Respectfully (and I do mean it), I disagree on a couple of points. 1) While I agree that it can be stopped by rounding them up, I’m dubious about the phrase “eliminating the root cause of their beef.” Should we have tried to discern Hitler’s beef? Or Hirohito’s? As far as I’m concerned, once you start killing people – and especially innocent ones who have nothing to do with your beef – you lose all right to have your complaints considered. This has a lot to do with my beef with Iraq. Hussien was paying families of suicide bombers in order to remove a disincentive from Palestinian bombers to blow themselves up in order to kill innocent Israelis. This means, yes, it supported terrorism! 2) I agree there is little we can do to discourage someone who has already made the decision to die for his cause, but that far different from encouraging them through a successful outcome, which will only cause them to redouble their efforts both at recruiting and in carrying out attacks, and which will give added enthusiasm to the lower level imbeciles who actually carry out the attacks.
Unless I specifically state that I’m acting as a moderator, I’m just a regular poster. No need to hold punches in this debate.
But you can’t prove that assertion - ergo there’s nothing to accept. It remains a speculation… a wish that you could prove was true to prop up your position. But it pointedly is not a fact. Polls are polls. Figures can lie, and lies can figure. To assert that the election was influenced by the bombings (and not by all the crap that the incumbent government did in the preceding 18 months) (let alone the incumbent’s handling of the bombings AFTER the fact) well, it all remains unsubstantiated pontification. By extension, your arguement is inherently a fragile one.
Argh! [ol][li]They didn’t suggest that the election was “clinched” – they predicted a marginal win.[]The polls themselves had a “comfortable margin” for error.[]The polls before the civic elections last year were wrong in exactly the opposite way.[/ol]Let me stress this once more. Although voter turnout was lower for the local elections in '03, more people voted for the Socialists than voted for the Popular Party, and the conservatives breathed a sigh of relief, because it was widely expected that they’d fare worse.[/li][quote]
With virtually all the votes in Sunday’s poll counted, the Socialists took 34.7% of the vote, about 200,000 votes ahead of Mr Aznar’s party which finished on 33.8%.
But that was a better than expected result for the Popular Party which retained power in key areas.
[/quote]
Possibly the pollsters were hedging their bets against last year’s unexpected election results. Who knows? Maybe they’re just lousy at polling. Forget the polls for a minute, okay. Do you think the Popular Party made great actual gains with their electorate over the last year? Why? Did the Spanish people have cause to reverse their general dissatisfaction with their policies? Why?
I can understand that, and if I knew I was speaking to a Spaniard, I would probably try to moderate my comments accordingly. I will admit that in my mind most of my posting has been with the idea in mind that I was speaking to other Americans.
And your point that I included above is well taken. But, and I hate to say it, whether it’s tactful or not, the result of Spain’s electoral flip-flop (and yes, I know it was a small percentage that changed, so let’s say I’m addressing those in that small percentage) is going to result in a world that is much more vulnerable to terrorist attack, and many more people are going to die as a result than would have died had not this happened.
Here’s the thing though… Hirohito and Hitler weren’t terrorists, they represented nation-states, not terrorist gangs. There is a huge, monumental difference between a nation-state and a terrorist organisation. They weren’t the leaders of shadowy terrorist cells which functioned under the safety of anonymity.
In the 1920’s and 30’s, Germany and Japan were nations which aggressively cultivated an institutionalised version of brutality - and there was ZERO, absolutely zero those two countries had in common with the borderless, nationless organisation of religious fanaticism which is Al-Qaida. To argue that Germany and Japan could have been persuaded to back down by being all nice and chummy was obviously shown to be historicly stupid. But to then argue that because appeasement failed with Germany and Japan circa 1938 that we are then free from any obligation to understand the machinations of Al-Qaida is equally stupid - if not more so. That’s why I want you to go back and read the last sentence in the quote I lifted from you in this post. See how wonderfully smug and supposedly simple it is? It says, do it my way, or not at all, doesn’t it?
Well, the sad news is this… Al-Qaida already holds all the aces. They’re already telling you to go and get fucked because you’ve already shown you don’t give a shit about how their world has come to be the world they grew up in.
