<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com%5B/url%5D">http://www.nytimes.com</a> all over the front page. It missed the paper, but I just thought you all should know.</p>
<p>this topic has already been posted</p>
<p>excuse me, I don't operate much outside the cornell forum. perhaps you could link to the post from here for everyones convenience.</p>
<p>I could be wrong, but I believe that this terrorist attack has to do with the 2012 Olympics. London is hosting it, and some people feel passionately about where the Olympics should be held, so this could be due to the fact that London won the bid.</p>
<p>Ridiculous statement, completely ridiculous. Its Al-Qaeda/Muslim extremist terrorist groups trying to frighten the British people, and frighten Tony Blair for his involvement in the Iraq war, and going along with W. Nothing to do with the Olympics at all. I dont think that "some people feel passionately" about something that they will kill Londoners who had nothing to do with the decision at all. If you ask me, if you were right, I'd kill the IOC delegates :)</p>
<p>I agree with BKLYN...there weren't terrorists waiting in london just in case they won the bid...nobody gets mad and builds a bomb in 3 hours or however long it was between the explosions and the announcement. I believe it correlated with the G8 conference in scotland, just as the madrid bombings correlated with the impending election.</p>
<p>btw jonathan thanks for the link</p>
<p>And you know this for a fact right? Because you are so informed on terrorism and the causes? Try practicing open mindedness and theorism. I was.</p>
<p>Yes actually i am. You have no idea. My relatives live in Israel for 25 years ok? We knew what terrorism is. They have it on the back yard. On their buses. My cousin survived a suicide attack. I am open minded. I dont listen to what W tells us, and the way we are fighting terrorism is horribly wrong, but i still know that the reasons why they did it were the ones i described.</p>
<p>Many Terrorist attacks are followed by major political events. In spain last year is a critical government election while in London is when Blair is attending G8 Summit. It has little to do with the Olympics i think.</p>
<p>scotland yard has all but eliminated the olympic connection. If terrorists didn't want the olympics in London, wouldn't it make more sense to bomb there before the ioc decided to have London host it?</p>
<p>Also, while its truth hasn't been confirmed yet, to my knowledge, a post was made on a queda website saying the attack was evening a blood-debt for iraq and afghanistan. It's very sick that the G8 conference is to help relieve poor african nations, and that terrorists capitalize on that to launch an attack. (this is looking past the sickness of bombing subways at rushhour)</p>
<p>The terrible terrorist attacks in London had nothing to do with the Olympics. They had nothing to do with religious or ideological differences. Indeed, countries like the US, England and Spain are far more puritanical and religious than countries like Sweden, France and Germany. And yet, it is the puritanical and religious countries that are being targeted. If it was indeed Al Quaeda that carried out that cowardly and evil act, it was because of England's hand in Middle Eastern politics. A "war on terror" is impossible to fight. Those terrorists don't have a reason to live. They have no loved ones. They have no future, financial or otherwise. They cannot be identified or located. They are diverse, spread out and number in the millions. One does not negotiate with those people...but one does not engage them in a ****ing contest either. Bush and his posse have no clue what they are doing...which is why I am shocked that Blair and Aznar decided to follow. 3 years later, Madrid and London have suffered for their leaders' idiotic gamble.</p>
<p>Well said Alexandre. But I want to point out that the Al Qaeda is much more organized than people think. They can effectively ignite four bombs within 2 hours without arousing any suspicions or warnings. </p>
<p>Then again, it might not even be Bin Laden- he comes out everytime there is a known threat in America and says he did everything...remember the power outage last year in Ohio and Canada?</p>
<p>The bombings had nothing to do with the Olympics either, I think it was just a coincidence that worked in the Terrorist's favor</p>
<p>terrorsts have moved from a hierarchical (please excuse spelling, dictionary.com is too much work) system to an independent cell system. It's an incredibly effective organized disorganization haha if that makes any sense. While terrorsts are still trained together in places that are safe to gather, nobody gets a call that says "blow up madrid in 2 months please" from Bin Laden. Terrorsts are trained, and then isolate themselves into cells that dont interact with other cells. a group of 5 guys or whatever operates independently from the organization, blending in and then strike without cue or signal from a superior. while london was obviously bombed by one cell, there are most likely other cells operating in the city that knew nothing (or possibly just a little) about the bombing. </p>
<p>the fewer connections to the organization as a whole you have, the harder it is for the authorities to connect the dots.</p>
<p>Alexandre: What would you do to quelch the radical Islam movement that encourages and advocates the killing of innocent people? If you are going to bash Bush and his "posse," why don't you offer some other ideas. </p>
<p>The cowards who commit acts of violence and terror have no regard for human life and thus are threats to modern society. To blame George Bush for trying to strike at the heart of Al-Qaeda (Bin Laden, al-Zarqawi, etc.) is quite foolish in my mind. Why do you think terrorists want to attack US allies? They want to continue to pursue a long drawnout war against America and weaken public support for the war on terror. This is what scares me and is why I am glad "W" was reelected. I know most people on this board disagree with this perspective, but I am sticking with my gut here. </p>
