Manchester ...

[uwe]

Planting a bomb at a teeny bopper concert with mostly young girls in the audience plunges new depths of vileness even if you apply terrorist standards. Could any of us have imagined the PLO or the IRA planting a bomb at a T. Rex, Osmonds or Bay City Rollers concert or, say, the Hezbollah attack a Take That or Britney Spears gig?

[Rob]

Planting a bomb at a teeny bopper concert with mostly young girls in the audience plunges new depths of vileness even if you apply terrorist standards. Could any of us have imagined the PLO or the IRA planting a bomb at a T. Rex, Osmonds or Bay City Rollers concert or, say, the Hezbollah attack a Take That or Britney Spears gig?

I completely agree!
And the answer to the question is NO.

[Dave W]

It's called blowback.

[bassilisk]

Once you're a radicalized psycho willing to blow yourself up there are no limits to vile.

A full movie house, a crowded bus/train station, a school in session, a church/synagogue during services...all fair fodder for the insanity that drives your belief system. The object is as big a target as possible.

He waited until the end of the show when people were all bunched up buying concert swag.
Setting it off during the concert wouldn't have maximized the casualties.

The terrorist aspect that really hits home is there is no defense against this kind of thing.
Catching a lone wolf maniac is like catching a very particular snowflake in a snowstorm.

[dadagoboi]

Please stop the political BS.  The US (and the UK) has killed many more innocent children over the years than any upstart 'terrorist' (or 'Freedom Fighter') organization ever will.

There are other social media platforms to express this one sided outrage.  I come here to discuss Thunderbirds but if you want to discuss world politics, Bring It On. I'll happily quote chapter and verse to back up my beliefs.

But I'd prefer we not open this Pandora's box only to start deleting responses and losing more members who prefer to discuss politics, or not,elsewhere.

[uwe]

That's crap. You won't find me condoning what the West has messed up in the Mideast over a century by now. And Afghan children killed at a wedding as "collateral damage" by a drone are no cause for celebration either. Their parents mourn too.

All that doesn't justify intentionally targeting a Western teenager event with a bomb. There was no US general there with his niece nor do I remember Ariana Grande as an outspoken supporter of Desert Storm - she wasn't even born then. This wasn't a Ted Nugent gig so to speak, the girls there had no political convictions whatsoever.

I understand the concept of asymmetric warfare. But generally even the most radical protagonists act under some type of code. The Japanese surprise-attacked Pearl Harbour (an act of war, not terrorism), but they didn't strafe civilian settlements there. The IRA and the PLO had dozens of terrorist attacks on innocents but they didn't blow up a kindergarten (nor did they ever consider it according to my knowledge) though that would have caused ultimate grief for people they hated and/or provoked retaliatory measures that might have helped their cause and attracted new followers. Nor do I remember the Vietcong attacking US schools in Saigon after what happened in My Lai or the Christmas bombings in Hanoi. This has a new quality.

There is no possible political justifcation for what happened in Manchester. And I probably agree with you on more points regarding Western policy in the Mideast than you would like to believe.

[dadagoboi]

That's crap. You won't find me condoning what the West has messed up in the Mideast over a century by now. And Afghan children killed at a wedding as "collateral damage" by a drone are no cause for celebration either. Their parents mourn too.

All that doesn't justify intentionally targeting a Western teenager event with a bomb. There was no US general there with his niece nor do I remember Ariana Grande as an outspoken supporter of Desert Storm - she wasn't even born then. This wasn't a Ted Nugent gig so to speak, the girls there had no political convictions whatsoever.

I understand the concept of asymmetric warfare. But generally even the most radical protagonists act under some type of code. The Japanese surprise-attacked Pearl Harbour (an act of war, not terrorism), but they didn't strafe civilian settlements there. The IRA and the PLO had dozens of terrorist attacks on innocents but they didn't blow up a kindergarten (nor did they ever consider it according to my knowledge) though that would have caused ultimate grief for people they hated and/or provoked retaliatory measures that might have helped their cause and attracted new followers. Nor do I remember the Vietcong attacking US schools in Saigon after what happened in My Lai or the Christmas bombings in Hanoi. This has a new quality.

There is no possible political justifcation for what happened in Manchester. And I probably agree with you on more points regarding Western policy in the Mideast than you would like to believe.

Hair splitting.  A life is a life, no matter what the age...or who does the killing under whatever authorization.  "Collateral Damage" is terrorism.

As Dave said, Blowback.  You reap what you sow, etc. GTFO of other people's countries.  For some reason you expect the rest of the world to honor your rules of who's fair game.   Save your sanctimony for your corporate clientele.

[Dave W]

Uwe, I would have deleted this thread immediately if anyone else had started it. I haven't forgotten the fallout from the Sandy Hook thread.

US/UK/Coalition forces wantonly kill 10x that many innocent civilians every week. All in Muslim countries they have invaded and/or attacked illegally.

As Carlo says, you're splitting hairs.

[dadagoboi]

You're a brave man, Dave!

