Author Topic: Paris Terror Attacks  (Read 6557 times)

Othko97

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Re: Paris Terror Attacks
« Reply #15 on: November 18, 2015, 08:57:28 PM »
It pains me to see these attacks being used as an excuse for xenophobia, not to mention the sudden paranoia cropping up everywhere. Fear like this is playing into the hands of the people who orchestrated the attacks, and by marginalising refugees and moderates all we are doing is providing brand new recruits to the death cult. The ideology can't be beaten simply by killing, all that achieves is giving these loons martyrs to rally around and giving them slightly better PR.

As for the refugee situation, I feel like closing borders is obviously a mistake, not just for moral reasons (after all, these people are only fleeing terror just like what happened in Paris, only to a much larger scale), but also to refuse the opportunity of propaganda and resentment to be spread.
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comrade_general

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Re: Paris Terror Attacks
« Reply #16 on: November 18, 2015, 09:06:27 PM »
Right, you can't physically kill an ideology, but we can't back down that only lets them think that terrorism works. Going full throttle would be so easy. US, France, UK, the portugaling Soviet Union, and all the other guys are in the fight now it should be so easy to wipe those portugals off the planet. Seize control of that whole portugaling area and put it under martial law. Boom. Done. It has to stop. Naow. Enough of this little drone armadillo - pew pew. With the combined force of manpower of the free world united I don't understand why everyone is holding back.

Othko97

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Re: Paris Terror Attacks
« Reply #17 on: November 18, 2015, 09:13:40 PM »
This kind of move is what they are aiming for, it gives greater ground for their cause and will only fuel the fire. Yes, perhaps it would stop attacks in the short term, but it is unsustainable, and will just create more hatred for the West. The more people are indiscriminately killed or oppressed, the stronger the ideology becomes. Worse still, many of the people involved in these organisations are Western born, on some Jihad fantasy, surely further romanticising this idea by giving them a legitimate reason to join what they will see as a fight for justice is a bad idea? We probably do have the firepower to do such a move, but I suspect it will do little good in the long run.
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comrade_general

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Re: Paris Terror Attacks
« Reply #18 on: November 18, 2015, 09:17:28 PM »
portugal that. It's that mentality that got us into this situation in the first place. All that political correctness crap makes us damn weak.

Othko97

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Re: Paris Terror Attacks
« Reply #19 on: November 18, 2015, 09:29:42 PM »
I think it is the eye for an eye mentality which got us here. Violence breeds only more violence.
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comrade_general

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Re: Paris Terror Attacks
« Reply #20 on: November 18, 2015, 09:34:52 PM »
Sure, let bygones be bygones. We would say "no hard feelings, bro" but they will always say "allahu akbar" *boom*. Put your hand out in good faith and they will cut it off every time.

Othko97

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Re: Paris Terror Attacks
« Reply #21 on: November 18, 2015, 09:44:53 PM »
Of course there will always be hardline lunatics, but I don't think they will be prevented by any means. Offering a hand in good faith will discourage moderates from becoming extremists. To be clear, I'm not saying the insane people who actually bomb/shoot people should be left unpunished, we need to show that terrorism is not to be tolerated, but also that we know not all people are terrorists.
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comrade_general

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Re: Paris Terror Attacks
« Reply #22 on: November 18, 2015, 09:47:53 PM »
There is a clear and unified enemy in the Middle East right now with land and cities and all the hardware of an army. That's what I'm talking about. The thing that is targeting anyone and anything that doesn't adhere to it's beliefs (other Muslims included). portugaling destroy it like a bee nest.

Jubal

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Re: Paris Terror Attacks
« Reply #23 on: November 19, 2015, 11:52:02 AM »
I think we need both sides to our strategy - we do need to defeat Daesh on the ground, and I'm increasingly wondering if ground intervention might not be overall worthwhile now, not least because the civilian casualties could be significantly decreased compared to the horrendous casualties involved in turning the Middle East into a blast crater. It's important to remember that IS is, in its own view, a Caliphate; it requires territory to function and is illegitimate without it, unlike al-Qaeda which is an organisation comprised of terror cells that makes no specific claim to land or supremacy. I think I'd want to hear more evidence before conclusively coming down for or against a ground war, but I certainly don't think it should be off the table.


