OT: Iraq, War, Terrorism, Ideology and various flames here please

[SimonM]

In order to keep a thread which should be devoted to dispassionate sharing of information and compassion for the victims of a terrible incident from descending into nothing but another political flamewar let's move those ideas to THIS thread and avoid cross-posting.

I might as well get the ball rolling by suggesting one thing: Blair had a very set agenda for the G8 this year. It included African Debt Relief and Climate Change Policy. With one exception the entire G8 was pretty much behind him. By distracting Blair at the OPENING of the G8 summit it could potentially derail these proceedings. Make of this what you will.

Feel free to open fire.

[Nick Forrer]

My earlier post:

To be clear these bombings are a horrendous atrocity and those responsible should be apprehended and charged with murder.

That said IMO there are a few things that this bombing demonstrates along with the Madrid bombing:

1) that for all its stated aims the so called war on terror, that is, the bombing and invasion of Afghanistan has, after 4 years, still not resulted in the capture of Bin Laden and has not diminished the terrorists ability *in any significant way*
to launch attacks against the west. After all you don’t need to go to Afghanistan to learn to make nitro glycerin – all you need is household chemicals, a bath, some basic chemistry knowledge and a recipe that you can get off the internet in 5 minutes.

2) that in fact by participating in the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq (done of course in defiance of the opinion of the majority of the British public - although this is not itself a contributing factor to what I am about to say) the British government have, in all probability, both

a)increased the support for terrorist/radical groups in both the middle east and the west

and

b)increased the chance of Britain being a target (for anyone who doubts this let me know when, say, Estonia or Finland will have their capitals bombed at rush hour)

This is in addition to the fact that these operations have killed thousands of innocent people (as much as 100,000 in Iraq according to London based medical journal The Lancet), scattered AL Q across a wider and much harder to monitor region (and even perhaps created a new base for them in Iraq), brought back to power in Afghanistan a ruthless gang of drug pushers (heroin production has gone back up to what it was pre Taliban), undermined international law, increased global instability, strengthened the perception of the US as a predatory and out of control imperial power, and provided a convenient pretext for tyrannical and corrupt governments to repress domestic political dissent .

Again, the perpetrators of these crimes should be brought to justice. However just as the RAF don’t go and bomb Boston (the source of much republican funding, arms and support) every time a bomb goes off in London, so too should the west think clearly about bombing and invading countries especially where that is done on a false pretext, without a clear UN mandate, and without a clear exit strategy.

[David Jamieson]

1.Iraq war = unprecedented attack on a sovereign nation by another nation without siginificant provocation and based on incorrect inteeleigence and still continues.

2.Bombs in spain = bad move by someone. Who did claim responsibility for that?

3.Bombs in London = totally sucks. Who claimed responsibility for it? Is it Iraq or G8 related?

4.Terrorists= Bad, non-sovereign, lashing out, for teh most part crazy folk that somehow finds other crazy folk so they can group together and bomb things in the hopes of...what? I have no idea what these peoples goals are. Just bombing stuff? Not taking responsibility for the bombings and then what?

5.New world order= probably not a bad idea in general, but I don't trust a lot of the people that are at the helm of it's inception and construction. They are shady and have their own agendas of wealth and power. Probably shouldn't be trusted with our tax dollars as much as we let them be.

6. People = need to take responsibility for their lives and properties and get further away from relying on government to take care of us. Government takes care of Government first and foremost. People are now an afterthought.

7.If you don't believe 6, take a look around you.

8.the end

[fa_jing]

My gut feeling is that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan would be stated as motivations for the attack by the perpetrators, however Britain's going to war against the will of its public and any lack of support for the war by the UN would not figure into their motivations whatsoever. In other words, had the British public supported the war more and had the UN signed off more directly on it, the terrorist attack still would have occured.

[Nick Forrer]

Fa Jing,

I agree with what you are saying. The terrorists would have almost certainly attacked regardless of whether there was a UN mandate or not. Moreover, if anything one would have thought that lack of British support for its governments policies would decrease the chance of retaliation. Obviously the facts tell us otherwise. Rereading my post i can see it is worded in such a way that suggests otherwise so i wanted to clarify that. The points about the UN and popular support are incidental/tangential/whatever the word im looking for is, to the main points I am making.

[David Jamieson]

Had the UN sanctioned the war in Iraq the same as they sanctioned the war in afghanistan, I think there is a 50/50 chance that everything would've staid how it is.

England is a hotbed of radical Islamic imams with some of the most vocal for violence clerics residing there and recruiting for terror camps and calling for the "new jihad".

In other words it was bound to happen in Britain sooner or later.

Britain is more closely tied to the current state of affairs in the middle east perhaps moreso than any other country. Why, Britains been meddling there for ages! From Before Gordon of Khartoum and before Lawrence of Arabia right up until today the British army or diplomatic corps has in some way shape or form been attempting to influence the bedouins both positively and negatively.

Now the US and the UK are the big players in the first pre-emptive attack type war in modern times and so those two countries are going to be the countries that are spurned and attacked by radical islamic fundamentalists who are the same people that are killing us and uk soldiers in Iraq and being killed by us and uk soldiers.

That is the price of being at war with an enemy that has no nation of it's own. This is a cost of jumping to judgement on teh region and it's peoples and it will likely continue until the occupation of Iraq is over and the middle east is vacated of western interests and the people of the region can go about their lives with autonomous power over their countries.

It is silly and narrow to complain about the "terrosists". They will continue to attack the west so long as we meddle in their countries. So live with it. You can't treat someone badly and expect them to be nice to you.

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

In order to keep a thread which should be devoted to dispassionate sharing of information and compassion for the victims of a terrible incident from descending into nothing but another political flamewar let's move those ideas to THIS thread and avoid cross-posting.

I might as well get the ball rolling by suggesting one thing: Blair had a very set agenda for the G8 this year. It included African Debt Relief and Climate Change Policy. With one exception the entire G8 was pretty much behind him. By distracting Blair at the OPENING of the G8 summit it could potentially derail these proceedings. Make of this what you will.

Feel free to open fire.

i don't do politics, but thank you for this.