Best Coast wrote:Tanzio wrote:
Label them whatever you prefer. In my world they are the enemy. Labeling the enemy evil is a tool utilized by both sides to foment rage and recruit amateurs for dirty work.
I dont buy into your situational ethics that there is no right or wrong, no good or evil. Bastards like the Jihadists that targeted young girls at the Manchester concert are NOT "amateurs" as you label them. They are part of a global Islamist network:
https://clarionproject.org/5-lessons-us ... r-bombing/
Manchester is a hub in the Islamist insurgency network.
It was a single bomb set off by a single jihadist, but he belonged to a hub in the Islamist insurgency. Apparently, independent Islamists often exist in geographic clusters that are linked together through a multilayered infrastructure. South Manchester is one such cluster.
Earlier this year, The Guardian found that 16 convicted or killed terrorists lived within a 2.5-mile space in southern Manchester. That was before the bombing and the subsequent arrests in the area.
I am not selling anything. Again, you may label the enemy bad, evil, terrorists or whatever. To me they are simply the adversary.
The article that you have quoted is relatively accurate. There are clusters of radical Islamists throughout Europe, Canada, and to a lesser extent the USA, not to mention Russia and of course The Stans.
You misunderstand my statement about fomenting rage in part to recruit amateurs. Amateurs are necessary to train. The insurgents that the article describes were not recruited as professionals in the overwhelming percentage of the cases. They are trained by professionals and many never become professional combatants or trainers. That does not preclude them from being operative insurgents.
The same can be said for our professional military. Recruits are not professionals. They become professionals if they successfully complete training.
I have been stating matter of factly that this is war, for many years. It is a clash of ideologies struggling for dominance. Right and wrong, good and evil are relative to perspective.
I fight for the rule of law evolving toward equal justice. I fight against the rule of totalitarians who utilize fear to consolidate power. I simply do not consider it a battle of right and wrong, good and evil, or gods and devils.
It is a simple matter of survival, which involves infrastructure building and maintenance, as well as pest control.
