Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW

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Hey look: jihadist, jihadist, pants on fire

by Paul Wells on Friday, January 15, 2010 10:59am - 9 Comments

From the print edition, my column about the latest permutations of global terrorism, custom-written, I believe, to upset just about everyone.

Tags: self-promotion, terrorism, this oughta be interesting

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Plain Old Anon

"When you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one".
http://intensedebate.com/people/Stewart_Smith Stewart_Smith

Paul, looks like you are going to have to try harder if you want to offend if a middling number of people.
http://intensedebate.com/people/MatthewFletcher MatthewFletcher

Haven't read the article yet, but given the promo here, if it doesn't upset me, I'm going to be really upset.
Mike T.

This article is dhimmi-loving FAIL because it doesn't point out how muslims are all evil and they are all incompatible with democracy and they hate women and they want to use human rights tribunals to all make us wear burkas and our culture will die if we are not STRONG yada yada yada hate hate hate hate. WAKE UP PEOPLE THEY WANT TO EAT YOUR CHILDREN.
http://intensedebate.com/people/canucklehead canucklehead

I have a feeling you came closer to pleasing everyone 0_0 It's a really excellent point to have the flexibility to acknowledge that individual bombers and leaders seem to refute any kind of poverty link but that very poor countries are still the places these guys come from. The obvious angle is that those are the countries without the resources to clamp down on jihadi organizations but it also makes lots of sense to think that living in an atmosphere of poverty is going to lead people with a sense of unique civilization into resentment of the people with much greater wealth and the belief that their people are being exploited. In that aspect it's about the religion, but only as a proxy or as the base for a nationalism.
Light On

I was going to read the article, then saw this lede: "“Consider this hypothetical,” Andrew Sullivan wrote in The Atlantic three years ago."

Why on earth anyone cares what Sullivan, or possibly one of his ghost-writers that it has emerged write half the stuff on his blog, says or thinks? He's ridiculous.

OK, I read the article. The North American media has to start acknowledging what the rest of the world does: America's support for Israel and propensity to invade and attack Muslim nations – something that has *increased* under Obama, astonishingly – is what pisses off Muslim terrorists. It's really not as big a mystery as this column makes it to be; in fact, Bin Laden has stated his grievances very explicitly, and so have other Muslim terrorists. It has emerged that the mastermind of 9/11 admitted that it was USA's support for Israel in their dispute with Palestinians that motivated him. What more did you need?

"It would be really good to have a government somewhere that would remind us of this instead of leading the panic parade." – OK, now you're talking.

"The Harper government isn’t temperamentally suited to calling for calm. " – Sigh. If there's one thing Harper is it is cool, calm, and collected. Would you prefer ashtray-throwing Martin or protester-assaulting Chretien at the helm? Liz May?

"It's Cheney's fault Obama panicked" – OK, I made that one up, but it's what you're saying here, and it's asinine. One more quibble: Are we sure countries like Bolivia, Burkina Faso, and Burundi are panicking too, as you suggest? I don't think they are, I think it's limited to, well, countries that invade Muslim countries and support Israeli war crimes and are therefore possible terror targets, such as Canada and the USA.

There's a website, notcanada.com, created by and for immigrants, detailing why Canada sucks, and they make a compelling case. With respect to air travel panic, it's getting close to the point where anybody with a bit of money saved up is going to flee to places like Costa Rica.

http://intensedebate.com/people/MatthewFletcher MatthewFletcher

So the U.S stops supporting Israel and everything is fine… Until the terrorists move the goal posts, because that's how terrorism works.

Anyone who writes about a compelling case "why Canada sucks" can go ahead and leave the country.

http://intensedebate.com/people/IntenseAlex IntenseAlex

I wasn't upset. In fact, I agreed with pretty much everything you wrote. Am I missing something?
YSP

I can't really comment if poverty correlates to terrorism (It seems like a slam dunk to me, but I don't claim to think like a terrorist, so what do I know?), but in the US it really correlates to whether white people support Sarah Palin.

Good observations on asymetrical warfare. I personally prefer a slightly less close to nul chance of dying in a terrorist attack than living in a police state.