Alongside that effort in the Middle East, though, we need to not make the mistake that IMO every intervention from Afghanistan onwards has made, and give the impression that we're only there for ourselves. Whatever the military budget needed to take out Daesh in a ground war, we need to be willing to spend as much again on reconstruction, on a massive propaganda war, on countering the online propaganda of Daesh and other extremists. Removing Daesh is important, but we also need to start the long term effort to dry up their recruiting base and hopefully ensure this ideology has little to no chance to resurface afterwards.
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Clockwork

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Re: Paris Terror Attacks
« Reply #24 on: November 19, 2015, 04:30:16 PM »
'Why does it matter more that Paris was attacked rather than all the armadillo that happens daily in the middle east?' is a question being asked a lot. It's not because we (as a whole) don't care about the suffering the decent people of the middle east go through, it's because it's a far away culture. As we go further from our point of origin, things get stranger, go to France and it's recognizable, go a little further east and Hungary is noticeably different, go to Turkey and it's exotic and head yet further and it's alien. It's not that we can't tell they're human and anatomically the same as us but more that their sensibilities are foreign and not understood.


Is Islam the problem? Most people say no. Personally, I think they need to re-word the Quran to make it damn clear that killing any people is not what your God wants. Pass laws to make only the new edition allowed in Mosques. Will that generate resentment? Sure but over time nobody will notice. Hopefully this will allow peaceable Muslims to differentiate themselves from the extremists. Maybe even go the whole hog and allow women equal rights or something radical like that.


Trying to counter ISIS propaganda is ineffective in my opinion. What's more attractive for these devout Muslims, peace under laws of man or under the laws of your God? We can't make the west seem any better than it is without being China-esque. We have a free media for a reason, they report on what they find and then skew things to generate sales. Depending on which side the outlet is on, reports will be skewed one way or the other. To people that haven't lived in the west long, our endless media stream on how corrupt our government is, how everyone is out for themselves and profit, the shameless harassing of our celebrities (celebrities: (n)people to be honored) and seemingly all the hate the (generally left) media has for their own countries, I can see exactly why someone without this would find it grotesque. Are we as equal to blame for the extremists as anything else? Not a clue. What motivates people is up to them but I believe that for some at least this will be it.


One thing that people get wrong continually, killing people does not mean you have a mental illness. There are many good reasons to kill people but we've found better ways to get free of your spouse or get away from jail or inherit the country fairly but we did this over a mountain of our own dead. Claiming superiority for this reason is ignorant. To these people whatever they use as their reason will be a good reason, will be just in their own minds. It does not mean they are insane, it's closed minded to think that someone with different beliefs and way of thinking is not sane.


As to war with ISIS, it's on the cards already. We'll see when the dust settles I guess but I'd rather our forces go better safe than sorry.
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Glaurung

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Re: Paris Terror Attacks
« Reply #25 on: November 19, 2015, 07:03:21 PM »
Colossus, I disagree with quite a lot of what you said (though possibly also agree with some). I've been building up to a rant for some days now, so what follows may be more intemperate than is called for. Also, I have a stack of other things to do tonight and for the next few days, so I'm only responding partially.

So, one of the things you said is this:
Personally, I think they need to re-word the Quran to make it damn clear that killing any people is not what your God wants.
The probability that "they" will reword the Quran is about the same as the probability that "they" will reword the Bible, and for many of the same reasons. In particular, I think the Quran is already about as clear and firm on the importance of not killing people as the Bible is - and yet members of both religions violate that rule every day. Al Qaeda, IS, Boko Haram etc. are killing people now; the IRA (whose members were at least nominally Christian) killed people fairly steadily between about 1970 and 1995. At one stage, for example, the IRA had a particular fondness for bombing pubs in and around London - not so different from what IS did in Paris.

More generally, there are, apparently, 1.6 billion Moslems around the world - not very different from the number of Christians, and rather larger than the total citizenship of the "first world" countries. The total number of IS/al Qaeda/Boko Haram/etc. members is 1 or 2 in a million. So the members of these organisations are no more representative of Islam than the IRA was representative of the UK, or of Christianity. Indeed, IS and others are engaged in a war against other Moslems, as witness the recent bombings in Beirut and Baghdad. Blaming "Islam" for the faults of terrorist groups blinds us to the true nature of the situation, must surely be seen as insulting by the vast majority of Moslems, and is very probably playing into the hands of the terrorists in stoking the sense of injustice felt by peaceful Moslems against "the West".