A war: in whose interest ?
No single interpretation, no mechanistic explanation, explains the attacks. Does this mean we have to be silent? Many believe – and we understand them – that in the horror of the event, only reverence would be decent. But we cannot remain silent when others speak and act for us and catch us up in their war. Should we let them do this in the name of national unity and the insistence we think like the government?
For that definitely would be war. Now! Previously, no? And why war in the name of human rights and civilization? In reality, the spiral into which the state firefighter-pyromaniac leads us is infernal. France is always at war. It has come out of a war in Afghanistan, heavy with murdered civilians. Women’s rights are still being violated there while the Taliban regain ground every day. France has come out of a war in Libya that left it ruined and ravaged the country, with thousands dead and a free market which supplies weapons to all jihads. It leaves an intervention in Mali. Jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaeda continue to grow and to perpetrate massacres. In Bamako, France protects a regime that is corrupt to the core, as in Niger and Gabon. Middle East oil pipelines, uranium mined under monstrous terms by Areva. Would the interests of Total and Bolloré have nothing to do with the choice of these very selective interventions, leaving devastated countries? Libya, Central African Republic, Mali – France has committed to no plan to help lift their people out of chaos. But it isn’t enough to administer alleged moral (western) lessons. What hope could future populations have when condemned to vegetate in camps or survive in these ruins?
France claims it will destroy Daech? By bombing, it multiplies the jihadists. The Rafaels also kill civilians every bit as innocent as those in the Bataclan. As in Iraq, some of these civilians will eventually show solidarity with the jihadists. The bombings are time bombs.
Daech is one of our worst enemies: they murder, decapitate, rape, oppress women and enlist children, destroy World Heritage. Meanwhile, France sold the Saudi regime, known to fund jihadist networks, combat helicopters, patrols ships, nuclear power plants. Saudi Arabia has just ordered three billion dollars of armaments; paid the bill for two Mistral ships sold to Egypt’s marshal Al Sissi who represses the democrats of the Arab Spring. Does Saudi Arabia not behead? Do they not cut off hands? Are women not living in semi-slavery? Committed to the Yemeni regime, Saudi aircraft bombed civilians, destroying architectural treasures in passing. Do we bomb Saudi Arabia? Or does our outrage fluctuate with the latest economic alliances?
The war against Jihad, it is said militarily, is taken to France too. But how to avoid seeing young people, especially from the working classes, founder if they continue to be discriminated against everywhere: in school, in hiring, in access to housing or in their beliefs? And if they end up in prison. By stigmatizing them further? By not opening other conditions of life to them? By denying them the dignity they wish?
We are here. The only way to concretely fight our enemies here, in this country which has become the second largest vendor of global weapons, is to refuse a system which, in the name of shortsighted profit, produces more injustice everywhere. The violence of a world that Bush junior promised us fourteen years ago, reconciled, peaceful, orderly, was not born in the brain of Bin Laden or Daech. It grows and thrives on the misery and inequality, which, year after year UN reports show is increasing, between North and South, and within the so-called rich countries. The opulence of some is offset by exploitation and oppression of others. We will not reduce violence without addressing its roots. There are no magic shortcuts. The bombs are not!
When wars were launched in Afghanistan and Iraq, our mobilizations were powerful. We stated that these interventions blindly sowed chaos and death. Were we wrong? The war of F. Holland will have the same consequences. It is urgent to come together against French bombing that increases threats, and against freedom destroying excesses that solve nothing but circumvent and deny the causes of disasters.
This war will not be lead on our behalf.
Among the first signatories :
Giorgio Agamben (philosophe), Etienne Balibar (philosophe), Ludivine Bantigny (historienne), Emmanuel Barot (philosophe), Judith Bernard (enseignante en lettres, comédienne et metteure en scène), Jacques Bidet (philosophe), Thomas Bouchet (historien), Louise Bruit Zaidman (historienne) Claude Calame (helléniste et anthropologue), Déborah Cohen (historienne), François Cusset (historien des idées), Laurence De Cock (historienne), Christine Delphy (sociologue), Judith Depaule (metteure en scène), Cédric Durand (économiste), Sophie Fesdjian (anthropologue), Eric Fournier (historien), Fanny Gallot (historienne), Isabelle Garo (philosophe), Eric Hazan (éditeur), Louis Hincker (historien), Sabina Issehnane (économiste), François Jarrige (historien), Nicolas Jounin (sociologue), Razmig Keucheyan (sociologue), Marius Loris (historien, poète), Philippe Marlière (politiste), Laurent Mauvignier (écrivain), Guillaume Mazeau (historien), Rostom Mesli (chercheur en études du genre), Marwan Mohammed (sociologue), Olivier Neveux (historien de l’art), Willy Pelletier (sociologue), Irène Pereira (sociologue), Pierre Salama (latino-américaniste), Siné (dessinateur), Julien Théry-Astruc (historien), André Tosel (philosophe), Rémy Toulouse (éditeur), Enzo Traverso (historien), Elena Varikas (politiste), Xavier Vigna (historien)
More than 5000 signatures as of December 11, 2015.