The Strategic Side Of Terrorism

One thing that I think we are missing about terrorism is it's strategic side. Things are not always as they seem. Let's have a closer look into the underlying purpose of terrorist attacks.

Refugees are pouring into Europe from the upheaval in Syria. IS was hoping that these refugees would go and join them. Instead, they are going to Europe. IS, and IS sympathizers, are trying to reverse this so that they will be barred from entering Europe, and then will have little choice but to live in IS territory.

The last thing that IS wants is for all the displaced Syrians that they were hoping would become their citizens to be welcomed into Europe. So, IS and it's sympathizers are doing their best to turn Europe against the refugees.

The November attack in Paris was, on the surface, to punish France for it's military action in the Middle East. But I see the underlying reason as getting Europeans to worry about how many of these refugees might be planning similar attacks, and respond by sending them back home, where they would then likely become IS citizens.

Notice that the Brussels attack was near the headquarters of the European Union, and also that it took place in venues that were different from the Paris attacks. The attacks in Paris took place in a sports stadium, cafes and especially in a concert hall. In contrast, the attacks in Brussels were on transportation outlets, a metro station and the airport.

This was done purposely to spread the "web of fear". Now, as long as we keep these refugees in our countries, we cannot safely go to sports events, concerts, cafes, subway stations or, airports. The solution is to send all of them back home as soon as possible ( so that they will then join IS because that is about their only option).

What about the attacks on women in Cologne on New Years Eve? Doesn't anybody see through this? Whoever heard of sex offenders coordinating their attacks together? And whoever heard of a female news anchor undergoing a sexual assault right while on camera, in view of the whole country?

They have not launched a terror attack on Germany, at least so far, because it is not directly involved in military action in the Middle East. But it is the country that is taking in the most refugees (which might otherwise be joining IS), and something has to be done to turn people against the refugees so that they will be sent back home, to IS. The purpose was to turn Angela Merkel, a woman herself, against the refugees.

We really should see through things like this and understand that shunning or shutting out Moslems in Europe and the west is really helping IS.

Turkey has recently undergone several attacks by IS sympathizers. The reason is obviously that it is a major route for the refugees. IS wants Turkey to shut the border to them so that they will then live in IS territory.

This underlying reasoning that we should see is not just for recent terrorist attacks. What do you notice about the hijackers of 9/11? By nationality, they were Saudis, Egyptians, and a Kuwaiti. These are countries that are traditionally considered as American allies in the Middle East. The reason for this was to turn Americans against their allies in the region, in order to expel outside cultural influences and weaken the governments in the Middle East that were opposed to implementation of Al Qaeda's vision of Islam, as well as turning the west against those Moslems who would go and live there.

A similar underlying strategy applies to the 2008 attack on Mumbai (formerly Bombay). The army of Pakistan was putting pressure on militants there. So they launched the attack on India, knowing that this would raise tensions between the two countries. Pakistan would then be forced to divert it's army to guard the border, and this would take pressure off the militants. The same can be said of the earlier 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament, which brought the two countries to the brink of war and resulted in pressure taken off the militants in Pakistan.

The same kind of strategy was used by the John F. Kennedy Administration to stop idealistic and discontented Americans from hijacking planes to flee to Cuba, in the early 1960s. They threatened to have Fidel Castro assassinated. I am sure that there never was a serious plan to assassinate Castro. The purpose was the make the Cubans wary that one of the American defectors might be a CIA operative sent to assassinate Castro, and would put them in prison or send them back, instead of welcoming them.

The strategy seems to have largely worked except that demonizing Castro, who had earlier been popular in America, also got Kennedy killed because it made him the target of Lee Harvey Oswald, who thought killing Kennedy would boost his status after arrival in Cuba.

