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So he was - but the Crusades were not something Christians believe in, it's not something we believe we 'must' do.

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Excellent post!

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If a thousand civilians die indirectly, through lack of drinkable water, does it mean that those who destroyed the ability to make that drinkable water are somehow *less* culpable than someone who directly shoots or bombs them?

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Excuse me? How does destroying water treatment and sewage disposal facilities impact on a country's ability to make war?? How did crippling power supplies to civilian (not military, nor industrial) areas have any effect on Saddam's forces in the first Gulf War?

Take a look at http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/19.../s91lopez.html and note where it says

"There have been no precise estimates of civilian casualties during the war. The most intelligent guesses have been broad ranging: "5,000--15,000 Iraqi civilians died during the war, and 4,000-6,000 civilians died since the end of the war due to wounds, lack of medical care, or malnutrition," according to Greenpeace. The bitter reality is that the numbers of civilians who die in the war's broadening wake will soon dwarf the number of Iraqis, Kurds, and other refugees who died in the civil strife after March 1. And the United Nations estimated in July that 50-80 thousand infants are at risk of severe malnutrition because of the war."

And we're the "Good Guys"?

I'm sure that's a *wonderful* consolation to the families of the dead!

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*What* "authority" is that? The UN? The EU? The Americans? Al Qaeda???

And if that's what she *meant*, why didn't she say it?

And what guarantees are there that, by breaking our own legal codes, those "500 or even 2" lives would be saved? Answer, none, of course. But every time we take a step down that path *EVERYONE'S* rights are that weakened that little bit more.

And this quote (which I'm sure I've mentioned before!) is not from a movie:

"Those would give up essential liberties for temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security" - Benjamin Franklin.

*WHY* does it "fall outside common sense", though??

I can only presume you didn't watch programmes like Rory Bremner's "Between Iraq and a Hard Place" where it was rather comprehensively pointed out that Islamic hatred of the West has a *long* history, because the West has had a *long history* of strolling into Middle East countries and acting in a high and heavy handed manner.

Cites?

Because the implication is that since *I* won't follow "Western Fundamentalism", I am, somehow, an "Appeaser".

Read George W Bush's own words on the subject:

"President Bush said Tuesday that there was no room for neutrality in the war against terrorism."

""A coalition partner must do more than just express sympathy, a coalition partner must perform," Bush said. "That means different things for different nations. Some nations don't want to contribute troops and we understand that. Other nations can contribute intelligence-sharing. ... But all nations, if they want to fight terror, must do something."

"Over time it's going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity," he said. "You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror."

http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/11/06/gen.attack.on.terror/

The clear implication there is not just that they "must do something" but that, to be *part* of the coalition, they must do what the Americans want.

Oh whoopee! Now I'm not an Appeaser, I'm *Apathetic*! Obviously because I don't agree with "doing something physically" I couldn't give a toss about the people who died... :rolleyes:

You've asked a hypothetical question. You answer it.

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You are mistaken and obviously not reading my posts correctly. I am not generalising, I (we) am talking about Al-Qaeda and it is their objective to remove all non-islamic cultures from this planet. That is not a generalisation that is a fact.

I have not read anywhere any article that advocates the eradication of the muslim faith. If you have please share it with us. Also I know of no western government manifesto to eradicate Islam, again if you have share it with us.

I note that this thread has skirted along the old Islam v Christianity. Although obviously a factor that is not the issue. Islam is a peaceful religion and Al-qaedas perverted version of it should not influence peoples perception of it.

My argument is that Al-Qaedas aim is to topple western civilisation and any non-islamic culture and they will not stop being a threat until they are eradicated

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Dammit, I've missed all the fun. That's fatherhood for you.

Who's said this? Names, times, places please. Mind you, what's wrong with understanding the motivation of the people attacking you?

Anyway, Graham's said (as usual) practically everything I wanted to say. Let me just find the other chap who said 'You are either against us or with us'. Oh, it was Stalin.

