WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Paris was chosen as the target for Friday’s terrorist attacks primarily because of France’s active role in supporting the US military actions across the Middle East over the past 14 years, US experts told Sputnik.
"Law enforcement was unable to prevent the attacks, largely, because the West's actions have escalated the prospects of terror so immensely since the ‘War on Terror’ began," White Rose journal editor and conflict analyst Paul Gottinger told Sputnik.
The US State Department's own figures show that terror-related incidents around the world have increased by 6,500 percent since 2002, Gottinger pointed out.
Consequently, "It is much more difficult for law enforcement to stop terrorist attacks when the likelihood of terror has skyrocketed," he explained.
Western policies since the attacks on September 11, 2001 in the United States have wrecked Middle Eastern societies, leading to an exponential growth in support for the Islamic State and other jihadist terror groups, Gottinger noted.
"Unfortunately, the West, led by the United Stated, has ripped the Middle East to shreds since 2001. The US war in Iraq, in addition to being the worst atrocity of the 21st century so far, transformed Iraq and Syria into chaotic and violent hell-scapes, which allowed ISIS [Islamic State] to gain a foothold," he said.
If the West is interested in stopping terror, Gottinger argued, it should end its wars, which in themselves are terror on a mass scale, and which only add fuel to the fires burning in the region.
Gottinger recalled that before the US-led War on Terror, the Islamic State did not exist, but now it controls large parts of Iraq and Syria and has support in dozens of countries.
Ivan Eland of the Independent Institute agreed that the main motivation of the attackers appeared to be to retaliate against France for its air strikes against the Islamic State in the Middle East.
"The main cause, as the attackers seem to say, was France's military action in Syria. I think France's immigration policy had little to with it," Eland said.
Although one of the attackers may have been from Syria, Eland noted, France has taken far less refugees than countries that were not attacked such as Germany.
Eland maintained that France, the United States and other western nations should try to end or scale down their military interventions in Arab nations, and instead seek to support established governments in the region.
"France and the allies can intervene less in the Middle East and Islamic countries, thus forcing regional powers, such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, to do more to stabilize the area," Eland advised.
President Francois Hollande’s much publicized action in closing France’s borders would have a negligible effect on improving security, Eland concluded.
