Is the world any safer?

[TiG]

With the recent bombs on the Train in Madrid, and yesterdays announcements that they believe it to be Al-Qaeda, i'm wondering what going into IRAQ and Afganistan has actually achieved.

I know my view may be unpopular but believe quite frankly that i fear more terror is on its way, the situation of what seems to me to be daily attacks in Iraq is based on extremists taking their fight to iraq, quite frankly closer and easier to hit than America.

But this train bomb thats killed 200 and injured 1000 more is pretty substancial, I hoped and prayed that it was ETA and not Al-Qaeda as I fear that we could be next.

It was the following situation of my younger Sister going into London on her own via train to a work meeting, just happened to be the same day as the Madrid bombings, I just can't get it out of my head that what if they decided to attack London instead of Madrid?

What to do about it?, well i don't have any answers i'm afraid, but i'm not sure anyone else does either.

TiG

[G4Z]

well, in all honesty I agree, I seen this coming... It will happen although I think they will do somthing unexpected, just like 11/9/2001 and madrid, spain was well behind us in the pecking order and yet they have been attaacked first, probably just because nobody seen it coming. also seeing the effect it has had on the elections seems to show that they have achived their goal and spain will probably withdraw its support for the occupation of iraq. imo this can only be a good thing for spain, if they do this they may well save themselves from further attacks. unfortunately I belive we are too far into this to pull back now and to do so would leave the country in ruins, so I suppose even if we get hit 3 days before our election it wont make much difference in government policy no matter who wins.

all we can really do is hope that when this happens here (I am sorry to say, I think its a certainty) that we and our freinds and family are not there when it happens. I can say one thing for sure... tony blair and his family will no doubt be safe and well...

[TeePee]

The underground would be an excellent target for a terrorist attack. A couple of bombs on a couple of trains and an entire line would have to be shut down. During rush hour this would leave thousands of commuters stuck in trains between stations, waiting for evacuation on foot. Just think what an effect this would have on commuter confidence in the long term.

[DeludedGuy]

I travel by tube everyday, and tbh, I havent felt as safe. I do believe the next target is either London, or Portugal in Euro 2004. Either way, Its not looking good.

[Big RICHARD]

I was talking to friends about this last night. London is a particularly hard target by comparison to other cities around the UK. I wouldn't gamble on any of the other big cities in the UK not being the next target. Also noted from our conversation was the bit about how we solve this problem in the long run. Are we gonna have to ask anyone of Arabic descent to leave? These people are fighting in the name of Islam and it seems to me that not enough ordinary Muslims are condemning what these people do. If somebody was committing atrocities in the name of any group (be it ethnic, religious, etc) which I belong to, I would be passing as much information as possible to the authorities, in order to prevent repercussions on myself and other innocent people. Are we gonna have to go on an extermination mission? These people want us dead and they are prepared to die to ensure that we do! The only way to prevent our own deaths from these people is to kill them first.

[G4Z]

ahhh the return of the hard right....

I dont think expelling all muslims is gonna be an answer at all. The only way to deal with this is to address the root issues, e.g Israel and Iraq. The thing is, Im not sure there is much as country we can do about these problems, we are not gonna be able to stop the US supporting the israelis because no president will do otherwise with such a large jewish votership. we are now too far into this occupation of iraq to do anything but let it run its course.. I dunno, but we should be looking at WHY these ppl are attacking us, I notice there tends to be very little discussion of this in government and on the media, not surprising really, rather than looking at why we are targets our government just wants to spew rhetoric on how they are gonna stop terrorism, and have a war on terror... all very eary to say when you can retreat to your nuclear bunker. as usual it will be the ordinary people who wlll bear the brunt of this.

[Allen]

Well, the bombs in Madrid were certainly a win for the terrorists! Spain are gonna pull out of Irag now...

They'll hit UK next, no doubt London or LHR, hoping that Blair will do the same as the new Spanish Prime Minister.

I'm worried, but we have to get on with our lives.

[directhex]

i'm a bad & wrong person, but when i was watching the huge turnout of people in madrid the following day, i was discussing wth housemates just how easy the terrorists went on the spanish - 200 dead at random, that's one thing. now, notice the number of shops walked past in the big procession. a month in advance uy a shop, board it up, fill it with explosives and shrapnel. if a couple of computer scientists can thinnk of it, you can be sure any terrorist group would have done - and it would be orders of magnitude easier to plan an execute than the trains themselves. can you imagine the scale of terror when people can't even leave their homes without losing everything below their knees? when (and yes, it's a when) something happens here in the uk, you can rest assured that madrid will appear mild by compaison.

[G4Z]

I gotta say, we all must be bad people because when I seen those crowds the first thing I thought was "christ, I wouldnt get in amongst that lot, prime terrorist target that!" all it would take is a couple of suicide bombers in amongsst that.. doesnt bear thinking about.

