I never ever ever know how to make this point. And the only way I can think to do it now is possibly going to get me in enough hot water to boil the ocean between us. All I can say is this is no way about you, Sharni, I just need to borrow your words. You put it very well. It's just that I can't get past the idea that the bad guys are human.
I take nothing away from the fact that the various terrorist attacks were hideously wrong, and it is a normal human reaction to be both frightened and angry. Anyone who didn't react by thinking exactly what Sharni said:
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How dare they think that by killing our own that we are going to give in to them....fucken dickheads dont have a clue....all they are doing is putting more against them.
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either is more evolved than I am, or isn't being honest. I thought it. Until the shock and pain faded, and reason came back, I definately thought it.
But the people in Iraq (who didn't attack us....and who have no demonstrable connection to al Quaida...sorry, it demands repetition) are human too. We have chosen to kill to further our interests. And somewhere there's a woman seeing red in Iraq, who will never forget a bombed out marketplace, who may now agree with Sharni....but she's talking about us.
Violence begets violence. The British are STILL in Northern Ireland, and they didn't bomb it into submission first. The first signs of hope that horrific quagmire saw came with the incredibly controversial move to acknowledge and deal with the IRA. At least now they're making progress.
I'm not now, nor have I ever anywhere, suggested that terrorism should be ignored. But as long as we use the war on terror as an excuse to promulgate conventional warfare, we are breeding the next generation of terrorists. I know this, because should another country ever invade my home on some laudible pretext, I know how I'd react and I am NOT a violent person normally. So long as we think tanks and bombs are worth a tinkers damn in this war, we're going to lose. Oh, we'll win the invasion...but we won't win the war on terror. For that, we have to change the paradigm, or we're going to keep losing. More than that, though: until someone finds the damned high road in this conflict, it's going to escalate. And so long as we can justify killing civilians, or occupying countries, in persuit of the war on terror...we have no hope of finding the high road.
G