sadoldgit

So you really believe that all Muslims are gun toting suicide bombers?

"Muslims constitute the worlds second largest religious group. According to a 2010 study and released January 2011 Islam has 1.6 billion adherents making up over 22% of the world population." This from Wikipedia but I have seen that figure quoted several times elsewhere. Second largest religious group is what needs focussing on. This is not some crackpot garage cult.

Police funding has been cut substantially over the last few years as part of the Public Spending Review. There are fewer police on the streets. We have even lost our community policeman. It is one thing saying give them greater powers, it is another having enough to do the job in the first place.

duplication

Who needs more intelligence offices when you have Batman?

I don't think it has anything to do with being racist, probably more to do with the number of people who follow a religion that they have every right to follow. Islam is no more or less a violent religion than Christianity.

If the comment re "vague talk about negotiations" is aimed at me I did not say that if we start talking now it will end the conflict now (no more than a policy of killing every terrorist will end it). I said that conflicts end with a dialogue and that we should seek to get to that point sooner rather than later. The situation in the Middle East is cleary highly complex. It is not just ISIS against the West. As you know there are many extremist factions and they seem to be just as much at odds with each other as they are with the west. We can go on bombing installations and taking out individuals with drone strikes until hell freezes over but that isn't going to end the problem. Perhaps instead of blowing them to pieces we should put them through a judicial process where possible and make them stand up an try and justify their actions in front of the world? We managed to track down Bin Laden, would taken JJ out have been harder? As part of the process we could try and learn what has radicalised them in the first place so that we can find ways to stop British and European Muslims from becoming radicalised in the first place? Yes I totally agree that we need to work with other states in the Middle East in dealing with this problem and that may also involve talking to people whose regimes we find abhorrent but that will help with IS and their aim to grab land and a power base, but as I said before, what do you do with the many and diverse would be suicide bombers already spread amongst us?

What about the tens if not hundreds of thousands of Muslims who live perfectly peacefully in Western Europe?

No generalisations there then?

We have been standing should to shoulder with France for many many, years now, it didn't just happen over the weekend.

unstable

I don't think they are Lighthouse, but I also don't think it helps the situation in the least and can only make it easier for those doing the brainwashing to show the West as evil and a threat to them. Is a vulnerable young man going to look at that front page and think sh*t, there is a drone with my name on it. I had better not do this or will he be more likely to think I shall avenge my brother? I say this not knowing the answer but I suspect that we don't come across as some beleaguered minority trying to defend ourselves against an evil regime.

I am not saying that at all. I wonder how you are going to kill them all and what criteria you will use to decide who you will kill. You comment about Hitler is just silly. And do you really think that the second war world war was all about just one man? I don't see any pussy footing around. There are air and drone strikes against IS on a regular basis - hardly appeasement is it?

I have never advocated a group hug but lets not let that get in the way of a good p*ss take eh? I also don't believe if we stop suddenly killing them they will stop killing us. But clearly killing them isn't working terribly well for us right now is it? The attacks are escalating and it is only a matter of time before another one happens here. Splashing crass headlines across the Red Tops when we blow a terrorist apart might make certain sections of the population feel good but if it means that more Muslims become radicalised and start strapping bombs to themselves and blowing up innocent bystanders then we are only adding to the problem. This is clearly not a straightforward conflict and a successful land battle campaign isn't going to solve the problem. These people are all over the place and are amongst us all. We cant invade them or nuke them. I agree with you CBF when you say that peace is generally won when sufficient numbers of people have been killed but do you really think that can happen here in these circumstances? Those who are leading the conflict don't give a stuff about Jihadi John and his mates and probably revel in the headlines when we take one out because once again it is the big bad west attacking the poor undertrodden true believers.

Sadly the people and attitudes that the show targeted often missed the point. Excellent actor. RIP "Alf."

wrong

Actually screw that. Forget winning, how do we stop the killing on both sides?

Okay, but how do we win?

So how do we deal with this then Verbal? Despite the deployed firepower in Syria and taking out specific targets on a regular basis with drone strikes, we don't seem to be making any progress. What is the answer?

One person on a football internet chat forum says that negotiation wont work so we don't bother?

Hypo, I have never said that we should not use force. I am just saying that it is getting us no where. We have discussed this problem before. The threat we face in the west in trying to deal with a guerrilla war. There is no standing army, just ordinary people who emerge from nowhere are cause mayhem. IS aren't in the least bothered about our firepower are they? The more we kill Muslims in "their" part of the world the more we play into their hands in terms of recruiting and drumming up hatred towards The West. What we are doing is not working. We need to do something different don't we? We don't have to say to them please stop these killings and we will give you something. Talking to the opposition or "enemy" shouldn't be seen as being weak. You can use a dialogue to push home how it is impossible for them to achieve their aim, and lets face it, unless they get hold of a nuclear capability they are never going to achieve their aims even then. Clearly I am no diplomat but there are ways of negotiating in all sorts of areas that may seem hopeless at the start but positions can change. I haven't listened to it yet but there was a Radio 4 programme the other week about how you deal with very difficult positions in negotiation using psychology. These people aren't the only people in history who don't want anything from their enemies other than to change them to their way they are or kill them. It might take a year, two years, five years, more. It certainly isn't going to happen soon.

I do respect Verbal's knowledge and I do understand that side of the argument. I don't want us for one minute want us to "give" them anything and given the fact that we are bombing the cr@p out of them on a regular basis we are hardly in a position of weakness.

Indeed, which makes you wonder why we still spend so much money on it when it doesn't seem to "deter." But that is for another thread.

They were on the back foot at the time but the two H Bombs did speed up the peace process. Trouble now is that our atomic capability counts for nothing.

I grew up through a large chunk of the Cold War. The Berlin Wall went up when I was 7 years old. Although I don't recall much about it at the time, as I grew up I thought it would be impossible that the wall would ever come down. Relations with the Russians changed and the wall came down. Ok, things with the Russians (well Putin) aren't so great anymore but things do change and there is no reason to believe that the people who are driving the Islamic extremists at the moment will not eventually soften, or if not them, those who follow them. For those who find the bickering disrespectful to those who were killed or wounded last night you are right and I will do my best to stop now!