I just dont believe that FORCE as the only strategy is going to solve this problem, a problem that faces us ALL.

Gill, several of the posts above did address this point, at least indirectly, and with some pessimism, given the passions driving actions on both sides:

Islamists: grievances arising from identification with groups asserted to be repressed, hopes associated with the success of global jihad; no one in this thread endorses these ambitions or methods

Bushites: arrogant belief in violence as a technological fix for cowing and/or killing people with unappealing ideas and methods. Panelbeaterbird, against all evidence to the contrary, in his saner moments continues to assert that these methods will be sufficient for the task. At other moments he seems actualy to relish the pain and torment necessitated by this approach.

A huge burden has been laid upon you and you have proven yourself to be strong enough to carry it. It’s not this burden but your subsequent courage that gives you the moral authority to say things and to do things that the rest of us cannot do. People will listen to you because they recognise that you have much invested in the task of making sense of what happened to you and how that relates to what is happening in the world.

You can never shrug that burden. Either you carry it or it will crush you.

The rest of us can afford to be pessimistic, but not to despair. I venture to suggest that pessimism would be a more dangerous state of mind for you.

I wish you enduring strength.

I work closely with Muslim communities, this is where I LISTEN. I am in constant discussion with the British Government, many in the Met Police are now close friends. I just dont believe that FORCE as the only strategy is going to solve this problem, a problem that faces us ALL.

I am really very sad at some of your comments directed at me / my actions – I have to do SOMETHING – I have seen too much to turn my head and say nothing.

I wish you all very safe days
Gill

Jason’s correct.

Birdy’s eruptions are like Waiting for Godot’s Lucky coming to terms with the fact that he’s got off Pozzo’s leash.

He doesn’t know yet whether he likes the experience of freedom. He is free to do what he wants, but he continually returns to Larvatus Prodeo, his Pozzo proxy, begging, daring someone to tie the rope round his neck again.

A fascinating existential predicament.

Great theatre.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Katz you weirdo.

I know for a fucking fact that this just HAS TO BE leftist-projection.

But tracing it back its hard to see just what a twisted and tawdry life you lead.

And I’m not sure I have the motivation to chase that rabbit.

No thats bullshit Mark.

It went wrong after week 3 when the left, with relentless political warfare, boxed the administration in, and then the killing of solidiers and Iraqis began.

Because the left and Jihadists had this sort of meeting of minds. Being as they were both spawned from similiar origins.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Watching HELLBOY last night…. When confronted with this creature…. when you killed it two more would be born….

HELLBOY immediately says… We have to kill them all at once!

Damn simple when you think about it.

There is no mystery if they go to war with you…. then you go to war with them… and then for some reason you CIRCUMSCRIBE the geographical territory of your operations…

The second you do that the other side is winning.

And WE could be winning and Jihadia losing and its just a matter of enlightenment and a change in perspective.

Oh yes, this mob-handed claque of jock-sniffing, pork-headed, Blackberry-hooked DC fixers have come up headfirst against the subtle ruthless culture that refined chess.

“Shah mat”

I invite you to reflect on the contrasts with late 30s Germany, Spain and Italy.

Internal contrasts?

Yes, Spain is the odd one out in at least two important respects.

1. Francoism was achieved after a bloody civil war. The experience of civil war kept alive civil hatreds. Ordinary Francoists had much more invested in the survival or Francoism than pro-Hitler Germans and pro-Mussolini Italians. Francoists feared reprisals from their neighbours. That’s much worse than an occupying army. That fear nourished enthusiasm.

2. Francoism allied itself with Catholicism. New polity and old faith nourished each other. In Germany and in Italy fascist regimes threatened and even persecuted traditional religion. Spanish Catholics could well believe “No Generalissimo, No Church”. This was an additional reason for Spaniards to identify with Franco.

And Iraq?

Religious enthusiasms also drive Iraqis toward civil war. But as yet the Shiite Franco has not appeared.

Franco rebelled against a government discredited by its associations with secularist world communism.

In Iraq Islamism sets itself against the illegitimate, secularist, US sponsored state.

But there’s something deliciously piquant about Iraq. It concerns the role of the invading superpower. Islamists a clever enough to recognise that they can use governmental institutions to destroy civil government. Bush had no choice but to let them in. The advent of “democracy” in Iraq is Bush’s only boast. He cannot afford to acknowledge that “democracy” opened the door to theocracy.

Nothing like that happened in Italy, Germany, or Spain.

I find the title of this thread intriguing.

I agree, boredinhk – there’s an invitation there to a different discussion from the one that transpired…