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Comment by forgotpwtomain | Hacker News Reader

How about Europe taking responsibility for their interventionist policies in the Middle East and their support for the US military agenda in the Middle East which created most of these problems in the first place?

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First of all, Europe is not one country. To hold the entirely of Europe responsible for what some countries do is just as absurd as holding all of Asia responsible for what China does.

Secondly, many countries inside Europe have opposed US military actions in the Middle East.

> First of all, Europe is not one country. To hold the entirely of Europe responsible for what some countries do is just as absurd as holding all of Asia responsible for what China does.

Germany, France and the UK (which actively supported interventions in the Middle East) contribute ~50% of the EU budget - it's silly to even suggest that these laws are being passed without their support.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_the_European_Union#E...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_involvement_in_the_Syr...

EU != Europe.

I live in Europe yet I'm not part of the European Union. Also, measuring by "budget", what's up with that? At least use population number or something that's semi reasonable.

It's roughly the same as thinking that the US == Continent America, and that Canada, Argentina and Mexico should be responsible for the actions of the US.

Yes, France opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2002. What do they get? Several terrorist actions in one year.

France also has a very bad track record in the Maghreb and lots of people who lived under French rule or lost people in their parents' generation are still alive. Given that France did not do much to make up for that, it is understandable that there still is a lot of hatred and they thus are an easy target. Concentrating a large, poor and badly educated 1st and 2nd generation of immigrants from those countries in neglected suburbs also did not help....

That's no justification for acts of terrorism. The fault is with the individual terrorists, not the French en masse.

I'm not trying to justify terrorism but highlight motivations for it.

Who is "Europe" in this case? I can tell you it was not idea of the European population to follow the US into a war based on wrongful information. So who should be taking responsibility?

How about you accept that people in the Middle East have their own agency, and are not merely pawns for other countries on a giant chess board?

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