(From an interesting article on totalitarianism at http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m...le.jhtml?term= )

Pulling troops out of Spain - I think Mr. Zapatero's been in favour of this for a while, it's refreshing to see a politician acting on the manifesto he was elected on. Note 'elected on' - this isn't a victory for terrorism, this is a victory for democracy - the terrorists succeeded in getting more people out to vote for a party that believes in peace, politicising a country against the discredited idea that brute force is the only way to fight terrorism. Terrorism usually has the seeds of its own destruction in it. Remember Bin Laden's lads *want* us to fight, want us to use our overwhelming technical superiority, as they *know* that it won't be sufficient to do the job. I believe that in any war you shouldn't really do what your opponent wants:

Bin Laden wanted Saddam out - we kicked Saddam out
Bin Laden wants a Sunni/Shia conflict in Iraq - we've ensured that one by freeing the Iraqi people and then failing to provide security
Bin Laden wants the US out of Saudi - they're out now, they're in Iraq.

Who's appeasing terror now? Bush is actively helping it seems.

I've noticed a disturbing revisionism recently from official sources along the lines of 'countries outside the US-led coalition are being targetted, so lets not suggest that attacking Iraq *increases* the risk of terrorist attacks (remember the view being pushed before the war was that attacking Saddam would *decrease* the threat, hence the urgent revisionism). Looking at the recent al-Qaeda attacks there is a common thread:

African bombings - US embassies
9/11 - target US commerce/military centres
Bali - US/Australian/British holidaymakers
Casablanca - Spanish cultural centre
Saudi Arabia - Western workers and US military
Kenyan bombing/rocket attacks - Israeli holidaymakers and Israeli aircraft
Istanbul - HSBC bank (British), British consulate, synagogues
Madrid - transport system of pro-coalition capital city
Iraq - US military, Iraqi security services and Shia religious sites

So while the attacks took place mainly outside the West, and killed large numbers of locals (because of the scale of the attacks), the targets are almost exclusively American, British, Spanish, Australian, Jewish or Shia. These targets were being attacked before the Iraq war, they're being attacked now. The world is *not* safer, the US is *not* safer, Spain is *not* safer, the UK is *not* safer as a result of the Iraq jaunt, the Afghan jaunt and the imprisonment of people in Cuba. Whatever the solution is, it's not military attack, that is clear.

Incidentally, on human rights and Irish terrorism, the point there is that in the mid-60s the Catholic population, which had been denied representative human rights (by gerrymandering and religious discrimination) started demanding their rights - if there had been a European convention on human rights at the time they would certainly have taken a case to Strasbourg and the UK government would have been obliged to comply, since it was a cast-iron case. Such laws may be impenetrable and aloof, but they're there essentially to stop disputes being sorted by violence. As it was, the situation degenerated with startling speed into violence between the two paramilitary sides and the British Army, after which it was nearly 30 years before the talking began again, which is what led to the better (though not finished) situation we have now.

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It is well documented that Bin Laden was against the USA and coalition forces after the first gulf conflict because he wanted to be the one that fought against Saddam and he was well and truly ****ed off when we all landed in Saudi.

Agreed - brute force is not the only way to fight terrorism. In Northern Ireland we now have peace, an uneasy peace, but peace never the less. However we could,and can, negotiate with Sin fein and the IRA.

How do you negotiate with a person who dedication in life is to destroy your way life. Who thinks the only good westerner is a dead one. Who will not be happy until he has detroyed all other faiths bar Islam.

Horses for courses, some people only understand violence and force, and we should not be afraid to give it to them.

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I thought we *had* negotiated with Sinn Fein (and Ben Gurion, and Mandela, and Kenyatta...)?

Admittedly I can't see Bin Laden dropping in for tea at the Palace. The best we can hope for there is to stop the flow of recruits to him, by going after the really dangerous people who teach them this rubbish about Jihad, demonstrating that the West isn't a threat to Islam (this can be achieved by treating Israel and Palestine properly for a start). I have to say that Muslim leaders in the UK and elsewhere need to stand up and be counted, and the media has to give moderate (i.e most) Islam a voice and respect, and understanding.

Heard on the radio on the way in - 'al-Qaeda have succeeded in splitting the West by force' - of course Bush has split the West in a far deeper way by using nuts like Rumsfeld to do the job of diplomats. Saying your allies will be 'called to account' for disagreeing with you, and all that.

Incidentally, I came up with the solution to Northern Ireland the other day - the Americans should have invaded. If we'd offered them good terms to build a big military base up there then there would have been good money flowing in, less unemployment, and the nationalists couldn't have attacked them (as the US was/is a big supporter) and the US would have had to take an interest long before Clinton did. Joint British/US patrols anyone? OK, I may have been on crack when I came up with that one, but it can hardly have been worse tha nwhat really happened in the 70s.

