2 Explosions at Zaventem Airport (Brussels)

[Alf Bentley]

The Wikipedia article on Salah Abdeslam, the bloke arrested for alleged involvement in the Paris attacks, makes interesting reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salah_Abdeslam

 

Yet again, "home-grown, non-devout petty criminal and all-round waster" seems to sum up his background. This is the pattern with a lot of the people involved in these terrorist attacks. Obviously, there are "devout" Islamist hate preachers out there, and maybe some of these terrorists latch onto them at some point - but their connection to Islam is mainly skin-deep. Most of them seem to be lowlife losers who latch onto Islamist terrorism to give their pointless lives some meaning and purpose.

 

Excuse the links copied across from Wikipedia...

"Salah Abdeslam was born on 15 September 1989 in Brussels, Belgium. Though the Abdeslams lived in Belgium from the 1960s, they were all French nationals, having acquired French nationality from the time the parents lived in Algeria.^[1]

Another childhood friend stated that Abdeslam liked football and motorbikes.^[6] According to a woman to whom Abdeslam was briefly engaged in 2011, he and Abaaoud continued to be close friends into adulthood.^[7]

At some point, Abdeslam became a reputed user of cannabis. He also regularly drank alcohol, was known to frequent gay bars where he associated himself with circles of male homosexual prostitutes and their clients, and was regarded as a "rent boy" by patrons and staff as he was "always hanging out with that kinda crowd".^[8][9][10]

Abdeslam was employed by STIB-MIVB as a mechanic from September 2009 to 2011.^[5][11] One source states his employment was terminated due to his repeated absences,^[12][13] but another source previously close to Abdeslam stated that his employment was terminated due to some kind of act or acts of crime, for which he was subsequently sentenced to one month in jail.^[7]

From December 2013, Abdeslam was the manager of a bar named Les Béguines in Molenbeek, located west of Brussels, after his brother Brahim took over the license. Most of the bar's customers were of Maghrebian origin. The bar was closed when authorities discovered that hallucinogenic substances were being used there.^[11] Abdeslam and his brother sold the bar about six weeks before the attacks.^[14]

According to one source, Abdeslam was already known to police authorities as a person involved in petty crime.^[15][16] Another states that both he and Abaaoud were imprisoned for armed robbery in 2010.^[5] According to the lawyer representing Abaaoud, his client and Abdeslam were arrested in December 2010 for attempting to break into a parking garage.^[17] In February 2011, Abdeslam was convicted for breaking and entering.^[18] In February 2015, he was arrested by Dutch police and charged for possession of cannabis. He was subsequently fined €70."

[Captain...]

I think we need to distinguish here.

The martyrs that blow themselves up, committing a sacrifice for IS for instance, are mere pawns in the game. The real leaders and instigators get away scotch-free and remain in a hiding place. They are the ones that should be targeted and held accountable.

 

I don't see Islam per se as being violent. It's the (mis)interpretation of the Qur'an that becomes the issue and has been for quite some time.

Let's not forget the Islamic world in itself is essentially divided into Sunnis (Salafists, ISIS) and Shiites (who are less active on a global scale) and those two groups tend to have a complicated relationship also.

 

Until we identify who these masterminds are and their real motives, and your post is getting a little conspiracy theory/illuminati, it is very difficult to say that this isn't all motivated by religion, or by power hungry individuals corrupted by their own twisted beliefs. 

 

If you believe the narrative then ISIS is trying to provoke a holy war in Syria, because of their understanding of certain Islamic texts, that a holy war will be fought in Syria (or whatever it used to be called) and the enemies of Islam will all be defeated and the world will end they will all be raptured.

 

This article kinda sums it up and it is hard not to argue with it, accepting some of the assumptions it has made.

 

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/what-isis-want-everything-dont-6848067 (I know it's the mirror and is very simplified, but effective)

 

It boils it down to 3 options:

 

Do nothing - not an option

 

Short horrible war - military deaths shared all over social media

 

Long horrible war - civilian deaths shared all over social media

 

I would be in favour of the Short horrible war, give them what they want, because if it does lead to Jesus coming down with a spear and sparking the end of the world, then I  guess they were right all along.

 

The biggest issue with a short horrible war though is that it could escalate, any assault on ISIS would need co-operation with Russia and an agreed plan on how to deal with the fall out, turning Syria into a political dick swinging contest between Putin and Trump* could feasibly bring about a third world war and nuclear apocalypse. Which would again prove ISIS right but it wouldn't be Jesus with a spear but Trump and a big red button or Putin with a polonium tipped umbrella. 

 

*I'm saying Trump here because I don't believe Clinton/Sanders would support a ground assault on ISIS whereas Trump could feasibly get elected on that basis, it's a fvcked up situation that's all I know.

[UPinCarolina]

The Wikipedia article on Salah Abdeslam, the bloke arrested for alleged involvement in the Paris attacks, makes interesting reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salah_Abdeslam

 

Yet again, "home-grown, non-devout petty criminal and all-round waster" seems to sum up his background. This is the pattern with a lot of the people involved in these terrorist attacks. Obviously, there are "devout" Islamist hate preachers out there, and maybe some of these terrorists latch onto them at some point - but their connection to Islam is mainly skin-deep. Most of them seem to be lowlife losers who latch onto Islamist terrorism to give their pointless lives some meaning and purpose.

 

Excuse the links copied across from Wikipedia...

