Breaking - explosions at Brussels Airport **Mod warning in post 1**

seamus wrote: »

"limiting", "most likely". The problem is that we've been here before. It leads to irrational fears and 1984-esque paranoia & security, as occurred in the US during the era of McCarthyism.
No, I don't believe it does. Denying them asylum swells the ranks of their fighters overseas and creates a larger enemy. It also means that the ones most likely to get in legally are the ones who best know how to play the system.
"Knowing" that you have locked down your borders also causes complacency inside those borders. Far from having a ragtag bunch of loonies wielding AKs, like Brussels and Paris, you get a more sophisticated, more devastating attack, like New York.

If we look at the evidence from the last two decades thats not the lesson we should be pulling from the different responses at all.

How many big attacks has there been in America?
There is 9/11 and a few lone wolf attacks and some attempts. Pre 9/11 US internal Airport security was shockingly bad AFAIK and even Osama didn't expect that level of success, basically the US had very little experience of Terrorism apart from some domestic individuals before it.

How many large attacks has there been in Europe, Europe should by your logic have far less attacks, its far more security conscious inside its borders (seriously look at the differences in CCTV coverage), its more openly tolerant, its disliked slightly less by Islamists, its far harder to source weaponry and explosives here.
Europe should be experiencing barely any attacks if your logic is correct.

Timberrrrrrrr wrote: »

Not entertainment, as a warning to others.

If somebody seeks martyrdom why would you literally publicly do that too them???

Regardless of what way you look at it politically, Brussels is basically our de facto quasi federal "capital of convenience" and shorthand for all things Euro.

It's 'home' in many respects. I don't feel 'abroad' there and it even has Irish on all the EU buildings these days.

It's not only culturally familiar (similar language, similar architecture, similar fondness of beer) but it's geopolitically connected to us and many Irish people would be very familiar with it and actually Ireland has rather strong links to Belgium historically too through the University of Leuven in particular.

I've used Maelbeek metro station quite a few times myself over the years when I've had to visit the European institutions. Tens of thousands of Irish people have had reason to visit that city for work (not just EU institution stuff either, a lot of companies have links to Belgian counterparts, Irish companies regularly do projects in Belgium etc etc), academic reasons, governmental reasons if they're civil servants etc etc.

It's not that Yemen doesn't matter, but Brussels is just very close to home.

It's also just a short flight away and Belgium is one of our closest neighbours and also oddly enough (largely for tax reasons) one of our largest trading partners.

FalconGirl wrote: »

I know this wont be a popular comment but these dictators are better left be. The world before Gaddafi & Hussein were ousted was a much more stable landscape.

Well, I guess it's inevitable though when you remove the dictatorship that was keeping a lid on things (and not in a good way) you will get a power vacuum and a rush to fill it.

It's pretty naive to assume that a dictatorship will be replaced by a democracy. I think in a way the Americans in particular had a notion that stable democracy would be the outcome of the Iraq war based on some notion that they'd beaten European dictatorships in WWII.

The big thing they were forgetting was that European countries were extremely old and well established democracies hijacked by dictatorship in most cases. They weren't introducing anything, they were just helping restore the status quo.

There's also a rather insane assumption that the Japanese defeat and re-start as a democracy is repeatable in the Middle East. The cultures and political / governmental structures are just so different you can't really compare them.

The middle east is a totally different scenario and you have an array of competition factions, countries that were largely just creations of British or other European empires drawing lines in the sand and no recent history of stable democracy in most.

It was a little shortsighted to say the least that you can just remove a system of government, even a massively flawed system and a brutal dictator and just expect everything to come up a bed of roses the following morning.

A lot of these processes have to be self-started and societies make decisions based on an evolution of consensus not by shock from outside. If you try to impose democracy in a scenario where people for example idolise a strong leader and are quite comfortable with the idea of that, you're on a road to to no where fast.

You have to basically sell the concept of democracy as a good way of doing things and let people install it themselves.

Attempting to speed it up with massive interventionism and attempts at external regime change has created absolute disasters, as unpalatable and unpleasant as some of these regimes were.

Also the whole concept of playing regimes and revolutionaries off each other as proxy wars between various powers has been an absolute disaster and almost all the major powers have been engaged in that over the decades.

Fr_Dougal wrote: »

Something like, say, Trump actually having a shot at becoming President?

Of Europe ?

12Phase wrote: »

Well, I guess it's inevitable though when you remove the dictatorship that was keeping a lid on things (and not in a good way) you will get a power vacuum and a rush to fill it.

It's pretty naive to assume that a dictatorship will be replaced by a democracy. I think in a way the Americans in particular had a notion that stable democracy would be the outcome of the Iraq war based on some notion that they'd beaten European dictatorships in WWII.

The big thing they were forgetting was that European countries were extremely old and well established democracies hijacked by dictatorship in most cases. They weren't introducing anything, they were just helping restore the status quo.

There's also a rather insane assumption that the Japanese defeat and re-start as a democracy is repeatable in the Middle East. The cultures and political / governmental structures are just so different you can't really compare them.

The middle east is a totally different scenario and you have an array of competition factions, countries that were largely just creations of British or other European empires drawing lines in the sand and no recent history of stable democracy in most.

It was a little shortsighted to say the least that you can just remove a system of government, even a massively flawed system and a brutal dictator and just expect everything to come up a bed of roses the following morning.

A lot of these processes have to be self-started and societies make decisions based on an evolution of consensus not by shock from outside. If you try to impose democracy in a scenario where people for example idolise a strong leader and are quite comfortable with the idea of that, you're on a road to to no where fast.

You have to basically sell the concept of democracy as a good way of doing things and let people install it themselves.

Attempting to speed it up with massive interventionism and attempts at external regime change has created absolute disasters, as unpalatable and unpleasant as some of these regimes were.

Big problem in Iraq was caused by that f!!kwit Paul Bremer refusing to integrate former Baath Party members into the new Iraqi military or police. He was told that he needed to do this or else trouble would brew.

Being the arrogant arse that he was, he refused, leaving a lot of militarily trained men unable to get work, used to being big cheeses, and now with a chip on their shoulders.

These guys are the cornerstone of Daesh in Iraq.

There are a lot of tribal affiliations in these regions which influence things. Not to mentions religious affiliations.

The Raptor wrote: »

This is awful news today.

I read that other countries were putting in extra security measures while Enda Kenny tweeted that Ireland remains the same.

If Ireland doesn't step up with security, could it make Dublin a likely place to get hit?

The very chilled out approach by our government certainly is worrying. But perhaps those other countries mentioned have intelligence to suggest a step up in security is needed while we don't. Enda seems to think we are in more danger of gangland violence in Dublin rather than terrorism.