Have the terrorists won?

I don’t know, what is the terrorists true goal with this idiot attacks??
Total fear? Rid the world of everyone but them?
Total world domination?
What is exactly their goal with this insanity?
Once you know their true goal,then you may be able to stop them,or at least slow them way down.

The terrorists won when we voted in the Patriot act. That’s when we went from a free and open democracy to a surveillance state, betraying all that our soldiers had fought and died for over hundreds of years of American history. Killing a few thousand Americans isn’t a victory, tricking us into fundamentally altering who we are as a nation and betraying our own values is a major victory for terrorists.

Christ we have over 30K gun deaths every year, and you see redneck “patriots” cheering on the NRA. That’s like 10 9/11’s every year in gun deaths.

@gorillapaws…I dunno. Not so sure how the Patriot Act plays into today’s events. Paris/France is an internationally beloved city and a target that is easy to get in and out of. Also France is a soft target in that they are generally pacifists and ISIS knows France has little recourse for retaliation on their own and I have yet to see an iota of anything beyond lip service from the US as far as immediate supportive force response to this event and IMO rightly so.

To compare US gun deaths to the tragedy in France today merely deflects attention away from the real threat IMO we here in the US and countries abroad face and that is ISIS and their ability to foster grass root retaliation against their perceived threat to their way of life and that is freedom and democracy.

The bottom line is they hate the western world a 100 times more than we value the threat they pose to our bucolic way of life. We have to wake up and rise up to beat them at their own game before they strike our homeland again.

Great question. It’s one of the best I’ve read in a very long time.

I firmly believe that the wide arc of history bends toward justice, to paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I am sure that humans are gradually growing more peaceful. It requires a very long view of history, but it’s true. Let’s think of what life was like 2000 years ago, 1000 years ago, and 500 years ago. It was vastly different than our present times.

I am not talking about our material circumstances. I’m talking about being human. Our attitudes are gradually changing. What was commonplace in Biblical times is not now. Medieval superstition is fading. Hatred of ‘the other’ is less accepted than in ages past.

It’s my view that we are witnessing the death throes of fundamentalist religion. It is dying. It will take a very long time to finish, but it is dying. People are fearful of the changes brought by scientific ideas that call into question deeply held religious beliefs. We as a race are slowly being told we must think for ourselves, yet we have been conditioned for millenia to believe what others tell us to. We are having to learn a new way of being, and that takes time. It will require many generations to become accepted.

In one sense, the terrorists have indeed won. We are afraid where we were confident before. Our cities are militarized. Our governments spy on us citizens. We are poked and prodded when we wish to travel by security agents who look at each of us as a potential threat. Our governments spent vast mountains of money to fight two desperate wars, only increasing our debt, thus limiting our ability to spend money on needed things like infrastructure improvements and healthcare.

But as long as I can leave my house and look up at the stars, I have a measure of freedom no one can take from me. I can breathe the pungent aroma from the flowers on the plumeria tree. I can talk to my son on the phone and help him with his plans for college. I can go to my work and arrange to train a new cohort who will take their personal stories of recovery from mental illness and spread them across the islands, giving hope where it’s been lost.

And that is the key. It’s hope. That’s what we all strive for. We want to believe we can wake one more morning, and something will improve. We know that with each breath we can take one more step toward our dreams. We feel in our cores that the next minute will deliver what we’ve been striving for. It’s coming! It’s just here! Here!

Hope!

With hope, I conquer all.

- Have the terrorists won?

Probably.

- How has the events of today and the other terrorist attacks affected how you will go about your day here on out?

Not in the least. It didn’t after 9/11, it won’t now.

- How does the modern world stop this insanity?

Leaving the Middle East alone is a good start. But no one wants to accept this, so we’ll keep doing what we’ve been doing for decades, and desperate people with nothing to live and a convenient enemy to pin their frustrations on for will keep turning to extremism, these attacks will keep happening and the west meddle in the Middle East more and more and rinse and repeat.