"Salah Abdeslam was born on 15 September 1989 in Brussels, Belgium. Though the Abdeslams lived in Belgium from the 1960s, they were all French nationals, having acquired French nationality from the time the parents lived in Algeria.^[1]

Another childhood friend stated that Abdeslam liked football and motorbikes.^[6] According to a woman to whom Abdeslam was briefly engaged in 2011, he and Abaaoud continued to be close friends into adulthood.^[7]

At some point, Abdeslam became a reputed user of cannabis. He also regularly drank alcohol, was known to frequent gay bars where he associated himself with circles of male homosexual prostitutes and their clients, and was regarded as a "rent boy" by patrons and staff as he was "always hanging out with that kinda crowd".^[8][9][10]

Abdeslam was employed by STIB-MIVB as a mechanic from September 2009 to 2011.^[5][11] One source states his employment was terminated due to his repeated absences,^[12][13] but another source previously close to Abdeslam stated that his employment was terminated due to some kind of act or acts of crime, for which he was subsequently sentenced to one month in jail.^[7]

From December 2013, Abdeslam was the manager of a bar named Les Béguines in Molenbeek, located west of Brussels, after his brother Brahim took over the license. Most of the bar's customers were of Maghrebian origin. The bar was closed when authorities discovered that hallucinogenic substances were being used there.^[11] Abdeslam and his brother sold the bar about six weeks before the attacks.^[14]

According to one source, Abdeslam was already known to police authorities as a person involved in petty crime.^[15][16] Another states that both he and Abaaoud were imprisoned for armed robbery in 2010.^[5] According to the lawyer representing Abaaoud, his client and Abdeslam were arrested in December 2010 for attempting to break into a parking garage.^[17] In February 2011, Abdeslam was convicted for breaking and entering.^[18] In February 2015, he was arrested by Dutch police and charged for possession of cannabis. He was subsequently fined €70."

How did he not end up in jail for an extended period of time?

[Guest MattP]

How did he not end up in jail for an extended period of time?

 

No idea, although just as concerning is how the actual two suicide bombers yesterday were free to do what they, why were they out?

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/brussels-attacks/brussels-airport-suicide-bombers-were-brothers-sources-n543956

 

In 2010, Ibrahim El Bakraoui was sentenced to 9 years in prison for shooting at police with an assault rifle during a robbery.

 

Khalid El Bakraoui was arrested for possession of Kalashnikovs in 2011 and had been sentenced to 5 years in prison for "carjackings."

 

What the actual fcuk? How leniant in sentencing in some European countries these days for these to get that in the first place and secondly to be out so quickly?

[UPinCarolina]

No idea, although just as concerning is how the actual two suicide bombers yesterday were free to do what they, why were they out?

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/brussels-attacks/brussels-airport-suicide-bombers-were-brothers-sources-n543956

 

 

What the actual fcuk? How leniant in sentencing in some European countries these days for these to get that in the first place and secondly to be out so quickly?

I don't agree with many American sentencing laws, or the purpose of our prison system (punishment w/o rehabilitation) - but that's ridiculous and seems to indicate a distinct lack of heft/weight in the legal code. 

[Guest MattP]

Interesting article from The Times today on Belgium, Molenbeek and it's recent history.

 

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article4719481.ece(paywall so I've copied and pasted)

 

Suburb where jihadists can be sure of sanctuary

 

Jihadists have for years ruthlessly exploited the chronic dysfunction at the heart of the Belgian system of governance to use the divided country at the heart of Europe as a base for murderous attacks. The story of Belgian counterterrorism is one of miscommunication, rivalry and mistrust that has hampered the response to the nest of terrorists incubated and concentrated in the capital’s Molenbeek district. Appalling lapses in co-operation between a dozen different security and police authorities have been exacerbated by similar problems liaising with neighbouring France.

 

These difficulties were dramatically dragged into the spotlight after the attacks in November on Paris, which lies an easy 300km drive to the south of Brussels across the then unsupervised border. While the terrorists, drawn mainly from Moroccan or Tunisian backgrounds, share the common language of French, the Belgian state is divided between the Francophone south and Flemish-speaking north.

 

Brussels too is a divided city. To the east of the centre live and work the well-paid eurocrats of the EU as well as the security staff of the headquarters of Nato, which lies on a main road to the airport. In the north and west of the inner city are the tightly knit immigrant communities where a network of radicalised terrorists has an unknown number of safe houses and sympathisers.

 

Brussels, a city of 1.4 million people, has 19 communes, or boroughs, which all had separate police forces for many years until a consolidation into six forces, as well as the federal police.

They have to liaise with the country’s overstretched and understaffed secret service which was supposed to have 750 members but was revealed last year to be 150 short of even that modest total. Since then 50 recruits have been hired but their training will take two years.

 

Belgium is a country in which local politicians jealously look after their own fiefdoms but no one was looking out for Molenbeek as terrorists found sanctuary there. Just 15 minutes from the Grand Place, it has long been detached from the Brussels of moules frites and hand-crafted chocolates known by millions of tourists.

 

Molenbeek is one of the most densely populated areas of the country, with 96,346 people living in less than 6 sq km. Unemployment is at a record high, with about 30 per cent out of work in 2013, two-thirds of whom had been without a job for more than a year.

For those under 25, the jobless rate was 42 per cent. Four out of ten residents of the district are Muslims, with many families originating from Morocco, including those of the Paris ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud and the suspect arrested last week, Salah Abdeslam, who grew up together and fell into a life of crime.

 

Abaaoud and the Abdeslam brothers Brahim and Salah, who ran a bar in Molenbeek, were named on a list of people suspected of involvement in terrorist activities handed to the mayor of Molenbeek by the intelligence services in October.

The mayor’s response was typical of Belgian security dysfunction. “What was I supposed to do about them? It is not my job to track possible terrorists,” Françoise Schepmans said. “That is the responsibility of the federal police.”

 

Brahim Abdeslam, 31, went on to carry out shootings in the 10th and 11th arrondissements in Paris and then blew himself up at the Comptoir Voltaire restaurant. His brother was arrested last Friday in Molenbeek, around the corner from his childhood home. He was able to go to ground for four months under the nose of the authorities after the Paris attacks because they have been unable to penetrate the large underground world of drug dealers and petty criminals.

 

The task of the authorities has been complicated by the ease with which Islamic State recruits were able to move around Europe during the influx of more than a million migrants last year. Suspects also exploited the booming market in false documents to assume often multiple identities, making tracking them more difficult.

 

Police have now admitted that the network protecting and supporting the Isis activists was much bigger than they previously thought, including those willing to drive them, buy materials such as phones and food, and give them shelter.

The Belgian authorities have denied that Molenbeek was ever a no-go zone for them but in reality it has been a hotbed of radicalism for years without an effective response from the Belgian state.

 

In 2001, just days before the 9/11 attacks in the US, a suicide assassination squad was dispatched from Molenbeek to northeast Afghanistan to kill Ahmad Shah Massoud, a powerful military leader. The two killers, believed to be Tunisian members of al-Qaeda, were given Moroccan passports while in Molenbeek and posed as Belgian TV journalists to secure an interview with Massoud, blowing him up with explosives concealed in their camera.

