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Quote:
Originally Posted by PTravel
...I would respectfully challenge you to provide an example of unhyphenated, non-religious terrorism from the past 50 years.
I do not believe that Timothy McVeigh and Nichols were motivated by religious reasons to blow up the Federal building in Oklahoma. Unless, that is, you consider suvivalism and anti-gun controlism a religion
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dodo
Quick one that comes to mind :ETA
Okay, that's one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jailer
I do not believe that Timothy McVeigh and Nichols were motivated by religious reasons to blow up the Federal building in Oklahoma. Unless, that is, you consider suvivalism and anti-gun controlism a religion
I know, I know, but I think that it’s a stretch. People who hate usually hate generally and widely. He was first and foremost anti-government; that he hated non-Christians as well was just the two for one deal.
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We tend to label large-scale acts of violence as terrorism. Murder and assault tend to be categorized as non-terrorism because it's essentially either one on one or more personal (e.g. jealous husband kills wife, her boyfriend, her mother and perhaps himself). With larger scale violence whose victims are random (e.g. bombing at a shopping mall, shooting up a police station, etc.), there's a tendency to immediately label that as terrorism. The exception appears to be when it involves some lone gunman who shoots up a school, church or fast-food restaurant. For some reason, we don't count that as terrorism.
I see a big difference between the real cause of terrorism and the stated purpose of terrorist acts. It comes down to this: the masterminds behind these acts have decided that violence is the way to get something done. They really don't give a damn about the social, political, religious, economic situation of a particular hamlet, village, town, city, county, province, country or region. It could be a simple matter of gaining power, notoriety, fame, prestige, political leverage, popular favor; the reasons are endless. It comes down to being able to convince a group of people that committing these large-scale acts is the right thing to do. The typical buttons they push are religious, political, nationalist, economic, social, ethnic, etc. But that's all they are: buttons that can be pushed to sway a group of people into following along.
If you truly believe that Islamic fundamentalist terrorists are committing these acts because of their religious beliefs, then you've missed the boat. It turns out that religion is the easy button. Otherwise, it may be ethnicity or some other motivation.
In the end, the terrorist is no different than a common thug or bully.
And they can be taught to fear the night.
We believe that the way to deal with these thugs is to play by some rules we impose on ourselves. How naive.
Okay, okay . . . Shining Path and Tamil Tigers are Maoist groups and those are, indeed, terrorists. I never heard of Naxalites before, but I see they are Maoist as well. Mao's goals were to export revolution through violence and terrorism. However, at the risk of sending flip (which I don't mean to do), Mao was yesterday's news, and the surviving Maoist groups, though undoubtedly deadly, are rapidly headed towards extinction.
I don't believe ETA is Maoist -- it's a genuine revolutionary/sepratist movement but that, in itself, makes it unique.
I will accept, however, that terrorism and religious extremism are not necessarily concomitants.
I'm currently in China and we have the BBC on, watching the Mumbai coverage. Mrs. PTravel just reminded me that, were it not for a change in our economic circumstances, we would have gone to Mumbai, rather than China (here we stay with friends and family, so it's very, very cheap). On our previous visit to India, we stayed at a couple of Oberoi properties and would certainly have stayed at the Oberoi Mumbai on this trip. We would, in other words, have definitely found ourselves in the middle of this terrible terrorist attack were it not for a quirk in our finances.
This is food for thought for us. Mrs. PTravel is really shaken by the thought that we would have been in the Oberoi (she was the one who really wanted to go to Mumbai -- I wanted to go further south). We have to seriously think about our international travel plans in the future (fortunately, China is about as safe a destination as I can possibly imagine). What I can not accept, however, is that this murderous rampage is motivated by poor people who feel they have been oppressed because of their religion. Mrs. PTravel is Chinese (though with a USA passport) -- apparently she would have been spared. I don't know whether I would have had the presence of mind to have said, "Mais non, je ne suis pas Americain -- je suis francais!"
As I said, food for though for us.
BTW, I absolutely applaud the president of Pakistan, who quickly and directly condemned the attacks, expressed his sympathy for the Indian people and called for world cooperation to end what he denounced as a global threat to peace and security.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jailer
I know, I know, but I think that it’s a stretch. People who hate usually hate generally and widely. He was first and foremost anti-government; that he hated non-Christians as well was just the two for one deal.
I don't think it's a stretch at all. The Christian Identity movement, which is every bit as dangerous as Al Qaeda, spawned McVeigh and the rest of his anti-government buddies.
We believe that the way to deal with these thugs is to play by some rules we impose on ourselves. How naive.
To think that your preferred methods would lead to anything but more bloodshed is naive. People willing to die for their cause are unlikely to "fear the night", and your contempt of the rules puts you exactly on their level -- no different than a common thug or bully. I don't want my government playing at that level, and I'm sure doing so would just create more enemies.
We tried all that 'fearing the night' stuff with the IRA. It mostly didn't work (although, at times, in very specific circumstances (Gibraltar) to prevent nasty things happening it did - but was not a long term solution). Perhaps Bart could suggest a terrorist campaign which has been successfully stopped by his chosen approach?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jenbel
We tried all that 'fearing the night' stuff with the IRA. It mostly didn't work (although, at times, in very specific circumstances (Gibraltar) to prevent nasty things happening it did - but was not a long term solution). Perhaps Bart could suggest a terrorist campaign which has been successfully stopped by his chosen approach?
One of the main goals of terrorists is to cause governments to overreact, thereby garnering the sympathies of more moderate types.
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Cheap shots and insults are the last refuge of those who have nothing else to fall back on. Thank you for making it obvious that you have no substantive argument.
So what's this then?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandhi90s
For the record, the number of people killed in all the atrocities that you list is dwarfed by the number of deaths caused by Bush's illegal war.
[Edited to add:] Let's try something different, let's *think* for a change.
Bolding mine.
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There is another FTer called UAfan. In my name there is a space between "UA" and "Fan".
