CB Fry

More than one in four sympathised and 10% of that group thought was right to attack them and you're trying to spin it the other way? How do you think those figures would index against the UK population as a whole?

I think we're banging up Germans for being Christians. The Nazis were like, so Christian. "We will fight the fundamentalist Christians on the beach, we will fight the fundamentalist Christians on the landing grounds, we never surrender to the fundamentalist Christians what with them definitely being fundamentalist Christians and that being what defines them. Never in the field of human conflict has a war been like so much about religion like what this one is just like the crusades or something" Ah, Winston. Wise words.

Was Christianity the driving force of Hitler and the Nazis? They were acting on the instructions of the Bible and the movement was defined by its Christian beliefs? That is how history judge the Nazis and how it's leadership defined themselves at the time? As, above all else, a fundemental religious mission? You sure about that?

This is a twitterati story that has got a bit out of hand - there was a security guard called Zouhier who spoke to the press, but he was relaying what others had told him, and was stationed near the players not at the entrance. The source material - I think it is a Wall Street Journal article - makes this very clear, but the people linking to it on social media have decided that this was the guy who saved the president and all the people and he's a muslim and the horrible media don't care. The media don't care because it's just not true.

Well, yeah, I was inferring that in the rest of the post. It is, however, unlikely that those ramshackle states are going to eradicate IS without any help from the UN/the West/etc and The West will just be blamed for its continued existence anyway.

Oh absolutely. Which puts the onus on Western democracies to try and intervene. As Shurlock says above then the risk is that kind of intervention looks like the evil west trying to control everything and as you say it becomes more grief than its worth. Cut to grieving mother in the midlands asking why are our soldiers being sent over there to die to sort out stuff that is nothing to do with us etc etc then Damon Albarn and Jeremy Corbyn give it all the "troops out now" routine and out they come, eventually. That all leaves the everybody loses scenario of an unstable state because the job isn't complete but all the extremists blame the interfering infidels for everything anyway. "Something must be done" but no, not that. Something else.

You were the one asking Batman what the line in between do nothing and killing all Muslims was, suggesting you didn't think there was one. Glad you've cleared that up. Batman post was a sarcastic to response to SOG anyway, pretty obvious when you look at it in context. It will take a lot to break the cycle but it will involve more bloodshed before any kind of diplomatic conversations start to resolve anything. The comparisons with Ireland and this idea we are all going to sit round the table and hug it out is facile garbage. Let's stop killing them and they'll stop killing us is utterly deluded appeasement. "What good did killing people" type thinking clearly missed how the major wars in history were actually won and peace achieved. It's far more likely to end with the west significantly stepping up agression against this enemy or even better, encouraging the sovereign states hosting this false "Islamic State" to deal with the criminals in their own lands. These people will need to be brought to their knees, not negotiated with.

You think there is nothing this side of killing all Muslims? Killing all Muslims. Okay then.

I've only just remembered that Euro 2016 is in France. Crikey.

We all get round the table and negotiate, like we did to stop the first and second world war and, like, all wars ever or something.

Whenever you're ready. Who are we negotiating with, what are we negotiating about and what are we negotiating away. Come on, SOG, we're all "round the table" as per your mould breaking idea. What's actually on the table?

What did the IRA want? A united Ireland. What have they got? Power sharing, devolved government and the veteran terrorists have replaced the guns for cozy power and validation. Even at the height of the troubles, who the UK was dealing with was clear and what they wanted was clear. Three words, a united Ireland. We negotiated against that and the negotiations lead to a functioning peace. I'll ask again, third or fourth time now, what do IS want, who do they represent and what are you negotiating away to them. Whenever you're ready. You can stop dishing out obvious platitudes of how war is, like terrible. No one is saying otherwise so stop trying to do your usual act of clambering onto a higher horse than everyone else. Who are we negotiating with and what are we negotiating? Anytime you're ready.

It's easy if you try.

Still grandstanding, then.

Absolutely - ETA, the IRA and the Palestinians all have a specific geographic and/or political aim which even in the height of the violence is still a tangible "thing" that they are fighting for and is an endgame that could be negotiated around. This is patently not the same, not least because there isn't even a group to negotiate with - the 7/7 bombers were British kids, so should the UN start negotiating with the British government to stop it? We don't know yet but I'd wager some if not all of the Paris terrorists are French citizens. It's massively complex and at this point virtually impossible for "the west" to even begin to work out how to stop it. And quite frankly it isn't down to the west to stop it anyway, it's down to the perpetrators to stop killing people. SOG and Chapel End Charlie are doing what they usually do on this forum, making a land grab for the facile moral high ground and making out everyone is somehow prejudiced, not like them. SOG spouts some pointless platitudes about "let's start a peace process" like only he's ever thought of it, while accusing others of wanting to "kill all muslims". CEC wades in just behind accusing others of point scoring. The grandstanding begins again.

Meanwhile, in the point scoring Olympics... That's "engaging in proper debate", right there.

No, I think you've just clinched it.

Oh, right. Set up a peace process and follow it through. Weird really that no one on the planet had thought of that until now. Thank God/Mohammad you're here.

...

I'll ask again. To negotiate what exactly?

Pretty despicable that SadOldGit equates yesterday's events with "all Muslims". Sickening.

To negotiate what exactly? This is not Ireland or the Basque region.

You tell me, you started it.

It was never going to be that, and it wasn't. The news was linking it to Muslim extremists pretty much immediately and they knew more than you did.

The fact there might just be some weeny little differences between British Muslims originating primarily from the Indian subcontinent and French Muslims originating primarily from North Africa is pretty freaking obvious really.