 

Molenbeek’s role in international terror was underlined in 2004 when it was the base of one of the key suspects in the Madrid train bombings that killed 192 people. Youssef Belhadj, a Moroccan who called himself Abu Dujana al-Afghani and lived in Molenbeek, claimed responsibility for the bombings on behalf of “al-Qaeda in Europe” in a video. He was found guilty of belonging to a terrorist group and sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2008.

 

Molenbeek has since been linked to the Charlie Hebdo attackers as well as being home to Ayoub el-Khazzani, the gunman who was overpowered when he tried to bring terror to a high-speed French train in August.

 

Mehdi Nemmouche, a French-Algerian who killed four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, spent time in the area. Two suspected terrorists killed by Belgian police in a shootout in the eastern town of Verviers in January last year were from Molenbeek.

Arguments between France and Belgium have been building as evidence of security failures has grown. The Belgian prosecutor’s office said it was angry that the French published the name of a suspect in the Paris attacks, Chakib Akrouh, before the Belgians searched the houses of his relatives.

 

The Paris prosecutor tried to conceal the identity of another suspect, Mohamed Abrini, during a news conference, arguing that investigators needed time to find out more about him. His name had been revealed by Belgian authorities moments earlier.

[Alf Bentley]

What happens to these blokes in prison is probably more important than how long their sentences are.

Even if they serve longer terms, they'll come out one day, even if their crimes are at the more serious end of the spectrum (armed robbery, rather than petty theft and drugs).

 

There seems to be a well-established 4-stage trajectory that often includes radicalisation in prison. How is that allowed to happen?

- Stage 1: End up with no meaningful qualifications, no regular job and no prospects in a crappy area of one of Europe's big cities

- Stage 2: Get involved in petty crime, theft, drugs, maybe graduating to something more serious like armed robbery.

- Stage 3: End up in jail, where you get radicalised by some extremist with a simplistic, brutal version of Islam....suddenly your life has meaning and purpose.

- Stage 4: Leave jail on a mission, get involved with Islamic State or whoever, and pursue your meaningful purpose destroying "corrupt western society" by blowing up dozens of innocent people (and yourself).

 

Whether or not longer sentences are given, surely action is needed at every stage of this process so as to stop this assembly line of terrorist recruits?

[inckley fox]

Yet again, "home-grown, non-devout petty criminal and all-round waster" seems to sum up his background. This is the pattern with a lot of the people involved in these terrorist attacks. Obviously, there are "devout" Islamist hate preachers out there, and maybe some of these terrorists latch onto them at some point - but their connection to Islam is mainly skin-deep. Most of them seem to be lowlife losers who latch onto Islamist terrorism to give their pointless lives some meaning and purpose.

 

A lot of them, as is pointed out elsewhere, are more than petty criminals. It's interesting that, with most terrorists being natives from deprived neighbourhoods with criminal histories, we haven't looked more at what we can achieve in deprived neighbourhoods, or how our rehabilitation systems can be more effective, or what we can do in education.

 

I know a lot of people around Leicester in schools and social services who have said to me 'this kid is going to make headlines', only to lack the budget or the powers to deal with it in the way they know they should. In Spain I spoke to a teacher a few months back who told me about a boy who had, on more than one occasion, threatened to behead other students on religious grounds. I asked what action had been taken and they said parents had been called in and, when it became clear that the parents weren't especially opposed to his attitude, they had to either drop the issue or expel the kid and pass the buck to another school. Why? Because the school doesn't have the power or the training to re-educate the kid, the social services don't have the budget to take the kid out of his parents' hands, and the penal system couldn't possibly cope with prosecuting people like them, even if the laws were in place for them to do it.

 

In this case the kid was a Muslim, which naturally makes him a candidate for Islamic extremism rather than, say, Neo-Nazism, but it's a wider issue which needs to be addressed if we want to stop this happening. Of course, the headlines - in Spain and in England where similar problems arise in a similar manner - never read 'criminal from slum commits atrocity', but maybe that would get closer to the root of the problem than 'Islamic extremism strikes again - who do we bomb now?!'

 

Of course the ideology is a problem too and needs fighting, but the profile tells us a lot about what makes a terrorist. I also know an old woman who, in the 1980s, was involved in a far-left terrorist group active in Spain and which supposedly had links with ETA (don't ask me which acronym - there were lots). She said she distanced herself from the movement because it became dominated by thugs who wanted to attack civilians, as opposed to intellectuals who preferred to select political targets. I know we shouldn't generalise based on our personal encounters, but her experience may well tell us something about the profile of a terrorist.

 

Until we identify who these masterminds are and their real motives, and your post is getting a little conspiracy theory/illuminati, it is very difficult to say that this isn't all motivated by religion, or by power hungry individuals corrupted by their own twisted beliefs. 

 

If you believe the narrative then ISIS is trying to provoke a holy war in Syria, because of their understanding of certain Islamic texts, that a holy war will be fought in Syria (or whatever it used to be called) and the enemies of Islam will all be defeated and the world will end they will all be raptured.

 

This article kinda sums it up and it is hard not to argue with it, accepting some of the assumptions it has made.

 

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/what-isis-want-everything-dont-6848067 (I know it's the mirror and is very simplified, but effective)

 

It boils it down to 3 options:

 

Do nothing - not an option

 

Short horrible war - military deaths shared all over social media

 

Long horrible war - civilian deaths shared all over social media

 

The problem with the article is that it rightly exposes a whole bunch of nonsense in the ISIS ideology, but then uses it to come to the conclusion that the only thing we can do is to bomb Syria. There are three million Muslims in the UK, four million in France, and a very small number of extremists - including recruiters, planners and so on - are active in both. The vast majority of terrorists, including the Belgian ones, are natives. It's hard to see how our military action in Islamic countries has done anything other than provoke a lot of ill-feeling and refugees, so I'm not sure how it would help now either - especially when the greater problem appears to be at home, rather than overseas. Just because people tend to travel to these countries from their homelands to prepare for criminal attacks, doesn't mean that they wouldn't commit them anyway if they just stayed at home. 

