Muslims face extra security checks

What's this? Some common sense? Now if we could implement this in the US as well. Then we could stop the never ending list of banned items on airplanes and focus instead on figuring out who the terrorists are.

Exactly.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2313135,00.html

 

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I agree that our current ways of scanning people randomly is pretty stupid. Target all the Arabs, Pakistanis, and other groups as they're currently the ones most likely to attack us.

However, where there's a will, there's a way. They'll just pay some South American that doesn't like the U.S., or they'll pay some African Moslem, some gangbangers, or they'll pay some white guy that doesn't like his government to do the deed.

Numerous terrorist attacks have happened on our soil before, and they were American citizens who did the deeds. They were all mostly white people too! Earth Liberation Front against our industry, radical Christians vs abortion clinics, Timothy McVeigh vs the Murrah Federal Building, some dude with pipe bombs at the Atlanta Olympics, numerous gangs across the country, etc etc. There's no stopping those that want to do harm.

- N

 

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A lot of your list, isn't suicidal in their hate, they do enjoy life, and aren't willing to go to Allah prematurely.

 

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no, im quite certain that all of those people would have been willing to die to accomplish their acts of terrorism.

just because someone straps a bomb to an inanimate object, rather than themselves, does not imply some degree of "martyr-think".

 

The 9/11 bombers were young muslim men dressed in western consumer clothing....the kind of thing you'd find anyone in a western country wearing.

They didn't have big long beards or headscarves.

 

Suicide attacks are a kind of tactic, planned and organized by extremely committed military or paramilitary groups. This tactic became widely known during the Second World War in the Pacific as Allied ships were attacked by Japanese kamikaze pilots who caused maximum damage by flying their explosive-laden aircraft into military targets. Since the 1980s, the low cost and high lethality of the tactic have made it a favorite with guerrilla, insurgent, and especially terrorist groups, notably in the Middle East and Sri Lanka. The Tamil Tigers were, as of 2000, "unequivocally the most effective and brutal terrorist organization ever to utilize suicide terrorism";[1] since the Tigers signed a cease-fire in 2001, suicide bombings by Islamist militants, mostly in the Al-Aqsa Intifada and the Iraqi insurgency, have been the most frequent and cumulatively destructive.

The concept of self-sacrifice has long been a part of war. From the earliest days of honoring fallen soldiers as heroes, those who sacrifice themselves to further a political, moral, or cultural ideology have been and are still highly regarded figures in their respective societies. Soldiers who lay down their lives to protect their comrades are commonly awarded the highest recognition for courage in battle, while those who survive combat are honored for their physical and psychological sacrifice.

The ritual act of self-sacrifice during combat appeared in a large scale at the end of World War II with the Japanese kamikaze bombers. In these attacks, airplanes were used as flying bombs. Later in the war, as Japan became more desperate, this act became formalized and ritualized, as planes were outfitted with explosives specific to the task of a suicide mission. Kamikaze strikes were a weapon of symmetric war used by the Empire of Japan chiefly against United States Navy aircraft carriers.

Following World War II, Viet Minh "death volunteers" fought against the French colonial army by using a long stick-like explosive to detonate French tanks, as part of their urban warfare tactics.

The first modern suicide bombing occurred in Iran in 1980 when 13-year old Hossein Fahmideh detonated himself as he ran up to an Iraqi tank at a key point in a battle of the Iran-Iraq War.

Lebanon saw the first bombing, but it was the Tamil Tigers who perfected the tactic and inspired its use elsewhere. Their Black Tiger unit have committed between 76 and 168 (estimates vary) suicide bombings since 1987, using more than 240 attackers. Their victims included former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (assassinated by Thenmuli Rajaratnam), many prominent Lankan leaders (among them the late PM Ranasinghe Premadasa), Colombo's Central Bank, and even warships.

In Northern Ireland, in the early 1990s, as part of the Provisional IRA campaign 1969-1997, the IRA used the tactic it called the the "proxy bomb" -a sort of involuntary suicide bomb, where a victim was kidnapped and forced to drive a car bomb into its target. In one infamous operation in Derry in 1990, the PIRA chained a Catholic civilian to a car laden with explosives, held his family hostage and forced him to drive to a British Army checkpoint as a "human bomb" where the bomb exploded, killing himself and five soldiers.

