Al Qaeda's call for Spain to Iraq Islam

[ben andrews' girlfriend]

I'm a bit confused. Does "Spain to Iraq" include us in good old Blighty do you suppose? Or does the English channel make us exempt?

Is there an Al Qaeda customer care line I can phone to get more information? ("You are held in a queue of infidel dogs and will be answered shortly).

I was trying to think of what kind of map they were using - Germany definitely isnt an "islamist" area and neither is Austria!

 

[London Irish]

Where ever this religion goes its ultimate goal is to create an Islamic state, and whenever a nation motions this can never be so it seems these days they resort to violence when they can't have their way.

And we don't resort to violence do we? 100,000 dead in Iraq and you moan about a cartoon controversy

 

[m20gull]

And we don't resort to violence do we? 100,000 dead in Iraq and you moan about a cartoon controversy

And how many of those are killed by coalition forces as opposed to being killed for political reasons by other muslims?

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

And how many of those are killed by coalition forces as opposed to being killed for political reasons by other muslims?

A very valid point.

One of the bloodiest conflicts so far has been between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

 

[Citrus]

London Irish I don't know whether you are wilfully misinterpreting what I said or whether you just don't understand.

But if you'd stop being so hysterically, self-righteous for a moment you might be able to appreciate that other points of view than your own are a possibility.

I take if from your answer above that you do think that war is, sometimes, justified. And that therefore the grief of a mother whose child has been "incinerated" (for example in a German city bombed by the RAF) need not be sufficient reason to halt a war.

So you are not a universal pacifist. Fine.

I also take it you feel the war in Iraq is immoral and unjust. Again, fine.

I dont' even disagree with your response to a previous poster who said the West held the moral high ground here. But in rubbishing this idea you fell, it seems to me, into the trap of moral equivalence - concluding that the US Army and Al Qaeda are as bad as each other. This is where you and I part company.

Blair and Bush were democratically elected. Which means that to an extent they represent the "morality" of an entire nation. Their views have some measure of endorsement from the millions of us who voted for them. Therefore to sit back and accuse them of cynical immorality is to simplify the problem, I would say. The nation as a whole is complicit in this. But it also means that their morality, is subject to criticism and they can be removed from office if the country doesn't like it.

In general terms, if WWII was justified then wars CAN be legitimate and justified (even though you personally don't think this one was, I'm guessing you accept this possibility).

Al Qaeda is utterly different. They represent the morality of no one but themselves, they do not seek a mandate nor do they have one. They ONLY kill innocent civilians.

On Saddam. To use your own emotive rhetoric for a moment, do you think the fact that Saddam was "contained and broken" would have comforted a mother whose child had been "incinerated" by him.