[Big RICHARD]

I'm not really on the hard right! I'm actually much more liberal than I seem, it's just sometimes, you have to let stuff out to get a full picture on the scenario. It does seem that some of the middle east population have some sort of inferiority complex and feel the need to take drastic action against the people they are jealous of. If it were football, the USA would be the Arsenal and the UK would be the Manchester United of the world. Now everyone hates ManU and a lot of this is through jealousy. Is this an example of another (more sinister and serious) 'jealous of the big boy' scenario?

[G4Z]

how can you compare this to footie...? they are angry because we inavded iraq and killed loads of musilms, they are angry for a whole load of other situations where US and UK foreign policy has meant for them.. for example in the Iraq /Iran war where the US supplied the iraqis with equipment and weapons to fight the Iranians because it suited them politically. this of course escelated the conflict and in turn left saddam hussain free to invade kuwait and then the coalition to attck the iraqis in 1991, end result lots of muslims died. I really dont think it simply boils down to jealousy, and i think its rather arrogant to think that, maybe they dont want our way of life, our mcdonalds and fecking gucci, hell Im not sure I even want it myself!

[Big RICHARD]

Just a comparison to prove a point about tribal attitudes (as exist in football as well as politics).

Didn't they also kill loads of muslims? Didn't Iran get some fairly major chemical weapon action in the Iran - Iraq war?

Which US/UK foreign policies exactly?

Don't you think there is a possibility of some jealousy? It is just naive to not allow for the possibility.....

[DaBeeeenster]

I agree with G4Z - we really need to be asking WHY these people are doing what they are doing. If we dont know why they are doing it, we cant stop them. Arresting or killing a terrorist is like cutting a worm in half - you simply create more terrorists. IMHO, there are three things that breed terrorism:

- Poverty
- History
- Religion

You dont need all three of the above, and I dont think Religion on its own is enough to create a terrorist. In the case of Al-Qaeda and Islamic Fundamentalism, I think we have all three as a factor. In Northern Ireland, for example, it was more a case of "only" history and religion.

I'm not sure if a settlement to the Israel/Palestine problem would put an end to Al-Qaeda - they have issues with a number of other areas as well - Western troops in Saudi Arabia (and now in Iraq), persecution of Islamic people in a number of other areas etc. etc. Having said that, I do think the problems would be eased a lot of there was a solution in Israel.

As for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it has unquestionably made things worse. Bush has played right into the hands of Bin Laden. OBL now has his reason for a Jihad (15,000 dead innocent Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, occupation of both of those countries and the associated persecution of Muslims there, Guantanamo Bay etc etc) and a larger army of recruits.

The sad thing is that I post on the neowin "Real World Issues" forums quite a bit, and a number of posters in the US simply do not see this. They see force as the only solution to terrorism. I think that British people realise, based on the experience with Sinn Fein and the IRA, is that force generally makes things worse.

I mean, let's face it, 15,000 dead innocent people in Afghanistan and Iraq. If that was my brother and mother on the statistic list, I'd like to hope I wouldn't, but I couldn't say for certain that I wouldn't be first in the queue for the RPG's in Afghanistan.

[spikegifted]

DaBeeeenster:

Darn fine points! You did, however, missed one of the points: Oppression (actual or perceived).

One of the primary motivations for all the groups who carry out terrorism is that they feel they are being oppressed or the treatments of themselves or others are seen as 'unfair'. Let's leave the subjects of animal rights and anti-abortion aside (there're terrorists working in and for those camps also), political terrorists (and I count the likes of the IRA, ETA, al Qaeda, Chechens etc.) all have a problem with 'oppression'. These groups see things in a very different light compare with the 'projectors of power' - the UK, Spain, Western civilizations and Russia, respectively. These people feel that since they're being 'oppressed', and they're not in positions to carry out 'conventional' opposition to these 'oppressions', they've to take their 'struggles' on the 'unconventional' route - terrorism.

I'm guessing that most of the participants (not the 'brains' but the people who actually doing the dirty work) of these terrorist activities are 'idealists' who see that they're simply doing work against the 'might of the machines'. Some of these people can be compassionate and caring and it is precisely these qualities that the 'brains' utilize to 'convert' them into terrorists.

[Big RICHARD]

Excellent point spikegifted!

I do agree that we need to solve the cause of these problems, but what do we do about the current threat from people within this country? The threat won't immediately go away if we take away the original cause as discussed above. If we take action against these people, do we then breed another generation of terrorists, who think that we treated todays threat (person) badly and want to take revenge?

[Angus]

To be honest, I don't think that AQ will taregt anywhere that any one expects them to. For starters if it's expected that they'll attack there'll be so much security it'll be impracticle for them to operate. Secondly if an attacks expected then the element of surprise and therefore shock will be gone.

The question of how to get rid of them is a hard one and at the moment the best approach I can see is to take out the leadership in the form of Bin Laden and his immediate followers and advisers.