I guess I shouldn’t question your decision, but I will anyway. In France, even with these terrorist attacks, you are under an extremely small risk of being a victim. Treating a place you love to visit like it’s a warzone to be avoided because of these attacks hurts the French people (albeit in a small way on an individual basis) and promotes the feelings of strength of the terrorists.
I feel compelled to question your decision because I have lived what you are going through. I go to Turkey every few years. This year I wasn’t too excited about it because of the terrorism and the general negativity of the news coming from that region. Yet instead of staying home and letting those feelings grow because of what is regarded as the most important news from the country, I went and ended up having one of the best trips I’ve had to Turkey. My love for the country was rejuvenated by my time with the typical people that live there who are generally extremely friendly, open and hospitable. I can’t really put to words how much I value that I took this trip and my feelings toward the country have shifted back to what I remember.
Don’t avoid places you love because of something that is less likely to happen than dying from lightning or a shark attack. If you are American, some insane person can pick up an AR-15 and slaughter you just as easily here. Just go.
Hasn’t the terrorism in Israel, or at least the deaths caused by terrorism in Israel declined by a huge amount since the West Bank and Gaza were effectively shut off from the outside world? I’m not saying I would aspire to follow Israeli government policy because it’s vile, but isn’t it effective?
We have friends who have saved and prepared for two years so that they could have their “dream vacation”.
First use of their new passports, they’ve never traveled further than Ocean City, Maryland. The family is leaving for two weeks in France this morning.
No, I mean in a big picture percentage sort of way – It’s a very small percentage overall, but there are still more Muslims who support violence than members of other religions. I think this will change in the long term, since there’s no deep difference between the religion and any other, and is best explained by economic and geopolitical circumstances. And at the same time that we’re (hopefully) helping to improve the economic and political opportunities in countries with less, then hopefully we will be open and tolerant to Muslims and other immigrants to continue to prove that Muslims are equally capable of living peacefully and tolerantly (like Muslims in America, who are more tolerant and peaceful than Christians, on average). I think this is the best way to reduce this kind of violence, in addition to good law enforcement and intel.
At such a time, an action affecting all Muslims in France would be appropriate, since all would in fact be guilty. The action most likely would be to expand the existing judicial system to handle all these criminals - a task I would indeed have a hard time thinking through.
I find the notion of “2 million are trying to kill you” interesting. So far, less than 100 seem to have actively tried to kill anyone as an act of Muslim-on-non-Muslim terrorism in France in the recent past. How the hell do you extrapolate that to a number 4 orders of magnitude higher? Some special “because Muslim” math?
I’ve said this before, but you come across like a high school senior who has only read Noam Chomsky and wants to lecture people about US foreign policy. You need to broaden your horizons beyond entertainers and polemicists and read some books by people with actual expertise in Islam, religion, and sociology. I think you should try reading the works of people who disagree with your views, but even if your preference is to read people who contend that the Islam practiced by many or most Muslims is fundamentally illiberal and incompatible with western society, there are plenty of authors who hold that opinion and actually know that the hell they’re talking about. I strongly recommend you read some Shadi Hamid.
It seems to me like this would just cause more unrest. Not to mention that you’d be rounding up a majority of innocent people, of course. This logic falls under the same kind as “incriminating people with little evidence- just in case”, which might work, but isn’t worth the injustice to innocents. I don’t know, though. It’s tough. We can’t just continue ignoring these atrocities. I suppose the first step, instead of rounding up people and forcing them on a partition, would be to criticize the fundamentally radically conservative ideology of Islam, or at least try to reform it to a more watered down alternative somehow.
In fact, your odds of meeting a violent end are reduced by spending as much time as possible in France, versus staying in the States. France could have a Bataclan-scale massacre every month, and this would still be true.
Anybody else wondering why there were arms and explosives in the truck that had no apparent use? Nobody to use them except the driver, who was, well, driving?
Yeah, I tried running a kick starter campaign to buy a Hydrogen bomb and start WWIII, but all I got is a $15.00 donation from my mom.
Despite the high profile of the attacks, you’re still about 20 times more likely to get killed in a traffic accident in France than in a terrorist attack. If for some reason this years trip to France involved 5% more driving, would you cancel due to the extra risk?
I’m not sure I disagree as much as I am a bit dubious as to some of your assumptions. The statement that I am most curious is the one about muslims being more peaceful than christians, how would statisticians know who is a christian?
Lucky for us that Muslims are all the same, and not all divied up into Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics and such like Christians are! Whew! Lucky break there!
