"Jay Honeck" wrote in message news:Yw66c.32304$_w.539101@attbi_s53...
If you read the entire thread, you will find that you have missed this
salient point: It doesn't matter one whit if the Spanish voted for the
Socialists because they were influenced by Martians. Rather, what matters
is this: The terrorists must now perceive that elections and troop
deployments can be influenced by indiscriminate attacks on innocent "soft"
targets.

Then I hope the terrorists are better informed than most people in
this group. If Aznar's administration hadn't manipulated the
information, and if the Spanish people hadn't been 90% against the
invasion of Irak, the bombings, in all probability, woudn't have
changed the election.

This is a very bad thing.

2. Terrorists are not fighting a religious war. They are fighting the
US and its allies, not Christianity.

No one here says they're fighting Christianity, although that is the
under-current of the conversation. But their fight goes well beyond the "US
and its allies." Rather, it encompasses all of Western civilization and
Western morals and standards.

It was explicitly stated that this was a religious war (see cites
below).

I don't think the target is all Western civilization, or they would be
attacking all democratic nations, which they are clearly not. They are
attacking the interests of the US and its allies. They are very
explicit regarding this in their messages through Al-Jazeera.

What I percieve is that a lot of people in the US can't face that they
are the target because that would mean they did something to deserve
it, and that seems to be unthinkable. Hollywood movies have hammered
the concept of "the good american boy" so hard into their brains, that
many seem unable to see it in any other way. Rather, they would have
the "western civilization", the "modern societies" and everything that
is good be the target, so they can demonize the enemy and expect the
rest of the world to join them in this war. Of course, as the rest of
the world does not see it that way (even in the US's allied countries
most people don't see it that way), then the rest of the world must be
wrong and anti-american, and they are "agains us" because they are not
"with us". Bull****.


"Dan Luke" wrote in message ...
We are in a religious war. We didn't choose it, but we've got it.

(Corky Scott) wrote in message ...
...This thing is religion based, but it's based on an apparently warped
interpretation of the Koran. But that doesn't matter to them. To the
people who believe in this Islamic Jihad, it's the most rational thing
on earth, or they could not be persuaded to die for the cause.