I doubt it would get that intense. But as you say, we will be content to continue to watch innocent people blown up by these thugs. Either way it is sad that there exist people who would strap bombs to themselves and blow up innocent people, women, children they care not one bit who.
what do you get if you successfully kill a Terrorist A Martyr Seriously. we’re fighting two completely separate wars, just like the pilgrims vs the native americans, the US troops in Vietnam, lots of other examples… with the natives is was one set of people for land control against a group of people who have no concept of land ownership at all (they felt you could no more own the land than you could own the air), Vietnam it was land control (our idea, how much of Vietman could we physically spread out and occupy) vs principles (them). and its something very much like those examples (one fight against an entirely different) now that’s making this so hard to deal with. we fight for money, control of oil and governments and money, they fight for religious reasons (and they actually find death in their cause to be a nobel act one that sends them closer to their creator, etc, while we’re obviously not so gungho on checking out, etc) Killing us devistates us, killing them (and I am only talking about the extremists here, not the whole of any certain religion, and what I am saying could apply to any extremist of any group for that matter, religious and otherwise) only actually inspires them, Some people think we stepped all over their religious and holy land, we might think having troops in saudi arabia and near “Mecca” etc is a good thing, we might think we’re even think we’re doing somebody a favor, heck we (general population) might not even know just where we all are. We like our material goods, our good life, while you notice these are often people used to living in tents and unstable and shelled out places such that they generally no longer try very hard to rebuild and material things don’t mean very much (and so maybe these other things concepts, beliefs and whatnot loom very large to them in ways we can’t even understand, etc Not to mention that one person’s terrorist is another person’s 'freedom fighter" etc etc and so on and before anybody jumps on me and miscontrues this as ‘defending’ anything… not in the least there’s an old saying (I believe very possibly a whole book to go with it) that goes something like “know thine enemy” and after 9/11 one of the first things I did was decide not to just be ignorant (and having a general mistrust of EVERYONE including our own government/supposed protectors etc)… I asked questions… found a few tried and true Pakistan taliban on line, very carefully and clearly made it known I wanted to try to learn, listen at least, to what the problem is… I don’t pretend to understand a fraction of it… but it pays to at very least try to know what you’re dealing with, and why
@dgriego: Hate to be a jerk, but you’ve got the majority of sociology as concerns crime and punishment against you mate. Do you know why most of Europe has done away with capital punishment? It’s because studies have shown it isn’t an effective deterrent and costs more than keeping them alive and educating them, or giving them job skills so they don’t need to commit crimes when they get out to make up for the fact that their formal education ended at grade 6. If killing all criminals worked, we wouldn’t have any after the number of executions from Ancient Greece up to the 1800s. Killing terrorist creates martyrs, and simply generates some awesome propaganda for them to recruit with. And hate to pull the rug out from under you, but this isn’t jihad. This is the same thing as what AllanH was saying is perfectly good justification for insurgency. It’s a region called Chechnya, which has been trying to gain independence from Russia for ages. Chechen revolts to gain independence from Russia have been going on for a solid forty to one hundred years before al-Qaeda was formed. Yes, they’re terrorists, and I’m not trying to condone what they did. However, they aren’t demanding a worldwide caliphate, they’re fighting for their independence and happen to be Muslim. In fact, I’d say this conflict has less to do with religion than the Troubles did. This is simply a culture that has historically been taken advantage of by the Russians and the Ottomans before them, and are tired of being repressed and forced to “Russify” themselves. I take issues with their methods as well. However, the UK wasn’t concerned about civilian casualties when they firebombed Dresden. The US was quite happy to support the Algerians when they used similar methods. Before you call other people barbaric, learn your history. We’ve done just as bad as they have, often much worse, only we like to forget it ever happened now that we no longer do it. I’m out before the flame war begins, I only see this topic going south, with it being such a touchy issue. I’ll be reading any responses, but don’t expect a public reply, as I don’t fancy a ban for continually causing issues in this thread. I feel for the victims. but I can’t say I’m surprised. You’ll see more of this before it’s over, as horrible as that sounds. This is simply the background noise of an ongoing war (Second Chechen War, look it up, I swear I’m not being an angsty twat). Edit: By the way, I’m not predicting imminent outburts of attacks in Russia, I’m just saying this will continue to happen every so often over the next decade at least.
There simply isn’t any justification for these kind of acts.
