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Originally Posted by redwitch
What happened is Paris was ugly and tragic. Like many posters here, I have truly enjoyed the French people I have met, in Paris and in other parts of France. They were always kind and polite.
That being said, I'm not sure what America is supposed to do about these random acts of terrorism. Destroying ISIL is not going to change anything. It seems that the destruction of one organization helps create another, stronger, more evil group to replace the old one. We should stop any support of terrorist groups, whether financial, informational or anyone just generally abetting these groups. This should be a worldwide campaign, not an American responsibility. Asking us to bomb ISIL into oblivion is, at best, a stopgap measure and, at worst, an open invitation to retaliate on our soil.
So, my sincere sympathies to Paris. No one deserves these kind of attacks but please don't ask us to do more than we are doing.
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Turkey could take a dark turn.
Turkish politics | Economist - World News, Politics, Economics, Business & Finance There's a Thanksgiving joke in there too! Sorry about the dark humor.
Thoughts about my former Mosul friend who I hung out with at the University of Denver Graduate School of Librarianship and Information Management come to mind. This was in 1983-1984 when the Iran-Iraq war was going full force. His brother was some kind of military leader in Saddam Hussein's army and Mahmood would get all worked up about the Iran-Iraq War and tell me rather offensive Kurd jokes. Now Isis controls Mosul and I do not know if Mahmood is even alive let alone his brother. Mahmood worked at the University of Mosul Library.
I suppose something worse could happen in Mosul than ISIS but I am having a hard time imagining it. ISIS is definitely far worse than Saddam Hussein.
I had written Mahmood for a few years but his thoughts became quite hostile towards Western values so I had to stop around 1985.