I'm in the middle of writing a Manifesto based on this article I found this morning on MSNBC. The article begins as follows:

Muslims worldwide are the main perpetrators of terrorism, a humiliating and painful truth that must be acknowledged, a prominent Arab writer and television executive wrote Saturday, as Middle East media and officials expressed horror at the bloody rebel siege of a Russian school.

nice article. glad to see someone calling it like it is.

“You are taking Islam as a cover and it is a deceptive cover; those who carry out the kidnappings are criminals, not Muslims,”

That recognition is a bright, shining light at the end of the tunnel! Good catch Syc.

nice sig line UT

Interesting article, I should keep more an an eye on arab news and see what the response is like. Wish you could get Al Jazeera in English already.

They have an English version of their website.

I can’t believe they let some of the perpetrators escape. The first thing they should have done, the very first, was to surround the building. Cover all the exits, even before they’re clear on what’s happening. :headshake

From what I gather this is a huge complex and they were still setting up for a seige.

Good article here
Maps and details here

Al Jazeera is supposed to be coming to Britain soon

If taking school kids hostage and killing some of them isn't bad, what is? The fact that shades of gray exist doesn't banish black and white.

I think the issue here is considering motivation and mindset. I was just explaining to a friend of mine (a very, "Semper fi! Do or die! Gung ho! Gung ho! Gung ho!"* kind of guy) that what terrorists do is wrong, absolutely. There are no shades of gray about killing civilians. However, if you want terrorism to stop, or at least slow down, the answer isn't the threat of retaliatory action. These people aren't afraid to die, hell, the Muslims look forward to it. What will stop them is getting into the mindset of your average terrorist, figuring out their motivation and taking that away. If you enter into a spiral where each side is thinking, "Well, we'll kill them because they killed us," the killing will never stop. However, if you genuinely work toward the resolution of a problem (say, Chechen independence or us getting the fuck out of the middle east, for example), you can stop the hatred. It won't be an instantaneous swords-to-plowshares transformation, but it will happen. The vast majority of terrorists are fighting because they've lost a family member or a close friend or a home or a life in the war that they are now participating in. If we stop killing mothers, their sons will stop turning into terrorists.

*The first person to tell me what movie this line is from gets a gold star for the day.

I got into a loooooong discussion about this the other day. For some people there is a "gray area" about killing civilians--it's just a part of war, and is inevitable. It's sad, but they don't necessarily lose any sleep over it. For me, I fail to see how the US dropping a bomb in Iraq and killing women and children is all that different from what the Chechens did.

who is the intended target? if civilians are killed because a combat target has chosen to surround itself with civilians (i.e. putting women and children in front of troops firing their weapons, or hiding munitions inside schools and hospitals) then unfortunately civilian casualties are unavoidable. that is very different than avoiding military targets in favor of targeting the weak and undefended.

It still comes down to the fact that the civilians have nothing to do with whatever "conflict" is going on. Do you think the civilians are lining up to part of this? Civilian casualties are completely unavoidable if unecessary, unsupported and uncalled for wars are AVOIDED instead of EMBRACED.