 

On the other hand the article completely ignores all of the other measures which could counter terrorism, such as the way we deal with slums, the way our schools and social services and rehabilitation systems deal with problem cases, or even how we could change our approach to religion and education (we still have faith schools, we still train teachers to respectfully deal with kids of different religions in different ways). And please don't think I'm saying Corbyn's answer is any better than the Daily Mail's, because I'm yet to hear any sort of meaningful response to the problem from him either.

 

But it's very hard to trust our politicians to take the right course of action, whatever that may be. Not only because the likes of Trump are unlikely to care deeply about the lives of people on backstreet slums they've never had to live in, nor about the fact that thirty or so people die somewhere for some or other crazy reason, but also because these same politicians recognise war to be a means of achieving political objectives and terrorism as a way to win votes. It's fifteen years since 9/11, and there has been little in the west's approach to Islamic extremism which has suggested otherwise.

[Buce]

What happens to these blokes in prison is probably more important than how long their sentences are.

Even if they serve longer terms, they'll come out one day, even if their crimes are at the more serious end of the spectrum (armed robbery, rather than petty theft and drugs).

There seems to be a well-established 4-stage trajectory that often includes radicalisation in prison. How is that allowed to happen?

- Stage 1: End up with no meaningful qualifications, no regular job and no prospects in a crappy area of one of Europe's big cities

- Stage 2: Get involved in petty crime, theft, drugs, maybe graduating to something more serious like armed robbery.

- Stage 3: End up in jail, where you get radicalised by some extremist with a simplistic, brutal version of Islam....suddenly your life has meaning and purpose.

- Stage 4: Leave jail on a mission, get involved with Islamic State or whoever, and pursue your meaningful purpose destroying "corrupt western society" by blowing up dozens of innocent people (and yourself).

Whether or not longer sentences are given, surely action is needed at every stage of this process so as to stop this assembly line of terrorist recruits?

I read an article recently, that highlighted the disproportionate number of Muslim prisoners in the UK prison system, relative to the population as a whole.

Interestingly, only 2% of them were in prison for terror related offences.

[Captain...]

The problem with the article is that it rightly exposes a whole bunch of nonsense in the ISIS ideology, but then uses it to come to the conclusion that the only thing we can do is to bomb Syria. There are three million Muslims in the UK, four million in France, and a very small number of extremists - including recruiters, planners and so on - are active in both. The vast majority of terrorists, including the Belgian ones, are natives. It's hard to see how our military action in Islamic countries has done anything other than provoke a lot of ill-feeling and refugees, so I'm not sure how it would help now either - especially when the greater problem appears to be at home, rather than overseas. Just because people tend to travel to these countries from their homelands to prepare for criminal attacks, doesn't mean that they wouldn't commit them anyway if they just stayed at home. 

 

On the other hand the article completely ignores all of the other measures which could counter terrorism, such as the way we deal with slums, the way our schools and social services and rehabilitation systems deal with problem cases, or even how we could change our approach to religion and education (we still have faith schools, we still train teachers to respectfully deal with kids of different religions in different ways). And please don't think I'm saying Corbyn's answer is any better than the Daily Mail's, because I'm yet to hear any sort of meaningful response to the problem from him either.

 

But it's very hard to trust our politicians to take the right course of action, whatever that may be. Not only because the likes of Trump are unlikely to care deeply about the lives of people on backstreet slums they've never had to live in, nor about the fact that thirty or so people die somewhere for some or other crazy reason, but also because these same politicians recognise war to be a means of achieving political objectives and terrorism as a way to win votes. It's fifteen years since 9/11, and there has been little in the west's approach to Islamic extremism which has suggested otherwise.

 

Completely agree that it is a very simplistic approach, and there are many things that we can be doing to look at the causes of radicalisation, and the education and re-education of those at risk, but all of that is a very long term approach and in the short term innocent people are dying.

 

I disagree that the issue is here, the issue is very much in the middle east the losses we have suffered here through domestic terrorism are small compared to the death toll in Syria. The problem isn't terrorism, the problem is ISIS and they want a war in Dabiq, and these attacks will continue to happen until they get their war. Now this war is already happening with drone strikes, but it is ineffective. This will not be a middle east invasion but a liberation of Syria and the best thing would probably be to hand it back to Assad, under the condition of democratic elections. 

 

If the belief is all centred on this holy war, then ideally the war happening and ISIS getting destroyed would make those that have been brainwashed into extremism think again, "we got our war, we lost, maybe we were wrong", ideally the ring leaders would be killed or captured, ideally ISIS would disappear and genuine Muslims could return to the area and rebuild their lives with support from the West and the League of Arabic Nations.

 

Realistically it would only be a temporary respite until the next lot of whack jobs start twisting the words of ancient "prophets" to fit their own agenda, but in the respite we can address the social issues and the education and reform etc  

[Benguin]

I am pretty defeatist towards all of this kind of thing nowadays. It's the wrong attitude to have and it does not sound empathetic, compassionate or bothered about the mess. The truth is I am really bothered, empathetic and compassionate; not just for Brussels but for Paris, Syria, Turkey, Mali, Iraq and so on and so forth. The issue is that I just don't see how we'll ever dig the world out of such a mess and that doesn't just go for corruption, terrorism and war it goes for pretty much everything. We screwed up majorly as humans. Aristotle had a great quote that "Man is the most noblest of animals but separated from law he is a mere savage." This rings true for me insofar that without democracy, the rule of law and a system that confers people rights and punishes those who breach them, then anything would go. Rape; murder and every other thing we deem as crime would prevail would it not? It transpires that this quote is about as far from the truth as is physically possible because there are billions of people with trillions of ideas living in hundreds of different countries each prescribing their own beliefs. (Be that in law, in religion, as a democracy or an autocracy) Furthermore these differing ideas do not become a conversation over tea or a little squabble because we're all indoctrinated with commodity fetishism, greed and jealousy. Therefore the only eventuality for these differing ideas is war, terrorism and so on and so forth. There is no longer an answer, there is no longer a solution and if this magical man in the sky so many people rave about exists he has clearly came to the same conclusion and buggered off and left us to kill each other so he can start again.

 

Sure it's sad what happened, sure I can not possibly imagine what the families of the victims are going through and of course I send them my thoughts, sure I wish some genius will come along and figure away out of this but ultimately we'll all kill ourselves before long, so I'm staying out of the politics...

