y va marquer wrote:

In saying that these murderers were not created by society or by circumstances beyond their control I am not suggesting that we ignore factors that enable men who harbour such anger towards our society to find an outlet for this rage.
ISIS grooming and recruitment affords them a platform to express their hate, without this perhaps the scale of their crimes would be limited to rape or stabbings or violence towards single individuals.

I supose my point is that that any person who chooses to join ISIS is already morally bankrupt and should be exposed as such.

Agreed. 

y va marquer wrote:

ISIS grooming and recruitment affords them a platform to express their hate, without this perhaps the scale of their crimes would be limited to rape or stabbings or violence towards single individuals.

I supose my point is that that any person who chooses to join ISIS is already morally bankrupt and should be exposed as such.

I can't see what could exonerate the "attackers" in Paris. Sick, twisted butchers. You don't search the histories of people like this for excuses, you search for the means to stop the next event. 

As for these fucked up people who rush off to join IS, they're a bit like these disgusting columnists always calling for war abroad. They have this in common: they wish to be swept up in something larger than themselves that will cause harm, death and mayhem.

Except those who join ISIS, and get swept up in something bigger than themselves, actually pick up and use weapons to decapitate, shoot and blow completely innocent people to pieces.

Those columnists who you say are "a bit like them" are nothing like them.

Actions, in this case direct involvement in murder, speak much louder than words.

The father of one of the gunmen who killed scores of concert-goers in Paris had tried unsuccessfully last year to bring his son back from Syria where he had joined Islamic State (Isis). 

Mohamed Amimour, 67, spoke about his failed attempt to extract his son, Samy, from the control of Isis commanders, telling the French newspaper Le Monde afterwards how he had been greeted with coldness and “a distant sort of smile”.

Samy Amimour, 28, who was born in Drancy, a north-eastern suburb of Paris, has been identified as one of the attackers at the Bataclan theatre. He wore a suicide vest and blew himself up on Friday evening as French police closed in.

His father had urged his son to renounce his jihadi beliefs. In June 2014, Mohamed Amimour, who is of French-Algerian descent, set out on a private family mission to rescue his son, crossing the Turkish border and travelling to the Syrian town of Minbej, near Aleppo.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/16/paris-attackers-father-tried-extract-son-isis-syria-samy-amimour

I was held hostage by Isis. They fear our unity more than our airstrikes
Nicolas Hénin

As a proud Frenchman I am as distressed as anyone about the events in Paris. But I am not shocked or incredulous. I know Islamic State. I spent 10 months as an Isis hostage, and I know for sure that our pain, our grief, our hopes, our lives do not touch them. Theirs is a world apart.

Most people only know them from their propaganda material, but I have seen behind that. In my time as their captive, I met perhaps a dozen of them, including Mohammed Emwazi: Jihadi John was one of my jailers. He nicknamed me “Baldy”.

Even now I sometimes chat with them on social media, and can tell you that much of what you think of them results from their brand of marketing and public relations. They present themselves to the public as superheroes, but away from the camera are a bit pathetic in many ways: street kids drunk on ideology and power. In France we have a saying – stupid and evil. I found them more stupid than evil. That is not to understate the murderous potential of stupidity.

All of those beheaded last year were my cellmates, and my jailers would play childish games with us – mental torture – saying one day that we would be released and then two weeks later observing blithely, “Tomorrow we will kill one of you.” The first couple of times we believed them but after that we came to realise that for the most part they were bullshitters having fun with us.

They would play mock executions. Once they used chloroform with me. Another time it was a beheading scene. A bunch of French-speaking jihadis were shouting, “We’re going to cut your head off and put it on to your arse and upload it to YouTube.” They had a sword from an antique shop.

