they would be better off trying to stop what causes these terrorists from wanting to attack us...
I think the response should be a careful, cursory action that acknowledges the public demand for retaliation, but all else put into the long game of building resistance to radicalised violence - working on education, poverty, etc amongst the communities where agitators source members. We should be encouraging people to find common ground rather than react aggressively, even if that is the gut response.
I am very irreligious, but there was a great comment on HN the other day about a fairly orthodox Christian finding that they had more in common with a fairly orthodox Muslim colleague than with other atheist co-workers.
Often the political and public reaction after an event like this is to focus on differences (language, clothing like burkas, etc) rather than things like a love of family, of food, sport, music and so on.
I live in Australia and our new prime minister is far, far better at this than the previous us-vs-them dog-whistler.
But let's take at face value that that's possible, you'd still have to assume that all terrorists have a) some rational set of demands; and b) even if they did, that we'd be willing to meet those demands.
What ISIS believes is incompatible with Western democracy. There is nothing we could do to eliminate their desire to attack us that wouldn't mean our own destruction, anyway.
No, the goal should be to improve the living conditions, infrastructure, access to education, etc of impoverished regions where terrorist sentiment typically appears and festers.
To give an extreme example, there is a reason the Saudi royalty aren't walking into the middle of a marketplace and blowing themselves up: they already have everything they want/need. I'm not saying we should make everyone royalty, but that there is a clear correlation between standard of living and terrorist sentiment.
Standard of living is a continuous curve which has absolutely nothing to do with mass murder. There is a binary switch which occurs separately from any experience which is measured in terms of 'standard of living'. Now maybe there are some experiences which can drive a person to commit terrorism, but I think more likely, this terrorism is not a consequence of some action, but rather, these are a group of people who use terrorism as a tool to wage war. Why are they at war with the West? It's not because of standard of living, I'm pretty sure it's because they hate everything the West stands for and wants it to burn.
You mean the United States of America, terrorizing Pakistanis for years now?
There's no binary switch. There are tactics effective for given goals and circumstances. Mass shootings and suicide bombings are a perfect strategy if you want to make a country destroy itself. The question is - why would you like to make that country destroy itself? The answer is not:
> It's not because of standard of living, I'm pretty sure it's because they hate everything the West stands for and wants it to burn.
That's not only bullshit but, if it were true, it would be the best argument to just ignore those attacks and treat them as any other murder done by organized crime. Because if they "hate our freedom", then by overreacting and turning ourselves into police states, we're doing their job for them - we're putting our economy and industry into dismantling everything the West stands for.
You look for a second at the people who actually carried out recent attacks, you will see what I mean. Who said anything about police state?
The thing which has impressed me is apparently this guy was a prolific attack planner. Known and poorly tracked. I'd say a major intelligence failure.
All those have a higher percentage of Christians in their populations than the US or anywhere in Western Europe, and they don't have the same level of anti-terrorism focus so are presumably easier targets.
Could it simply be that those countries haven't been bombing and invading places in the Middle East?
These countries have negligible numbers of Muslims.
There have been multiple Islamic terrorist attacks in Tanzania (which borders Zambia) and Kenya, both of which have significant Muslim minorities. Not to mention the frequent attacks by Boko Haram et al in Nigeria and the perpetual civil war in Somalia, which is overwhelmingly Muslim.
Even the threats and attacks against cartoonists, as mentioned by another commenter, go beyond the simplistic "kill all infidels just because they exist".
To put it more simply: when Danish cartoonists are threatened for offending Islam, is that also because of imperialism?
And why would you believe them? What they say on TV is also a weapon. People who don't come and negotiate but go straight to killing won't be posting their real goals on their website, they'll rather post something that helps further those goals.