[inckley fox]

Completely agree that it is a very simplistic approach, and there are many things that we can be doing to look at the causes of radicalisation, and the education and re-education of those at risk, but all of that is a very long term approach and in the short term innocent people are dying.

 

I disagree that the issue is here, the issue is very much in the middle east the losses we have suffered here through domestic terrorism are small compared to the death toll in Syria. The problem isn't terrorism, the problem is ISIS and they want a war in Dabiq, and these attacks will continue to happen until they get their war. Now this war is already happening with drone strikes, but it is ineffective. This will not be a middle east invasion but a liberation of Syria and the best thing would probably be to hand it back to Assad, under the condition of democratic elections. 

 

If the belief is all centred on this holy war, then ideally the war happening and ISIS getting destroyed would make those that have been brainwashed into extremism think again, "we got our war, we lost, maybe we were wrong", ideally the ring leaders would be killed or captured, ideally ISIS would disappear and genuine Muslims could return to the area and rebuild their lives with support from the West and the League of Arabic Nations.

 

Realistically it would only be a temporary respite until the next lot of whack jobs start twisting the words of ancient "prophets" to fit their own agenda, but in the respite we can address the social issues and the education and reform etc  

 

Okay, but then we have to ask ourselves what the actual problem that we're talking about is. Is it the fact that there's a civil war in Syria, with an abhorrent organisation with an abhorrent ideology behind it? Or is it the danger of terrorist attacks in the UK, or throughout the EU? Because the link between the two is a very spurious one. After all, there were terrorist attacks by Islamic fundamentalists before ISIS, or civil war in Syria, and they also preyed on the vulnerability of criminals from deprived backgrounds who had been taken in by an extreme interpretation of a religious text.

 

If the problem is a selfless concern for the former, then some form of military action is probably necessary, though it begs the question as to why we're especially interested in Syria and not other places - much of Africa, for instance - where twisted ideologies make life miserable for millions of people. It would be especially odd when we bear in mind that the only connection Syria has to the threat across Europe is that it's the latest in a long line of excuses for attacking the West. It's certainly not where the terrorists are coming from, and before the Syrian war there were plenty of other reasons for attacking the West then as well. On top of that, of course, we know from very recent history that military action will probably worsen this.

 

If the principal reason, however, is our fear of terrorist attacks in the UK or EU, then we know that military action is ill-advised, and would do little to reduce the support for extremism within minor factions of the three million-strong Muslim population of the UK, or the four million in France. In fact it would probably have the opposite effect. ISIS exploits the fact that sympathies for their ideology exist within these countries, and this is therefore the main reason for the threat. And, equally, it's much easier for us to fight those sympathies on home soil - which will persist regardless of whether it's Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan or Al Qaeda or ISIS which is detonating the bombs (if we 'cut the head off the serpent that is ISIS, then I'm sure it's not going to leave thousands of Islamic fundamentalists wandering around the UK or France listlessly saying "oh no, now I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, I may as well go back to being a petty thief and forget all this terrorist lark...") - than it is for us to go and fight a war which won't make us any safer.

 

It's good to see people have given up on arguing that border control would have any impact one way or another, though. And even better to see that people have stopped calling for us to, effectively, persecute or ethnically cleanse our British-born Muslim population.

[leicsmac]

Tremendous piece of satire going round via social media:

 

"WHAT IS UP WITH ALL THE MUSLIMS AND BLACK PEOPLE IN GLASGOW TODAY???

This is the worst day ever. I am currently hiding in an alleyway in Glasgow with no trousers and it’s all because of Muslims and black people.

It started at about 11 this morning, I'm just walking down the street on some Important White Guy Business (going to have coffee with a friend or whatever), when this random Muslim woman in one of those headscarf things comes up to me on George Square and asks me a garbled question. I didn't understand it at first so I had to ask her to repeat it, and she says, "What do you have to say about Dunblane?"

I thought she was trying to GET TO Dunblane, so I asked if she wanted me to look up directions on my phone, and she said, "No, IDIOT. What do you have to say about the Dunblane shootings?"

I was confused to say the least: "Dunblane? Uh... I have nothing to say about Dunblane." It was really weird, because she actually seemed pretty angry about something. Then she said, "Why not? Don't you think it was wrong?"

And I said, "Of course it was wrong, but that was 20 years ago, and, um, I wasn't really involved with it in any way. I was 14-years-old in 1996, I didn't even live in Scotland then!"

Crazy Muslim Lady then starts following me down the street screaming random place names at me:

"OKLAHOMA! UTOYA! OMAGH! PORT ARTHUR! COLUMBINE!” - with an airline thrown in at the end for extra krazee - “GERMAN WINGS!” - and I'm thinking, "What the heck is this? Is this a code? Is she having some kind of breakdown?"

I was actually getting a bit scared by this point (I’m a lover not a fighter, if you know what I mean), so I jumped on the first bus I saw, just to get away from her. I went to the back of the bus and saw her shouting and swearing at me as we drove away.

At the very next stop, some young Asian lads get on the bus, and they came and sat right in front of me. They seemed to be laughing at something, and then one of them just turned around, looked me right in the eye and asked me why 'my people' keep raping young girls.

“What do you mean?” I said, “I’m just a middle class white guy. I went to university, I’ve worked in the media - we’re good people! I’ve never raped anyone, and neither do ‘people like me’ rape people!”

(Couldn't believe I actually had to say that, it's so obvious!)

And the teenager replied, “****ing pedo. I know what your lot are like. Rolf Harris, Jimmy Savile, Cyril Smith. Child abusers, the lot of you.”

“OK, whatever,” I said, thinking they’re just trying to wind me up. I moved to the front of the bus because I didn’t want any trouble, and then this old Sikh guy sitting there looks at me like I’ve broken wind, and he says, “They’re right you know, your holy book condones rape, even if you don’t.”

Now first of all, I don’t have a holy book. Sure, I’ve been christened and I celebrate Christmas, but I’m not what you’d call a Bible basher or anything. Nevertheless, I do know FOR AN ABSOLUTE FACT that the Holy Bible would never condone rape (unlike some other holy books I could mention).

