Problem with this whole militant thing is that it assumes there's one guiding intelligence running it. There isn't.

Yes, 9/11 was the work of people who'd had contact with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

But London? Disaffected locals working on their own. Spain? Disaffected locals working on their own. This one? Disaffected locals working on their own. That's why I agree with 282RA - all these *are* isolated incidents.

But there *is* a terrorist threat. What have all these got in common? Answer: disaffected Muslims who have grievances over what's been done to Muslim countries by the US and the West in general, and who also have grievances against the treatment of Muslims in the US and West in general. Is the answer to impose more sanctions on Muslim countries and put more restrictions on resident Muslims? For me, that seems stupid. You don't prevent this by cracking down harder on Muslims, you prevent it by dealing with their grievances.

To put the same question another way, was the best response to the IRA to send out the B Specials/UDR/RUC to intimidate Catholics? Or was it brokering deals that would give Catholics a say, and dismantling the apparatus that institutionalised the violence against Catholics? And in the US, was the best response to the Black Panthers to send the police out on the streets and fire-hose black protestors? Or was it to give blacks equal access to schools, jobs and social environment, and prevent discrimination on the basis of colour?

The simple fact is that once someone hates you, you can't stop them taking a swing at you, and that's as true for individuals as for countries. But you can usually stop them hating you in the first place by not doing things that'll piss them off.

Graham.