To try and link Al-Qaida’s mission statement, or for that matter, the general mentality behind Islamic Fundamentalism to the rise of Fascist states in Europe in the 1930’s (or to the rise of the Military government in Japan in the 1920’s) is just plain ignorant. Sorry to be blunt there, but it is, it’s just plain ignorant. They are such utterly different cultural paradigms that your arguement is entirely without basis.
It behoves all of us to be aware that Islamic Fundamentalism stems entirely from coping with crap. Day to day unbearable crap. Corruption, nepotism, exploitation. Throw in shit awful education standards and endemic poverty and you have the perfect mix of ingredients for millions and millions of easily manipulated angry young men. That’s the beef. That’s the root cause. Fixing the poverty and the corruption is the true appeasement, the true goal. It’s called “pulling the rug out from under Al-Qaida’s feet”.
We here in the West often fail to understand a very simply reality - namely, stable society costs money - and shitloads of it too. All those civil institutions? And commitments to the upholding of rule of law, and respecting human rights, and improving education in every new generation etc? It all costs shitloads. And unless you’re in a country which is producing a minimum GDP per capita of about $3,000 USD per year, quite honestly, the resources just aren’t there to plant all the seeds which a stable society requires to function and prosper. Ergo, time after time we see nation-states teeter between great potential and oppressive brutality. It’s not the mindset of the people. It’s not the implied racial overtone that some peoples are inherently backward. It’s simply that the minimum threshold per capita GDP is insufficient to pay for all the civil institutions which are needed to make a safe country out of a violent one.
So… ya got that? THAT is why both Germany and Japan were able to be rebuilt so well after WWII. Their inherent industrial infrastructure was sufficient to climb over the threshold per capita GDP during the rebuilding phase. But all these countries around the world nowadays with hotbeds of Islamic Fundamentalism running rampant? None of them, absolutely none of 'em have the infrastructure in place to drasticaly change their average per capita GDP’s in the foreseeable future. Or for even 20 years for that matter. Hence, all the corruption and naked grabs for power will continue to take place, and as a result, we’ll be seeing truckloads more Islamic Militants for years yet.
And this is why I’m so pissed off that President Bush doesn’t listen to me. Yep, that’s right… he should be listening to little ol’ Boo Boo Foo. Coz the War on Terror is actually the wrong war. The real battle is the War on Poverty. Because ultimately, poverty creates terrorists, not religion. It’s easy to blame Islam because we live in a modern world where the Media loves to compress everything into soundbites. But the truth is that religion merely expedites communication. The bottom line is that you can’t manipulate a people who won’t identify with your message. The message behind Islamic Fundamentalism is this - “We can make your life better. And the lives of your children too…” Considering their existing quality of life, how can such a message fail to intoxicate the listener?
Man, all this Al-Qaida shit has been at LEAST 50 years in the making. All the bloody cold war crap between Russia and the USA in Iran and Iraq in the 1950’s playing sides off against each other. Man, we’re just reaping the seeds we sowed all those years ago.
The point, which you are steadfastly ducking, is that it is only your misguided opinion that fear was the motive. You seem to think that because fear could have been a motive that it must have been the motive, and therefore everyone should have done the opposite of what that motive dictates. This is patently silly. Would you have voted for a government which you felt was lying to you about 9/11? Would you want such a government in power? Is it “standing up to terrorists” to elect a government which has a vested interest in exonerating the genuinely guilty, and which has made strenuous efforts to do so?
To make your point, such as it is, you have to ignore all the perfectly valid motives spaniards may have had in voting as they did, and moreover assume that voting simply to piss off terrorists is a sensible thing to do. Neither is reasonable.
They why did they flip over night?
I want to know the damned polls. I’ve searched now, and I’m not finding anything credible without a political motivation.
This article admits 4.5% lead of the Popular Party. Depending on the margin of error of that poll, PP would still lose.
I do wish to know more about the polls, though. Not many news article I could find about them (I may be bad at searching for those). It can be in Spanish, if that helps.
I say again, because they felt the government lied to them, and did so in a transparent and self-serving manner. Not overnight, over a number of days. Persistently, and in the face of mounting evidence. How can you continue to ignore this major factor?
