i did. thanks for your comment. didnt get as mauled as expected given the extreme sensitivity of the topic. tho HP is an almost unique site in that there are hundreds of commenters who like to pick a fight with everyone no matter what is said.

sonia – is that right? how very unusual? are there no differences at all?

Easier would be to point out that it was the British Empire that defeated both the Ottoman and Moghul empires. That defeat could only be by the will of the Divine, so logically the Caliphate of the modern era is the UK.

Just get Charles to hint he has converted in private, and find some nice Qur’anic quotes to back it up.

Anyone who buys that argument, stick them in a uniform, and then on a troop ship to some third world country where they can live in a hut. Maybe even do some useful work while they are there.

Same net effect as Guantanomo, except for no need to spend money on guards or wires, and with self-selecting volunteers.

‘channel your hatred on to ‘our’ common enemy’

The worst criminals are not the laughing cockney pickpocket, the socially inadequate shoplifter or even the criminal masterminds of comic books. The worst criminals are the serial killers, the psychopaths and the like. It is to them that I was trying to draw an analogy.

BTW, did you write the guest post in Harrys Place? I thought it was pretty interesting.

There are times I think you are the Jonathan Swift of our age. There are times when I think otherwise…

I’m sure you’ll leave the details of your modest proposal to others.

(Nb not suggesting all city workers are psychopaths, any more than that all army recruits are, just that it is wise for societies to have ways of channeling rage and hatred somewhere outside of politics)

For example, all the way through the troubles, the royal irish rangers was recruiting. While in principle non-sectarian, in practise it had some distinctly catholic, even Irish nationalist flavour. As such, unlike the UDR, it was always excused from occupation duty in NI. Instead, it sent a lot of military-minded catholic young men off around the world to go live a life of adventure, putting the world to rights by shooting at bad guys.

I’m not sure the army would be allowed to use the word ‘jihad’ in a recruitment poster, but it could be hinted at.

i agree with you that calling them terorrists makes them feel better than being called crims. we should call them crims but we also have to accept that they are terrorists.

as someone earlier pointed out, criminals are inherently selfish. i dont see what is selfish about blowing yourself up.

Ms Xtreme – if you dont like the OED definition of terrorism, you should take it up with them.

Let me get this straight in my head.

Lets leave to one side the alleged dificulty that the Army has in getting any ethnic minority troops to sign up. Lets assume that had been solved.

Lets assume the numbers are right, and the potential terrorist threat comes from around 2500 idiots. What are we supposed to do? When MI5 identify them, they should be approached and offered a career in the Army? And this is going to work?

Sign them up to our army.

0.3% of the 100,000-strong UK army is muslim, compared to 2.7% of the population in general. That’s a shortfall of 2400 odd; more when you take class, age and income into account. That’s a lot of young men unable to pursue their vocation in life in any way other than flying off to foreign countries like Kashmir or Chechnya to find whatever scraps of work are going.

Britain exports warriors like Poland exports plumbers.

Add in the missing Muslim professional sportsmen, guitarists and other high-status young male occupations, and you get to pretty much exactly the size of the pool of potential bombers.

It is this pandering to a self image that is really irritating. The fact that they may have seen themselves as warriors when the rest of us see them as disturbed lunatics is essentially why everyone, everywhere, should be describing them as disturbed lunatics. Perhaps then other potential recruits would appreciate that acts of incredible barbarity and stupidity are only likely to have people cursing their very names. And describing them, in turn as, ‘depraved lunatics’ and not as the ‘warriors’ they might have hoped for. So they may come to doubt the self image they are presenting.

As you don’t see universal social opprobrium as at least one arrow in the quiver, what is your solution?

Resisting an inquiry is just absurd. You can ALWAYS learn from the past. Hell, thats why we are where we are today in terms of education and technology. Closing the file on something thats so profound as murder on a large scale is not acceptable to me. I personally want to know what happened and what is the plan to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

I’m going dyslexic or something.