"War on Terrorism" - is it hopeless ?

[fatbadger]

The whole idea is to terrorise people so that Governments are blackmailed into giving in to demands.

But government is terrorism, too...

 

[Ex Shelton Seagull]

Jihad means struggle and it's nothing to do with strapping a wad of semtex around your waist and blowing up a childrens birthday party in a resturant. The worst thing the Koran says about Christians and non-muslims living in muslim lands is that they should be taxed.
If this is all revenge for decades of repression and exploitation then I want to know what all those hundreds of Africans who died in the embassy bombings in Nairobi had to do with it. Or the Turks who died in the bombing of the HSBC building in Istanbul? The people in power are never touched by this stuff, it's always us poor bastards in the middle who get it. Same thing goes for al-qaeda, you don't see their "commanders" donning the explosive belts, they always get some poor kids who think they've got nothing to live for and will die a "heroes" death. If it's so heroic why don't their commanders put on the bombs?
Oh and Bin Laden and al-qaeda were more than happy to see the Indonesian government repressing the people of East Timor. The people of East Timor are christians and therefore deserve to be crushed by the muslim Indonesian government in their eyes.

 

[Yorkie]

But please note that the Koran is absolutely clear that infidels are those that are neither Moslems nor 'brothers of the book' - that's Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians.

And, anyway, the Koran does not command Moslems to kill the infidel.

Read this

What is Islamic Jihad

All the extemists have to do is claim that Westerners are oppressors and they have their excuses.

I am not saying that all Muslims are extremists, far from it. I live in a predominantly Asian area and get on well with my Muslim neighbours but I am pointing out that the Koran does give credence to these particular terrorists.

 

[Simster]

What amazes me is the fact that governments never seem to examine the reasons why people feel compelled to slaughter innocent civilians or commit suicide bombings. Surely without public support amongst their own kind, this type of attrocity would be very rare indeed?

In fact, I don't believe governments are that ignorant, it's just that they don't care sufficiently about the people in poorer countries to address their issues properly.

 

[Lammy]

Lammy. without resorting to issueing a Fatwah on you, can you tell me where it says in the Koran that Allah enjoys seeing the death of innocent civilians?

That was my point Dave. It doesn't.

ps please don't Fatwah my ass!

 

[Wozza]

Blair has put us at risk.

We are the axis of evil.

 

[Faldo]

I felt a bit uneasy on the tube this morning, reading the metro article on the Madrid attacks - they quoted an expert as saying something along the lines of how vulnerable London is to a similar attack, and that to a certain extent, he's expecting something sooner rather than later...

I cant give direct quotes coz I threw the paper away. Seemed a pretty unguarded thing to print though.

 

[fatbadger]

Read this

What is Islamic Jihad

All the extemists have to do is claim that Westerners are oppressors and they have their excuses.

I am not saying that all Muslims are extremists, far from it. I live in a predominantly Asian area and get on well with my Muslim neighbours but I am pointing out that the Koran does give credence to these particular terrorists.

Yeah, and the Bible gives credence to those who wish to kill abortion doctors.

The point is that most Moslems don't support these actions because, quite simply, they involve a monstrous misreading of the central tenets of Islam.

 

[y2dave]

I've been very nervous getting the train (waterloo line) to work for quite a while now. I wait outside the station rather than on the platform and sit at the back of each train. Being a old and busy line most stations have no staff presence or barriers and travel between Readings major station and Waterloo. Compare this to airport security and Al-queda recent attacks on soft targets and I'd agree it's only a matter of time.

In my opinion the true cause of Islamic Terroism is The Zionist movement.

 

[Tooting Gull]

My depressing answer to the question would be - yes. While there are people who are actually willing to kill themselves blowing people up, although that doesn't look like what happened in Madrid, but we don't know - and you want to preserve any kind of democratic freedom, then you will never be able to stop someone loading themselves up with Semtex and walking onto a packed train.

Suicide bombing changes the whole complexion of preventing atrocities - ie, makes it virtually impossible.

The only answer is better intelligence and prevention. Despite our shite intelligence on Iraq, I still believe we are among the best in the world on intelligence gathering, and it's got to improve further.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't genuinely quite scared living in London at the moment. It surely is a matter of when, not if - and then it's all down to luck where you or your loved ones are on the day.

As far as us provoking this goes, I have only limited symapthy for that view. Did we provoke September 11? I don't think so, and that was obviously planned well before the war in Iraq.

 

[Sorrel]

This new form of Islamic terrorism is very different from the old PLO and PFLP secular groups that fought against Israel. If it came down to a decision between supporting Israel or Islamic fundamentalism, then I'm sure that everyone on this board would be happy to support Israel.

To me this is a fight between religion and secular democracy - i.e. Western values. The way to win such a fight is to promote the ideals of human rights, and secular legal systems. Obviously you can't stop determined terrorists if they want to create violence, but you can turn the general climate of public opinion in places where terrorism is tolerated against such actions.

To do this you need to blunt the edge of religious fanaticism, removing the drive that encourages people to kill themselves believing that some "god" will reward them, and treat people fairly. Obviously giving equal rights to the Palestinians would be a good start for this, but I don't believe it's the root cause of the conflict. The problem is that some people believe that religion is more important than human rights, which we in the west believe is wrong.

 

[fatbadger]

As far as us provoking this goes, I have only limited symapthy for that view. Did we provoke September 11? I don't think so, and that was obviously planned well before the war in Iraq.

Who is 'we'?

And do you really think that the WTC and the Pentagon were random targets? One of the HQs of western economic imperialism and the HQ of western military imperialism were attacked that day.

 

[fatbadger]

To me this is a fight between religion and secular democracy

Absolute bullshit, otherwise Bush and Blair wouldn't be involved in the fight. And, as I (and others) say above, the 'religion' of fanatics (of whatever religion) is not, and should not EVER be, taken as representing 'religion'.

Plus, both 'sides' in this thing called a war lack democracy and both contain a religious impulse.

 

[Marshy]

Apparantly there were 911 days between yesterdays bombings and 9/11......worrying.

 

[Wozza]

912 - it's a leap year.

 

[Marshy]

Still too close for comfort.

 

[teaboy]

Terrorism is not about blowing things up and killing people. It works by disrupting the lives of ordinary people. This can be through 'forcing' governments to restrict freedoms and introduce laws in the name of 'security' against an invisible enemy. This can be justified by 'foiling' attempted attacks, thus nothing happens except the government introduce new laws.

The best example of this was July 4th last year - America on red alert, airspace locked down and Independence Day celebrations cancelled. What happened? Nothing. People's lives disrupted - the terrorists won.

 

[fatbadger]

All this stuff about years, etc - please remember that as far as the bombers were concerned, the attacks on New York and Washington took place, not on 11 September 2001, but on 23 Jumaada al-Thaany 1422 H.

 

[Sorrel]

Absolute bullshit, otherwise Bush and Blair wouldn't be involved in the fight. And, as I (and others) say above, the 'religion' of fanatics (of whatever religion) is not, and should not EVER be, taken as representing 'religion'.

Nice to see some agreement from you again! As far as I'm concerned it does represent religion. I don't believe we'd have these problems if Islam hadn't been invented.

While I don't like the American war machine and aggressive attitude at all, and I'm not impressed with Blair in any way either, I do consider myself on the same side as them when it comes to global politics - i.e. the side of western secular values. I don't know if you've read the original constitution of the United States, but it is something worth fighting for IMO. To me, the terrorists are the forces of conservatism.

 

[fatbadger]

I don't believe we'd have these problems if Islam hadn't been invented.

Or if western secularism hadn't been invented.