If you believe that Spaniards are the sort to “flip” over terrorist incidents, perhaps you’re ignoring the fact that they have lived with ETA for many more years than the States has even countenanced Al-Qaeda; the PP’s consistently hard-line stance against ETA has been one of their more popular policies. Explain that one within your context of fear.
What if the majority of Spaniards didn’t just want their soldiers out of Iraq, but feel that they should never have been there in the first place?
This is about withdrawing troops from an illegal war that many feel they should never have been involved in, not about keeping them there to make it look like they’re not capitulating.
Oh, and the fact that the government is felt to have deceived the people for 3 days about who was really responsible makes people very angry.
You’re misreading the mood in Spain. It’s not fear, it’s sorrow, grief and anger. Those millions of people marching in the streets should have shown you that.
Of course the attack effected the election result - but the result was so close that it is as valid to state that the incumbent government trying to spin the blame game onto ETA, and dismiss any AQ connection until after Sunday, lost them the election just as much as any other possible consideration.
Properly functioning democracies don’t like being lied to, manipulated or treated like fools. As hopefully Bush will find out come November.
**Muad’Dib **'s OP is the biggest atrocity posted on these boards that I have read in a long long while.
Yay! You’ve made an important discovery about polls. Many of them are not credible and are politically motivated.
Polls are unreliable. They don’t mean shit except that a certain of percentage of the people polled say they’d vote a particular way.
In my experience with elections there are always changes in polls around election time and they often don’t reflect the actual election.
Even if the polls are accurate you are forgetting that there were two key things happening prior to the election.
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A bomb went off.
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The Spanish government tried to put some heavy political spin on the bombing.
Everyone who seems to know anything about Spain (eg Spanish people on this board) are all stating that the people were pissed off at the government’s insistance on pointing the finger at ETA while the evidence all pointed to someone else, probably AQ.
Your whole premise ignores event number 2. Event number 2 seems to be the most critical though.
And to Maud’Dib:
You are a cunt.
Boo Boo Foo, first of all I have to hand it to you. You make some excellent points and a very reasonable and well-reasoned argument, and you’ve come closer to at least getting me to consider that your argument has merit than anyone else I’ve talked to on this or any other board. But if you truly want to have a substantive dialog – with me, at least – I would suggest you knock off the occasional interjections regarding stupidity and ignorance on my part. If you want to discuss this and have a chance of influencing my point of view – which I assume you want to do, otherwise why your post – it would be best to lay off the personal insults.
Your points about the poverty and misery that exists these parts of the world are certainly true. But I would have two things to say in that regard. First of all, how is it that we (or anyone, for that matter) can bring an end to it? Are you suggesting some sort of global welfare system whereby the wealthier nations subsidize the poorer ones? Or some sort of trade adjustments to bring about healthier economies in these countries? Or perhaps some other remedy? Fine. These things could be considered among the nations of the world and if answers could be found, so much the better. Nothing would make me happier than for all the world to live in peace and abundance.
However, when I think about the demands of the Arab world and what they want from us, I think in terms of their wanting the “godless infidels” i.e., us and anyone else believing differently from them, completely out of all Arab lands. And I think of them wanting us out of the way so they can demolish Israel. And I think about how the nations of the middle east, more than anywhere else in the world, have been at each other’s throats for thousands of years…and with every indication that it will continue for thousands of years more. It appears to me the reason for this is their almost universal unwillingness to compromise or adopt a live-and-let-live attitude toward their neighbors and/or their own minorities. When it comes to their belief and dogma, that’s where you find the real “my way or not at all” attitude, and they are perfectly happy to kill or be killed themselves in an effort to make their way the only way.
These are the observations I’ve made that cause me to believe the way I do. It appears to me that you could provide comfortable incomes, a good medical system, excellent educational and agricultural programs, etc. in all the areas you are referring to and that terrorism would still flourish as long as we “godless infidels” were doing anything they disapprove of, and the list of things they disapprove of seems to be almost limitless.
And then, let’s take it a step further and get all Westerners out of all Arab lands. What happens then? War, chaos, and more war…and so on and so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. It has always been thus.
And that is why I have the attitude that you percieve as smug and inflexible. I don’t believe that any solution exists other than to wipe these people (the terrorists, that is) from the face of the earth. Since their demands and the things they resent are virtually limitless, and vary from one faction to the next and one country to the next, I see no alternative but to destroy them anywhere and everywhere they are. I know that sounds brutal and bullying, but there it is. If you have a workable alternative, I’d be glad to listen.
