How DO you punish a suicide bomber? make him live?

[SoCalDem]

Mubarek apparently has vowed to punish the suicide bombers at the Egyptian resort..

This is the reason why we MUST all negotiate with the zealots..even if we hate them, and their ideas.

Negotiation is a place to start, because they do not fear death, and they cannot fight modern nations with conventional methods. We can have millions of people in the military, and billion dollar planes, but they are useless against handfuls of suicidal zealots.

they may not kill as MANY people as our methods do, but they wreak havoc with governments in sly ways.. they discourage tourism and commerce in countries that rely heavily on those things...and that further destabilizes their already weakened governments.

Look at what the WTC attacks did to air travel here in the US.. The tourism slack here is probably more due to the fact that Americans are broke, and foreigners are not too happy with our leadership's draconian policies right now.

If the goal is to eliminate westerners from the middle east, why not just let them have it..and thrash out their own problems by themselves? They will have to sell their oil to someone..they cannot eat it..so why don;t we just become their customers, and leave them all alone?

I know it sounds simplistic, but sometimes the best solutions are also the simplest ones..:shrug:

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

1. How on earth do you negotiate...

...with a group of people who believe that if you do not share their particular, extreme religious beliefs then you can justifiably be killed? Islamic Jihad is not Hamas. They do not have a similar political component.

[SoCalDem]

2. But.. if we leave their lands and do not "bother" them

why would they feel the need to fight us? For decades, there was actually tourism and trade in the middle east, and other than being a colorful place to visit, westerners did not really meddle that much with them..or them with us..

There HAS to be a way besides a continual escalation. We cannot kill them all..We don't even know who they are..

I feel in my bones, that if we GET OUT of their region, the locals will deal with them...but as long as the west is meddling in their affairs, we are only endearing them to the people who would probably be the same ones to eliminate them if we left..:shrug:

Having a HUGE embassy right there in their midst will continue to be an irritant..

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

6. Bother them?

If we leave their lands and do not "bother" them why would they feel the need to fight us?

That assumes that the only reason they're blowing up tourists is because we, the west, are "bothering" them, and they want us to leave. That isn't strictly true. The goal of the islamists is to overthrow the current regimes in the Middle East and replace them with Islamist regimes. They believe that the way to do this is to turn people against the West and their own governments. Islamic Jihad and al Qaeda aren't going to give up their ambitions if we leave Iraq.


I feel in my bones, that if we GET OUT of their region, the locals will deal with them

Get out how? Do you mean militarily? Financially? With respect to oil? There's simply no way of disentangling the west from the middle east.

[GeorgeGist]

3. You make an excellent point, except...

that as their customers we wouldn't be leaving them alone and our zealots, as well as their's, don't appear willing to negotiate a constructive solution. :dilemma:

[SoCalDem]

4. People in the middle east have been merchants for thousands of years

so buying stuff(oil) from them would not be that foreign of an idea. I think it;s the "regime change" that they resent so much:(

Zealots everywhere are the same:(

[rfkrfk]

5. they also want Mubarek's job

Mubarek wants to keep his job.

do you think he cares if thirty people get blowed up?

of course not, but he can't say that

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

7. He definitely cares.

The Egyptian economy needs tourism to survive.