[seanlinmt]

I find it a little strange that people don't look into the reasons why terrorism exist. Wouldn't it be more efficient in trying to stamp out the root causes of terrorism?

People don't just wake up one morning and go, "Ah. Such a beautiful morning. I think I'll start terrorising people today."

Do they?

[mmjaa]

Its far harder for western societies to contend with the fact that they are creating the terrorist threat by their own actions, than it is to just "blame religion" for the problem.

But the truth of the matter is, we are creating the conditions for terrorists, every single day - by delivering our own form of terror: the (Imperial) Coalition forces currently demolishing Syria/Iraq/Afghanistan/Yemen are, indeed, terrorising entire populations in the rush to be the most efficient war-fighting machines on the planet.

If you want to stop terrorism, its quite simple: stop letting your governments get away with murder. The way they do it, is couch everything in secrecy, while we the citizens decide that ignorance of the war our societies are waging is worth the luxury and decadence those wars provide.

POP QUIZ: do you know how many people the state killed, in your name, today? Yesterday? Last week? Until you start paying attention to this statistic, citizen, you cannot cry when the terror comes home to roost.

[edanm]

Well, yeah. Some people do.

I mean, World War II happened, because (some) Germans wanted to conquer more land to have room for the Aryan race to grow. Not to mention wanted to kill anyone who didn't fit their ideal. (Or think of, e.g., the inquisition, if you want a non-Godwin's-law breaking example).

I'm not saying it's necessarily happening in this case, but yeah, it's possible for people to just really, genuinely believe that other people who aren't the same race as you, or who don't believe the same things as you do, should be killed.

Hell, 60 years ago much of the US population thought it made sense that people who had darker skin than they did should be segregated.

We can certainly look for root causes, but you really, truly have to accept that some root causes might be religious in nature, not rational, not what most people growing up in a Western society might consider normal. It's not always a case of "well there must be valid reasons for their actions", unless you choose to completely ignore history.

[wackro]

In a society where violent acts fuelled by extremism are actually being carried out, you have to have the top down approach as well.

However, I don't agree with massive loss of liberty like this one being proposed (as well as the snoopers charter, etc), and am wary of the potential for the laws to be misused by malevolent governments.

New laws have to be proportional and have minimal scope for misuse, IMO.

[kuuff]

> Wouldn't it be more efficient in trying to stamp out the root causes of terrorism?

Is it means, to forbid mass media to speak about terrorism? The root cause of terrorism is his direct goals, the fear is the cause. Without information about terrorism the would be no fear, so terrorism would become pointless.

[vilmosi]

Well terrorists aren't technically rational. They'll attack countries and civilians that have nothing to do with "the cause of therorism"