“If you mean the Bible, that’s nonsense. The Bible is a book full of wisdom and light,” I said, trying to be well-mannered even though I was getting angrier by the second with all these uninformed opinions coming at me. Old Sikh Guy looked sceptical, so I told him the only Bible quote I know off by heart - “Ever heard of ‘All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, the Lord God made them all’? That's the message of the Bible.”

But that didn’t shut him up, not even a little bit!

“What about Oholibah in Ezekiel? ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will stir up your lovers against you… I will turn you over to them for punishment, and they will punish you according to their standards. I will direct my jealous anger against you, and they will deal with you in fury. They will cut off your noses and your ears, and those of you who are left will fall by the sword. They will take away your sons and daughters, and those of you who are left will be consumed by fire. They will also strip you of your clothes and take your fine jewellery. I will put a stop to the lewdness and prostitution you began in Egypt.’ That’s your God arranging the rape and mutilation of a prostitute.”

I was pretty pissed off at this point. I didn’t even reply to his bullshit, I just jumped off at the next stop - and that’s when things went from Slightly Weird to full on Twilight Zone.

Standing at the next stop were a bunch of black teenagers, about thirteen or fourteen-years-old, completely butt-naked except for some kind of white patterns painted on their skin! They looked bloody freezing, so I asked what they were doing, standing at a bus stop with nothing on, on a freezing Glaswegian day.

“We’re Xhosas,” replied the tallest boy, “We’re on our way to a coming-of-age-ceremony. We go into the wilderness for a few days, and when we come back we will be men.”

“But why are you NAKED?!”

“It’s our tradition,” said the tall boy.

“Why are YOU wearing trousers?” said a smaller boy with World Cup ears and a cheeky smirk.

I laughed, “Isn’t it pretty obvious? Everyone wears trousers. I’m wearing them for modesty. I don’t want to walk around just revealing every part of my body to every random person I meet.”

The boys thought this was pretty funny:

“Sounds oppressive to me,” the tall boy said.

“Yes,” said a chubby lad with a big shiver. “Sounds like you’ve been brainwashed by your society.”

“Nonsense,” I said, “Trousers are objectively right. Why isn’t she covering her breasts?” I said, pointing at the only girl in the group, whose boobs were out and covered in goose bumps.

“Why should she? Why should a woman cover her breasts, but men don’t have to cover up? Don’t you think that’s pretty sexist?”

“It’s a woman’s choice to cover her breasts,” I said.

“So I won’t get arrested for walking through Glasgow like this?” said the Xhosa girl, rolling her eyes.

“Well… You might,” I replied. “I mean… You are exposing yourself. It’s pretty disgusting seeing a young girl dressed like that to be honest.”

“You know what I think is disgusting?” said the tall boy, “Your society making you ashamed of your Ham in the Hood!”

That’s when the mood suddenly changed, and World Cup Boy shouted, “Get his trousers!”

“Let’s liberate him!” said the chubby one.

“How can I trust him when I can’t see his penis?!” said the girl.

And they started trying to pull my trousers down! FOR REAL! I put up the best fight I could, but like I said, I’m a lover not a fighter, and with six or seven of them on me, I didn’t really stand a chance. They got the trousers off pretty quickly, and then my Thundercat boxers, and then they all just ran off down the road with the cheeky boy whooping and swinging my trousers around his head like a lasso! And then the tall boy had the cheek to shout back at me, “It’s for your own good! Don’t let anyone tell you what to wear!”

So here I am. I’ve managed to crawl into an alleyway and cover myself in bits of newspaper, but I really need someone to bring me some trousers so I can get home. Please, if you’re in Glasgow today with extra trousers, come and find me - SIZE DOESN'T MATTER!

Oh, that reminds me - when you see me in my naked state, please bear in mind that it is a very, very, very cold day."

 

You laugh, until you realise why the mick is having to be taken in the first place. Then you stop.

[Rincewind]

A good summing up  but it will not register with some people.

[Captain...]

Okay, but then we have to ask ourselves what the actual problem that we're talking about is. Is it the fact that there's a civil war in Syria, with an abhorrent organisation with an abhorrent ideology behind it? Or is it the danger of terrorist attacks in the UK, or throughout the EU? Because the link between the two is a very spurious one. After all, there were terrorist attacks by Islamic fundamentalists before ISIS, or civil war in Syria, and they also preyed on the vulnerability of criminals from deprived backgrounds who had been taken in by an extreme interpretation of a religious text.

 

If the problem is a selfless concern for the former, then some form of military action is probably necessary, though it begs the question as to why we're especially interested in Syria and not other places - much of Africa, for instance - where twisted ideologies make life miserable for millions of people. It would be especially odd when we bear in mind that the only connection Syria has to the threat across Europe is that it's the latest in a long line of excuses for attacking the West. It's certainly not where the terrorists are coming from, and before the Syrian war there were plenty of other reasons for attacking the West then as well. On top of that, of course, we know from very recent history that military action will probably worsen this.

 

If the principal reason, however, is our fear of terrorist attacks in the UK or EU, then we know that military action is ill-advised, and would do little to reduce the support for extremism within minor factions of the three million-strong Muslim population of the UK, or the four million in France. In fact it would probably have the opposite effect. ISIS exploits the fact that sympathies for their ideology exist within these countries, and this is therefore the main reason for the threat. And, equally, it's much easier for us to fight those sympathies on home soil - which will persist regardless of whether it's Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan or Al Qaeda or ISIS which is detonating the bombs (if we 'cut the head off the serpent that is ISIS, then I'm sure it's not going to leave thousands of Islamic fundamentalists wandering around the UK or France listlessly saying "oh no, now I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, I may as well go back to being a petty thief and forget all this terrorist lark...") - than it is for us to go and fight a war which won't make us any safer.

 

It's good to see people have given up on arguing that border control would have any impact one way or another, though. And even better to see that people have stopped calling for us to, effectively, persecute or ethnically cleanse our British-born Muslim population.

 

There are undoubtedly selfish reasons for  having more of an interest in the  conflict in Syria, one is the terrorist attacks ISIS is claiming credit for, the other is the refugee crisis that is impacting Europe and the fact that Syria is on the border with what we consider western civilisation. There is also the devastating loss of life which is greater than any single conflict in Africa. I disagree the link is spurious ISIS  have directly claimed responsibility for the attacks in Paris and Belgium and others. There is of course no guarantee that wiping ISIS off the face of the planet would stop all terrorist attacks, but it would certainly stem the flow and restoring Syria to a peaceful state will allow the refugees to go home and stop risking their lives trying to escape.

