(July 15, 2016 at 7:48 am)Little lunch Wrote: I sometimes wonder how far you would have to go into the future before you could look back and say, 'remember when all those Muslims were terrorising the planet.'
And I wonder if this will be a permanent thing for the rest of my lifetime. I hope not.

It's gonna be a permanent thing, unfortunately.

As long as the region itself is highly unstable, it will continue. I grew up with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and it won't be solved in my lifetime. Now, the lid is off from even more boiling kettles. Partly because of Bushite idiocy, partly because there's still finger pointing at Assad, instead of understanding that it's in our own best interest to protect him instead of groups with unknown goals. Lybia should have told us as much.

Yeah, bad man, I know. But at least largely secular bad man with a vested interest in stability.

BTW, what kind of nutball brings fake grenades to a terrorist attack ??

(July 15, 2016 at 9:48 am)abaris Wrote: As long as the region itself is highly unstable, it will continue. I grew up with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and it won't be solved in my lifetime. Now, the lid is off from even more boiling kettles. Partly because of Bushite idiocy, partly because there's still finger pointing at Assad, instead of understanding that it's in our own best interest to protect him instead of groups with unknown goals. Lybia should have told us as much.

Yeah, bad man, I know. But at least largely secular bad man with a vested interest in stability.

I completely agree. We're making a huge mistake by trying to oust him and it's also pissing off Russia. And it's unlikely that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be solved in my lifetime either.

(July 15, 2016 at 9:49 am)vorlon13 Wrote: BTW, what kind of nutball brings fake grenades to a terrorist attack ??

Got a source for that?

Do we want to protect someone who is believed (evidenced really) to use sarin gas on his own people?

In Lybia, were we happy to stand back and watch Ghadaffi march towards a probable slaughter of mostly helpless people?

I'm not advocating a 'world' police stance, but I'm 100% pro intervention where it is warranted, and Lybia was 100% justified in my view.

(July 15, 2016 at 10:02 am)Pandæmonium Wrote: Do we want to protect someone who is believed (evidenced really) to use sarin gas on his own people?

In Lybia, were we happy to stand back and watch Ghadaffi march towards a probable slaughter of mostly helpless people?

I'm not advocating a 'world' police stance, but I'm 100% pro intervention where it is warranted, and Lybia was 100% justified in my view.

Out of curiosity, do you have a set of guidelines with which we could tell if intervention is warranted?

There are a multitude of Both national and international guidelines yes.

But I'm talking more of a personal moral perspective. Bracketing out postwar cleanups and infrastructure development (where I reality the problem really lies), I don't feel comfortable with the idea of knowing we could at least aim to prevent a slaughter of people but we decided to take the isolationist view and we stood back and did nothing.

We live in a globalised world. Isolationism really isn't an option anymore. What happens the other side of the world will eventually affect us all one way or another.

If folks are happy to stand back or even begrudgingly allow someone to use sarin on their own people (a very unpleasant death of course), then ok. I'm not one of them, though.

(July 15, 2016 at 9:52 am)Bella Morte Wrote: Got a source for that?

According to French and other international news sources, he indeed had a load of fake weapons in the back. That's obviously one of the preliminary findings of the investigators.

Which, along with his rap sheet, makes me unsure if a real organisation is behind this or if this guy didn't simply go over the edge. We had a similar incident at the city of Graz last year. Guy went nuts and drove his SUV into saturday shoppers. Thankfully only three fatalities and not 80. Driver survived and is now in a closed mental facility.

(July 15, 2016 at 3:49 am)Bella Morte Wrote:

(July 15, 2016 at 3:47 am)abaris Wrote: Two differences. First, your country hasn't got a disenfranchised proportion of youths, originating from the most sensible regions for recruitment. France has second or third generations coming from Algeria, Tunesia and other former colonies where radical islam is on the rise. They are born French, but traditionally without hope to ever scratch a decent living. In previous years that led to riots in the so called Banlieus. Now they're recruitment fodder for radical preachers, offering them some purpose in life. The killed driver is reported to have been French with Tunesian roots.

Secondly, if you want to destabilize Europe, France seems like the most logical angle. For reasons I gave above. If Le Pen wins the presidential elections next year, there's a good chance that the country would leave the EU. Which would lead to political as well as economical turmoil, since the Euro would be dead too. Europe would be occupied with itself for years to come. Foreign intervention would be off the table. Precious time for gorups like ISIL to regroup and to gain strength again, since the USA would be the only country still willing and able to fight them abroad.

Russia seems to be doing a better job than the yanks.

A few token air raids before pulling out because of a lack of money isn't really a job.