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Tunisia Attack


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Obviously it's absolutely horrible what happened over there - for anyone who wasn't aware, a gunman (or gunmen, it's unclear how many attackers there were) opened fire on a beach in Tunisia killing 38 (confirmed so far) people - full story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33307279

 

 

David Cameron has responded in a typically Prime-Ministerial fashion - we must fight terrorism etc, but there's a part of his response that sounds a little odious to me:

 


'Full-spectrum response'
 

Writing in the Telegraph, Mr Cameron said that as the identities of the dead continued to emerge the full "horror" of events was becoming clear.

"But we will not be cowed," he said. "To our shock and grief we must add another word: resolve. Unshakeable resolve. We will stand up for our way of life.

"So ours must be a full-spectrum response - a response at home and abroad; in the immediate aftermath and far into the future."

 

He said the Islamic State group used social media as its "primary weapon" and police and security services must have "the tools they need to root out this poison".

Mr Cameron - who will chair another meeting of the Cobra emergency committee on Monday morning - said it was also vital to confront the "poisonous ideology" behind attacks like that carried out in Tunisia.

"We must be stronger at standing up for our values - of peace, democracy, tolerance, freedom," he said.

"We must be more intolerant of intolerance - rejecting anyone whose views condone the Islamist extremist narrative and create the conditions for it to flourish."

 

Am I the only one who reads that and thinks there may be another war in the middle-east on the horizon? And that this is pointing towards greater privacy infringements when it comes to social media? I don't want to sound too tinfoil-hat about it, just interested in hearing others' thoughts about what they think our response will/should be?

 

xx

Edited by Stroopy121
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It might just be the hardcore leftie in me, but I can't help but feel like all the anti-Western extremism comes from this same attitude. We're stuck in a chicken-and-egg loop where there are terrorist attacks which cause unrest here, which causes subtle racism and anti-Islamic sentiment, which causes disenfranchisement among non-radical followers of Islam leading to those people being sucked in to an anti-Western rhetoric and so on.

 

It's particularly sad because when you look at the EDL, Britain First, UKIP and all these other mainstream movements condeming "radical Islam", it's exactly the same mob mentality. Dylann Roof is a Christian Extremist in the same way that the gunman here is a Muslim one, but we still see it fit to blame their religion and not ours. Frankie Boyle (I think) made a great point about something similar where some Pakistani men were found to be raping kids (in the UK) and the media said it a "cultural thing" with them, even though the age of consent in Pakistan is the same as it is here.. It's not a cultural thing, it's not a racial or religious thing, it's a "some people are fucking awful" thing and we need to stop trying to draw these big dividing lines that are meant to keep us seperate from the "bad guys" because that attitude just allows evil like this to flourish!

 

xx

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By "war" you mean "ground troops"? We're already bombing IS in Iraq, no?

 

I'm not in the UK at the moment, but I tend to think the opposite. Cameron wanted to ?(at least) bomb Syrian gov forces a year or so ago after the chemical strikes, and both Labour and much of the Tories voted against it. So not only did the the Syrian gov. get to continue bombing kids and sectarian cleansing, but now the moderate opposition there is gone and in place is an extremist, sectarian bunch of armies across Syria and Iraq (and hitting elsewhere, ofc); not only that, but the "secular", chemical bombing dictator is now quietly preferable to that. I think a large part of the blame for ISIS can be laid, as well as at the doors of the Syrian and sectarian Iraqi goverments, at much of the Labour and Tory parties, and Obama. 

Edited by scottyboy
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By "war" you mean "ground troops"? We're already bombing IS in Iraq, no?