 

Any military action I'm advocating (which shouldn't be taken lightly) should be done alongside addressing all of the social issues previously mentioned.

[Guest MattP]

There are undoubtedly selfish reasons for  having more of an interest in the  conflict in Syria, one is the terrorist attacks ISIS is claiming credit for, the other is the refugee crisis that is impacting Europe and the fact that Syria is on the border with what we consider western civilisation. There is also the devastating loss of life which is greater than any single conflict in Africa. I disagree the link is spurious ISIS  have directly claimed responsibility for the attacks in Paris and Belgium and others. There is of course no guarantee that wiping ISIS off the face of the planet would stop all terrorist attacks, but it would certainly stem the flow and restoring Syria to a peaceful state will allow the refugees to go home and stop risking their lives trying to escape.

 

Any military action I'm advocating (which shouldn't be taken lightly) should be done alongside addressing all of the social issues previously mentioned.

 

I agree with this, ISIS aren't going to be defeated without a miltary intervention, it's just when it happens that's the question.

 

The argument about making it worse doesn't really fly in Northern Syria anymore, it can't actually get any worse than ISIS, when we talk about intervention to Syria we have to make sure it isn't about any sort of regime chance, if the Syrians want rid of Assad they have to do that themselves, at some point though external forces are going to have to be inside Islamic State controlled areas in order to wipe them off the map as any sort of destructive military force.

 

As for creating more extremists, if any moderate Muslim is going to turn into a Jihadists because we attack this death cult then I don't really hold out much hope for them anyway.

[Webbo]

It was only a couple of years ago that people were ardently opposed to military action in Syria, now it seems "something must be done". Arguably the military action against Lybia has been a greater cause of the migration crisis than Syria.

 

The truth is there are no easy answers. I just wish people would consider this instead of the smug cynicism we often get on these types of threads.

[Captain...]

It was only a couple of years ago that people were ardently opposed to military action in Syria, now it seems "something must be done". Arguably the military action against Lybia has been a greater cause of the migration crisis than Syria.

 

The truth is there are no easy answers. I just wish people would consider this instead of the smug cynicism we often get on these types of threads.

 

Very different cases, people were opposed and voted against joining the rebels and ousting Assad, this was before ISIS took hold of Syria.

 

We were 100% right to not get the military involved at that point as it was an internal power struggle, and the only reason to get involved was political and to support a rebellion against a Russian backed Assad regime. ISIS is a completely different beast, they are not a recognised state they are a death cult whose aims are to bring about the end of the world.

[Webbo]

Very different cases, people were opposed and voted against joining the rebels and ousting Assad, this was before ISIS took hold of Syria.

 

We were 100% right to not get the military involved at that point as it was an internal power struggle, and the only reason to get involved was political and to support a rebellion against a Russian backed Assad regime. ISIS is a completely different beast, they are not a recognised state they are a death cult whose aims are to bring about the end of the world.

How can you say it was 100% right with what's subsequently happened? It might have made matters worse ( not sure how) but there's no way you can know that.

[leicsmac]

It was only a couple of years ago that people were ardently opposed to military action in Syria, now it seems "something must be done". Arguably the military action against Lybia has been a greater cause of the migration crisis than Syria.

The truth is there are no easy answers. I just wish people would consider this instead of the smug cynicism we often get on these types of threads.

When, as you say there are no easy answers and practically every course of action will lead to a bloodbath involving innocent people, I think that's actually quite a reasonable point to be at least a little cynical about the whole thing, isn't it?

[Captain...]

How can you say it was 100% right with what's subsequently happened? It might have made matters worse ( not sure how) but there's no way you can know that.

 

In my opinion at the time, we were 100% right not to get involved then, what has happened since just confirms it, again this is my opinion.

[Guest MattP]

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/03/clone.of.brussels-attacks-manhunt-suspect-airport-.html

 

The Belgian authorities are looking more incompetent by the day. It's hard enough to stop these people without just deciding to ignore people who tell you they are terrorists.
 

Turkey said on Wednesday it had detained and then deported one of the two suspected suicide bombers at Brussels airport, suggesting Belgian authorities ignored a warning that he was a "foreign terrorist fighter".

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkish authorities detained Brahim el-Bakraoui in June last year in Gaziantep, close to the Syrian border, and then deported him to the Netherlands in July at his request.

"We reported the deportation to the Belgian Embassy in Ankara on July 14, 2015, but he was later set free,"  Erdogan told reporters in Ankara.

"Despite our warnings that this person was a foreign terrorist fighter, the Belgian authorities could not identify a link to terrorism." 

Erdogan did not specify how Bakraoui had been transferred from the Netherlands to Belgium, where 31 people died and 270 people were wounded in the bomb attacks at the capital's airport and on a metro train on Tuesday morning.

[inckley fox]

There are undoubtedly selfish reasons for  having more of an interest in the  conflict in Syria, one is the terrorist attacks ISIS is claiming credit for, the other is the refugee crisis that is impacting Europe and the fact that Syria is on the border with what we consider western civilisation. There is also the devastating loss of life which is greater than any single conflict in Africa. I disagree the link is spurious ISIS  have directly claimed responsibility for the attacks in Paris and Belgium and others. There is of course no guarantee that wiping ISIS off the face of the planet would stop all terrorist attacks, but it would certainly stem the flow and restoring Syria to a peaceful state will allow the refugees to go home and stop risking their lives trying to escape.

 

Any military action I'm advocating (which shouldn't be taken lightly) should be done alongside addressing all of the social issues previously mentioned.

 

I agree with a lot of this. It's true, of course, that when governments choose their worthy causes to go to war over (the old 'why Iraq and not North Korea?' argument), the key factor is bound to be the impact it will have on their own country. And I understand that the justification put forward for military action in Syria leans heavily on this. 

 

You're also right to point out that the severity of the Syrian conflict is greater. I think fatalities in the Syrian Civil War over the past year have been around five times higher than in the Boko Haram rebellion, which was the example I'd given. It's also more closely related to attacks in EU countries because, well, if we prefer the ISIS acronym then it makes clear reference to Syria.

