Leading Cause of Terrorism


The War on Terror Is the Leading Cause of Terrorism
By Kim Sengupta and Patrick Cockburn
The Independent UK
Posted on March 1, 2007

http://www.alternet.org/story/48620/

Innocent people across the world are now paying the price of the “Iraq effect,” with the loss of hundreds of lives directly linked to the invasion and occupation by American and British forces.

An authoritative U.S. study of terrorist attacks after the invasion in 2003 contradicts the repeated denials of George Bush and Tony Blair that the war is not to blame for an upsurge in fundamentalist violence worldwide. The research is said to be the first to attempt to measure the “Iraq effect” on global terrorism.

It found that the number killed in jihadist attacks around the world has risen dramatically since the Iraq war began in March 2003. The study compared the period between 11 September 2001 and the invasion of Iraq with the period since the invasion. The count – excluding the Arab-Israel conflict – shows the number of deaths due to terrorism rose from 729 to 5,420. As well as strikes in Europe, attacks have also increased in Chechnya and Kashmir since the invasion. The research was carried out by the Centre on Law and Security at the NYU Foundation for Mother Jones magazine.

Iraq was the catalyst for a ferocious fundamentalist backlash, according to the study, which says that the number of those killed by Islamists within Iraq rose from seven to 3,122. Afghanistan, invaded by US and British forces in direct response to the September 11 attacks, saw a rise from very few before 2003 to 802 since then. In the Chechen conflict, the toll rose from 234 to 497. In the Kashmir region, as well as India and Pakistan, the total rose from 182 to 489, and in Europe from none to 297.

Two years after declaring “mission accomplished” in Iraq President Bush insisted: “If we were not fighting and destroying the enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle. They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our borders. By fighting these terrorists in Iraq, Americans in uniform are defeating a direct threat to the American people.”

Mr Blair has also maintained that the Iraq war has not been responsible for Muslim fundamentalist attacks such as the 7/7 London bombings which killed 52 people. “Iraq, the region and the wider world is a safer place without Saddam [Hussein],” Mr Blair declared in July 2004.

Announcing the deployment of 1,400 extra troops to Afghanistan earlier this week – raising the British force level in the country above that in Iraq – the Prime Minister steadfastly denied accusations by MPs that there was any link between the Iraq war an unravelling of security elsewhere.

Last month John Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence in Washington, said he was “not certain” that the Iraq war had been a recruiting factor for al-Qa’ida and insisted: “I wouldn’t say that there has been a widespread growth in Islamic extremism beyond Iraq, I really wouldn’t.”

Yet the report points out that the US administration’s own National Intelligence Estimate on “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States” – partially declassified last October – stated that " the Iraq war has become the ‘cause c?l?bre’ for jihadists … and is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives."

The new study, by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, argues that, on the contrary, "the Iraq conflict has greatly increased the spread of al-Qa’ida ideological virus, as shown by a rising number of terrorist attacks in the past three years from London to Kabul, and from Madrid to the Red Sea.

“Our study shows that the Iraq war has generated a stunning increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and civilian lives lost. Even when terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world have increased by more than one third.”

In trying to gauge the “Iraq effect,” the authors had focused on the rate of terrorist attacks in two periods – from September 2001 to 30 March 2003 (the day of the Iraq invasion) and 21 March 2003 to 30 September 2006. The research has been based on the MIPT-RAND Terrorism database.

The report’s assertion that the Iraq invasion has had a far greater impact in radicalising Muslims is widely backed security personnel in the UK. Senior anti-terrorist officials told The Independent that the attack on Iraq, and the now-discredited claims by the U.S. and British governments about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, had led to far more young Muslims engaging in extremist activity than the invasion of Afghanistan two years previously.

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of the Secret Service (MI5) said recently: "In Iraq attacks are regularly videoed and the footage is downloaded into the internet.

“Chillingly, we see the results here. Young teenagers are being groomed to be suicide bombers. The threat is serious, is growing and will, I believe, be with us for a generation.”

In Afghanistan the most active of the Taliban commanders, Mullah Dadullah, acknowledged how the Iraq war has influenced the struggle in Afghanistan.

“We give and take with the mujahedin in Afghanistan,” he said. The most striking example of this has been the dramatic rise in suicide bombings in Afghanistan, a phenomenon not seen through the 10 years of war with the Russians in the 1980s.