If the objective is to kill as many people as possible, suicide bombing by terrorists may thus "work" as a tactic in that it costs fewer lives than any conventional military tactic and targeting unarmed civilians is much easier than targeting soldiers. As an objective designed to achieve some form of favorable outcome, especially a political outcome, most believe it to be a failure. Terrorist campaigns involving the targeting of civilians have never won a war. Analysts believe that in order to win or succeed, any guerrilla or terrorist campaign must first transform into something more than a guerrilla or terrorist movement.[15] Such analysts believe that a terrorist cause has little political attraction and success may be achieved only by renouncing terrorism and transforming the passions into politics.

Often extremists assert that, because they are outclassed militarily, suicide bombings are necessary. For example, the former leader of Hamas Sheikh Ahmad Yassin stated: "Once we have warplanes and missiles, then we can think of changing our means of legitimate self-defense. But right now, we can only tackle the fire with our bare hands and sacrifice ourselves." [16]

Though the majority of suicide bombers were and are male, female suicide bombers have carried out a number of attacks since 1985.

* Women of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or Tamil Tigers, have perpetrated 30–40% of the organization's suicide bombings, which number more than 200. Thenmuli Rajaratnam (also known as Dhanu), who assassinated Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, is the best-known of these bombers.
* The Chechen shahidkas have attacked Russian troops in Chechnya and Russian civilians elsewhere, e.g. in the Moscow theater hostage crisis.
* During the Lebanese Civil War, female SSNP members bombed Israeli troops, militias such as the South Lebanon Army, and Lebanese civilians.
* In the Al-Aqsa Intifada, women of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hamas have bombed Israeli civilians and soldiers.
* Members of the Iraqi insurgency have set off suicide bombs.
* Women of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have carried out suicide bombings primarily against Turkish Armed Forces, in some cases strapping explosives to their abdomen in order to simulate pregnancy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_bomber

 

the point of my post was to illustrate that if a person can justify killing others to further their agenda, they are more often also willing to sacrifice themselves as well.

btw, the kamikaze tactic was most often employed by "scraping" their planes across the surface deck of a ship, not "crashing". this way, as much personel and equipment as possible would be destroyed by the flaming, exploding wreck of plane debris.

 

Why are americans so obsessed then with the casualty figures of their troops?

 

I think moslems should be screened more effectively as they could be potential suicide bombers. forget playing fair for now!,..this sort of behaviour shouldn't be tolerated in the civilized world and it has to be dealt with the hard way!.
every nations deserves the right to live free from terror, this is not the dark ages anymore, our ancestors have been through that and we don't want a future where our kids live in another dark age

 

to incite hatred of the enemy. these figures are delivered in the manner that they are, to do that very thing.

then again, i dont really feel like i fit the mold of the "typical american", so i cant say.

 

Does this apply to the Middle East as well?

 

Yup I was supporting your statement with examples.

 

Nah, americans think that they are invincible just because they live within the borders of the USA. To your average american war is just like in GI Joe....no one gets killed, and if someone on the other side gets killed, well, shit, they're "bad guys" (the exact words the US military has used time and time again) so it doesn't matter....but if one of your soldiers breaks a nail....call the war off. We saw this in Vietnam.

 

at least you used the word "american" instead of "yank".
you are making progress, my son.

as for your vietnam comment...it was a conflict we were involved in for almost a decade, and in which 50,000 americans died. the statistics hardly support your statement.

 

im having a strange day. heh..for some reason i thought you disagreed with me.

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No its a normal reaction to my generally intransigent attitude.

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no, it is because of my highly abnormal day.


NOW we are arguing! yay!!

 

I'm too cool to argue with people I like. I can pretend to argue though.

I'm good at that.

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it is pretty much all i do here.
pretend to argue.

 

in principal this is an overdue suggestion

but there may be people who don't fit the profile... for example:
* western converts to jihad
* unaware westerners whose luggage is used by terrorists to smuggle bombs on board...
both scenarios have happened before

which is why it should be beyond "Muslims only"
it should also be behavioural (i.e. people looking / acting suspiciously), and random, on a statistical basis

basically we need to let statistics determine who to be checked, and not constrain it with PC bullshit.