[dionidium]

You want to remove the terrorist impulse from all of humanity forever? That's...ambitious.

But let's take at face value that that's possible, you'd still have to assume that all terrorists have a) some rational set of demands; and b) even if they did, that we'd be willing to meet those demands.

What ISIS believes is incompatible with Western democracy. There is nothing we could do to eliminate their desire to attack us that wouldn't mean our own destruction, anyway.

[enraged_camel]

>>ou want to remove the terrorist impulse from all of humanity forever? That's... ambitious.

No, the goal should be to improve the living conditions, infrastructure, access to education, etc of impoverished regions where terrorist sentiment typically appears and festers.

To give an extreme example, there is a reason the Saudi royalty aren't walking into the middle of a marketplace and blowing themselves up: they already have everything they want/need. I'm not saying we should make everyone royalty, but that there is a clear correlation between standard of living and terrorist sentiment.

[zaroth]

Ah yes, the good old 'if only they could all be treated like Saudi royalty, they wouldn't blow themselves up in the middle of a marketplace' argument!

Standard of living is a continuous curve which has absolutely nothing to do with mass murder. There is a binary switch which occurs separately from any experience which is measured in terms of 'standard of living'. Now maybe there are some experiences which can drive a person to commit terrorism, but I think more likely, this terrorism is not a consequence of some action, but rather, these are a group of people who use terrorism as a tool to wage war. Why are they at war with the West? It's not because of standard of living, I'm pretty sure it's because they hate everything the West stands for and wants it to burn.

[TeMPOraL]

> these are a group of people who use terrorism as a tool to wage war

You mean the United States of America, terrorizing Pakistanis for years now?

There's no binary switch. There are tactics effective for given goals and circumstances. Mass shootings and suicide bombings are a perfect strategy if you want to make a country destroy itself. The question is - why would you like to make that country destroy itself? The answer is not:

> It's not because of standard of living, I'm pretty sure it's because they hate everything the West stands for and wants it to burn.

That's not only bullshit but, if it were true, it would be the best argument to just ignore those attacks and treat them as any other murder done by organized crime. Because if they "hate our freedom", then by overreacting and turning ourselves into police states, we're doing their job for them - we're putting our economy and industry into dismantling everything the West stands for.

[zaroth]

No, I don't. I think they do quite a better job terrorizing themselves than they do us or we do them. In any case it's all out war at this point. Against exactly who or where will be interesting to find out.

You look for a second at the people who actually carried out recent attacks, you will see what I mean. Who said anything about police state?

The thing which has impressed me is apparently this guy was a prolific attack planner. Known and poorly tracked. I'd say a major intelligence failure.

[prawn]

Either that or you work against whatever gives them irrational demands. And I wouldn't do that by fighting on religious grounds, but building the alternatives - through education being one. It's not exciting or retaliatory, but the status quo in the Middle East is not particularly effective.