 

But I think the connection between taking military action against terrorists in a country, and a reduction in terrorism which claims to be in the name of that country is very dubious. ISIS is the Islamic State of Iraq (which we invaded well over a decade ago) as well as Syria, after all, and it was an active group taking part in terrorist activities throughout the Iraq war. It's hard to see it as a cause which is especially bound to the Syrian conflict, or as a cause which is likely to shed support purely because we embark on yet another war. While their aims extend far beyond ending western military involvement in the Middle East, that's the origin of their movement. In the same way, western military involvement in the Middle East was responsible for the upsurge in support for Islamic fundamentalism in Europe post-9/11.

 

So if - hypothetically - we could crush the movement in the Middle East and establish peace in Syria, which is highly questionable, it's unlikely that we would see support for Islamic fundamentalism recede in Europe as a consequence, and equally unlikely that no movement would rise up to replace it in the Middle East. If anything, history tells us that the opposite would be the case.

 

Worst of all, when you look at who the people carrying out the attacks in the EU are - regardless of whether they use Syria as the excuse for what they do - it's clear that they don't come from Syria or Iraq any more than the Madrid bombers came from Iraq/Afghanistan (they were Moroccan and Spanish) or the London bombers (they were mostly British-born) during the Al-Qaeda era. The same can be said of the ISIS era - the Paris bombers were nearly all French/Belgian and the Brussels bombers were Belgian.

 

So whatever action we take - as you indicate yourself - has to put a strong emphasis on fighting the ideology, and the reasons for people supporting it, in our own countries, because (a) we've got a mixed track record at winning these wars - there were more deaths in Iraq/Afghanistan combined last year than in Syria, (b) the wars we get ourselves involved in have tended to provoke a rise in terrorism rather than a reduction, © most of the terrorists are actually native to the countries they attack and (d) Islamic extremism has persisted in Europe in the name of multiple causes for the past decade and a half, so it's unlikely to end just because a specific conflict ends, or a specific organisation is disbanded. It will simply exchange flags, switch acronyms and carry on in another form.

[inckley fox]

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/03/clone.of.brussels-attacks-manhunt-suspect-airport-.html

 

The Belgian authorities are looking more incompetent by the day. It's hard enough to stop these people without just deciding to ignore people who tell you they are terrorists.

 

 

Didn't the family of the Leytonstone (have I spelt that right?) stabber warn our authorities too?

[Captain...]

I agree with a lot of this. It's true, of course, that when governments choose their worthy causes to go to war over (the old 'why Iraq and not North Korea?' argument), the key factor is bound to be the impact it will have on their own country. And I understand that the justification put forward for military action in Syria leans heavily on this. 

 

You're also right to point out that the severity of the Syrian conflict is greater. I think fatalities in the Syrian Civil War over the past year have been around five times higher than in the Boko Haram rebellion, which was the example I'd given. It's also more closely related to attacks in EU countries because, well, if we prefer the ISIS acronym then it makes clear reference to Syria.

 

But I think the connection between taking military action against terrorists in a country, and a reduction in terrorism which claims to be in the name of that country is very dubious. ISIS is the Islamic State of Iraq (which we invaded well over a decade ago) as well as Syria, after all, and it was an active group taking part in terrorist activities throughout the Iraq war. It's hard to see it as a cause which is especially bound to the Syrian conflict, or as a cause which is likely to shed support purely because we embark on yet another war. While their aims extend far beyond ending western military involvement in the Middle East, that's the origin of their movement. In the same way, western military involvement in the Middle East was responsible for the upsurge in support for Islamic fundamentalism in Europe post-9/11.

 

So if - hypothetically - we could crush the movement in the Middle East and establish peace in Syria, which is highly questionable, it's unlikely that we would see support for Islamic fundamentalism recede in Europe as a consequence, and equally unlikely that no movement would rise up to replace it in the Middle East. If anything, history tells us that the opposite would be the case.

 

Worst of all, when you look at who the people carrying out the attacks in the EU are - regardless of whether they use Syria as the excuse for what they do - it's clear that they don't come from Syria or Iraq any more than the Madrid bombers came from Iraq/Afghanistan (they were Moroccan and Spanish) or the London bombers (they were mostly British-born) during the Al-Qaeda era. The same can be said of the ISIS era - the Paris bombers were nearly all French/Belgian and the Brussels bombers were Belgian.

 

So whatever action we take - as you indicate yourself - has to put a strong emphasis on fighting the ideology, and the reasons for people supporting it, in our own countries, because (a) we've got a mixed track record at winning these wars - there were more deaths in Iraq/Afghanistan combined last year than in Syria, (b) the wars we get ourselves involved in have tended to provoke a rise in terrorism rather than a reduction, © most of the terrorists are actually native to the countries they attack and (d) Islamic extremism has persisted in Europe in the name of multiple causes for the past decade and a half, so it's unlikely to end just because a specific conflict ends, or a specific organisation is disbanded. It will simply exchange flags, switch acronyms and carry on in another form.

 

The fact that the terrorists are not native to Syria, doesn't mean that they are not being radicalised by ISIS, these people are the pawns in all of this. If it wasn't for some external influence, ISIS or Al Qaeda, it is very unlikely any of these terrorists would have committed these atrocities, they were at the least inspired by and encouraged by ISIS if not directly instructed by them. As has been stated in this thread a lot of them were not very religious had backgrounds of petty crimes and misdemeanours and  something turned that into a terrorist.

 

This didn't happen by chance, someone made that happen, I don't know how directly or indirectly ISIS leaders in Syria influenced these people, or the people that radicalised these people, but all threads lead back to Syria and without ISIS I doubt these attacks would have happened. I can't prove it, but it feels like ISIS is the head of this particular hydra.

 

Defeating ISIS will not be the end of extremism, but after defeating Al Qaeda there was a good few years free of terrorism until ISIS came along.

 

There is already military action in Syria, but it is proving to be insufficient, stepping up the military action seems the next logical step, in Iraq where we are engaging on the ground ISIS is failing to take as strong a hold  as in Syria, so it has proved to be partially effective, with more support and ground troops it  could be more effective. Obviously it needs to be done carefully and with serious planning and forward thinking. This is not an opinion I have formed lightly, but I see very few other options and I don't see the point in waiting for the next tragedy before we respond.