I've had a great day today, my football team has beaten their bigest rivals, My countrys rugby team has won,Ive had a good night out, and will no doubt suffer in the morning.
While I've been enjoying all this something much bigger and important has been going on, nearly a million people have been marching in London against the war with iraq, there have been similar marches all around the world, yet the powers to be seem intent on conflict.

I have never been against any conflict my country has been involved in in my lifetime, but I feel in this case that my goverment is totally ignoring the views of millions of its citizens by going to war with Iraq. I personally do not feel threatened by Iraq .

I do however feel threatened by terrorists,and have grown to live with the terror that the IRA have brought to London and the rest of Britain for as long as I remember, I now fear Al queda and the different threat that they bring.

I realise Iraq has some dealings with this organisation, but as far as i know terrorisom has no state, most of the terrorists in the uk arrested so far have been from north Africa, should we attack them too, Bin laden and some of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, are they next on the list, where does it stop! Atacking Iraq will kill thousands of innocent people, create thousand of refugees, and thousands of new terrorists, and to me it all smacks of revenge, I'm all for a war on terrorism but not for terrorising innocents.
.
The fact that I've had a good drink tonight has possibly helped me post the above, and I know that it's not as articulate as some who post here, but it comes from the heart, and the feeling will remain tommorow it's the same feeling I've had for the last month or so.

So there you go I've said my bit, I feel better for it , and if this upsets anyone it was not my intention but tough shit.. it's the way I feel.

hear hear!! im in 10th grade, and we have conversations in most of my classes about how we dont need to go to war, and we are only going to inspire more terrorism by bombing them. If i was old enough, ide go out and protest.

I live in the USA, so i know all too much about the terrorism against us. My dad was on that runway on 9/11 in NY, he took off about 5-10 min before the first plane that him the WTC. Thats scary. it could of been him so easily on that plane, and i would have never seen him again. im ALL for the war on terrorism, but we need to fight the terrorists.. not the country they are living in.

Xero

im sure all if not most of us feel the same way... [img]smile.gif[/img] its nice for you to speak it out loud. no harm done in speaking your thoughts as long as its civil and not racist and within the bouderies of law of IW [img]smile.gif[/img]

My country's rugby team has lost ;) but I nonetheless heartily agree with you, Lanesra. [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

I stood up to be counted yesterday, and had a fantastic time. Biggest protest I've ever been on (and I've been on a few ;) )

And then I went and got very very drunk [img]redface.gif[/img]

In terms of giving peace a chance in Iraq, think of it this way:

You're a senior student, walking around your high-school grounds. You see a younger student kicking the s**t out of another one. You walk up to the bully and say 'hey punk, get the hell off've that kid!', the attacking kid then replies 'go mind your own business asshole! this is between me and him'. So, being bigger and tougher than the bully, you take measures into your own hands and proceed to beat him to the ground in order to save his victim from this abuse.
Now, you have the bully firmly disabled on the concrete and are giving him a few tried-and-true shots in the ribs for his troubles. He's unable to do anything against you or the kid he was picking on, and he's hurting bad. Now, a high school teacher sees you dealing to the bully and says 'That's enough! He's learned his lesson, leave him alone!'. By now the bully is squirming and crying, hyped up on adrenhaline and humiliation screaming at the top of his lungs "I'll kill you! I hate you! I'll kill you I swear!!". The teacher is urging you to let the kid go, while you know that the bully is so incensed with hatred.
This bully has a reputation for carrying a concealed knife around school, although he openly denies carrying such a weapon around. In recent weeks the school authorities have made a brief search of his locker and schoolbag for any sign of a deadly knife, but have come up with nothing. But you still can't be sure that he doesn't have it hidden away somewhere. If you let him go now he may very well stab you in the back as you walk away. In fact he's so pissed off right now that you are almost certain that that is what he will do should you release him.
But the teacher is getting more and more impatient of your refusal to let the kid go. The teacher does not believe that physical force is necessary in restraining this proven bully under the current circumstances, and prefers to look further into the matter of the bullies concealed knife in order to possibly press legal charges against him and get him detained in juvenile prison should a knife be found. But such a search could take a long time, and you have no guarantee that the kid will not wait until an opportune moment to stab you from behind before the inquiry is over. If you were to just knock the kid out now with a hard punch to the head there is a good chance that you could get away and into a safe position before he is able to regain consciousness. But to do so will almost certainly anger the teacher, and you may face expulsion from school.

So what do you do? What do you do??!!??

[ 02-16-2003, 08:12 AM: Message edited by: The Hierophant ]

Totally oblitirate the school, making more enemys seeking revenge ?.

Think of the school as the political world of nations and states, and the bullying kid as the nation of Iraq. Some people have said that the kid has quite alot of friends, some of whom don't attend school, they dropped out of school because they hated the rules and regulations. They themselves would have no trouble with doing a drive-by shooting on the whole school, regardless of who got killed. The kid denies associating himself with these guys, but he may just be saying that to keep the principle off've his back. Who knows? But if you let the kid go, and he does hang out with these guys, then you'd better be watching your back as you walk home from school!

[ 02-16-2003, 08:30 AM: Message edited by: The Hierophant ]

I agree with your post Lanesra.

I wonder if 9.11 hadn't happened would we be going into Iraq. I no longer know what terrorist represents what.

Seems like all the terror threats have escalated since the Iraq thing. I dunno.

Good post, Heirophant. We, the USA, are at war with terrorists, specifically with Al-Qaeda, since they attacked us and kiled quite a few of our citizens and others living here. They have no qualms about proclaiming that they are going to do it again, when they have the opportunity. Several nation-states, at first, most notably Afghanistan, harbored and supported the terrorists, refusing demands to extradite them, and allowing training camps to exist on their soil. We took out Afghanistan, over protests, and found, whaddaya know, they had the terror camps, etc., they claimed not to have. Now, Iraq is harboring terrorist camops in the north (didn't any of you read Colin Powell's speech to the Security Council?) and he is a known supplier of money and arms to terrorists. He is in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions, as well as the treaty that ended the Gulf War. So, he is next on the list. Give war a chance.