If their idea was to separate nations, then no. They have not won. If anything, nations that may have hung back because their politicians didn’t want to go against the public, may now have support of Nations that realize that no one is immune to terrorists and the only way to beat them is to present a united front.
If their idea was to create chaos and to get brother against brother, it will only work for a little bit. WWII was proof that nations that may be enemies will join forces to battle an enemy that poses a threat to them equally.
Terrorists from any nation pose a threat equally to every nation. Any country that believes avoiding getting involved will keep the peace in their country is in for a surprise. Well maybe, except for Switzerland. They hold the money of all the criminals of the world. Money still talks.

France has hardly avoided getting involved. Like pretty much every other western imperial power they’ve attempted to assert their will when and where they can over the decades, particularly in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.

I guess one would have to determine what victory is, much more, what is victory to them? If the goal is to change the way people do things and make them scared of shadows or rob liberty from their people, then the alleged terrorist are winning. I remember where just about every day was a yellow to orange terrorist alert (or something like that). Terrorist changed the way we board jets, what you can and cannot carry, made us afraid of any satchel, bag, or briefcase left sitting too long and the owner can’t be located. The terrorist had it so the government was spying on its own people, and able to whisk people off the streets and sequester them, without a lawyer, or family notification indefinitely without charge. As much as people do not wish to think they have been affected, they have, and the terrorist know it, so the attacks will never stop; who you loose to a suicide bomber today will be replaced by 5 new recruits next week

The terrorists have not won!! If you think just because you go through a full cavity search prior to flying that means the terrorists have won, you don’t know what they want. They could not care less whether you’re inconevenieced at the airport. World domination is the goal, same as Hitler’s. Kill all the infidels or at least convert them to their particular strain of Islam. It’s not the terrorists that need to be defeated but rather the ideology. Their god given mandate to Jihad.

The issue is not about Israel, or anything we’ve done in the Middle East. Hell we’ve been fighting these guys for more than 200 years and they have been fighting for centuries beyond that. The first war we ever fought was against the Barbary Pirates. That’s where the opening lines of the Marine Hymn came from: “From the Halls of Montezuma
To the shores of Tripoli”. These guys are not overly smart nor technically sophisticated, so they blow themselves up and take a bunch of people with them. The only answer is to blow them up first. Give them a hand so to speak.There are plenty of Arab nations that will do the heavy lifting if we just support them. But they have to believe we have their back. Right now they don’t think we do. We need a foreign policy and now we have none.

The question of whether or not the terrorists have won depends both on your definition of the contest as well as the supposed prize. None of them are going to EVER achieve their publicly stated goals. They are therefore losers from the outset, and will die losers in the end. But it’s more important to recognize this stuff for what it is. The stated goals of the terrorists are actually an outlet for deluded, unstable and ALWAYS miserable people to take out their frustrations on the rest of us. Misery no longer merely loves company. Misery now DEMANDS company. The thing to keep in mind when it comes to terrorism is that great line from “Dr. Zhivago”. “Happy men don’t volunteer”. The big lesson in all of this is the depressingly simple and obvious fact that this isn’t merely a phase in history. There will always be one cause (excuse) or another, and an excess of young unhappy men, mental defectives, and suicidal fanatics. The real purpose of the Paris attack is threefold First of all it’s a recruitment campaign, and you can bet your ass that enlistment in the world’s cockamamie hodge podge of “heroic” organizations will spike appreciably. The other goal (also achieved) is the call of “I matter. Pay attention to me”. And last but certainly not least is the absolute necessity that we be afraid. It’s this last one that bothers me most, because the incitement of fear is the one arena where a crowd of straight up losers can actually walk away with the trophy.

Yes and no.

While @Jaxk is entirely correct that they have not achieved their goals and therefore, pretty much by definition, have not won yet, they actually have had some pretty big victories. To deny that they have achieved a disturbing amount of success is to refute that people who share his opinion on this issue even exist. For the most part though, I am with @stanleybmanly in that it depends a bit on how we define “winning” or “defeat”.

