Devices go off in London again

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Darkwolf is quite right, Iago. You've missed the boat entirely if you see all of these terrorist attacks, killing innocents, as "collateral". They ARE the targets, as DW said.....and this is a WHOLE lot more than a little civil war as you portray. Read the Qu'ran some -- for the radical faction of Islam, it's their LIFE'S MISSION to erradicate infidels-- not a mere civil war.

 

Well, I thought taking your own style of prose us guidance for my own wording would ease up communication between us. It obviously did. As for colletaral damage. Yep, you grasped the concept and you know how it has to applied. That's about it. It makes no difference, a bomb is a bomb and has the same purpose, who ever uses it.

And don't minimize in know way the meaning of lives. We both talking about it in the sober way we learned to do it in school, don't we.

It's not like you yourself consider things like that when talking about things outside of Oklahoma. Kettle calling pot black.

It gives more insight into vanity and ethnocentricity. See, they don't care about the west in the first place. They care about their political goals in their neighbourhood. And if they find there's something in their way, they get rid off it. But they don't dream fancy dreams about changing Argentina to something new.

And no, don't use red-herrings. Don't subscribe the ideas of your neighbour to me. I don't want to leave them alone. My answer to the recent bombings in Egypt is visit Egypt. Again, again and again. And then some more. If they think that tourism in some way constitutes an obstacle to their political goals, be it for Egypt alone, be it for the ME as a whole, they sensible way to react is obviously not to cancel all flights. (OK, I am trying to get there next winter. Summer is way too hot for around the mediterranian.)

On the other hand, the concept of trying to create some new model societies and political entities according to some of weird ideoligical concepts through invading foreign countries, seems to be pure waste of time and money to me. Not to mention lives. I seriously doubt that came up with the idea hat enough brain cells to think it through.

And there we differ again. I don't see big differences between Christianity and Islams. Nor do I find the mountains of ressemblences striking. And your argument doesn't hold anything convincing to me. You say, if a person dubbed as "Christian" does something, it's because he "twised the meaning" and has become a poor lost sheep, while a "Muslim" doing the same thing is just acting like he's supposed to do. No, that sounds like weasling out. Infact, a purification of a corrupted society through flame and sword sounds very Christian to me. Calvinistic zeal is not unkown to me, being versed in local history. And I don't consider Christanity as a grocery store, through taking only the things I can agree with and say:"Well, the bad things never really belonged to it anyway".

 

Iago,

Read the Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla -- Carlos was quite candid in stating the taking of innocent life was a necessary tactic. This flat out states the innocent victims ARE the target. Collateral damage is an innocent victim who is caught in the crossfire of two warring armies -- the opponent's army is the target. There is a big distinction between the two.

Most people in the world find collateral damage offensive, but acceptable in extremis. No sane person I know of believes targeting innocent bystanders is acceptable in ANY cause.

 

No it isn't. A bomb set off on a bus that kills women and children who are not directly connected is much different than a bomb dropped on a tank. If a bus carrying children happens to pass by the tank, the sadness of the loss of innocent lives is no less, but the culpability of the person who delivered the bomb is completely different.

We will have to agree to disagree regarding this issue. I for one believe that there would be dancing in the streets of Tehran, Cairo and Riyadh if an announcement of a sponsorship of the Madrassas, adoption of Islam as the national religion and of Shari'a, came out of Buenos Aires.

In some ways I can agree with you on this. I do not endorse tourism in states that sponsor terrorism (I break with the current administration in its support of Saudi Arabia), however, I do agree that prosperity is one of the ways to change the paradigm in the ME, and as long as a nation does nothing to support terrorism, and does what it can to minimize it, I think that we should support it economically (by we I mean individuals, not gov'ts with tax $'s)

I am certain that some felt that way about Nazi Germany prior to our entry into WWII.

I am not stating that these extremists are "acting like he's supposed to do", and I am not stating that those who corrupted the meaning of Christianity to justify their actions are "poor lost sheep". Both of these groups are evil, and they both deserve the same level of scorn. However there is an undeniable difference in the history of the founding of these religions. The history surrounding the founding of Islam is far bloodier than the history of the founding of Christianity. Christ was never accounted to have lead or ordered men to war while Koran was founded on the teaching of man who was leading other men in armed conflict (atrocity to some, righteous revolution to others). To state that there is no difference between these religions is to ignore the history of their founding, and if you examine the Koran and the New Testament these differences are easily seen. My only goal in stating this is to provide insight into what drives these extremists, and what creates an atmosphere of tolerance of this behavior in the ME.

Edit: DMC, Sorry, I was typing this as you were posting your warning. I do not think it is appropriate for me to delete the post, but if you believe that I have strayed too far off topic and deem it necessary to delete it I will understand.

 

I was just reading about the Brazilian that got caught in the witch hunt:

No excessive force there... maybe the shot to the shoulder wasn't necessary.

 

That's about the only point we agree. But there is a difference. To me, it's one of the most important factors. It's one of the factors that determine who gets killed, where, when and why.