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The EU Court Of Human Rights, obviously. I was going to say so explicitly, but I thought it was obvious so I toned it down a bit.


None of course, but a country must do everything in its power to defend it's own citizens. People complain about illegal proactive defencing policies (Destroying a plane full of bombers before reaching NY, say), but that's sometimes one of the only ways to protect the right life of your own citizens.

You don't think he might of been saying that to take the moral high ground? He's hardly gonna say (If he was alive and in power in this day and age): "Any known terrorist caught inside our borders might be tortured for information", would he? Because of the morality issue, this is dealt with in secret.


Because if you can kill 2 suicide bombers in a safe area, rather than let them blow up 500 people, then that makes common sense (sacrificing 2 lives for 500), but doesn't make moral sense.


I haven't seen it, but I said they take history for justification. But you can't hold people who are alive today responsible for what happened many decades, or hundreds of years ago. By that logic, i'm personally responsibile for the British imperialism during the Empire, am I?


Well, if I was president of a country, I would for one. I'd be risking bringing a lot of violence on my own country and people by doing X or Y, and is it worth the hassle it would cause? I really doubt that didn't cross all government's minds at some point.


That's exactly what he didn't say. I said, you have to do something, not necessarily bombing them, but something, including dialogue, freezing assets, contributing intelligence, arresting suspects, or whatever plan would help suppress/defeat terrorism. Even Dubya said that, as you quoted above. All nations must do SOMETHING. You may care, but if you don't do anything about it, what's the point? You might as well be apathetic. When I said phsyically, I meant some kind of visible action, not necessarily violent (I even cited Libya as an example of dialogue instead of warfare. Time will tell if it worked or not).


No, I asked you. You seem to be very good sitting on your armchair telling everyone else what they are doing is wrong (It's also very easy), so I merely asked what would you do if you were in that position. (Which isn't so easy). It is a reasonable enough question. In fact I've already answered it twice on your behalf, and got it wrong.

I meant from my own experience of talking with heavy left-wingers, although during the Peace protests, support for Palestine was huge, even among non-muslims. (See www.brain-terminal.com and check the videos). There's nothing wrong understanding the motivation, but what i'm saying is it wont make a blind bit of difference what any American (Especially non-muslim) thinks, or says, the terrorirst want to kill them anyway.

You are all taking this "With us or against us" a bit too seriously. Bush has already said he doesn't mind if you don't contribute troops, but so long as you do something, anything, be it violent or non violent. If you don't do something, then you are aiding them, by allowing them to flourish when they are under your control. The Taliban wern't ever going to attack the US, but by sheltering Al Qaeda. Terrorist organisations won't grow anywhere near as fast, if there are no countries to let them. Incidently, theres a difference between not doing something, and expressly opposing a country.

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Replies to graham and a few other notes:


She did, you just didn't understand it, while punky did.


And what's the guarentees are there that by not breaking our own legal codes no lives would be saved? 100%?


Here's a common sense/moral clash.
Incurable fatal disease. Simplest way to obliterate it would be to wipe out everyone who is a carrier - common sense, but morally that's awful.
Common sense leads us to a way of preventing further infection, and saving more lives. Those who are infected are going to die, so why risk letting them infect others?
Morallity leads us to a way of exposing the rest of society to further infection because killing all those people is morally wrong.
Hence how morality can fall outside common sense.
I'm sure you'd rather we take the moral path keeping those infected people alive, hoping a cure can someday be found, even though it risks further infection and death, rather than culling them all.

Loved that show :)

Not really. Your quotes from Bush make no mention of doing what america wants. It's quite open, even going as far as saying that they don't expect countries to send troops.
As has been mentioned, terrorism can be fought with many tools, political pressure being one of them.
Now if there is a nation, with no army, no inteligence service, not much political clout, but has a member in the UN, simply by voting on things which the UN decides would help against terror, like voting on an arms sanction for instance, that is doing something in the fight against terrorism.

Other terrorists which have been successfully negotiated with, have all wanted a reasonable goal, whether it's freedom from an oppresive gov laws, or for their own country.
That's something that can be worked on, political pressure can be applied, give and take can happen, a comprimise can be reached, like apartite being abandoned in SA, or Israel returning the land it has stolen.
But when the terrorist just wants to kill you or convert you to their way of thinking, there's not much hope of negotiation. You can't have an agreement on only killing a portion, or only half converting people, it's an all or nothing situation.

