I agree with Savage Pencil that calling John E. Carey an imbicle is not acceptable and urge Marilyn to retract it. On the other hand, I don't see any great offence with the term "spin merchant" as this clearly is in reference to the article as written. As for "blown to bits", I assume it'd be more accurate to say this describes Southern rather than all of Lebanon.

We should remember this article was written for an American audience (in the Washington Post). I don't believe the irony is intended.

For example, the line "the terrorists, media and the UN tend to handcuff the West within its own values even more." Think of the meaningless meaning in this sentence. (I assume that "its own values" refers to Western values due to singular pronoun.) Are terrorists forcing the West to avoid hypocracy ... even more? Is the UN collaborating with the terrorists and media in this handcuffing? Is the West still able to retreat from its values?

This use of the word values is interesting. The author probably is saying in order to retain our values, we need to depart from them in order to attack those who attack us who do not share our values.

If so, this mimics the idea that terrorists should shave their beards, wear Western clothes and not go to a mosque (i.e. depart from Islamic values) in order to attack Westerners (who do not share these values.)

Response to Perdrus on Capital Punishment:
According to the article Western values include an unalienable right to life. If so, this precludes capital punishment because the state is depriving a criminal of life, without another life being at risk as occurs with self-defence. In Australia, support for the death penalty is in the mid 40% range, although it jumped to 51% after the Bali bombings. (http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/18/1061059761657.html)

To Strewth
Ah Ha!, now I have discerned your problem.
You see, you've been looking under the wrong bed.
Since you've gotten into bed with Hezbollah,
IT'S BEEN HEZBOLLAH'S BED you've been looking under.
Now of course you won't find the bogyman under Hezbollah’s bed.
They don’t haunt their own kindred -they only haunt good guys.

But I think you haven’t answered my original question.
Do extreme elements of Islam pose any threat to people in the west? (And in giving your answer, please try to consider the ordinary Joe or Jane who has to use crowded public transport or frequent busy shopping centres etc)

Hi Horus. I'm an 'ordinary Joe who has to use crowded public transport or frequent busy shopping centres'.

And you know what? I'm not afraid.

John E. Carey is right to say that "no man should live in fear of terrorists."

Which is why I don't.

Sure, they can bomb my train or my shopping mall. So I'll be gone along with a few hundred other commuters. That's about a week's worth of civilian deaths in Iraq right now (60 per day according to Baghdad morgue).

Heck they can even let off a ground-detonated nuke in one of our cities , as somebody on this forum suggested (with what, Saddam's missing WMD?).

But overall, the damage terrorists can inflict upon our society and our Western values is miniscule compared to the damage our own fears have already inflicted. Look at the effect a few years' fear of terrorism has had upon us here in Australia - see how Australians can't even manage to have a civil disagreement with each other without spitting venom. See the instinct towards totalitarianism bubble up as anybody with a dissenting view is told to "go and live with the terrorists".

Whatever happened to robust liberal democracy? Looks like the terrorists have already succeeded in cutting a lot of people's heads off without even using a knife.

This fear is the cancer that is eating away at our "western values" - our freedoms and our democracy.

So I don't care if you're Arab, Muslim, American, Israeli or Australian - if you talk peace and freedom but you act with bombs and bullets, well, action speaks louder than words.

If you're frightened, you're already dancing to the terrorists' tune.

If you live in fear, the terrorists have already cut off your head.

Response to David Latimer on capital punishment.

David, I thought you were more mature than to believe newspaper opinion polls! Don't you remember the polls in early 1999 on the republic, which had support up in the high 60's?

My main interest in the whole issue is not the issue itself, but the continuing battle around the western world between the people and the elites. A very interesting article on this appeared last week in the London Daily Telegraph, which traces this battle back to the roundheads and the cavaliers in the english civil war, and it can be found at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/08/12/do1201.xml

As far as I am aware, the opportunities given to the australian people to vote on capital punishment were the same given to the british people on entering the common market, i.e. zero.

At each state election we find the two main parties competing on "law and order issues" trying to outdo each other on penalties. The real reason is that many people would like to see a lot of the offenders hang.

This contest between the elites and the people, with the supreme representatives being Paul Keating and Pauline Hanson, is to me one of the most interesting issues of our time, and very pertinent to western values. In some ways the US is ahead of us, with citizen initiated referendum at state level, and with recall. I believe on balance that we are ahead because of the provision here that only the people can amend the federal constitution.

An article written by a former military leader is likely to have a military bias. That is, it is very difficult to think beyond the values engrained by our background; the values we learnt as children; and then, those learnt in our work environment, have a profound impact on how we think. We, with our Western psyche's just cannot comprehend how somebody of the Middle East extraction might think about the current conflict in the Middle East; and vice versa. That is the tragedy in relation to Iraq as the quagmire created, has Iraq on the verge of civil war.

It's pretty clear that the Israeli's are going to want to take action when suicide bombers blast themselves and others to smithereens. The Palestinians if not killed, have had their houses or orchards bulldozed out of existence for military strategic reasons by the Israelis. Beirut has been bombed, and Southern Lebanon flattened; this occurring when Lebanon is not at war with anybody. In Israeli military terms that may be a perfectly rational thing to do; however, on a human level it is dastardly. Just like it is dastardly to become a suicide bomber or kill and kidnap Israeli troops at a time of truce. To be able to be a person who programs would be bombers; is suggestive in Western terms of an anti social personality disorder when the bombers are directed against ordinary citizens.

Modern weaponry has a sting in the tail with uranium coated bombs ready to cause cancer for unsuspecting Lebanese once they return to their homes. Or, they might be blown to bits by unexploded cluster bombs. To be able to design such weaponry the humanness of the designer must be called in question.

Part2
In other words we are good, they are bad does not make sense; morality does not come into the situation. We are equally as barbaric or as humane depending on the actions being done. Russia, Iran and major Western Nations do good business out of conflicts; being suppliers of the military hardware used.

John E. Carey stated that the Israeli’s warned people in Southern Lebanon about needing to escape prior to mass bombing; their grace was not matched by their action as on at least two occasions they fired upon citizens escaping.
To put it in a nut shell there are no good guys in this scenario.