Re: clique preservation, I keep finding myself wondering if we're shooting ourselves in the foot calling these acts "terrorism" and the actors "terrorists". It seems to me these are just criminals. If you buy the Dawkins/Harris/Maher line about Islam being more violent than other religions, then perhaps these "new" categories (like "enemy combatant" and "terrorist") might make sense. But if you don't buy that (like me) and tend to think any person is capable of massive destruction given the right circumstances, then such categories don't make as much sense.
Granted, _if_ these people were rational and strategic and were committing these acts purposefully to instill terror, then it makes sense and the actors would sometimes commit other, more mainstream acts (crimes, acts of war, etc that are not terrorism). But it's difficult to buy the argument that these guys (or Tsarnaev and the like) are rational. I can see someone thinking of bin Laden as rational and a terrorist. But these guys seem more like fever-eyed lunatics to me.
The same issue comes up w.r.t. gitmo and justifications for suspending due process. If the US were really more focused on integration, then wouldn't we treat people like this as criminals and not terrorists?
On 01/08/2015 02:36 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
The big issue Europe, and France in particular faces, is "multiculturalism" vs "cultural integration". The US is structured to favor the latter. Europe the former. The co-existence approach (multiculturalism) can in the worst of cases lead to ghettos and isolation, leading to anger and hate. I have zero idea if this is part of the apparent (and definitely not real) perception that islam, rather than islamic nut cases, is the cause of the current violence.
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