Also, at this early stage of things, I am not 100% convinced that this wasn’t some sort of “false flag” operation. I’m not about to make a tin-foil hat and embrace a conspiracy. It’s just that I’m devious enough to think that a group that has made public threats makes an excellent scapegoat, and as this is a rapidly developing story, I don’t have enough facts yet to entirely dismiss the cynical notion that someone else may have had the same idea.

It probably didn’t go down that way, but if it turned out that it did, then that would only prove that the terrorists have indeed won. More likely it was actually Islamic extremists, but there are enough of those that the list of suspects is still rather long; it may have been one other than ISIL. Remember, Al Qaeda still exists too.

@Jaxk The fact that you think we can fight extremists even remotely the same as we did the only wars we actually won is something I find both amusing and disturbing. The US may be the ultimate in resources and technology, but as far as tactics and strategy go, we face the same problems Boudica did; failing to make effective new tactics to counter the tactics of an enemy unlike any previously faced.

Fuck no. The West hasn’t even formed a cohesive strategy to deal with these people yet and ISIS depend on this perceived weakness, the slow deliberation of democracies. Hitler did as well, but he was a much easier target to identify and focus on. I hope that the reaction to Paris incident yesterday will speed things up. The recent ISIS terrorist attack in the capital city of Ankara, Turkey in October, which slaughtered 102 university students, evidently didn’t get the strong reaction in the West that ISIS wants. So, they hit Paris. So far, 140 dead and counting, mostly young people. The reaction in the West to the action in Paris is much more intense than the bombing in Turkey.

Hopefully, ISIS has finally pushed the right button:

A few minutes ago, the president of France declared that the terrorist actions in Paris were definitely the work of ISIS and has declared the actions as an act of war. This can only be interpreted that France is now at war with ISIS. I can only hope that, under our plethora of international treaties against terrorism, all French allies will declare war against ISIS. We need to form a concerted worldwide effort, a coalition of militaries, to chase down and kill every one of these fanatics and their financiers.

But who and what is ISIS? Christ, at this point, we’re all still arguing about what to name them.

ISIS has declared that their objective is to “convert-or-kill” all non-Islamists on earth in order to finally create one earthly nation under Islam, or One Islamic State, run according to their interpretation of the Koran. Unlike all other terrorist groups, they take hostages they are used only to exhibit more terror when they publicly kill them—not as bargaining chips for their own safe escape, or the release of ISIS prisoners, or money for further operations. They have no interest in feeding or caring for hostages when in ISIS captivity and this dynamic should be remembered when the police and military deal with ISIS terrorist actions. Knowing this also helps if you become one of their hostages, like in the concert venue last night in Paris. You have no choice but to attack your captors because you are dead anyway.

Who and what is ISIS, IS, AQI, or ISIL? There is a lot of confusion, reflected by the many names used by the media, and this is beneficial to this stateless international group. The following is from this helpful Wikipedia article:

The group has had various names since it began.

The group was founded in 1999 by Jordanian radical Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as Jamāʻat al-Tawḥīd wa-al-Jihād, “The Organisation of Monotheism and Jihad”

In October 2004, al-Zarqawi swore loyalty to Osama bin Laden and changed the group’s name to Tanẓīm Qāʻidat al-Jihād fī Bilād al-Rāfidayn, “The Organisation of Jihad’s Base in Mesopotamia”, commonly known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Although the group has never called itself al-Qaeda in Iraq, this has been its informal name over the years.

In January 2006, AQI merged with several other Iraqi insurgent groups to form the Mujahideen Shura Council. Al-Zarqawi was killed in June 2006.

On 12 October 2006, the Mujahideen Shura Council merged with several more insurgent factions, and on 13 October the establishment of the ad-Dawlah al-ʻIraq al-Islāmiyah, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), was announced. The leaders of this group were Abu Abdullah al-Rashid al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri. After they were killed in a US–Iraqi operation in April 2010, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi became the new leader of the group.

On 8 April 2013, having expanded into Syria, the group adopted the name Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, which more fully translates as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant[citation needed] or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. These names are translations of the Arabic name ad-Dawlah al-Islāmīyah fī-l-ʻIrāq wa-sh-Shām, al-Shām being a description of the Levant or Greater Syria. The translated names are commonly abbreviated as ISIL or ISIS, with a debate over which of these acronyms should be used. The Washington Post concluded that the distinction between the two “is not so great”.

