What disappoints me about all this is the sudden sense of outrage prompted by the media when ISIL's month long campaign gets a bit closer to dear old England. What happened to the news about the previous day's attack in Beiruit? (Which surely would have been much worse if one of the bombers hadn't been brought down by Adel Termos at the cost of his own life), and the p*ss-poor coverage of the incursion into Ankara targetting a Kurdish rally, a wave of attacks south of the Med, and the Russian plane brought down over the Sinai. I see one commentator here has made the connection:
That's surpassed the Turkey attacks, but these numbers seem to crop up in Africa and the middle east every month.
It's depressing that UK media won't report this as a coordinated campaign and a war, which is what I understand it to be. We've tried to ignore or deny how much we are hated in the past (a prime example is Ulster), and without much success. Why would any agressor respond to being ignored or misunderstood in any way other than trying harder?
All attackers are now believed to be dead.
Yes. That's how warfare works when your MO is to sacrifice your own life for your cause. Your quote reminds me of the comedy story, whose joke is in the title : "
The Kamikazi pilots' reunion dinner". It's equivalent to, and as revealling as, stating that 'all munitions are now believed to have been fired'.
This is on a different scale to the above and was well planned, co-ordinated and executed.
I would want to say much the same for the other attacks in the month's campaign too. Let's not assume that the Paris attack on 'death metal' and football means that the campaign is over!
This isn't about the EU or the lack of any preparation to handle the extra-number of resources due to open borders. This is about ISIL,and removing the desire for people here to fight in Syria.Only then can we finally combat the root causes and not deal with just the branches and stems, which we have seen time after time, their devastating consequences if left to sprout.
I think this is a well-informed analysis; though lacking a grasp of the purpose and intention of ISIL/ISIS and its beliefs; beliefs and logic that are well enough understood by its front line to commit so many of them to sacrifice their own lives to further that understanding. What I'm not hearing is any intelligent debate which grasps the principles of ISIL - just the condemnation, demonisation, shock and anger. Nothing about the underlying principles, whose intensity of conviction will encourage a committed person to want to sacrifice thier own life. (I discount the 'propaganda' stories that their troups are all coerced, persuaded or otherwise encouraged to die without a sincere committment.
This war won't end before we understand it.
It's the understanding by us Europeans that is at the heart of the conflict. The muslim campaign #NotInMyName is, I'm sure, helpful to many who might feel wrongly criticised, but where is the informed explanation of why we europeans are such deserving targets of other people's own sacrificial death?