Dammit, I've missed all the fun. That's fatherhood for you.
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A lot of left wingers i've heard wish to go to the terrorists and say stuff like "I'm on your side; I'm against Americans foreign policies; I understand your pain; I'm pro-Palestine", etc
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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.
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One-party dictatorships define their enemies in terms of those who politically "expressly oppose them"
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(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.