Hollande being provoked into playing Bush, and France's paradox

Judging by what has been written and said after the attacks in Paris on Charlie Hebdo staff and subsequently on a supermarket, it appears that France is being persuaded toward a place rather than being subjected to an attack.

From the very first minutes, in response to those, especially on the American side, trying to say that the attack was France's 9/11, it is striking that some people, from within or outside France, tried to calm things down by saying, "Let's not exaggerate; there is nothing in either the number of dead or the manner of the attacks that can be likened to 9/11."

François Hollande's statement right after the event, "we are not at war with a religion, the attackers have nothing to do with Islam," shows his awareness of the place the event is trying to drag France to. However, how long Hollande can withstand insisting on a policy based on this awareness seems unknown. For those who liken the Paris attack to 9/11 evidently expect Hollande to play the role Bush played after the 9/11 attacks.

Yet that war dragged the US into a quagmire in which it proved not at all successful in the fight against terror, and whose bill it is still paying. The war it launched on Iraq on the basis of a series of fabricated pieces of evidence caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and also cost the lives of a great many American soldiers.

As things stand, no one is in a position to say that progress has been made in the fight against terror in Iraq. If terror is a greater danger today in Iraq and everywhere in the world, the most important reason for this is the state of panic attack that Bush entered after 9/11 and dragged the whole world into. There are certainly some who benefit from this state of the world, but it is not possible to say that the US, as a state and a society, comes out ahead from it.

The know-it-alls trying to persuade us that the Paris attacks are a 9/11 for France are probably trying to mire France in the very same quagmire in which America got stuck on 9/11. That is why they find France's reaction insufficient.

John Vinocur of the Wall Street Journal says Hollande made a great mistake by insisting on not blaming Islam itself or Islamism for the Charlie Hebdo attack. According to him, when a war that will last at least ten years is at the door and this attack is part of that war, Hollande's having simply described the attack as "reactionary" is an excessively "soft" policy.

Vinocur's comments are of course not the only example. They are trying to put Hollande and France on the minibus they put Bush on 13 and a half years ago. Perhaps Bush himself, because of the camps he belongs to, boarded that minibus knowingly, and perhaps even operated that minibus himself. But no one can say today that this adventure into which Bush dragged America has served his own nation.

Neither the occupation of Afghanistan nor the occupation of Iraq, undertaken in the aftermath of 9/11, served America's "national interest," nor did they bring the slightest benefit in achieving the visible aims of the attack. Because of this war into which the US was dragged, the world is still flailing in an even greater spiral of terror. As for the material and moral cost of this crusade to the US, it is not even possible today to keep a tally.

For that reason, it is not possible to say that those who want to drag France, on the occasion of this event, into such a war against Islam want something good for France. France is currently the country with the most Muslim citizens in Europe. Against a minimum of 7.5 percent citizens, polls conducted some time ago show it to be the country whose public stands most favorably (at 73 percent) in its attitude toward Muslims.

It may be that France, a considerable portion of whose Muslim citizens come from former colonial countries, is wanted to turn more toward those regions because of these events. But because of the economic difficulties France is going through, increasing its military presence toward these countries will cause it to sink into far greater crises. Frankly, France's present state also shows that it is not prepared for such an adventure.

These Islamophobic provocations applied on France under Hollande, which cannot do what is expected of it on rational assessment, therefore lead only to the rise of the French right. But it is also impossible for the rising far right to make a promise that does not bow to the pressures on today's France and thus does not drag France into that expected dangerous adventure.

That the way to gain advantage in the struggle for power passes through consenting to France's harm is France's greatest paradox.

We hope France overcomes this paradox with the least harm to both itself and the world.