[veebass]

I still recall the words of Peter Ryan, New South Wales Police Commissioner 30 August 1996 – 17 April 2002. He was recruited from Britain where he was the National Head of Police Training.
After 9/11 he was interviewed and made the following comment, which has stuck with me,  in response to questions about how the West should respond. He said words to the effect - Send emissaries not soldiers.
That was at a time when the Australian Government (and many others) were aggressively prosecuting their case for further military intervention in the Middle East. The calls of the left were ignored. I was struck by his bravery.

[uwe]

"Save your sanctimony for your corporate clientele."

Carlo, when it comes to undeterred self-righteousness, you've got us all beat here.



You don't have the faintest idea what I tell my clients.

We can endlessly discuss what the West has done wrong and why tit follows tat, but describing a bomb attack on British kids as some kind of deserved and provoked payback ... that is where you have lost me.  There are distinctions in evil and hideously wrong acts too, it's not all the same quagmire where you can mutter "tsk, tsk, tsk, they should not have started it ...", shrug shoulders and move on. Next thing you'll be saying is that the Holocaust, Dresden, Pear Harbour and Hiroshima are all on the same scale defying any differentiation - let me tell you: they're not. Sometimes, not "splitting hairs" gives you a bald view and even balder statements.

And I didn't think I'd see the day where voicing horror in a music-related forum about a terrorist attack at a pop music concert (with an audience consisting mostly of minors) would be perceived as a risque political statement either.

I just came from a Kiss gig where Paul Stanley asked the audience for a minute of silence re the victims in Manchester, receiving it too. Quite possibly, Paul Stanley's hen-and-egg analysis of what happens in the Mideast isn't as lucid and sharp as yours and Dave's, and we all know how Kiss are corporate cretins that somehow must also be blamed for the deaths of Afghan and Iraqi children, but his reaction struck me as more apt and humane than the howls from the pit here. If that is sanctimonious to you, I relish in being it: Help yourself!

[Dave W]

Nobody said or implied that it was deserved. It was a horrific and unjustified attack. But condemning it while ignoring what motivated the bomber is what murderous governments and their lackeys in the media always do. That's repugnant to me.

Matthew 7:5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

[dadagoboi]

"Save your sanctimony for your corporate clientele."

Carlo, when it comes to undeterred self-righteousness, you've got us all beat here.



You don't have the faintest idea what I tell my clients.

We can endlessly discuss what the West has done wrong and why tit follows tat, but describing a bomb attack on British kids as some kind of deserved and provoked payback ... that is where you have lost me.  There are distinctions in evil and wrong acts too, it's not all the same quagmire where you can "tsk, tsk, tsk, they should not have started it ...", shrug shoulders and move on.

And I didn't think I'd see the day where voicing horror in a music-related forum about a terrorist attack at a pop music concert (with an audience consisting mostly of minors) would be perceived as a risque political statement either.

I just came from a Kiss gig where Paul Stanley asked the audience for a minute of silence re the victims in Manchester, receiving it too. Quite possibly, Paul Stanley's hen-and-egg analysis of what happens in the Mideast isn't as lucid and sharp as yours and Dave's, and we all know how Kiss are corporate cretins that somehow must also be blamed for the deaths of Afghan and Iraqi children, but his reaction struck me as more apt and humane than the howls from the pit here. Sanctimonious my ass ...

I'll restate:
A life is a life, no matter what the age...or who does the killing under whatever authorization.  "Collateral Damage" is terrorism.

As Dave said, Blowback.  You reap what you sow, etc. GTFO of other people's countries.  For some reason you expect the rest of the world to honor your rules of who's fair game while ignoring the realities of how 'our side' conducts itself.


 

[uwe]

For the record:

- There is no difference in the value of children's lives - irrespective of location or faith.

- Western policy in the Mideast in the last 100 years was a cynical nightmare. Anybody who accuses me of being blind to that - or taking a one-sided Western stance - hasn't been reading my posts here in the last 10 years or so (or is an utter cretin). You might as well say that I obviously dislike Deep Purple.

- But even an extreme wrong (or series of it) can by no means justify - or somehow relativize - another extreme wrong. The Manchester bombing was devoid of anything but hate - no military value, no political symbolism attached, chances of the slaughtered girls turning into crusaders of the British Army that would wantonly kill Muslim children as collateral damage sometime in the future in order to plunder the Mideast's riches (or however your line of thought goes; btw, we're nearing the end of the gasoline and diesel era, if that eventually brings peace to the Middle East then so much the better) were zilch. The "blowback" argument is just another version of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" which has never convinced me as a concept of justification or bringing mankind forward (always the progressive, eh?!).



The Old Testament is largely full of retaliatory crap like the above and - while we're at it - spare me with Matthew citations, Dave, you know I'm an agnostic.

[gearHed289]

Touchy subject, obviously. When the 9/11 events happened, sadly the first thing that came to mind was "what took them so long?". It's a tough pill to swallow when you've been raised "the American way", but western imperialism is now biting us in the ass. Dave's "Why do they hate us?" meme is spot on.