So, what is my ideology then? That violence is a means of last resort? That problems should be tackled at the root, not by attacking the symptoms? That religion - which I personally do not subscribe to - has problems, no matter where but that freedom of speech automatically implies freedom of religion and so it's here to stay and will have to be accommodated, in all it's forms?

Pick some, they're all true.

Bombing civilians in a trumped up war about resources is to the victims exactly the same as shooting randomly at people. Ditto blowing up weddings with rockets, killing a few hundred thousand civilians to stop them from subscribing to another ideology and so on.

All of these activities are deplorable. I'm all for national defense, I'm not a pacifist (try harming me or someone I love and see how that ends) but at the same time I'm all for restraint and very careful consideration of the consequences of actions.

Note that there is a fairly direct line between the Iraq invasion (which France was adamantly against, remember the 'surrender monkeys' and the 'Freedom Fries'?), and the attacks in Paris. Action begets reaction, so before you react without considering the consequences you should hold still. And only when and if you've identified root causes can you go and attack the problem.

Attacking Iraq on false pretexts after 9/11 was a step on the way to Liberating Fallujah (or should that be 'wiping it off the face of the earth') which indirectly led to the US leaving Iraq which led to a power vacuum which led to on the raid of Mosul by IS which was one step on the way to IS becoming more coherent which was one step on the way to a bunch of murderers shooting up the Paris nightlife.

It's not that hard. Context and intent are a lot more complex than they seem to be at first glance, ideology has precious little to do with it.

> no matter where but that freedom of speech automatically implies freedom of religion and so it's here to stay and will have to be accommodated, in all its forms?

Depends on the way to go.

If you're going for 100% freedom of speech then you'll have to accept things like the WBC or Neonazi hate speech

Now if you're going for what happens in Europe then going agains hate speech should work for all forms of hate speech, including hate towards any groups and the country itself. Tolerance goes both ways.

> Note that there is a fairly direct line between the Iraq invasion (which France was adamantly against, remember the 'surrender monkeys' and the 'Freedom Fries'?), and the attacks in Paris.

Yes, and I agree with the correlation, but they were against it and got the short stick first.

So damned if you do, damned if you don't? Might as well do it then

> Action begets reaction, so before you react without considering the consequences you should hold still.

I agree. But you can't predict all consequences. Saddam was a ruthless dictator but he kept the other ruthless wanna-be dictators in check.

> If you're going for 100% freedom of speech then you'll have to accept things like the WBC or Neonazi hate speech

I'm fine with that. I'd rather have such sores out in the open than underground where they can rot and fester that much more efficiently.

It also shows them for the idiots they are instead of being able to isolate their wanna-be company into a nice little echo-chamber.

> Bombing civilians in a trumped up war about resources is to the victims exactly [jacquesm's emphasis] the same as shooting randomly at people.

This is absolutely, truly, astonishing.

It's not the exactly the same thing from your perspective, but I bet it is from the victims'.

Imagine if a drone from Saudi Arabia or better yet Assad's Syria swooped into your community looking for, the leader of a US infantry commander, and instead blew up a wedding party. And not just once, but dozens of times over the course of years.

How would you feel about that? Would you want retribution?

Would you want to spend time debating what a "terrorist" is?

Seems that Germans, Japanese, Vietnamese, Nicaraguans, have all managed to contain their need for "retribution" from the United States.

That's because their leaders either committed suicide or gave up.

Before Japan's surrender they were planning kamikaze operations against the US invaders and believed casualties might be in the millions. They had already launch 2,000 kamikaze operations to that point in the war.

Hirohito ordered his people to submit, and the US allowed him to stay on the throne as a reward. Most of his generals were executed.

If Hirohito himself had been executed, it wouldn't surprise me if there had been a horrific backlash against the occupiers.

I don't know why you mention Vietnam. From their perspective, Vietnam won the war. More importantly, they got the US to do what they wanted: leave them alone.

Going for retribution continuously is the same thing as "an eye for an eye and the world will go blind"

His whole point was about intent! You're the one who doesn't see: The intent on both sides is to tear down a system that has values different from theirs. The fact that Bush had an army and Bin Laden didn't doesn't change that.

If you start talking about intent like this what your really saying is I share the values of one side and hence find their actions more justifiable. And I obviously even after with you about the west fighting for the better value system, but I would also prefer it would win on its own merit and not because it was forced on countries like Iraq.

No

One intends to cause terror, the other to hit military targets (against a certain government).

Who mentioned values?