I have even wondered about the shooting down of  Russian jet by Turkey a few months ago. After Russia got militarily involved in Syria, a plane was sure to stray into Turkey's air space sooner or later, however slightly and unintentionally. Russia wouldn't go to war over a single plane, and shooting down the plane would show leaders of the European Union, which Turkey wants to join, what a reliable ally Turkey would be on Europe's southeastern flank, facing the Middle East. The recent agreement on refugees does make Turkey a defacto member of the European Union.

The Brussels immigrant district of Molenbeek has, since the Paris attack, become one of the most maligned places in the world by the global press, because it was where the attackers lived and plotted the attacks. I found the house where the younger Abdeslam brother was recently captured. Let's start a look around Molenbeek there, it really doesn't look like a bad place.

Remember that, if there is a compass showing on the right of the image, it is a 360 degree view, if not then it is a still photo. You can get more viewing space by clicking the arrow to "Hide Imagery". But if you click that on the first image, it seems that it may stop the following images from loading. You can pull the screen up or down or around with the mouse:

https://www.google.com/maps/@50.8532958,4.3315541,3a,75y,270h,87.76t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sF6bLk4EKohW61a3JMe9afQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Here is a look, for comparison, at another area of Brussels. The blue and white "M" sign in the first scene means "Metro". This is the subway station that was one of the scenes of the Brussels attacks. The large geometric form office building nearby is part of the headquarters of the European Union:

https://www.google.com/maps/@50.8440013,4.3761338,3a,60y,69.61h,87.87t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sGJa6pdNdeAkFQNqDUvee3A!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DGJa6pdNdeAkFQNqDUvee3A%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D244.15408%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656

Five days after the November 2015 Paris attacks, some of the terrorists were traced to an apartment in a building in St. Denis, a heavily immigrant quarter of Paris not far from the sports stadium where one of the attacks took place. In the ensuing shootout, police and soldiers fired about 5,000 bullets into the building, and part of it collapsed.

The fourth floor corner apartment shown in the building with the peaked roof, immediately ahead of the yellow "Tropical Sea" sign, in the first of the following images is where one of the leaders of the attacks, and his female cousin who rented the apartment, were killed. In some countries, including France, this is considered as the third floor since numbered floors in multi-story buildings do not count the ground floor. The rest of the images are a look around St. Denis.

The large church is the Basilica of St. Denis, which we saw in the posting on this blog, "American And The Modern World Explained By Way Of Paris". This is where Marie Antionette was crowned as queen and where the tombs of her and King, Louis XVI are located. Ironically this basilica, a short walk from where the shootout took place, also holds the tomb of Charles Martel who once saved France from Moslem conquest:

https://www.google.com/maps/@48.9370955,2.353827,3a,75y,164.78h,109.41t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s9t48ZETnrGQlq7fdS27NmA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

BIBLE PROPHECIES

Are my Bible prophecy readers watching closely how these recent terrorist attacks fit right into the scenario presented in the posting on this blog "The End Of The World As We Know It"?

In that posting, I explained my reasons for thinking that the fabled "Mark of the Beast" which people will have in the Last Days of the world to enable the one-world government, led by the Antichrist, to keep track of them and their finances, is really phones. God gave St. John a vision of the Last Days of the world, but he was an ancient man without the slightest concept of modern technology and he described people all over using phones as having a "mark" on their right hands or foreheads, for headset phones.

Like no other major terrorist or criminal investigation previously, the efforts to solve and counter these attacks in Paris and Brussels have revolved around tracking and tracing the attacker's phones. With all of the planning that obviously went into the attacks, it is surprising how careless they were about their phones being monitored and tracked.

The female cousin mentioned above practically led police to the apartment in St. Denis by use of her phone, where they are believed to have been preparing for an attack on La Defense, in Paris. The Belgian police were clearly just waiting for the funeral of the older Abdeslam brother, the bomber in a Paris cafe, and they gleaned enough information from the phones of those who attended the funeral to find his escaped  younger brother, at the house in the first set of images above, in Molenbeek.