Madrid Bombing Group Announces Next Possible Targets

[ComedyLimp]

Perhaps I'll come back go your points when I have more time but suffice it to say that I have faced similar arguments and attiudes before -- to think and feel the way you seemingly do is quite understandable after all -- and I'm fairly sure that there is not much I can say that will sway you from your views.

I think you see things rather in black and white and somewhat simplistically and, I suspect, in 10 years time you might have acquired a more nuanced view and less of, what seems to be, a closed mind.

Of course I might be wrong and in 10 years we may be all toasting the final victory in the War Against Terroras the very last Islamist terror cell is rounded up and slung in jail.

Matthew

[superleeds]

[ QUOTE ]
Don't mean to speak for M but I believe Ms point is that the society the IRA terrorists want and the society the Jihadist terrorists want are far different.

[/ QUOTE ]

So what? Just because one group flew planes into a building and the other, amongst many other atrocities, exploded a bomb during a rememberance day parade make their ultimate goals somehow different. They both use methods to effect change because they know legal methods will not acheive their goals. Trying to suggest Terrorists have some kind of moral scale based on how much of the world they wish to affect is pure and utter drivel.

The old argument that one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter I can accept but to suggest that there are levels of evil within the terrorist world is obscene.

[MMMMMM]

Well that is indeed what both sides tend to say. Yet what both sides say isn't necessarily the same as what God would say--nor is what both sides say even necessarily in keeping with what their respective religious texts say. Also, the two religious texts, the New Testament and the Koran, are not just two sides of the same coin; they are instrinsically very distinct from each other, even in that which they exhort their followers to do.

Well gtg best wishes again.

[MMMMMM]

superleeds, I agree that a terrorist is a terrorist. But the IRA does not insist that Protestant England convert to Catholicism or face future attacks, does it? The IRA does not desire that the Pope become the effective legal ruler of the UK? What I'm saying is that the objectives of the Islamists are more encompassing in scope and more impossible and fanatical than those of terrorists who hold more concrete objectives. Sorry I won't be able to continue this discussion for the next week or two. Be well.

[superleeds]

Have fun while your away

[MMMMMM]

I'm not trying to suggest that the Islamists are somehow more evil than the IRA; rather it is their ideology that is more impossibly insane, impractical, grander in scope and uncompromising. The IRA wants certain political and concrete things in Ireland. The Islamists want to turn the entire world, by force, into a Theocracy ruled by an Islamic Caliphate. That's some difference in goals if you ask me.

[MMMMMM]

Don't worry Tom, on the few occasions you have attempted to speak for me I do not recall you making any significant errors;-)

[superleeds]

MMMMMM,

Maybe I am just suffering from selective hearing, after all it is a fault we all suffer from, but for what its worth this is what I hear.

We are fighting a war on terror, and I know various countries, allies of ours, have had problems in the past themselves which we have either ignored or at the very least played down, this time its serious. We know how to deal with it so leave all the details to us and don't dare question us. It will look like appeasement. Just suffer in silence when you also suffer the inevitable consequenses and help pay for it but under no circumstances question us. You haven't had what we've had so just trust us to get it right

This administration had a huge opportunity after Sept 11th to mobalise the all of the most powerful nations and basically pissed it away with its arrogant bull in a china shop approach.

[adios]

You are missing his point IMO. Nobody is claiming that some terrorists actions are more legitimate than others. What is being claimed is that some terrorists have more legitimate causes than others. Just because someone's cause may have more legitimacy than another doesn't excuse acts of terrorism.

[nicky g]

I completely disagree. You seem to advocate voting for the PP. regardless of its handling of the bomnings, simply because that will not look like "giving in" to terrorism. From my point of view, that is letting the terrorists make a much bigger difference in the election than throwing out a party in response to its atrocious handling of the bombings. It's simply cutting off your nose to spite the terrorists, to coin a phrase. Playing politics at such a time with a grieving country is much worse than you suggest, but that wasn't all the Aznar government did to deserve the swing against it; it, like Blair and Bush, took its eye off the al-Qaeda ball, to concentrate resources on a smaller threat from ETA and a nonexistent threat from Iraq, and then when al-Qaeda struck refused to acknowledge who it was. It also made SPain an international laughing stock by pushing through a UN resloution blaming ETA well before blame was established. THat is not the hallmark of a serious government or one that can be trusted to chose to do the right thing in protecting its citizens if a politicaly more expedient option is available. That is a disastrous way to deal with a terrorist threat. To overlook all that simply to show unity or defiance is nothing but moronic bloody-mindedness.