The name Da’ish is often used by ISIL’s Arabic-speaking detractors. It is based on the Arabic letters Dāl, alif, ʻayn, and shīn, which form the acronym (داعش) of ISIL’s Arabic name al-Dawlah al-Islamīyah fī al-ʻIrāq wa-al-Shām. There are many spellings of this acronym, with “Daesh” gaining acceptance. ISIL considers the name Da’ish derogatory, because it sounds similar to the Arabic words Daes, “one who crushes something underfoot”, and Dahes, “one who sows discord”. ISIL reportedly uses flogging as a punishment for those who use the name in ISIL-controlled areas.

In 2015, over 120 British parliamentarians asked the BBC to use the name Daesh, following the example of John Kerry and Laurent Fabius.

On 14 May 2014, the United States Department of State announced its decision to use Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) as the group’s primary name. However, in late 2014, top US officials shifted toward using Daesh, since this was the name that their Arab allies preferred to use.

On 29 June 2014, the group renamed itself ad-Dawlah al-Islāmiyah (الدولة الإسلامية, Islamic State (IS)), and declared itself a worldwide caliphate. Accordingly, “Iraq and Shām” was removed from all official deliberations and communications, and the official name became the Islamic State from the date of the declaration. The name Islamic State and the claim of a caliphate have been widely criticised, with the UN, various governments, and mainstream Muslim groups refusing to use the new name.

The following is a list of terrorist incidents of 2015 (so far) including the countries involved and the results. If you run a word search for Islamic State, you can sort out the 97 actions committed by ISIS.

That is who and what ISIS is.

I don’t know. I was just talking on the phone with my son in Paris. Hollande is recommending that people don’t go out today unless it is necessary but the Gallerie Lafayette is open.

I think, for good or bad, that we shudder in horror for a time and then we resume our lives – albeit with greater scrutiny and restrictions that may or may not, make us safer.

I think there is evil abroad in the world and I don’t know how we stop it.

In terms of teaching the children, I like what Mr. Rogers said:

“In the face of the senseless tragedy, the words of Mr. Rogers echo in my mind, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’””

My hopes for preventing future terror attacks is that we start looking into the effects that the US, along with coalition forces (also France), continual bombing of at least 8 different Muslim countries has.
Terrorism is all about perspective. It is easy for us to call them terrorists, but it is not easy for us to put ourselves in their shoes to understand that when a drone strike hits a village and kills civilians, we are seen as the terrorists.
Today, France sees this as an act of war, but dismisses the fact that when we drop bombs on other countries, it is also an act of war.
I feel we have been in a pissing match where everytime we fly a drone and kill civilians, we are actually strengthening ISIS’s cause and membership because the family members of those who were killed, are now great candidates for joining ISIS. The only thing that all the countries that the US has been bombing and occupying have in common, is all Muslim nations, so of course this will be used to unite.
In my eyes, our reaction to this threat since 9/11 has been no better or different than the terrorsists that we criticize.

Has anyone actually read Bin Laden’s Letter to America? Their grievances have much more to with our occupation of Muslim lands and holy lands than the fact that we are “infidels” or “rich and free.”

I don’t know but I do know that I am going to NYC tomorrow and am thinking that I will see lots of tight security. I am going to Boston to see a big show in December and am concerned about that, and I am also considering a flight in the spring and am concerned about that. Chances are, it will be fine but I am concerned.

On the news, they’re saying “how do you take out the ideology” that the terrorists are spreading. That’s a good question.

I’m going to Paris for Christmas.

More people died during the 9/11 attacks than during Pearl Harbor.. but lots of Americans would have our guns taken away. Americans are spoiled and foolish. Terrorists don’t need to do anything but sit back and watch.

@janbb I can totally relate to what you said in your first answer. 14 years ago my flight to Orlando was instructed to land immediately because planes were being flown into high rises in NY. It took me many months to overcome my fear to fly again and potentially risk my life and my families lives to ever fly again. By the virtue of that fear to fly 14 years ago, I have to admit the terrorists won that battle. The fact that you and I still do fly and that Paris will rise above the madness of yesterday demonstrates to these terrorist bastards that we will win this war.