 

I'm not in the UK at the moment, but I tend to think the opposite. Cameron wanted to ?(at least) bomb Syrian gov forces a year or so ago after the chemical strikes, and both Labour and much of the Tories voted against it. So not only did the the Syrian gov. get to continue bombing kids and sectarian cleansing, but now the moderate opposition there is gone and in place is an extremist, sectarian bunch of armies across Syria and Iraq (and hitting elsewhere, ofc); not only that, but the "secular", chemical bombing dictator is now quietly preferable to that. I think a large part of the blame for ISIS can be laid, as well as at the doors of the Syrian and sectarian Iraqi goverments, at much of the Labour and Tory parties, and Obama. 

 

Yeah, I guess full-scale occupation is more in line with what I was meaning.

 

I'm not 100% sure I follow your point - are you saying that part of the blame lies on Tories, Labour and Obama because of a lack of action before?

 

xx

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Full-scale occupation (of where exactly?), surely not; boots-on-ground, in Iraq, could well be. For the second point, yeah, basically. Not going to claim deep knowledge of Middle-Eastern politics, demographics, etc. but surely the outlines are pretty uncontroversial: the rise of IS is tied up not just in killing/oppression of muslims but Sunni ones particularly. Bassad (el-presidente, Syria) may be nominally secular but he and his government is identified with Shia rule/oppression of Sunnis. Ditto with IS (being Sunni extremists, particularly) and the pro-Shia sectarian Iraqi gov which happened to be in power when everything kicked off there last year. There are also the Iranian fighters (Shia) who are currently fighting IS and it seems committing atrocities of their own.

 

Neither the UK nor US wanted to arm the moderate/secular Syrian rebels when they were as strong as, or stronger than, anyone. Nor did they want to conduct air strikes or even just shoot down Syrian gov. aircraft; not even after the crossing of Obama's "red line" (chemical attacks). Others were willing to aid the sectarian extremists, so that's we've got in Syria now. We might still have a more localised Iraqi IS but surely not as strong and with as much pan-national sectarian appeal.

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Boots-on-ground in Iraq I think is almost a given and occupation of Iraq, invasion of Syria or some kind of disproportionate response - I'll be honest, I don't think that this is what's going to happen because it's smart or sensible at all - what I meant was that the words Cameron used about "full spectrum response, at home and abroad" suggests military action/reaction/intervention to me.

 

xx

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"occupation", as opposed to "boots on ground", to me implies an invasion and some kind of occupation government. Since the government in Iraq is relatively friendly to the west and actively fighting IS I can't see why it just wouldn't be (welcome) ground troops. The government in Syria, Assad's, is again actively fighting IS and it's local variants so we're again not going to overthrow it to strike at IS. No chance of ground troops alongside the Syrian government though, since again a year ago the talk was indeed of intervening against Assad (and again, the fact that the moderate rebellion failed, and the extremist replacement is now the greater enemy is an illustration of what a disaster that lack of action was).

 

Ground troops (particularly if we're just talking around the Kurdistan front, which we probably are) or no isn't that much of an issue I'd say, in comparison with all that (other than for the troops who might have to risk their necks, but that's kinda their job). There is already a full-blown ground war on multiple fronts in the middle-east, we are already involved militarily (air-raids) and if we were to withhold troops were they to be needed, the implication is we'd be letting Kurdistan (or the Kurdish frontlines, even) and/or Baghdad fall to IS. Doesn't sound preferable to me.

Edited by scottyboy
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Would be a good plan to attack the source of IS funding, just like it would have been a good plan to attack the actual perpetrators of 9/11, unfortunately that means sanctions/reprisals against Saudi Arabia - so it's not likely to happen...

I recko we'll go to the old faithful response of bombing fuck out of some poor people that had nothing to do with any terrorist attacks, it's just easier innit.

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It's sad really.  A few years ago I visited Sousse for the first time and it was quite lovely, during that stay I went to Tripoli and saw Jaefran which is a beautiful town.  The second time I went to Sousse was just after the revolution and a lot had changed but the people were just as friendly.  The war against Daesh can only be won through Education.   You cannot win a war against people hiding within the civilian population using bombs.  The world should also refer to them as Daesh instead of the Islamic State or ISIS

Edited by MerryChristmas
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