See, in my opinion, that's the whole story of the Middle East in a nutshell. Foreigners have to die to settle domestic problems. Sometimes those foreigners die in the ME, sometimes in far away places. The reason they die is, that someone has the intentions to destabilize a country or even the whole region to get a chance to seize the chaos to further their own agenda.

Ravings about the occident and how it sucks don't have any real value in the whole equitation. Well, maybe as an ornamental piece.

I know the argument. Yet it never convinced me. Two reasons. One, the Quaran is like the bible, giving answers to everyday questions, like should I cheat on my wife or not, in 97.49% of all cases. And the answers those books give are more or less the same.

Secondly. Lacking the bellicose fundaments in the new testament, creating new appropriate mythology didn't take too long for Christians. What about Constantine’s in hoc signo vinces. Not only a great marketing trick, it also established the cross as the universal contagious magic sign for military supremacy on any weapon, man-o-war, tank or fighter plain in whatever nation with Christian roots. Oh, and people still get offended in non-christian regions because the remember that a white cross on a red ground meant in good old medieval heraldic bathing in infidel blood is good for Christian health.

No, the historical differences of the beginnings of those too religions per se don't convince me of a fundamental Islamic predisposition towards war. In the end, I even tend to see it the opposite way. "Holy war" is a pure Christian concept.

And anyway, our national hero happens to be a god-fearing, good citizen of a freaking terrorist
who single handely changed the European political landscape by obeying god's will and assassinating some Austrian dude's. And don't get me started on Santiago Matamoros.

No, the differences in the history never convinced me. I know that dirty tongues claim that orientalism is split since the 60ies between the one view you hold (inherent militarism because of it's founding mythology) and the exact opposite view, with only very few shades in between. But in the end, the light of enlightment
came from the east. They managed to be quite prospering, scientifically advancing, regularly bathing and rationally conducting laws, diplomacy and politics a long, long time. And they led Aristotle back to the occident. No, the religion has it's merits and I am with Nathan the Wise on that one.

Too me, all the problems in the Middle East stems from a policital situation that's the sum and result of the last few centuries and are not an inherent consequence of being taoist or whatever.

My own theory holds, that it was the Arabic writers guild that has to take the blame. They resisted the adoption of brook-printing because the feared all those writers, copying books all day and night, would lose their job. Ah, just shows again that the European strength had it's foundation in widespread analphabetism. No readers, no books, no book-copy-unions.

T2Bruno::::::

Ha, point taken. But with collateral damage, I meant something different in that case. According to one view, the goal of these terrorists is to destroy the "west". I think that view is wrong. In fact, some westerners have to be targeted as means to achieve to the actual goal. Which would mean, that occidentals hit are "collateral" -> accompanying as secondary or subordinate (Webster Online) -> The murdered victims are the necessary means to get to the goal. And the goal is not destroying the occident, but re-inventing the orient.

And the general strategy to get the convinient starting point for the establishment of this paradise is to provoke and create chaos, turmoil and war to further one's own agenda.

And Carlo puts that way, but I agree with him, yet I like it more blunt:

Edit: Way tooooo long post. There should be a post-size-restriction.

[ July 29, 2005, 01:07: Message edited by: Iago ]

 

Iago,

Hopefully, you are in the minority with your beliefs -- we in America actually think so and may be fooling ourselves.

 

Well, all this "destroying the west" theories have one obvious huge hole in them. Why are citizens and the property of citizens of small countries with no significant importance in greater political relations so much more often targeted than citizens of huge china-like nations ? How can the murder of people in far-away countries, that won't even get mentionend in the press of other far away countries, be nothing else but a scheme to destroy the westen world? The "destroying of the Western World"-theory is a pretty weak theory, as it can't explain the biggest part of all deaths and attacks.

 

There is a boulder of truth in what Iago sais. When terrorists are keen on destroying the west, why don't they start with the easy enemies first, like Luxemburg, Monaco, Andorra ascending to Switzerland and then France, Germany and Poland?

As Iago said, there is a reason why the train bombings weren't in Zurich, Monaco or Luxemburg but in Madrid and London.

The 'war against the west' proponents simply leave out the aims of Bin Laden and for simplicity's and convenience's sake assume he's a loonie and happy with killing as many westerners as possible. They choose the feel-good option: "They hate us because we're so great!"

Bin Laden is a much more formidable enemy than that. His killings are means to an end that is much more concrete and specific.

He fights using an indirect approach. He attacks the allies of his enemies. Days before 911 Bin Laden killed America's best ally from the days of the Afghanistan war. He is against the Saudi regime, thus he attacked the U.S., their most powerful ally.

First of all, he wants to see the end of the Saudi Regime, free the country of the holy sites. There is a fair guess, that after sending 11 Saudis into 911, he probably expected the U.S. to regime-change Saudi Arabia. Considering the 'sucess' in Iraq it is a fair guess to assume that in that case he would have just got what he wanted.

Bin Laden is smart. And he isn't merely a nihilistic terrorist. He employs terror as a tool for a political goal. And his islamism isn't merely a terrorist ideology but the ideology of a global insurgency.