Whew!!!
So what if they did? Why does it make me a coward to believe the policies followed by the governments of the USA and of Spain are making matters worse and it is better to follow a different policy? If it had altered the votes towards a tougher government would it make Spaniards more manly in your view? I suppose during the Vietnam conflict the number of Americans being killed had an effect in the way the American people voted. Was that cowardice too? The only valid response to war is escalation? Anything else is cowardice? Discretion is the better part of valor. The only reason Spain voted as it did was cowardice? The only reason the Americans could vote for President Bush is because they are murderers who want their government to kill Iraqis? isn’t it a bit more complex than that? Well, let me put another simple perspective to you. If and when the people of America reelect president Bush then the Muslims of the world would be correct in arriving at the conclusion that the people of America are supporting the policy of aggression of their government in Iraq and are, therefore at war with them and are legitimate targets in this “war”. I think it is entirely legitimate that the Spanish people have voted they are not at war with the people of Iraq and do not want to be considered enemies. If the people of America wish to make new enemies they can elect a government which will give them what they want but they should also grant the Spanish people the privilege of deciding their own policies.
In other words, what many of us had predicted just with a bit of common sense. Invading Iraq has made things worse. The Spanish people believe this and want to de-escalate the situation rather than enter a dynamic of spiraling violence. The Spanish people have every right to deal with the situation as they see fit and they have no obligation to help the government of the USA in its imperialist aggression. The people of Spain have been generous in their help and support in the fight against Al Qaeda and in their humanitarian and ppeace keeping missions but they do not wish to participate in making matters worse, especially if it means making new enemies unnecessarily.
I think the people of Spain correctly understand the problem much better than the government of the USA. The “war against terrorism” is a really stupid concept which only serves to get support from simple minded people for any action the US government decides to label as “war on terrorism”. Terrorism is just a method used by different groups with different ends and you cannot fight it without dealing with the root causes which are different in each case. This “war against terror” is not going to be won by brute force because the only way would be to exterminate entire nations and even that would make matters worse. Furthermore, when the government of a nation uses methods designed to instill fear in the population of another nation it is no less a terrorist and some of us are not willing to fight terrorists with terrorism.
And for those with short memories you can read past threads where we have discussed the rounding up of Muslims in the USA, Revisiting the Moral Highground: Torturing Terrorism Suspects in Afghanistan, the abridgements of human rights in Guantanamo and plenty of other actions by the US government. Those policies have been carried out by the US government and defended by many Americans. The government and the people of Spain have chosen not to do this type of thing and I applaud that. Panic and hysteria are not the best way to deal with Islamic terrorists. Policies which will increase their support and their numbers will only make matters worse. What we need are policies which will lessen the support they get and which will make their numbers dwindle.
I’m not sure whether you fall into the “bigotted fucking idiot” camp or just the “fucking idiot” camp.
Sure, it’d be a nice thing to eliminate terroroism. Even if that meant eliminating the terrorists.
But you simply don’t have a fucking clue who they are, what they want, or why they want them. How the fuck do you think you’re going to find these people that you know absolutely fucking nothing about?
I think I’m gonna rest my case because if you can’t see the possible truth in what I’ve been saying by now, we’re going to have to agree to seriously disagree. This bombing by AQ was tactical. Until now, their bombing has mostly been strategic. If they believe they can actually sway policy via their
bombings then they will be more inclined to use it in such a way and tactical use doen’t require as much effort. If you don’t believe that the bombing affected the vote then, judging from the papers, you’re in a vast minority.
I remember you! I saw you in a film on Vietnam. You were on your way to Suk Muk Dik.
Where in the fuck did I say that I knew how to find them, or that I was going to find them, and how the fuck do you think it’s possible to eliminate terrorism without eliminating terrorists. What a fucking moron!!! Go back and read what you wrote. You’re an idiot!
May I invite the OP and the others who stand with him to reply at my questions to them in this thread at GD
The same counts in fact for those who tell the OP what he deserves in typical US wording/style. In this case I am almost brought to applaud the use of the language you see displayed on this particular board 
Salaam. A