You are, again, trying to paint this as a black-and-white issue where the police either can go or cannot go.
Considering the article made that exact assertion in its title, describing it as a "no-go zones" which is not ambiguous in the slightest, either you linked to something you knew was deceptive from the first sentence if I believe your defense now, or you're rationalizing after the fact. There are no other conclusions available.
The causes are not debated. I acknowledged long ago ITT that the causes of terrorism (extremism in general) are many - poverty, culture, religion, ideology, perceived oppression.. It is pointless to debate, because we agree here.
No, you really didn't; you just kind of slid on to yet another orthogonal point.
What you seem to have missed is that I am saying these factors are all very hard, if not practically impossible to change - how many times have I said ITT that "we do not have a magic wand to solve poverty", or that I am skeptical of cultural assimilation?
None for the former, many for the latter, but when challenged to provide evidence you have once again slid orthogonally.
It does not matter what the ultimate cause is, if you cant change it, if it does not point to a practical solution, its irrelevant for our purposes (solving the problem, not just writing long tractats about it).
So your argument is that we can't change our own actions in the Middle East now.
...yeah, that's where we are. That's what you're reduced to.
My solution (minimizing the % of population that is strongly correlated with the unwanted phenomenon) will certainly work no matter the causes, because its not based on causation at all - the correlation is enough for it to work.
Ignoring the fact that your solution has been repeatedly refuted as unworkable, considering many, if not most, of this sort of incident in the last five to ten years have been caused by people who live here then go there then come back.
Unless you're now proposing restriction of freedom of travel even for Westerners; a quarantine of Muslim-dominated countries. Which would admittedly be a novel argument from you, if even more utterly impractical and ridiculous.
What is the percentage of attackers with muslim immigrant background among all those deadly terrorist attacks in western Europe in the last decade or two? Is it far more than their share of population? Yes or no? If yes, then it is caused by immigrants (from certain countries, that is).
What is the percentage of these attacks by citizens vs. on visa? That should be far more illuminating. Indeed, if we're actually attempting to
study the problem where were individual attackers educated and how, what was their role in the overall execution of the operation?
We already know at least two of the French attackers were French citizens, and the attack that was executed required knowledge of the city and the specific target locations that would be available most readily
to an existing resident. We know from failed attempts at attacks in the United States that it's far easier to subvert a Caucasian citizen of the US than to smuggle in an Arabic terrorist since 9/11. How do you propose to prevent these problems? Deny visas to visit other countries? Shut down the internet so nobody can contact these people?
The world is a small one, smaller than you want it to be. A dozen people killed at a wedding in Iraq can be photographed and viewed in the privacy of your own home within ten minutes of the fact. Spatial seperation does not exist. Followers are everywhere in the world; it's a fundamental truth. Actors can be anywhere they want now; it's also a fundamental truth. Welcome to the Twitter age.
Do you think there is any serious untapped potential in that area? I dont.
It has already been established, in this thread, that there were failures to heed the existing warning signs. Turkey is on-record as having warned French intelligence about one of the attackers.
You're arguing there's no more data to be mined. That's possibly true. It is
painfully clear, however, that the analysis and follow-up side of the house can make improvements.
The rest of your statement is utterly disconnected from reality in light of the fact that the information was actually out there, ready to be used, if anyone had connected the dots and judged them important.
I am saying that I dont base my policy on Daesh demands, but on what I want to achieve. I am saying that yes, my solution is incidentally opposed to the Daesh demand of more muslims in Europe, but thats not why I chose it at all, my reasoning is different than the simplistic "do the opposite of what Daesh says".
You have yet to produce evidence this a demand Daesh makes, and considering that any idiot can find Daesh talking about what they want (christ, I'm the only guy who actually posted a real Daesh publication here, and
you want to lecture
me about what Daesh wants?) this shouldn't be hard for you.
You are once again attempting to slide your goalposts away from Battuta's discussion of the facts rather than address them.
Western presence in the middle east can be a risk, and I am not fan of it too (tough it can also be a mitigating factor if conducted properly). But it is far below the risk posed by mass immigration. Unless we stop the latter, the former is pretty much not worth talking about.
See previous posts re: citizenship, residence, who's actually recruited to plan and lead attacks.
My point is not about the severity of attacks, but more about the frequency and preventability. 9/11 once in a decade? Whatever, we cannot prevent that anyway (and YOU cannot too). Regular terrorist attacks, caused primarily by domestic terrorists, several times a year? We have a big problem, and one with an obvious solution that would at least stop it from growing.
Here, you seem to brush against the truth you're so eager to avoid: the terrorists are domestic. But they're also immigrants. But they're also flying robot unicorns, at this point, for all the consistency you can seem to manage.
Recent attacks in Paris were caused in large part by muslims living in Europe.
Which isn't the same as immigrants. Muslim is a religion, not an immigration status.