What “sides”? The Brits and loyalists vs. a dead woman?
Oh well that justifies it then :rolleyes:
This is a bit premature, I think, as I see little evidence to show that anybody has paid attention to what terrorists have said at all.
It all seems to be Western journalists vs. other Western journalists.
Not at all. The IRA were terrorist murdering bastards no question about it. I’m am merely saying there is a difference in the way these threats can be dealt with the as IRA, ETA etc. rarely if ever carried out suicide attacks and the like and also never called for the complete destruction of a country and way of thinking.
If they’re posing a threat and can’t be arrested kill them. I’ve no problem with that but events like Gibraltar were counter productive when it came to the nationalist community. In fact that action directly led to a lot of deaths on either side, the grenade attack at the funeral and the deaths of the soldiers at the funeral of one of the victim of the grenade attack.
Sam Stone said:
I’m not sure how true this is.
They don’t want us to live under the rules of islam. As far as I’m aware very few muslims think that the whole world should be brought under islamic control, even the radical ones. They think it would be nice if that happened but they don’t think it will happen and their religion even tells them it won’t. Islam says that prior to the day of judgement the number of muslims in the world will shrink and islam will once again become concentrated in Mecca and Medina.
This has to happen before the day of judgement can come. So they actually don’t want us to become muslim because that will delay the day of judgement.
The west is not al Q’s primary target (although that can seem hard to believe with all the stuff going on at the moment). Their primary target is other muslims but they figure they have to reduce American hegemony in the region before they can proceed to attack other muslims. This is more of a muslim civil war than a war of islam against the west.
The main problem is that too few people realise this - both muslims and non-muslims. Muslims think all this is some kind of CIA conspiracy while non-muslims think the muslims are going bananas. Both sides need to realise what’s going on. But it doesn’t matter anyway - it’ll all die down after a while.
One thing that I have changed my mind on though is the capture of OBL. I used to think it didn’t matter because he’s just one guy but now I think it’s quite important that he gets caught. This is because there is a tradition in islam of warrior priests. These warrior priests can be quite troublesome because the nature of islam is that it is somewhat of a “warrior religion” so warrior priests can attract a lot of the brotherhood to their cause. Their cause is always the same - the advancement of islam, the restoration of the caliphate etc.
However if you catch the ringleader then that takes the wind out of their sails somewhat. Even moderate muslims have a fatalistic attitude - whatever happens must be happening because it’s God’s will. So as long as Osama is free they will think that God must want him to be free. At least a small part of them will wonder whether this is it, whether this is the moment. Maybe Osama will be successful and the day of judgement will come.
Silly though this may sound, you need to capture Osama to comprehensively demonstrate to them that, no, this is not the moment. The day of judgement is not nigh and they can all calm down.
I could be wrong - this is just my reading. Catching Osama though may be difficult because wherever he is, he’s probably being protected by people who think he’s a hero. Difficult but not impossible. Even if we don’t catch him it’ll die down anyway but it might die down a bit quicker if he was dead or caught.
“I am satisfied that there is evidence of collusion by Governmental Agencies in the murder of Rosemary Nelson that warrants holding a public inquiry.”
- Cory Report, published today, page 71.
**There is no evidence of it working because it hasn’t been implemented. No one has yet to put the theory (which many subscribe to) into practice. If you negotiate only one time, you’ve blown your credibility completely. If you never give in, you will certainly suffer some short term losses, but eventually render the tactic ineffective and therefore obsolete. Over the long haul, I believe more lives would be saved by never negotiating then allowing the tactic to remain viable. Again, this only applies to groups that use terrorism to achieve a policy change or quid pro quo.
**
Actually, there is an example that comes to mind: the Armenian terrorists in the 80s. No one listened, no one cared, condemnation was universal. THey had no state sponsors.
THey went away rather quickly.
The easiest way to feed the flames of terrorism is to be disunited in the face of it, make excuses for it, or even worse, give in.