Yeah seriously it’s very understandable to want to lash out at this point. If it was an effective way to go I’d be right behind it. Oh well, it doesn’t really work well. Though I’am sure that in a lot of cases too their thinking really isn’t that far off from yours. If we kill them all or enough of them the problems will go away (not saying they are the same or justified in anyway by the way). Plus is this a new thing??? No it’s not. Terrorism has been going on well since people have bothered to take note and I’am sure it’s been going on a lot longer then that. Guess it’s part of being human really to have to deal with these things and that people really won’t ever get along. Personaly I say shrug it off. People die every single day in much larger numbers. Hell your are still in more danger of being killed by your transportation then by terrorist. Yes their the worst kind of scum imaginable and they want you to freak out and call to arms that would be the best thing for them. And remember this for killing people to really really work they have to respect life and guess what it seems that these types of people don’t respect thier own lifes. Yeah if someones life isn’t even worth as much as their ideology then what can killing them do really. Hell if you want to be pissed at something how about malaria which kills a lot of people every year does far more damage then any bomb has (you can rebuild cities but if the people are too sick to work you can’t get a city off of the ground). I guess what I’am saying is try to get this in perspective before reacting because seriously that in the long run will cause more problems then these types of people ever can do on their own. Though I just want to make sure that everyone realizes I’am not trying to invalidate anyones anger or rage or anyones death really just the opposite to be honest. Well peace everyone.
Allan, I agree, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t some serious ‘justifying’ going on in the minds of people who perform these acts. Most people on the planet see themselves and their actions from their own point (this is where my lack of words for a concept I understand frustrates me)… most people, even terrorists, don’t see their own actions as just wrong… everything has a ‘reason’ and a purpose and is ‘right’ to the person who’s doing it. I’m sure its a psychology thing and I’m sure it has some grand name, I just don’t know what its name is. and understanding this about other people and what somebody’s thinking (to the best of one’s ability anyway) is absolutely not to be construed with or confused in any way whatsoever with agreeing with Have ever had somebody you loved murdered, ever seen or heard of some attrocious act, and the very first, the natural question is “why? why would somebody do such a thing??” Somebody once wrote a big fat book called “The Mind of Adolf Hitler” and a lot of people have actually read that book… I hardly think every one of them were Nazi sympathizers ever had a big long debate and exchange with somebody about some topic and come to see the thought processes from the other person, just see how they got there, even if you maintain that they are quite wrong, etc? Its like that. Its not like you’re going to get ‘mind cooties’ or something, be magically subverted into agreeing with something if you just try to find the mechanics of what’s driving it.
Plus if you don’t understand what your fighting your fundementaly fucked. Makes kind of like shotting shadows.
I went to find something about this on my TV and finally located CNN on my cable system (I have personal reason to really loathe CNN above all others) and I’ve yet to see anything about this attack today you’re all talking about because as I write this and for at least the last 15 minutes CNN has been apparently currently too busy describing a bunch of Michiganders as _terrorists_I shit you not. EDITED – here we go…a eh… ookay… before I could even finish this sentence the segment on this event was over…I doubt that was 30 seconds! Okay guys just FYI the Michigan Militia is higher priority to CNN than what happened in Moscow today (a full two sentences for it to tell me it was a ‘twin suicide bomber’ event) make no mistake, I’m not on “headline news” this is CNN (with the big ever pressent red CNN logo in the corner…) just make of this whatever you will screw this I’ll do what I always do if I want to know whats going on… I’ll go to ‘foreign newspapers’ online.
Golda Meir “We can forgive them for killing our sons, but we can never forgive them for making our sons kill their sons.”
News from my moscovite friends; they’re ok, all atheists, orthodox christians, jews and muslims and budhists and weird cultists. They couldn’t kill them all. And never will.
@AllanH: Da zdrastvuyet drujba narodov. Didn’t have a cyrillic keyboard so I transliterated it.
AllanH, I’m very glad to hear that at least those you know are alright. Maybe we should be getting our news and updates on what’s actually happene directly from you and them? (seriously). I’d be curious to know what they’re saying in Moscow most of all really. One thing I read online suggests that they are very afraid for still more very immediate attacks.
Few Irish friends of mine live in Moscow, some with families. Myself worked in Novgorod town and oblast few years back. Best times I’ve ever had anywhere.
There’s a YouTube channel that appears to be many short videos taken by what appears was probably just another regular person (prbably with a cell phone althought most of them are very high quality they are short) that was out there when it happened, some of it is pretty disturbing, and especially out of respect to AllanH who had friends out there and since I’m just not certain if this is a good thing to share or not here, I’'ll just hold back on posting it here, unless AllanH and others would want it here.
What would Stalin do?
Stalin would say it is the work of “rootless cosmopolitans” and start a pogrom. Thank god someone took care of him.
I think he’d nip it in the bud.
@Tom – I think you mean Barney Fife
Stalin would make the people want to go back to when it was outsiders killing them much less effectively. You really can’t trust someone who steals one of supermans nicknames.
Stalin’d sort out these kind of problems. The greatest peace-enforcer of all times. You can’t have peace without eliminating the troublemakers.