http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5142754,00.html That flypaper, er, shark-chumming, er beehive smacking strategy seems to have worked out well. Who's missing their recruitment quotas indeed. In related mindboggling news.. how do you beat that militarily?
This is an excellent thread, and deserves comments, but only redoubles my anger about Operation FUBAR in Iraq.
A little off topic, but I'm still surprised that so many of these terrorists are middle-class and in Osama's case very well off. Not a Marxist revolt of the proletariat. There must be an element of self-loathing involved. These guys reaped the benefits of Western culture for a long time, then suddenly stopped and turned destructive against it. Especially since so many have technical educations: modern rationalist science is the unique hallmark of post Renaissance European culture.
By supporting Doonesbury you support the terrorists! By being against the terrorists every step of the way... you sympathize with them?
the lower class is always struggling daily to feed their families. The middle class are the ones with the time/energy to do something about the "oppression" of their brothers. Homophobes who gay-bash are often the types who could not come to grips with locker-room urges/incidents of their past. Biblethumpers who rail loudest against sin are often caught in seedy motel rooms. It is logical that extreme behavior results from a confused brain that is both intrigued and appalled.
the neocons want terrorism. if there is no terrorism, there is no enemy, if there is no enemy, there is nothing to use to instill fear into the american people, and if they cant instill fear, then they dont have a job...
ZORG: by that simple gesture of destruction. I gave work to at least fifty people today. The engineers, the technicians, the mechanics. Fifty people who will be able to feed their children so they can grow up big and strong. Children who will have children of their own, adding to the great cycle of life! Father, by creating a little destruction, I am, in fact, encouraging life! So, in reality, you and I are in the same business!
Excerpts from article below.... http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/825ijtne.asp Breeding Stupidity Where does the insistence that the war in Iraq is creating terrorists come from? by Hugh Hewitt THERE IS A STRANGE PAIRING of positions on the left. The first is that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were not connected. The work of Stephen F. Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn in THE WEEKLY STANDARD, which is supported by other serious investigative reporters such as Claudia Rosett has already established beyond any reasonable doubt that there was a web of connections, but the combination of the left's indifference to inconvenient facts and the international version of the soft bigotry of low expectations--an Arab dictator couldn't have had a sophisticated intelligence service capable of hiding such matters--make it an article of faith among Bush haters that there was no connection. Exactly the opposite approach to facts and evidence is emerging on the left's claim that Iraq is a breeding ground for terrorists. "Breeding ground" means something quite different from "killing ground." The term conveys the belief that had the United States and its allies not invaded Iraq, there would be fewer jihadists in the world today--that the transition of Iraq from brutal dictatorship to struggling democracy has somehow unleashed a terrorist-breeding virus. The fact that foreign fighters are streaming across Syria into Iraq in the hopes of killing America is not evidence supporting the "breeding ground" theory. "Opportunity" to act is not the same thing as "motive" for acting. There is zero evidence for the proposition that Iraq is motive rather than opportunity, but the "motive" theory is nevertheless put forward again and again. As recently as Wednesday the Washington Post account of the aftermath of the London bombings included the incredible--and unsubstantiated in the article--claim that the "the profile of the suspects suggested by investigators fit long-standing warnings by security experts that the greatest potential threat to Britain could come from second-generation Muslims, born here but alienated from British society and perhaps from their own families, and inflamed by Britain's participation in the Iraq war."[emphasis added] In an interview with the London Times, Prime Minister Tony Blair disputed the idea "that the London terrorist attacks were a direct result of British involvement in the Iraq war. He said Russia had suffered terrorism with the Beslan school massacre, despite its opposition to the war, and that terrorists were planning further attacks on Spain even after the pro-war government was voted out. "September 11 happened before Iraq, before Afghanistan, before any of these issues and that was the worst terrorist atrocity of all," he said. While it is theoretically possible that some jihadists were forged as a result of the invasion of Iraq, no specific instance of such a terrorist has yet been produced. Reports in the aftermath of the London bombings indicated that the British intelligence service estimates more than 3,000 residents of Great Britain had trained in the Afghanistan terrorist camps prior to the invasion of Afghanistan--which suggests that the probability is very high that most of the jihadists in England date their hatred of the West to some point prior to the invasion of Iraq. And though two of the London bombers appear to have traveled to Pakistan for religious instruction post-March 2003, there is not the slightest bit of evidence that it was Iraq which "turned" the cricket-loving young men into killers. In fact, it is transparently absurd for anyone to claim such a thing......................
Russia suffered terrorism because they did lots of killing in their own backyard prior to that. And no one would expect Tony telling the truth in regards to his role in Iraq war.
USA, you're smarter than that. Some of the assertions in that article are positively moronic. We know you're smarter than that. Stupid stupid stupid. 9/11 happened before Iraq. No duh. Because we were in Saudi Arabia. Beslan happened - because of Chechnya, not Iraq. Additional spanish terror attacks could easily be because spain was the ancestral high water mark of islam. Those have nothing to do with London. Hell, we got suicide carbombs every fricken day in Iraq. All these people were hardened terrorist carbombers before we invaded Iraq, but were just waiting for Saddam to be removed so they could blow things up? Stupid stupid stupid. I expect that from the weekly standard, but expect better from you.
I should probably think about backing away from my assertion that the Iraq War had only a marginal influence on terrorists, based on the Guardian article. Yet, I just can't get there. I think the Iraq War is just an addition to the AQ shopping list, and this guy would have been a terrorist anyway. We should pull out of Iraq for our own interests, not because we think pulling out will affect AQ one way or the other.
Perhaps you meant: Post hoc ergo propter hoc - After this, therefore because of this ... I also hope posters aren't confusing "inspiring" with "justifying".