Wether the West will be able to put an end to this depends on how it will be possible to allow this political streak to express itself in democratic competition. There is no alternative to press for public participation in the Middle East when it's political troubles spill over to the rest of the world.

If that is denied, insurgencies resort to terror. A french sociologist, and I agree with him, has made a difference between an insurgent and a terrorist by the degree of his social support.

Bin Laden has social integration. He has a grassroots movement all over the world, just think about the madrassas and friendly clerics and sympatizers, numbering in the ten thousands at least.
In sharp contrast to that, leftist terror in Germany had a tiny cadre of some 40 people max and some 2000 or so sympatizers that had barely any support in the population as the political sphere allowed even the left fringe room to express itself. The death of the RAF, with a grain of salt, was the forming of the green party and their move into the parliament.

And even if it has been achieved to allow to express politically the demands of the salafists, which are in parts entirely legitimate political demands, there will be a core of insulated terrorists left iver, capable of doing immense damage and extreme violence.

Terrorism or insurgency - the tools they employ both are the same - terror - bombings, random killings etc. Insofar it is misleading and useless to judge their actions only by their nature.

A bombing in an insurgency and a bombing in a terrorists campaign look exactly identical at the receiving end, but yet they require a different approach because of the very different nature of the offender group.

The sad thing is that there are no easy options like: "Nuke Mekka!", only the insight that invading country after country in the Middle East will certainly not help.

 

Don't be surprised if they don't attack another somtime soon, possibly Syria or Iran. But it probably won't be a full invasion like Iraq, but perhaps a border invasion. It could be the same way in which Cambodia was targeted during the Vietnam War, and much the same reasons will be given: "The enemy is moving across the border, and so we have to attack him there."

Also, Bin Laden is not as smart as some give him credit for. His attack on NY, which was largey aimed at civilians, did nothing except get him thrown out of his hideout in Afghanstan and gave George II an excuse to invade the Middle East. Of course, if Bin Laden only wanted to strengthen George's political hold on the US and his friends in the ME, then that is exactly what he has achieved.

Yet, he may have found a good friend in George, since he has not even bothered to go after him to any real extent. But that may be due to incompetence. Remember how we kept hearing about how close we were to getting Bin Laden during October of last year? But that was right before the election, amid all the mutli-colored terrorist alerts that were *so useful* during the same time frame. But useful for whom?

The question remains: What did Bin Laden gain from his attack on America in 2001 that he did not have before then? Is his cause better off? or that much worse off as a result? I would say that as a result of Afghanistan, a fully justified and marginally successful attack, he his worse off. Yet, King George's incompetence (and dreams of an imperial America) have kept him mostly off the hook.

[ July 31, 2005, 17:54: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

 

Oh yes, before anyone here asks where I got some of the heretic ideas in my previous post ... from this liberal site, and especially from this article.

Chandos,
considering his declared long-term goal of 'liberating' Saudi Arabia and purifying the Islamic World by purging western influence he has not achieved his goals.
As far as his standing and support is concerned, he's doing better than ever. So, courtesy of George, he has had partial success, despite all the losses he and his crew had to take.

That's solely the result of the serious misperception of the nature of the threat in the current U.S. administration.

As I pointed out above, people are coming to sensible conclusions in the U.S. but a real change in policy has yet to emerge. They have to be heared, too.

Still there are the as vocal as disconnected or willfully ignorant neo-cons ... Only recently Krauthammer called for yet another invasion and 'relentless and ruthless' measures in Syria.
Sure thing, the U.S. don't have anything else to care about atm anyway, so why not start another war? Oh sorry, we're at WW-IV already, so it would merely be another skirmish ...

Some people in the U.S. seem to share my preference for pullout, be it only for saving the armed forces from bleeding white in face of lagging recruitment and not wanting the draft. You can't keep an army fighting with stop-loss orders and by keeping reservists from their families eternally.

Sunni Salafists have begun targeting Shias, so a sectarian civil war in Iraq is closer than ever. The results would in worst case for the U.S. include a unification of a part of Iraq with Iran and open conflict between Sunnis and Shias. Besides, America's 'noble savages' in Iraq, the Kurds, are getting cocky in the north and Turkey is rapidly losing patience with the U.S.
The idea of the U.S. military caught inbetween as the common enemy must seem nightmarish to the Pentagon generals. Unintended consequences anyone?

Small wonder they lauded away Wolfowitz, the blunderer in chief behind this mess, to head the World Bank.

So the mesage of the day is that the U.S. is considering pullout. The neo-cons will cry bloody murder, and their predictable babble of another 'Munich 1938' and 'Appeasement' will be quite the festival.

I wonder how the White House would spin such a U-turn into a striking example of Bush staying the course, but I guess I know how: Over the smoldering ruins and mutilated bodies after yet another suicide bombing in Iraq, Bush will declare victory.

Ain't it easy to win a war nowadays?

[ August 01, 2005, 12:59: Message edited by: Ragusa ]