They were laughing and I played the game by screaming, but they just wanted fun. As soon as they left I turned to another of the French hostages and just laughed. It was so ridiculous.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/16/isis-bombs-hostage-syria-islamic-state-paris-attacks

y va marquer wrote:

Except those who join ISIS, and get swept up in something bigger than themselves, actually pick up and use weapons to decapitate, shoot and blow completely innocent people to pieces.

Those columnists who you say are "a bit like them" are nothing like them.

Actions, in this case direct involvement in murder, speak much louder than words.

Not everyone who goes to the Middle East to join IS kills either, but they, like the advocates of senseless war, are desperate to see death happen.

It's a very sensitive topic so please respect the distinction I've drawn. I make no comparison between newspaper columnists and evil terrorists who strap on bombs and execute civilians.

As for these fucked up people who rush off to join IS, they're a bit like these disgusting columnists always calling for war abroad. They have this in common: they wish to be swept up in something larger than themselves that will cause harm, death and mayhem.

Apologies Bw, but for me the distinction was not clear in the original post.

I don't generally read columnists who advocate war, but I don't think I've ever read a column where I felt the columnists reason for wanting war was that they get some kind of thrill out of the prospect of death and mayhem.

Put it this way. In 2003 the largest protests in human history took place against the Iraq war. Millions of people demonstrated against the war globally. Two thirds of the Australian electorate opposed going to war. 

At the time there was a movement calling itself the "decent Left" which supported the invasion, and there were well known protean public intellectuals like Christopher Hitchens who were among its leading advocates. As well as the usual frothing right wingers.

The US invasion of Iraq was a geopolitical disaster. It directly caused hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and indirectly has led to about a million more, and to the geographical extension of IS controlled territory in western Iraq and Syria. 

It is worth pausing for a bit to consider the scale of that atrocity I think. 

When you see the same people who advocated war on Iraq doing the same thing again today—with the same half-baked rationales and false claims they want to end tyranny and save lives, without a jot of hesitation given the historical record, it's truly disgusting. They're evil fuckers and we need to get them out of our public debate. 

y va marquer wrote:

Apologies Bw, but for me the distinction was not clear in the original post.

I tried to make it as clear as possible, I gave my thoughts on the terrorists in the first paragraph.

France's "closed border" is an absolute joke by the way, I crossed the Spain/France border the other day. There were only 2 police officers and not a single car was stopped.

This will surely work out wonderfully. A western lead intervention in the Middle East...What could possibly go wrong:

http://nypost.com/2015/11/16/france-wants-to-join-forces-with-us-russia-and-wipe-out-isis/

Security alert in all of Belgium now on level 3/4 until Salah Abdeslam is caught. Dear oh dear

Kel Varnsen wrote:

This will surely work out wonderfully. A western lead intervention in the Middle East...What could possibly go wrong:

http://nypost.com/2015/11/16/france-wants-to-join-forces-with-us-russia-and-wipe-out-isis/

Nowhere does it say anything about a large scale intervention with ground troops. That won't happen. It's just a ramping up of the drone strikes and the special forces operations that are already going on.

Jens wrote:

Kel Varnsen wrote:

This will surely work out wonderfully. A western lead intervention in the Middle East...What could possibly go wrong:

http://nypost.com/2015/11/16/france-wants-to-join-forces-with-us-russia-and-wipe-out-isis/

Nowhere does it say anything about a large scale intervention with ground troops. That won't happen. It's just a ramping up of the drone strikes and the special forces operations that are already going on.

We'll see. Obama is under a lot of pressure after his "Isis is contained" comments a day before the Paris attacks. 

Reckon Putin will be too if they have to admit that ISIS took down that plane over Sinai.

Think we're a long way away from a ground invasion from the likes of the US/France/UK. Putin might want to help out his mate though in a limited capacity.

Obama's remarks about containing IS referred to the geographical area between Mosul and Raqqa.

@ Gurgen: I take it your emo was a sign of sardonic humor? It's not so funny if you live in Brussels.

I live in Brussels..

wrong there, mags. It's funny again.