The effect of Iraq on various jihadist conflicts has been influenced according to a number of factors, said the report. Countries with troops in Iraq, geographical proximity to the country, the empathy felt for the Iraqis and the exchange of information between Islamist groups. “This may explain why jihadist groups in Europe, Arab countries, and Afghanistan were more affected by the Iraq war than other regions,” it said.

Russia, like the US, has used the language of the “war on terror” in its actions in Chechnya, and al-Qa’ida and their associates have entrenched themselves in the border areas of Pakistan from where they have mounted attacks in Kashmir, Pakistan and India.

Statistics for the Arab-Israel conflict also show an increase, but the methodology is disputed in the case of Palestinian attacks in the occupied territories and settler attacks on Palestinians.

  • The U.S. is joining the Iraqi government in a diplomatic initiative inviting Iran and Syria to a “neighbours meeting” on stabilising Iraq, the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday. The move reflects a change of approach by the Bush administration, which previously had resisted calls to include Iran and Syria in such talks.

? 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/48620/

[quote]jlesk68 wrote:
The War on Terror Is the Leading Cause of Terrorism
By Kim Sengupta and Patrick Cockburn
The Independent UK
Posted on March 1, 2007

http://www.alternet.org/story/48620/

Innocent people across the world are now paying the price of the “Iraq effect,” with the loss of hundreds of lives directly linked to the invasion and occupation by American and British forces.

An authoritative U.S. study of terrorist attacks after the invasion in 2003 contradicts the repeated denials of George Bush and Tony Blair that the war is not to blame for an upsurge in fundamentalist violence worldwide. The research is said to be the first to attempt to measure the “Iraq effect” on global terrorism.

It found that the number killed in jihadist attacks around the world has risen dramatically since the Iraq war began in March 2003. The study compared the period between 11 September 2001 and the invasion of Iraq with the period since the invasion. The count – excluding the Arab-Israel conflict – shows the number of deaths due to terrorism rose from 729 to 5,420. As well as strikes in Europe, attacks have also increased in Chechnya and Kashmir since the invasion. The research was carried out by the Centre on Law and Security at the NYU Foundation for Mother Jones magazine.

Iraq was the catalyst for a ferocious fundamentalist backlash, according to the study, which says that the number of those killed by Islamists within Iraq rose from seven to 3,122. Afghanistan, invaded by US and British forces in direct response to the September 11 attacks, saw a rise from very few before 2003 to 802 since then. In the Chechen conflict, the toll rose from 234 to 497. In the Kashmir region, as well as India and Pakistan, the total rose from 182 to 489, and in Europe from none to 297.

Two years after declaring “mission accomplished” in Iraq President Bush insisted: “If we were not fighting and destroying the enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle. They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our borders. By fighting these terrorists in Iraq, Americans in uniform are defeating a direct threat to the American people.”

Mr Blair has also maintained that the Iraq war has not been responsible for Muslim fundamentalist attacks such as the 7/7 London bombings which killed 52 people. “Iraq, the region and the wider world is a safer place without Saddam [Hussein],” Mr Blair declared in July 2004.

Announcing the deployment of 1,400 extra troops to Afghanistan earlier this week – raising the British force level in the country above that in Iraq – the Prime Minister steadfastly denied accusations by MPs that there was any link between the Iraq war an unravelling of security elsewhere.

Last month John Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence in Washington, said he was “not certain” that the Iraq war had been a recruiting factor for al-Qa’ida and insisted: “I wouldn’t say that there has been a widespread growth in Islamic extremism beyond Iraq, I really wouldn’t.”

Yet the report points out that the US administration’s own National Intelligence Estimate on “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States” – partially declassified last October – stated that " the Iraq war has become the ‘cause c?l?bre’ for jihadists … and is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives."

The new study, by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, argues that, on the contrary, "the Iraq conflict has greatly increased the spread of al-Qa’ida ideological virus, as shown by a rising number of terrorist attacks in the past three years from London to Kabul, and from Madrid to the Red Sea.

“Our study shows that the Iraq war has generated a stunning increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and civilian lives lost. Even when terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world have increased by more than one third.”

In trying to gauge the “Iraq effect,” the authors had focused on the rate of terrorist attacks in two periods – from September 2001 to 30 March 2003 (the day of the Iraq invasion) and 21 March 2003 to 30 September 2006. The research has been based on the MIPT-RAND Terrorism database.

The report’s assertion that the Iraq invasion has had a far greater impact in radicalising Muslims is widely backed security personnel in the UK. Senior anti-terrorist officials told The Independent that the attack on Iraq, and the now-discredited claims by the U.S. and British governments about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, had led to far more young Muslims engaging in extremist activity than the invasion of Afghanistan two years previously.