<p>So here's my rational question:
What are other "rational" alternatives to protect the interests of modern civilizations from the wrath of radicals?</p>
<p>I think there are alot of people who feel we opened a can of worms by going into iraq and thats a major issue on many minds.</p>
<p>Rather than fight all out wars it would be better to make isolated strikes and highten security as a whole internally (which, to the credit of the current administration, we have begun to do.) The fact is that there is nothing we can do about people willing to blow themselves up in our airports and busses and buildings. </p>
<p>While it's true that you and I have the advantage of not having any incriminating connections that would lead to our surveyal by the FBI, theres very little IMO that would prevent anyone on this board from obtaining the necessary materials for a bomb, driving to the nearest city, and blowing ourselves up in the middle of the crowded street. It's a horrible thought, but I think it's true.</p>
<p>So, thats my 2 cents. increase security in such a way as to reduce the possiblility of this happening as much as possible, stricter background checks on immigration, better border patrols, and sting operations overseas in collaboration with foreign governments (to avoid the recent unpleasentries we just had with italy heheh)</p>
<p>I agree, hockeygenius17, that people put too much blame on the bush administration at times, but i do feel that they have bungled the task of national security.</p>
<p>Hockeygenius, radical islam is a direct result of US medling in Middle Eastern affairs. There was no radical islam in the 1940s and 1950s. Radical ISlam is a recent trend mostly due to US policy toward the Middle East, from the assassination of heads of states to the support of totalitarian dicators like Saddam and Mubarak. Clearly Bush is not responsible for this. Itis a result of decades of corrupt US policy in the Middle East that has resulted in the deaths of millions of Muslims. But Bush has not helped things by declaring war on terror...a war that any half-wit would know cannot be won. But Bush is not even a half-wit. He has the mental age and maturity of a teenager.</p>
<p>As for Aznar and Blair, their decision to help Bush in this war of aggression against Iraq was clearly idiotic. What have Spain and England benefited from this war? Instead, those two countries have lost close to 300 innocent citizens to terrorist ploys.</p>
<p>"a war that any half-wit would know cannot be won" </p>
<p>But maybe "US medling in Middle Eastern affairs" gave these lunatics a supreme hatred that cannot be turned around. If they are willing to die, they are unwilling to negociate. Then what?</p>
<p>Sparticus- You make some very good points about security. It's hard to protect everything, but I think we can only continue to keep protection levels elevated.</p>
<p>"There was no radical islam in the 1940s and 1950s. Radical ISlam is a recent trend mostly due to US policy toward the Middle East, from the assassination of heads of states to the support of totalitarian dicators like Saddam and Mubarak."</p>
<p>I disagree. I think if we're going to talk about islamic fundamentalism and extremist terrorists, we're going to need sources from scholars of Islamic politics and civilization. I've done a bit of reading by the acclaimed Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis, of Princeton University, and have viewed a few video lectures by one of the Islamic Studies professors at cornell. From what they've concluded, it seems islamic fundamentalism has always existed in Islam and heightened in intesntiy after the fall of the Abassid Caliphate with the destruction of Baghdad in 1258 CE by the Mongols. Peter Stearns, a Harvard historian, has gone on in great detail about how after the Islamic empire fell, muslim scholars began to lose their once tolerant and open-minded view on truth, reason, and learning and began to succumb to a more literal and doctrinal study of the religion. After the mongol sieges, there grew a strong backlash towards foreigners, towards non-muslims and non-arabs. From that point on, Islamic fundamentalism has played a fairly critical role in the way the Middle East has been shaped politically and culturally. Now, Islam is a particularly singular religion in that it places much more cohesion between the state and the mosque. This is because when the Islam first began to establish a religious empire, the rulers of the state were the Caliphs, those who were believed to have descendence from Muhammad or chosen by Allah himself.
Anyways, what I'm trying to get here is that Islamic fundamentalism has always been prevalent in Islamic society (that is not to say that the majority of Muslims are extremist fundamentalists). In terms of their directed attacks against the west - well, that can be traced to an ongoing fundamentalist war against the western world that began with the Crusades. Yes, the terrorist attacks of this century do have relation to the crude realist foreign policy that the US implemented in the middle east during the cold war, but one can't attribute the blame fully to that. For example, remember that Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda operatives had been funded by the CIA to fight against the USSR during the Cold War. Bin Laden and most of Al-Qaeda's top operatives also came from Saudi Arabia - not a country the US intervened in in terms of coups or puppet governments (essentially, not Iran).</p>
<p>Also, your logic does not follow. If radical muslims hate America because we've propped up dictators in the middle east during the 50's and 60's, then why would they target our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan if such actions have REMOVED dictators (Hussein and the Taliban).</p>