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Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (5489)	1/8/2004 2:11:05 PM
From: tsigprofit	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20773

Dale, maybe it is because we Americans had felt protected here on our own continent, far removed from Europe and the Middle East. I'm not sure, but I don't think we will easily accept the same level of terrorism that Europe does as an acceptable risk to live with. We will likely do whatever is necessary to reduce that risk. After 9/11 - Bush said he'd go after terrorists wherever they were in the world. One plan would have been to go after them in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, etc, etc. Edit - Pakistan too of course... I thought that was what he might be doing actually - and that could work - with the obvious negatives like collateral damage ;-) But - we opted for Afghanistan and Iraq.

To: Dale Baker who wrote (5489)	1/8/2004 4:38:42 PM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 20773

Has there been a terrorist attack in Europe of the magnitude of 911? That is that killed 3-4 thousand in one day and that targeted the nation's central military command and head of state (the plane forced down by the passengers in Pennsylvania was believed to be headed for the White House). I can't think of anything comparable.

To: Dale Baker who wrote (5489)	1/9/2004 11:27:36 AM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

If you look at how Europeans have coped with terrorism the last 40 years, they didn't try to lock their societies up tight and make normal life impossible. But I don't see that Europe has faced the same level of terrorism that we have. Their terrorist groups tend to be Western grouns -- the Red Brigade, Bader-Mendehof (sp) -- or nationalist -- Algerians in France -- not religious fanatics. As the lengthy article posted above pointed out, Westerners generally have more love of life than love of cause. You don't find many, if any, suicide bombers in Westersn terror groups. I doubt you could find twenty IRA members willing to die flying planes into London landmarks. In addition, European terror groups are easier to infiltrate with Western agents than are Islamic terror groups. These groups speak the local language, so you don't need to recruit or train agents in a foreign languagge using a whole different alphabet in order to understand what they are talking about. Western terrorists are themselves Westerenized, and recruit from Western citizens, so it is easier to place Western agents in the groups. Even in WW II it was easier to place allied agents among the population in France than it is to place US or British agents among the population in Saudia Arabia, Iraq, or Iran. Really, the Europeans faced a quite different form of terror, which can't be compared with fundamentalist Islamic terror.