@Apparently Im the Grumpy One I would love it if we could leave the gun control argument out of this.

@janbb I’m not bringing up a gun control argument. It’s just a good example of foolishness. There are plenty more. To avoid detracting from the original question I won’t elaborate too much on that. Have the terrorists won? No. Will they win on this current course? No.

The war America is fighting isn’t even against them. It is against itself. It has been said countless times but look at the history of Rome. See how well it aligns with the US’ current trajectory. Imagine ancient Rome crying for the removal of swords in the wake of Barbarian attacks. All I can do is shake my head and hope my kids move to Australia.

@Apparently_Im_The_Grumpy_One Ok. Thanks.

I don’t see anyone calling for gun control because of terrorist attacks. I see people calling for gun control because people who should never have access to guns are getting them easily and using them to shoot up schools, theaters, churches, etc.

(p.s. I could be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure Australia has much more restrictive gun laws than the United States does.)

in a word, @Apparently_Im_The_Grumpy_One?
“Specious.”

@janbb Paris for Christmas! I was just thinking the cynical thought that today is when I would like my flight to touch down. There won’t be a line to wait in anywhere for anything (if you can get out of the airport).

in a word, @ibstubro ?
I’m moving. It’s not Specious. It’s history. It’s repeating itself. It always does. I’ve always wanted to live in Australia….

These attacks can’t be looked at in isolation as they are part of the convulsions that have thrown the Middle East into chaos. The ‘Arab Spring’ has turned to winter and there are no winners but untold millions of losers.

No one is winning.

Seems to me terrorizing people is the worst way to accomplish any goals. All it does is up the effort to destroy them.

It has been said, @tinyfaery, that their philosophy is the same as Bin Laden’s – whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

Any Muslim who dies in the name of the Jihad will be given a “great reward” by Allah, so terrorism is win-win to radical Muslim sects.

“Any Muslim who dies in the name of the Jihad will be given a “great reward” by Allah, so terrorism is win-win to radical Muslim sects.”

Honestly it isn’t just radical Muslim sects. We see this pattern of thinking just about anywhere where there are large numbers of angry, disaffected young men. Wherever there are men who have nothing and feel they have nothing to look forward to in this world, no prospects, then those men will turn to some cause to fight in order to validate their existence.

We saw this during the Crusades, we see it now with terrorism. We even see it in our own countries where seemingly every week there’s a new story about some angry young man shooting up a school, or a theater or a youth camp. Mix in the idea that by dying in the effort you’ll be rewarded in the afterlife then you’ve really got some good motivation. And if you get captured during the attempt well then at least you’ve got three hots and a cot for the rest of your life (however brief or long it may be). You’ve got nothing to lose and can only improve your lot any way you slice it.

And whether you get away or are killed or captured it’s all good because you’ve accomplished something. You’ve got people’s attention now. You fucking matter. The only way you fail is if nobody notices.

“And whether you get away or are killed or captured it’s all good because you’ve accomplished something. You’ve got people’s attention now. You fucking matter. The only way you fail is if nobody notices.”

Therein lies a huge problem. Our military is geared to kick ass as the sort of combat where victory and defeat were cut and clear, killing and capturing did not embolden the enemy, and terminally-guided munitions were missiles with electronics rather than some guy with C4 strapped to his chest running at their target.

Despite all of our advances, we are not geared to face the type of warfare necessary to effectively combat ideology. We can bomb a church, but we can’t bomb a cause or a belief.

Good point! They do win in a very real sense, the longer they are allowed to persist. It is unfortunate that our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan were the lessons that finally took regarding involvement in the Middle East. The requirements of Western political necessities now prohibits the commital of troops required to run ISIS to ground. But the longer they remain viable, the more clearly the struggle becomes defined in the minds of all who witness it as a religious war. It is essential to ISIS that the struggle be defined as such to acquit themselves “legitimate”.