<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The proper response to terrorism is clear: if you are doing something to provoke it, stop! This is not difficult to understand. Yet it is a message seldom understood. Sure, if you have a situation like Northern Ireland where the British stepped in to try to prevent further bloodshed, this may not be desirable, or even possible, but it should not be hard to stop attacking Muslim states who have not threatened us. After the bombing, Spaniards didn't shout: "They hate us because we are good!" or "Spain is Number One!" or otherwise pledge their religious devotion to the consolidated Spanish state. Not at all. Instead, they said: that jerk at the top brought this on, because he sold out the nation to appease the Bush administration. There was no Spanish Patriot Act, no creation of a Department of Homeland Security. Instead, there was a wave of good sense which amounted to the following: let's stop making these people mad by invading and occupying their country.While I'd like to be sympathetic to understanding the "terrorist's cause," they cross a very dangerous physical & spiritual threshold when innocent civilians are murdered
About bin Laden and al Qaeda: as has been shown by all the countries that hav been plagued with terrorism, the worst answer to terrorism is violence, and specially military violence. The best responses have been: police actions, as terrorists are criminals, and economical and social actions to eliminate the motives for terrorism. In the 1970's and 1980's ETA had a fair amount of popular support and was killing one person a day in average. After the Felipe Gonz?lez PSOE government treated them as common criminals and started political, social and economical reforms in the Pa?s Vasco, ETA's actions have killed in average 5 persons a year and I guess you already saw the kind of popular reaction terrorism gets in Spain: 8 million people in the streets just the day after the attacks, openly defying and condemning terrorism, be it from ETA, al Qaeda or whatever group it turns to be from.
After being asked by Bush and Kerry to keep Spain's troops in Iraq, and after being considered as not necessary by Donald Duck Rumsfeld, Zapatero made his position clear again: Iraq's invasion and occupation is a fiasco; Spain will no longer be part of that fiasco and will not support the USA and UK anymore, as it was the will of Spain's people, a will that Aznar decided not to obbey. Long before the Madrid bombs, Rodr?guez Zapatero promised that if he was elted he would withdraw the troops from Iraq, in accordance to what the people WANTED. Now, the only way he will keep the troops in Iraq is if the UN takes complete control of the occupation before June 30 and the UNSC asks for the troops to stay. Thus, Spain returns to being part of the international community, leaving the rogue states.
The USA is doing exactly the OPPOSITE, provoking more terrorist attacks and providing the best of terrorist propaganda to make their ranks bigger. One has to wonder if this is done because of complete idiocy or if it is part of the plan of some cruel, hard, brutal SOB leaders with no respect for human life and an incredible drive for power.
<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ March 20, 2004 03:00 PM: Message edited by: Bozzio ]</font>
Some good points...
Not to further turn what was originally a heartfelt concern for a fellow HB member post into a political pundit or anything, but...
Suffice it to say that i understand & agree w a lot of what ur saying...
But 1 thing is clear...many of these extremist terrorist groups will never "play by the rules" [of the "gentleman's" or "fair fight" - becaus, quite frankly, there is no such thing anymore, if there ever was; maybe "the idea of," at one time, "back in the day"]...& will never stop, even if their perceived "antagonists" stop...because they will always have some fanatical ideological excuse to perpetrate acts of insufferable [& often inexcusable] acts of violence & hatred upon unsuspecting innocents...
In a more cohesive world, it would seem that the opt to take out the leaders of these murderous hordes by assassination instead of taking on whole counries in war is a fine ideal - in a perfect, dream world [& this leads to a whole other debate of problematic issues]. What to do in the case of an evil dictator who surrounds himself w small 'countries' of an army? But then, in a PW, there would be no violence...
I'm beginning to come to the realization & fear that, in this highly charged & volatile arena, it's becoming increasingly obvious that the floodgates have been opened [crumbled beyond repair] & may/will never be able to be closed by man again...the proverbial Pandora's Box.... [img]eek.gif[/img]
<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ March 20, 2004 06:34 PM: Message edited by: FuseU1 ]</font>
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