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of the Secret Service (MI5) said recently: "In Iraq attacks are regularly videoed and the footage is downloaded into the internet.

“Chillingly, we see the results here. Young teenagers are being groomed to be suicide bombers. The threat is serious, is growing and will, I believe, be with us for a generation.”

In Afghanistan the most active of the Taliban commanders, Mullah Dadullah, acknowledged how the Iraq war has influenced the struggle in Afghanistan.

“We give and take with the mujahedin in Afghanistan,” he said. The most striking example of this has been the dramatic rise in suicide bombings in Afghanistan, a phenomenon not seen through the 10 years of war with the Russians in the 1980s.

The effect of Iraq on various jihadist conflicts has been influenced according to a number of factors, said the report. Countries with troops in Iraq, geographical proximity to the country, the empathy felt for the Iraqis and the exchange of information between Islamist groups. “This may explain why jihadist groups in Europe, Arab countries, and Afghanistan were more affected by the Iraq war than other regions,” it said.

Russia, like the US, has used the language of the “war on terror” in its actions in Chechnya, and al-Qa’ida and their associates have entrenched themselves in the border areas of Pakistan from where they have mounted attacks in Kashmir, Pakistan and India.

Statistics for the Arab-Israel conflict also show an increase, but the methodology is disputed in the case of Palestinian attacks in the occupied territories and settler attacks on Palestinians.

  • The U.S. is joining the Iraqi government in a diplomatic initiative inviting Iran and Syria to a “neighbours meeting” on stabilising Iraq, the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday. The move reflects a change of approach by the Bush administration, which previously had resisted calls to include Iran and Syria in such talks.

? 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/48620/[/quote]

Mother Jones Magazine has funded these two on other occasions. Also the Associate Publisher of Mother Jones Magazine, Steven Katz has ties to the two. According to the link below, Mother Jones is a LEFT WING Magazine.
If you take money from the Left, guess what, your Left. Don’t make these guys out to be independent. No doubt people are.

I believe the terrorist situation is perpetuated by money made from arms sales.
Interesting situation:

In Iraq the other day, they had a woman suicide bomber. Today, the insurgents killed prisoners because the government soldiers raped a female prisoner and this was to avenge the woman who was raped.

The same people who caused a woman to kill herself and kill other innocent people have now killed even more on behalf of a woman who was allegedly raped!  It does not make sense.  If we weren't in Iraq, they'd still find reason to attack us.  They hit New York and we weren't in Iraq or Afghanistan.  

We since have occupied Afghanistan and the insurgents there are calling US the bad guys when they attacked us first! I believe we had every right to strike back.

No problem with your ideas really man, but lumping all arabs together is stupid. Not only are all arabs not terrorists, iraq did not attack america. Such generalisations perpetuate wars, as innocents die for the crime of association

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
The same people who caused a woman to kill herself and kill other innocent people have now killed even more on behalf of a woman who was allegedly raped! [/quote]

The woman suicide bomber chose to blow herself up to resist the occupation of her country. I do not condone violent actions, but I believe the universal human rights charter has something along the lines of “the right to resist oppression, expropriation and occupation.”

The only people that caused her to kill herself along with other innocents are…I’ll leave that as a homework.

dannyrat, you’re absolutely right. But I still think that attacking Afghanistan was a correct thing to do given the circumstances.

lixy, the ones who made the woman blow herself up probably were the people who supplied the suicide vest, C4 and told her to go a head and do it.

Actually, what I was getting at is the terrorists did not care about a woman suicide bomber’s life, the did not care about the innocent people they killed (the shia), but, suddenly a woman is allegedly raped by the government troops and oh boy, we have to suddely defend the woman’s honor.

A life to the terrorists means nothing until it is taken by an enemy, giving them licence to kill and maim as many people as they want to.

You talk about Israel. They pulled out of Lebanon and what did they get? Attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon. They pulled out of Gaza and what do they get attacks from Hamas from Gaza. Nothing will appease these people.

So, in other words, even if we weren’t in Iraq, even if we stopped all support for Israel, they’d make up reasons to attack and kill us.

The leading cause of diabetes and CVD is poor dietary habits.

Let’s leave diabetes and other diseases alone. It’s not THIER fault!

Who the hell cares WHY they’re terrorists. An enemy sworn to kill us is an enemy. Why don’t you people get that?