Knocking out a civilian power station has the military effect of taking out broadcasters (ie the ablity for Saddam to rally), divert resources from the war effort, knock out other communication means such as telephones.
I don't recall any reports stating that sewerage or water works were deliberate targets.
I also don't recall any reports stating that populated areas such as markets or civilian office blocks were being activly targetted.
I'm pretty sure our military did its damndest to attack military targets.
Don't remember hearing about any apache's flying up and down the streets of Bahgdad shooting civilians, or launching a hellfire or two into a crouded school bus.

A sunni/shiite conflict is not ensured. This has been shown by the unitiy between them after the explosions which killed shiites. Sunni's and shiites have united against osama and his followers for those killings. They know who to blame.
And before anyone says they're blaming the coalition forces, they are not. They are angry that there wasn't enough security to provent it, but it's like someone walking up to you and thumping you, while a friend stands by. You can be angry at your friend for letting it happen, but you don't blame them for it happening, the blame lies with the person who hit you.
That's actually one of the interesting things about Islam, you are responsible for your own actions, hence why they don't believe Jesus died for their sins, because that takes the responsibility away from them.

The US is still in Saudi, protecting her oil fields.
Saudi wants this, the US wants this, and most oil using countries want this.
Osama doesn't because he feels that the arabian penisula should be wiped clear of non-muslims.
Also, the US has the public image of shaitan in Islamic nations, and so to have Shaitan protecting the holy land is understandably not what most muslims want.

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Which is exactly my point, and one, it would seem, which Graham doesn't want to confront.

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I, too, haven't seen any that advocate the eradication of the *entire* muslim faith, but only, shall we say, certain elements of it eg for an example of their attitude see http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/news/btn/hamza.shtml "the unacceptable face of Islam."

Sorry, where did I say anything about any Western Governments having manifestos about eradicating Islam?

And I wouldn't disagree, however I think that "eradication" needs to be done by the *Muslim* communities of this world cleaning up their own religion, rather than being it being "forced" upon them by the West which is only likely to create greater resentment and make some people more inclined to side with Al Qaeda.

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Damn! That's bloody brilliant!! :D

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"Obviously"? Sorry, where is this obviosity?

Please quote me the relevant phrases or paragraphs from her article at
http://www.melaniephillips.com/artic...es/000392.html which makes it *so* obvious that she was talking about the EU Court of Human Rights.

And, if she was, *why* does she say "For common-sense to be stymied at such a time by the alien †˜human rightsââ‚Ã⠀šÃ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢ culture is just plain crazy." when this "alien 'human rights' culture" is one that we not only freely and willingly signed up to (in 1951!), but we were also one of the *first* EU countries to do so?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/948143.stm

When a country starts undertaking actions to "defend" its own citizens that go *against* its most fundamental concepts of law and rights and justice, they are *giving* victories to those who wish to *destroy* that country!!

No, I think he was saying that because he *understood* the fact that liberties have to be hard fought for but it's very easy to give them up again without realising *what* you're giving up.

It's very easy to glibly say "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about", but it's much more difficult to, for instance, regain the right to presumption of innocence when it's been lost.

Common sense? Moral sense? No, *NONSENSE*!!!

I really don't think you have any idea of what you're talking about, let alone what *I* am talking about!

If there are two suicide bombers in the open, about to run into a crowded building and kill lots of people *AND* there is no other way to stop them, it makes both common sense and moral sense to shoot them before they can do so.

However if someone claims that it is "common sense" to allow the Security Services to monitor all of our communications "just in case", then that is utter nonsense because that goes against one of our "core values" of the presumption of innocence.

If we give away our core values to protect ourselves "no matter the cost" we *lose* everything that makes our society *better* than the one that terrorists want to impose on us.

No, because that's not a logical conclusion.

The point is that Middle Eastern Countries want to be allowed to get on with running their *own* affairs *without* Western "influence" or "control" because they have seen what has resulted from this in the past.

No cites, then?

If the President of the USA says "you will be held accountable for inactivity" and "you're either with us or against us" I'm not sure what other interpretation can be put on it apart from "if you don't do it our way, you're going to end in in trouble, one way or another".

Balderdash. Just because you don't do X does *not* mean you are "apathetic" about a situation.

If you think I'm going to be impressed by this sort of baiting (with sneering undertones), you are sadly mistaken.

JOOI, if it is such a "reasonable enough" question, how come you have already got it wrong twice?