France threatened by Islamists

Yeah, hopefully it's only a bad joke. Even if it is, whoever started it needs to be punished for scaring a whole bunch of people. I really hope nothing bad happens.

We CANNOT come together into a massive union. It is the institutionalization of this "War" On "Terror" that is leading to its dowfall. What we need to do is A. Pull out of all our engagements altogether, don't give them anything to hate us for, and B. Treat this as a law-enforcement problem. For the cost of fighting our nugatory war, we could put a bounty on Osama's head that'd have his own soldiers fighting to turn him in. I'm not sure whether or not you're advocating some kind of massive one-world-government or just some kind of huge terrorist-focussed Interpol, but the one-world-government idea is absolutely...awful/terrifying/wrong.

Adrian

Poor girl! Must be very stressing to find everywhere you go there's an alarm!

No Adrian i'm not talkign about some massive over ruling government (that's what my militia is for )

But I'm pointing out that we need to all get our fingers out now and do something about it TOGETHER.

Stop arguing about who's right and who's wrong, there is no right and wrong when these people are blowing anyone in sight up.

The best way to resolve this is to educate these people.

You of all people Adrian know I never pussyfoot about issues and shocking as it may sound to some people, Islamic fundamentalists are nothing more than members of the worlds biggest cult and sadly, alot of their ideals are shared by Muslims who are less extreme but still believe it.

Am I assuming too much here? I'm not sayign every single Muslim follows or agrees with the fundamentalists but put it this way.

I live in a place that has its fair share of tension between Protestants and Catholics which has stemmed from the troubles in Ulster. Now up until a few years ago I thought nothing of loyalist paramilitaries killign catholics "in the name of the cause" because that's what i believed was right.

I'm not particularly proud of the fact but then again I'm not ashamed of it either, That was what I believed. Am I a member of the paramilitaries? No but I still agreed with their ideals just as many people I know did/ still do and likewise, catholics agreed with the IRA killing Protestants.

and why? because thats what we thought was right, don't question it, don't think abou tit. they are the enemy so **** them.

As I say I used to agree with it up till a point where I thought, you know what, it's all bullshit I'm wanting nothign more to do with this. there were several reasons for this but actually knowing people caught up in all the shit that goes on over in Ulster and hearing 1st hand what goes on was a big factor of it and actually starting to question it all was another.

Most people won't question it however unless they are educated and shownt hat it's not right and it's not the only way. Tough job but opinios such as my own can be changed with time and education.

If it can happen to me, it can happen to Muslims who believe the fundamentalists are actually doing their religion a favour.

In turn less and less people will be getting brought up with these ideals and less and less of them will become fundamentalists and will stop supporting and cheering on these animals.

once the terrorists lose the support of the people the game is up.

er, being christian is reason enough for them..

+1

Being a Christian may be reason enough for the most extreme of the extreme, but Al-Qaida's grievances (as I've heard them outlined by numerous sources) are our support of Israel, our keeping troops on their holy land, and our starvation of Iraq. Of course, now that we stomped Iraq and Afghanistan, it may be a moot point, they may attack us whatever we do.

I think we need to do something, but I don't think the solution is to create even more, even bigger government programs (which invariably fail at their assigned task). Our solution should be to stop marching all over the world, pull our troops back, restore our freedoms here at home that have been butchered by this "war," and then treat this as a law-enforcement problem, like I said before. Terrorism is nothing more than criminal acts in the name of something, be it religion or politics. Why should we treat a politically motivated murder any different than a random killing? I don't know. What I do know is that we're bankrupting our country (and its future, as well as destroying the freedoms that made our country great) to pay for the vast might of the US military to go marching around the globe looking for Al-Qaida sympathizing goatherds and non-existant weapons. And whatever we do, we need, NEED to respect innocent life, and the sovereignty of foreign nations. That's a large part of what got Al-Qaida up in arms in the first place.

Adrian

It's a basic hate of the West. The UN probably has more people stationed in trouble spots over the world but there's very rarely any agression towards them when compared to allied soldiers being attacked and ambushed in one area everyday.

These countries are poor and in a mess. Having people there to watch over things isn't a bad idea but alot of people in these countries seem to think it's a result of the US that they're in such a mess.

You don't see Cuba attackign US soldiers there or people from the Falklands and Gibraltar attacking our boys.

Pull out the troops and they'll still find another reason to hate us and thats along with the new enemies we'd make by no longer protecting them.

i don't think so. but let's suppose this percentage is high and we have a John McClane on the plane who kills all 5 or 6 terrorists. what is the percentage of people that can fly and land the plane safely? because the first thing the terrorists did, was killing the pilots.

and if guns are allowed, don't you think the terrorist would have guns themselves? it would be a lot easier for the crazy guys or the terrorists to take over the plane, if they were allowed to have guns. the plane wouldn't be safer at all i think.

by the way: if there wouldn't be so many gun loving people walking around, the USA would be a much safer place. each year more american people are killed by other american people with guns than the number of victims on 9/11. and you're now gonna say that the freaks would kill the others in a different way if they wanted to kill and wouldn't have guns. but somehow these guns even get in the hands of 6 year old kids. i've heard too many sad stories of young kids killing each other with the guns of their parents.





anyway, back to the subject: i agree that all the western countries are possible targets. but the organisation who did that in madrid (or claims that they did it) say: targets are USA, england, italy, japan and australia. spain isn't a target anymore at the moment, cause they want to give the new government the chance to pull back the troups from iraq. and it's a different organisation that's threatening france. so it surely has something to do with the war and whether your country took part in it or not.

the new government in spain now announced to pull back the troups, but that's actually a rather stupid idea in my eyes. first of all the terrorists will see that they reach their goals like this, and see that they have really grerat power. that a dangerous thing. secondly, this happened so may times before, starting a war and then suddenly pull back all the troups etc. and it always ended with a lot of people hating the invaders (for good reasons). the most important part of a war like the war in iraq in my eyes, is protection of the people, to help the people with reconstruction, medical help, giving them their own government etc. etc. all these things went totally wrong in this war. people aren't safe at all, the reconstruction doesn't work at all, the USA doesn't want to pay for medical help, they promised that tere would be an iraqi government even in 2003 but it doesn't work etc. etc. if you pull back after destroying everything you will make enemies like Bin Laden who was also f'cked by the US in the first place.

eighter to "play the game" untill the end, or you better don't start it at all.

You can't totally rebuild a country and set up a democracy in a place thats been a dictatorship over night.

We've only been there a year, give it some time.