[quote]derek wrote:
The leading cause of diabetes and CVD is poor dietary habits.

Let’s leave diabetes and other diseases alone. It’s not THIER fault!

Who the hell cares WHY they’re terrorists. An enemy sworn to kill us is an enemy. Why don’t you people get that?[/quote]

Because you do not fight a disease by creating conditions that make it worse?

Like not building swamps near living areas when fighting Malaria?

Or not allowing open fires in the dry season.

There is this school of thought that centers around the concept of “prevention” and how a stitch in time saves nine and such…

[quote]orion wrote:
derek wrote:
The leading cause of diabetes and CVD is poor dietary habits.

Let’s leave diabetes and other diseases alone. It’s not THIER fault!

Who the hell cares WHY they’re terrorists. An enemy sworn to kill us is an enemy. Why don’t you people get that?

Because you do not fight a disease by creating conditions that make it worse?

Like not building swamps near living areas when fighting Malaria?

Or not allowing open fires in the dry season.

There is this school of thought that centers around the concept of “prevention” and how a stitch in time saves nine and such…[/quote]

Yes, I totally agree. However, you do not let mosquitoes bite you and let them breed when you can take steps to eradicate the ones that already exist.

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
dannyrat, you’re absolutely right. But I still think that attacking Afghanistan was a correct thing to do given the circumstances.[/quote]

I concur.

I believe she went and asked for the C4. If they didn’t provide her with it, she could have made an explosive device herself. Anyone with half a brain and a chemistry set can make one.

That’s a good point that illustrates the absurdity of war.

It’s the only way they can resist. They don’t have fancy weapons. We’re talking about a country that endured the wrath of the US twice plus an embargo for more than a decade. And they’re up against the world’s most powerful army in history

And it has the added value of drawing the attention of the world to the problem, but apparently fails miserably.

You’re assuming that they are bloody savages. Face it; They’re people like you and me. Security is one of the ground layers in Maslow’s staircase. They want to be able to educate their kids and aspire to a better life. The Israeli army cross the borders to Lebanon and Gaza to terrorize the population but it’s never reported in Western media. Kidnappings of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians by the Mossad is also common-place. UN personel can attest to that. It is also reported by the Israeli non-Zionist press. It is believed that these repeated attacks on the sovereignty constituted the cause of the capture of the 3 Israeli soldier last summer. Thousands of people died from the Tsahal strike on Lebanon. Millions of refugees. Kids are still dying from cluster bombs as we speak.

For the last time, they are rational beings that were driven against the wall. That’s the only reason they’re forced to suicide bombings and such. Now, Ben-Laden & co are not rational and you should not confuse the fanatics who declared Jihad on the West (I’d say about a hundred crazy people around the world) and the ones that have nothing against you as long as you don’t aggress them. That’s a very important distinction which most people don’t seem to make around here.

If I blew up your whole family and friends, destroyed your house, infrastructure, occupied your country and then starting pillaging its natural resources, chances are you’ll hold a grudge against me. Of course, Al-Qaeda is different. They declared Jihad on infidels back in the late 70s. Trained and armed by the CIA even before the Soviets attacked Afghanistan, they were a collection of the looniest, most extremist Islamist around the world. And the CIA did a pretty good job at gathering them on the same spot. After the collapse of the USSR, they were left with nobody to fight and turned against the US. Such people should be imprisonated. Going around bombing countries is ensuring them a steady flow of new recruits. I heard that they were turning down people at one point.

[quote]derek wrote:
Yes, I totally agree. However, you do not let mosquitoes bite you and let them breed when you can take steps to eradicate the ones that already exist.[/quote]

If you have something that kills mosquitoes, I totally support your decision. I even supported the war on Afghanistan because the good that came out of it outweighs the bad. But declaring a crusade (Bush’s own words) against the whole Muslim world is downright madness. Which reminds me about a mosquito and indiscriminate killings story…

Back in the fifties, people in a region of Borneo were having trouble with malaria. In an effort to save lives, the World Health Organization decided to intervene by drastically reducing the mosquito population (mosquitoes being carriers of malaria). To do so, they sprayed the insecticide DDT all over the area, killing many mosquitoes and significantly reducing the incidence of malaria.

However, the World Health Organization failed to appreciate the full scope of their actions. DDT not only successfully killed mosquitoes - it also attacked a parasitic wasp population. These wasps, it turned out, had kept in check a population of thatch-eating caterpillars. So with the accidental removal of the wasps, the caterpillars flourished, and soon building roofs started falling in all over the place.

