TERRORIST ATTACKS: PARIS, MALI, AND MORE

[HairOfTheDog]

I haven't said anything about supporting torture and killing family members.

My main point is: this is a war against the West.

An actual war.

It may not be fought on battlefields or with missiles, but it IS us against them.

No matter how we arrived at this point, we as a society have to realize that.

Coddling and empathizing won't do us any good.

If they had the means, they'd destroy all of us in a heartbeat. That's their mindset.

Time to buckle up.

I agree that it would be foolish to minimize the threat that terror groups pose across the globe, especially when the guys at the top are bringing in a ton of money.

There are several such Islamic terror groups making life hell for everyone who doesn't join their ranks in the Middle East, in Africa, etc.. And, yes, fundamentalist Islamic religious beliefs and manipulations play a large role.

But, it's not only a war against the West - it's not even primarily a war against the West at this point. Western targets and hits are more of a bonus and an attention-grabbing recruitment tool than anything else presently, in my opinion, though "the West" may be the ultimate future target.

Look at it objectively, MS. Al-Assad, the Syrian people, and the Syrian army are not "the West". The Iraqi and Syrian Kurds are not "the West". The Iraqi, Turkish, and Egyptian governments, armies and peoples are not "the West". The Israeli soldiers guarding the Syrian border are not "the West". The Jordanian air force is not "the West". The Russian soldiers (who not only battled with ISIS, but also hit US-backed rebels and civilians to help bolster Assad) are not "the West". All are declared enemies and equally 'infidel' as "the West" in the mantra of ISIS.

The reality is that Shiite (and to a lesser extent, Sunni) Muslims who have been killed or forced to flee their homes by ISIS outnumber western targets and Christian victims by the hundreds of thousands. By far, Middle Easterners and North Africans (mostly Muslims) have been the hardest hit targets of Islamic terrorists.

The reality is also that ISIS-inspired or ISIS-backed attacks on Western soil have been carried out almost exclusively by Westerners who sought to join ISIS.

None of that reality means that ISIS isn't a danger to the U.S. or the West as a whole. Islamic terrorism is infiltrating Western populations primarily by attracting Westerners to their cause; often by reminding malleable Westerners of how the West killed hundreds of thousands Muslims under false pretenses. That happened MS; it's a fact -- not fiction or opinion.

I feel like you sometimes deny facts and truths that you find distasteful and attempt to paint people who look at things more objectively and less emotionally than you as 'apologists' or 'PC' or other en vogue labels that often don't fit and minimize the seriousness of the matter.

Anyway, of course we should vigilantly work to deter attacks at home by domestic ISIS-devoted lone wolves and cells. Of course we should vigilantly screen refugees, immigrants, and citizens returning from terrorist hotbeds. Nobody here has said otherwise, not that I recall. It's debatable, but I also support the West continuing to work with the multi-national coalition to quash the ISIS leadership/headquarters and military bases. And, I would like to see a much harder push on Middle Eastern countries to take in the displaced refugees rather than "the West" continuing to absorb so many of them.