so typically greek of a greek person to make every situation about greece and greeks

It's only a matter of time before that shit comes over here. It's not a question of IF, only WHEN. But they're coming, they're most definitely coming.

And anyone who thinks that "appeasement" is going to change that, is living in a fantasy world.

Yup.

Huckabee is a weird dude. People who live in a desert can't live in the cold Minnesotan winters!

You fight wars with nations. Nation states. I'm not seeing a US secretary of state meeting with anything like an ISIS foreign minister to negotiate a peace treaty.

You fight organized violence - and the ability to plan & carry out violent acts mostly against civilians is not remotely close to prosecuting a war - with....diligence. surveillance. paying attention to shit. intelligence.

And even deciding to do "just" that is not easy. Because if you decide you're going to do "it", you have to decide - to argue about - all the various granular elements of "it". And in the USA, if you don't argue through what those aspects of "it" are, if you're just gonna yell "kill the ragheads!" or "the POTUS is weak because he isn't killing all the ragheads!" or some other stupid unthinking shit, you damn well better be prepared to get your ass the hell out of MY country.

Now get off my lawn

Well I don't believe ISIS will ever decide to to stop performing terrorist acts unless they meet their objective. It's also going to be difficult defeating them unless you decide you are going to kill every last one of them - which would cause a lot of collateral damage and still probably not be possible

Warszawa wrote:Well I don't believe ISIS will ever decide to to stop performing terrorist acts unless they meet their objective. It's also going to be difficult defeating them unless you decide you are going to kill every last one of them - which would cause a lot of collateral damage and still probably not be possible

The entities you're combating were not literally cultivated in a petri dish. They are human beings - horrible human beings to be sure, but human beings.

They're not going to "fight to the last man", or anything close to it. "They" don't really even have a very well-formed "objective".

The fact that I'm being called a bigot says more about you than it does me. I'm a realist. And I'm getting information from someone who's actually living it, not watching it on TV from the comfort of their own couch.

What's going on in Greece and all of Europe is a problem that the locals do not want to deal with. Yes, some politicians and governments are saying the right things but the people of these countries do not want the migrants there.

And you know what? I don't blame them.

Well good for you, Trump

well, greeks are also some of the most racist people i know fwiw

its impossible for proud greek citizens to find any goat titties to suck on these days. the filthy gypsies have overrun the farms, crowding together, greedily sucking on every goat titty.

my incredibly racist uncle in greece agrees

all truthful joking aside, i think it was said best that the IS just has a fundamental difference in conditioned worldview. a solution to terminate is accepting their invitation into the game. they live for this. it has been this way for thousands of year before and will be for thousands after. DiM is right when he says people are withdrawn over here in an out of sight out of mind kind of way, but it isn't a excuse for ignorance

If 3 of the 4 dead at the soccer stadium are truly the terrorists themselves, then this could have been so so so much worse. Curious as to what happened. There must be video cameras around that area I'd imagine.

"No chance for anyone to be a hero. One man was executing while the other kept the concert goers at-bay" - witness interviewed on CNN

Doll Is Mine wrote:The fact that I'm being called a bigot says more about you than it does me. I'm a realist. And I'm getting information from someone who's actually living it, not watching it on TV from the comfort of their own couch.

What's going on in Greece and all of Europe is a problem that the locals do not want to deal with. Yes, some politicians and governments are saying the right things but the people of these countries do not want the migrants there.

And you know what? I don't blame them.

imagine if you will that the those migrants never wanted to be migrants. That forces bigger than them, or you, or me, brought about their migration. That hating on them makes haters stupid, if only because they're not directing most of their hate on the responsible parties

me, I hate everybody

In general, blanket statements about ideology and even strategy are likely to be misleading at best. For example, some refugees are trying to escape the civil war in Syria, while others are in fact fleeing Isis itself.

Isis is not Al Qaeda, despite many similarities. Isis in fact has pretensions towards operating like a sovereign state. Thus, a military response may in fact do substantial damage to their credibility and ability to recruit adherents. Furthermore, for all intents and purposes, Isis is a genocidal in its stated intent and in its actions. It does need to be stopped, and simply enhancing security at various public gathering spaces won't be sufficient. It very well may be millenniarian in intent, but I'm not familiar enough with Islamic theology to say much about that. AQ, by contrast, is more akin to a criminal enterprise, uninterested in controlling territory. In response to US military operations, it has become rather decentralized, and less organized. It has morphed into something different from the organization that mounted the 9/11 attacks. It seems however that denying them a safe haven in fact does substantially reduce their capabilities.

It's been pretty clear that "war" metaphors are overused and have drained the term of its meaning. So it's not really clear to me what people who proclaim a war on terror are really advocating. Because we've had wars on poverty, drugs, and cancer too. So instead of relying on tired metaphors and generalizations that reveal nothing other than utter ignorance, let's use the words we mean when discussing such matters, and aim to read far more than we write or say in response.

We see in the aftermath to this why the internet is in general terrible by the way--everyone, no matter how ill informed or what dumb agenda they're promoting, feels quite free to post their inanities on twitter or whatever. I can't really blame them, as they're simply following the model that our punditocracy has generated for them. But ultimately, with few exceptions, just about everything I've encountered so far is simplistic and juvenile, not just missing nuance, but willfully dumb. For instance, one obvious complication that most narratives I've had the misfortune to encounter in the last twenty four hours or so seem to miss the fact that Isis is most intent on killing Muslims who do not adhere to its perversion of Islam, most especially Shi'ites. This undermines both the "clash of civilization" nonsense some are spewing, but it also undermines the left wing apologist idea that all this ultimately the fault of the west. The reality is for many people around the world of all faiths western style liberal democracy has great appeal. Indeed, that's precisely what instigated the civil war in Syria in the first place. Had Assad not stubbornly clung to power, we would not be in this position today. (On the other hand, had the US not toppled Saddam Hussein, he may very well have been able to brutally suppress what's happening in Iraq now, and it's unlike Syrians would have even thought about trying to topple Assad, so we are far from innocent here.)

TenuredVulture wrote:Thus, a military response may in fact do substantial damage to their credibility and ability to recruit adherents.

a military response where?

Furthermore, for all intents and purposes, Isis is a genocidal in its stated intent and in its actions.

this assertion, presuming someone like Baghdaddy has actually uttered it, doesn't exactly equate to a constitution.

...one obvious complication that most narratives I've had the misfortune to encounter in the last twenty four hours or so seem to miss the fact that Isis is most intent on killing Muslims who do not adhere to its perversion of Islam, most especially Shi'ites. This undermines both the "clash of civilization" nonsense some are spewing, but it also undermines the left wing apologist idea that all this ultimately the fault of the west.

NOW we're getting someplace, TV. I'm not sure it holds in every instance - for example, I'm doubtful too many of the concertgoers were Muslim - but this needs headlining, because it reminds us that these delusional dirtballs are not omnipotent space aliens.

TomatoPie wrote:

I didn't know we were Facebook friends.