As if that was not enough the insects, poisoned by DDT, were consumed by geckoes. The biological half-life of DDT is around 8-years, so animals like geckoes do not metabolize it very fast, and it stays in their system for a long time. Those geckoes, carrying the DDT poison, were in turn hunted and eaten by the cat population. With far less cats, rats took over and multiplied, and this in turn led to outbreaks of typhus and sylvatic plague (which are passed on by rats).

By now the cure had become worse than the initial disease, so the World Health Organization did what any self-respecting world health organization would do: they parachuted 14,000 live cats into Borneo. The event was known as Operation Cat Drop.

The WHO had failed to consider the full implications of their actions on the delicate ecology of the region. Because they lacked understanding of the basic effects of DDT (now banned in the United States), such as a long half-life that allows spreading through levels of consumption, and the relationships among the animals of the area, they ended up making things worse rather than better - and a high cost was paid for this mistake.

By considering only the straightforward, first-level relationship between mosquitoes as carriers of malaria and humans as recipients of malaria, the WHO unrealistically assumed that this relationship could be investigated or acted upon independently of any other variables or relationships. They considered one tiny aspect of the system, rather than the entire thing (the entire ecology).

The results of their actions demonstrate the incredible importance of whole-systems thinking. In the real world, as opposed to the drawing boards at a WHO meeting, one relationship strand (e.g. mosquito-human) cannot be separated from the rest of the system. All of the parts are intricately tied together in a complex fabric of inter-relatedness, and tugging on one string of that fabric can pull at other parts which may not at first glance appear at all connected to the point of action. While the WHO was certainly doing their best to help people in a crisis, and things worked themselves back into balance in the end, the drastic counter-measures necessary to re-achieve basic stability demonstrate the necessity of viewing our world in its own holistic terms rather than simplistic theorizing that tries to separate easily manipulated variables in tweakable relationships.

The same idea can be applied to all areas of life. Everything is inter-related, and changes which are seemingly narrow in scope can set off a domino effect that reaches much wider than ever anticipated. A butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world could set off a chain-reaction that eventually effects the weather patterns across the entire Earth.

The same applies for your “war on terror”. You ended up with more terrorists due to your indiscriminate reaction that amalgamated fanatics with secular Arabs and peaceful Muslims.

[quote]lixy wrote:
Gkhan wrote:
The same people who caused a woman to kill herself and kill other innocent people have now killed even more on behalf of a woman who was allegedly raped!

The only people that caused her to kill herself along with other innocents are…
[/quote]

Muhammed? Isn’t it a kadish, or a radish, or some other sack of bullshit?

[quote]lixy wrote:

The same applies for your “war on terror”. You ended up with more terrorists due to your indiscriminate reaction that amalgamated fanatics with secular Arabs and peaceful Muslims.[/quote]

I am very much in favor of all Muslims becoming peaceful.

The only thing that creates the aforementioned terrorists is the pathological mindset of Islamism.

Casting them as ‘victims’ is pathetic, and brazenly political - after all, if they are nothing but honest-to-Allah victims, why do Islamists continue to slaughter African Christians and animists in the name of spreading their ‘ism’? More Africans are killed in a day than in a month in Palestine - why would we default to thinking the Islamists are the ones being picked on and would just mind their own business if only we hadn’t ‘occupied’ their world?

If you believe that, go visit Africa.

Islamists wanted a war, and they got one - why now pretend that they are innocent victims?

[quote]lixy wrote:
derek wrote:
Yes, I totally agree. However, you do not let mosquitoes bite you and let them breed when you can take steps to eradicate the ones that already exist.

If you have something that kills mosquitoes, I totally support your decision. I even supported the war on Afghanistan because the good that came out of it outweighs the bad. But declaring a crusade (Bush’s own words) against the whole Muslim world is downright madness. Which reminds me about a mosquito and indiscriminate killings story…

Back in the fifties, people in a region of Borneo were having trouble with malaria. In an effort to save lives, the World Health Organization decided to intervene by drastically reducing the mosquito population (mosquitoes being carriers of malaria). To do so, they sprayed the insecticide DDT all over the area, killing many mosquitoes and significantly reducing the incidence of malaria.

However, the World Health Organization failed to appreciate the full scope of their actions. DDT not only successfully killed mosquitoes - it also attacked a parasitic wasp population. These wasps, it turned out, had kept in check a population of thatch-eating caterpillars. So with the accidental removal of the wasps, the caterpillars flourished, and soon building roofs started falling in all over the place.

