity, and… even the position of women in society).

The “Muslim” faith of the fanatics in the middle of the Middle Earth is a “different religion from mine” declared Abou Diouf, a Wolof Muslim, ex-president of Senegal (and General Secretary of the 70 nations strong francophonie).

Of course such a version of Islam, islam with a progressive, human, civilized face, is intolerable to a lot of bad actors.

Wahhabism, the faith of Saudi Arabia, is perfectly compatible with terrorism, gangsterism, drug trafficking, and, first of all, extreme concentration of wealth (in other words, the exact opposite of Senegalese style Islam). Thus extremely well financed bad actors, armed by the feudal oil powers, tightly connected to Wall Street, of Arabia, keep on financing it. This constant war agaisnt a self made enemy, serves as a justification for the feudal, fascist regimes in the Middle East. That’s why they keep on secreting what we are supposed to fight.

The usual professional pseudo-leftist whiners are sure to surface and accuse France of having interests in Africa. Well, there is something to the notion of empire. Originally, it simply meant command, order.

Under the British Raj, there was no danger that the Muslim dominated regions would engage into a thermonuclear war with the rest of the subcontinent. Had the British Raj evolved as Canada, that would still be an impossibility.

Whereas, as it is, after Gandhi’s pathetic circus, the existence of that Pakistani theocracy (see the connection with plutocracy, above) which he contributed so much to create, does not just threaten India with a few hundreds of millions of dead, but also could ignite a world war.

The old argument of the French in Algeria was that they were back, as the successor state of Rome, after a hiatus imposed by Arab Muslim invaders. This was also the basic argument of Napoleon in Egypt. And there is something to it.

After all, Rome had African, and even Arab, emperors.

So how does this compare with Libya, Syria and Afghanistan?

Well Qaddafi was a horrible dictator, who even raped young girls industrially. he had a deal with those plutocrats, Blair and G.W. Bush. As long as he was in place, an atrocious plutocratic symbol was in place. The difference with North Korea is that, as Qaddafi found out, Libya was only an hour flight out of European bases. Similar reasons brought JFK to a tough line about nuclear capable missiles in Cuba.

Syria is a mess. The only correct line of the West is to draw lines for Assad not to cross, and support the secularist opposition (even with weapons)… while trying not to help the genuine Islamists supported by the feudal regimes.

I have been opposed to the war in Afghanistan for, among other things, strategic reasons. The first one is that, when democracy fights, democracy ought to be pure. In Afghanistan the USA has been as impure as possible, and that had direct strategic consequences leading to the unavoidable defeat we are now experiencing.

During its great war with Sparta, Athens was not ethically pure, far from it, and that is why she was ultimately defeated by a coalition of enraged city states (led by Sparta, financed by Persia). Athens was impure because Athens used the defense funds of the Delian League to build itself pretty buildings still observable today, because Athens destroyed an entire island, Milo, just to show it was a superpower, and because Athens attacked Syracuse, there again, just because she could, as an undefeatable superpower. Athens aggravated her case by boasting of her great democracy and Open Society, while practicing the opposite for all to see.

(Analogies with the present USA, while regrettable, are not a coincidence, and fully intended.)

When the French Republic gave an ultimatum to Hitler, on September 1, 1939, the Republic had been ethically pure (Britain, that France dragged behind, had been much less pure, and its compromising with Hitler had a direct effect on its military preparedness, which was so insufficient, as to leave mostly France fighting, by a ratio of 1 to 20 in soldiers deployed!)

The first big mistake in Afghanistan is actually that the USA attacked the REPUBLIC of Afghanistan in the 1970s. It would seem that the USA (or some influential people in the USA) were after the mineral wealth that the republic of Afghanistan intended to develop with French (and probably Soviet) help.

A dirty war resulted, with the likes of the CIA instrumentalizing the likes of Bin Laden. Then there was 9/11. The West invaded Afghanistan, as was its right.

But then a tragic, and strategic mistake was done: that one of NOT enforcing a SECULARIST state in Afghanistan. Instead the west did what it should never do, put a theocratic republic, Iranian style, in power. Hence NATO fought for Wahhabism light. Thus the Afghans, including those in the army and police, got completely confused, and felt NATO ought to be supporting Fundamentalist Islam, and became crazy, observing otherwise.

Hence the famous “green on blue” and “green on green” attacks. It’s a hopeless situation, and too late to fix it. Better next time we invade Afghanistan from scratch.

Mali is completely different. Mali is a secularist republic. A natural ally of Western civilization, an emanation of it. Not supporting Mali would have extremely adverse consequences, because not just of its location, but because it would be not supporting civilization.

Fortunately precision bombing on armed columns have happened on Friday January 11. There is no doubt the terrorists were taken by surprise. Moderation in the support of civilization is no solution.
Patrice Ayme