As people were leaving for a holiday weekend (I am pretty sure this is about every other weekend there) in Madrid, 5 bombs went off. This is your good ol' classic terrorism. The terrorists politely called and informed the police that they were placing bombs in gas stations on highways leading away from Madrid. They even correctly informed the police that the bombs were going to go off at 5:30pm.
Yes, that’s right. The Basque separatists are back to inform the world that there are terrorist groups in places other than the Middle East. Also seemingly showing those Al Qaeda bastards what good gentlemanly terrorism is supposed to look like.
More to the point, I have been listening to conservative pundits this morning informing their elderly am radio listening audience that this should be taking as proof that the Spaniards are idiots. Yes, I know what you are thinking. There is a lot of truth to this statement. On the whole, I think the Spanish are highly untrustworthy (primarily due to several I have had in classes with me, and yes, I am judging an entire nation based upon the actions of three individuals one of whom I later found out was from Argentina- this is not the point). The moral is, people like Roger Hedgecock, (I think) who is guest hosting Rush Limbaugh's show today, has insinuated that this is due to Spain's electoral response to terrorism and their pull or support from Iraq. Clearly this is evidence by the fact that bombs have exploded in Madrid but not New York.
One can only hope this is an opinion only held by the most insane and uninformed of conservatives. I honestly believe that if Mr. Limbaugh himself had been hosting the show he would have shot down callers insinuating this connection. That man isn't quite as insane as people give him credit for.
This whole situation did get me thinking about the stat e of terrorism in the world today. You have the ETA, Hamas, and to a lesser degree anymore the IRA. These groups actually have some kind of nationalist agenda. The ETA and IRA both have publicly denounced terrorist attacks resulting in civilian casualties- claiming said practices are counter productive. The key to these groups is that they actually want something. They consider themselves soldiers for their "nation". Now you look at Al Qaeda. Can someone tell me what the hell these people want?
Is there really anything that we can do other than attempt to kill them all?
Is George Bush actually right on this one? I refuse to believe this. Back in high school I remember reading an op ed article relating to terrorism in the UK that postulated the obvious.
Terrorism is bred from economic desperation.
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People with nice houses and large imported cars tend to not want to blow themselves up. Is this just my western bias? I don't know, but my gut instinct is sending our military into the Middle East and making their situation even more desperate is not helping the situation.
Any thoughts?
myconfidence says:
"The key to these groups is that they actually want something. They consider themselves soldiers for their "nation". Now you look at Al Qaeda. Can someone tell me what the hell these people want?"
David Cross pretty much nailed this one…
Unfortunately you have to do an Edit–>Find on this page search for "David Cross" once at the link, but it will get it done.
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/36677
I'll grant that the possibility that Bush or any other administration would have the balls or the power to stop or otherwise mediate the shocking degree to which our government supports Israel, for example, by giving a supposedly "functioning democracy" billions of our tax dollars every single year.
Meanwhile, our support for religious or semi-religious monarchies and autocracies in the region, nations (get it?) such as Saudi Arabia or Egypt generally seems to be in the form of guns, sans butter, vis-a-vis the citizens thereof.
So I guess the irony is that these people (i.e., the 9/11 al Qaida operatives) do in fact have nations that they're fighting for, they're just not a part of a larger one. This goes some distance in explaining another difference between the other terrorist groups and al Qaida, in that the former are subnational organizations and al Qaida is an international organization (something like the inverse of a multinational corporation), and they know exactly who wields hegemonic power globally (on the so-called anarchic system of nation states) and throughout the region of southwest Asia in the same way that, say, Basques know that it is the government of Spain that wields it in their own case.
In any event, if we had a place where their grievances could be heard, perhaps their resorting to violence could be avoided. I'm thinking of something like a place where all the nation states of the world could get together in diplomatic setting to avoid things like world conflict or the transgression of basic human rights or the interference by one nation state in the internal political affairs of another (say, in places like Chile or Haiti or Venezuela). We could even have it here in the US, perhaps in a cosmopolitan town like New York City.
But then, what kind of American would I be if I supported an organization with egalitarian, humanist goals like those? I mean, we all know that God's infinite love stops at the churchhouse door, right? Where would we be if needless suffering and misery didn't inspire us all to develop a personal relationshiop with God? What would motivate us to get up and go to the fridge during commercials? Imagine, without the pain and suffering that is necessary to our faith, how could we bring ourselves to sit and judge people from third-world nations that have first-world rulers who our government props up by our will and in our name, represented by our foreign policy? How else would we know that these citizens are evil, freedom-hating suicide bombers who are simply insane? They're not rational, like us blessed Christian, eternal, immaterial, dare I say, magical souls going to a perfect place in the sky, right? Heck, I'd probably pay a high-school dropout the equivalent of minimum wage to load a 2,000 pound bomb on a fighter plane so it could drop said bomb on the residential neighborhood of anybody who didn't understand that if God wanted everyone to not be Christian and Americanized, He wouldn't have made America the greatest nation with the greatest, most idealistic people on Earth, now would He?
kat says:
i was stuck in the middle of an eta riot once in san sebastian. the riot police in their armor reminded me of teenage mutant ninja turtles.
james says:
the best thing to do, IS to hunt them all down and kill them all. obviously. you're right al qaeda isn't fighting for anything worhtwhile (if anything at all). that area of the world [culturally/religiously] has been a sleeping beast. it's just waking up from 500 years of STAGNANCE- they are lazy and fat, and until michaeal moore's fraudumentary, all we saw were fat a-rabs selling oil, with their titled, nepotistic ways, depriving millions from a chance to succeed or live like men should … And THAT plays a role in the backlash- these fundamentalists think that WE somehow curdled their way of life(dumbass nomads vs. survival of the fittest) … and it doesn't help when some afro-korean-jamaican lesbian gets on NPR an says "i moved to NYC because it's the sodom& gemorrah of our time" … as much as said about the hyporcrisy of conservatives (i'll atest to it AND say WE DESERVE IT, PUTA!), liberals want so much GD freedom and QUESTION why the rest of the world thinks we're arrogant, valueless, holier-than-thou, ammoral, scum that is somehow ABOVE THE LAW!! (ie dope smokers). whatever, alls i'm saying is that I BELEIVE in racial profiling, i'm afraid of God, i think you CAN judge entire nations on the action of a few, AND hold them accountable for those few, i think it's gross that gay men have to put tampons in their butts, i don't want to pay taxes EVER! i give money to people that ask earn for/earn it (ie singing homeless people) i think ABORTION is okay, i don't understand how VEGANS or vegetarians CAN BE PROCHOICE!! and goddammit, if george bush was still an alcoholic i'd pound a beer with him and make fun of fat girls ….
www.sfantu.ro says:
Eduardo Flores Rosza trained in 2007 in Romania
Daily Ziua this extensive activities of the Legion in 2007, in an article in January 29. Members of this group prepared a paramilitary camp even Ciuc Mountains, and among those present at the training was and Rosza Eduardo Flores, killed by Bolivian commando's on April 16. Hungarian-Jewish-Spanish Rosza Flores participated in the war in Yugoslavia and has received Croatian citizenship as a result. But the most important thing in your resume terrorist "Sz