As if that was not enough the insects, poisoned by DDT, were consumed by geckoes. The biological half-life of DDT is around 8-years, so animals like geckoes do not metabolize it very fast, and it stays in their system for a long time. Those geckoes, carrying the DDT poison, were in turn hunted and eaten by the cat population. With far less cats, rats took over and multiplied, and this in turn led to outbreaks of typhus and sylvatic plague (which are passed on by rats).

By now the cure had become worse than the initial disease, so the World Health Organization did what any self-respecting world health organization would do: they parachuted 14,000 live cats into Borneo. The event was known as Operation Cat Drop.

The WHO had failed to consider the full implications of their actions on the delicate ecology of the region. Because they lacked understanding of the basic effects of DDT (now banned in the United States), such as a long half-life that allows spreading through levels of consumption, and the relationships among the animals of the area, they ended up making things worse rather than better - and a high cost was paid for this mistake.

By considering only the straightforward, first-level relationship between mosquitoes as carriers of malaria and humans as recipients of malaria, the WHO unrealistically assumed that this relationship could be investigated or acted upon independently of any other variables or relationships. They considered one tiny aspect of the system, rather than the entire thing (the entire ecology).

The results of their actions demonstrate the incredible importance of whole-systems thinking. In the real world, as opposed to the drawing boards at a WHO meeting, one relationship strand (e.g. mosquito-human) cannot be separated from the rest of the system. All of the parts are intricately tied together in a complex fabric of inter-relatedness, and tugging on one string of that fabric can pull at other parts which may not at first glance appear at all connected to the point of action. While the WHO was certainly doing their best to help people in a crisis, and things worked themselves back into balance in the end, the drastic counter-measures necessary to re-achieve basic stability demonstrate the necessity of viewing our world in its own holistic terms rather than simplistic theorizing that tries to separate easily manipulated variables in tweakable relationships.

The same idea can be applied to all areas of life. Everything is inter-related, and changes which are seemingly narrow in scope can set off a domino effect that reaches much wider than ever anticipated. A butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world could set off a chain-reaction that eventually effects the weather patterns across the entire Earth.

The same applies for your “war on terror”. You ended up with more terrorists due to your indiscriminate reaction that amalgamated fanatics with secular Arabs and peaceful Muslims.[/quote]

Cite your source if you C&P.

[quote]lixy wrote:
The same applies for your “war on terror”. You ended up with more terrorists due to your indiscriminate reaction that amalgamated fanatics with secular Arabs and peaceful Muslims.[/quote]

I understand your many points but you know damn well that when they attack in Sweden, it’ll turn very quickly into “your” war on terrorism.

It’s got to be easy to analyze this whole mess from a country not yet impacted by terrorist’s actions.

I’m sure you’ll get your chance to experience it sooner or later. Then we can talk.

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Muhammed? Isn’t it a kadish, or a radish, or some other sack of bullshit?[/quote]

If you attack somebody, you must expect retaliation.

The woman who saw her kids, family and friends fall under US bombs and fire views yur attack on Iraq as unjustified (like the majority of the world). Did she have anything to do with 9/11? No. But you still destroyed her life.

[quote]Headhunter wrote:

I am very much in favor of all Muslims becoming peaceful.

[/quote]

And I am very much in favor of all girls becoming T-vixen.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
The only thing that creates the aforementioned terrorists is the pathological mindset of Islamism.

Casting them as ‘victims’ is pathetic, and brazenly political - after all, if they are nothing but honest-to-Allah victims, why do Islamists continue to slaughter African Christians and animists in the name of spreading their ‘ism’? More Africans are killed in a day than in a month in Palestine - why would we default to thinking the Islamists are the ones being picked on and would just mind their own business if only we hadn’t ‘occupied’ their world?[/quote]

Again, you’re making the dangerous amalgam between Islamists like Ben-Laden - which I totally support action against - and Secular Arabs and peaceful Muslims which you attacked. The latter have nothing against you but will sooner or latter see you as enemies if you continue invading their countries and wrecking their lives.

I spend a quarter of century in Africa.

They aren’t innocent victims. They should be fought.

Just lay off the innocent victims which you slaughter on a daily basis. For every Islamist, you end up killing a few hundred innocents. This was bound to blow back in your face and turn even moderates into radicals.

[quote]etaco wrote:
Cite your source if you C&P.[/quote]

http://www.strange-loops.com/blogarchive200401.html

Sorry about that.