Hard to judge anyone who happened to be in the middle of the explosions.
That’s valid, @zeldie, but still wish it was different. 
@carachel2 My D lives in Germany. If you have any questions, PM me. But really, this can and does happen all over the world. I was staying in a rented apartment in Paris just 150 yards away from one of the Paris attacks.D had passed by the Bataclan just five minutes before the attack. Rather than come home, we stayed another week. I also spend a lot of time on business in San Bernardino. In my mind there is no where to hide and for this reason I am not fearful. Because there is no point in being fearful.These brutal animals like to attack transportation hubs so that they will strike fear in anyone who has ever been to an airport or gone on a subway. Fear is the whole point.
We need to be vigilant but we also need to go on with our lives.
FYI — I will be back in Paris this fall, at the same apartment.
Doschicos–No, it doesn’t bother me that people recorded the video rather than help. Most people wouldn’t even be able to help victims.
Good to it recorded at any rate. It’s what brings it alive to the world. Not like the news channels were hanging out at the airport waiting for it to happen and get a good shot.
First shock–what can I do?-- Help others–Tell other people.
Perhaps that video will provide some more clues as to how it happened.
I’m saddened by the losses, but I’m also freakin p*******d off!!! that these low life’s are claiming innocent lives supposedly because of their religious views. What kind of mental case thinks that this is related to God???
I’m tired of it! No one should lose his/her life because of some nut case with a gun or bomb.
People need to talk and not be afraid to report unusual or suspicious behaviors.
I am not fearful for myself. But I rarely am in large crowds. I do not take public transportation.
Somebody dropped the ball here. Don’t they have bomb sniffing dogs roving the Brussels airport?
While we never want to become desensitized to these things, the truth is we already are to a great extent.
One of my kids was adopted from a region of the world where one of the worst terrorist attacks ever launched upon innocent children took place a couple of years after we got him home. While it got some coverage here in the US, it was relatively little compared to how it would have dominated the airwaves had it taken place in the West. It’s just human nature to empathize most with those who look most like us and with whom we have some personal connection.
As alarmed as I am by Islamist terrorism, I’m also terrified by misguided and poorly planned reactions to that very real threat. I hope we learn from the people of the UK and France that it’s not in our nation’s interests to over-react by targeting innocent people or sacrificing our civil rights.
To quote one of our Founding Fathers: “Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”
“Somebody dropped the ball here. Don’t they have bomb sniffing dogs roving the Brussels airport?”
They do have plenty of security at the airport, but it is hard to stop people who are determined to blow themselves up in a public place. How do you protect the subway at rush hour?
Our western world is ill-equipped against religious extremists. Brussels is now paying the price for decades of laxism and tolerance,
*corrected lavish
I believe that GMT’s prediction will come true; we should expect to see off-site screening of passengers in the near future. Although, shuttling screened passengers to the terminal still offers a “soft target” to homicidal maniacs, doesn’t it? What’s to stop a madman from attacking people at the shuttle pick up for screened passengers, or at the bus stops in the long-term parking area? When you seal one weak point, another one is left vulnerable. A few years before 9/11 Newark International Airport officials opened a new underground parking facility which literally was under the check-in part of the terminal. As you can imagine, it was closed following 9/11 and has been closed ever since.
No place is totally safe from terrorism, whatever the motivations, talk to people who grew up in Northern Ireland about what it was like when the IRA was in their glory. NYC in the 1970’s had the Puerto Rican nationalist group blowing up things like Fraunce’s tavern and I believe a pay locker at La Guardia… There are just too many places that can be hit to protect them all. The only real blessing is that terrorism thrives on high profile targets, so you can concentrate on them rather than wasting time on places a terrorist wouldn’t be interested in (something homeland security and congress didn’t seem to understand, I might add, you had them funding hazmat units in places terrorists were unlikely even knew existed…). And in something like this (the CNBC channel we have on at work was reporting at least one suicide bomber) is very difficult to protect against,someone can walk into most airports into the unsecured areas and not be detected, how do you scan every person coming into an airport for bombs for example, or even weapons? Metal detectors at the door wouldn’t help, because then you would either have people go through security before they get into the airport (a nightmare), or have to invent better scanners.
There are plenty of people with grudges out there, and all you can do is go on and live your lives. Europe has seen this kind of terrorism before, the IRA was one example, then, too, you had groups like the red brigades and Baader-Meinhoff out there, as some examples, or the Basque ETA group in Spain.
There is a fine line when it comes to Islamic extremism like this. For one thing, someone finally has to stand up to Saudi Arabia, besides the fact that they are the chief proponent of the fundamentalist Islam we are talking about, the money trail to groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS often leads back to deal old Saudi (and as someone said, with friends like that, who needs enemies?). It is also going to be Islamic countries themselves fighting Islamic fundamentalism, countries like Indonesia are now spending government time and resources on a campaign to promote an Islamic society that is about diversity and tolerance. It also is going to take understanding why this is happening and going to the root of it, whether it is radical preachers who need to be shut down (even in the US, freedom of religion goes only so far). It is also realizing that you won’t solve this problem by ramping up the conventional defense budget, the way some politicians right now are screaming about, but rather finding effective methods to root out this kind of thing without turning the world into a giant police state. If we do that, then the loons have won, one of the reasons ISIS is doing this is they want this to turn into a war against Islam, they are quite happy, for example, that countries are hesitant to take in Syrian muslim refugees because of fear of terrorism, this gives them further “proof” that the west is anti islam and waging war against it.
“What kind of mental case thinks that this is related to God???”
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people like this, and it isn’t just Islam. We have people backing certain political and economic agendas claiming “jesus wants this”, we have 10’s of millions of people who think the US should be a Christian theocracy with a system that would not be unlike what you see in ISIS controlled areas…it has nothing to do with God I am sure, but somehow, people just seem to actually forget what their religion teaches about God or Yahweh or Allah:)
Secure the airport all you like; look what happened in Paris with the attacks at a music venue. Any place people gather is vulnerable - street festivals, concerts, bus stops, etc; there’s nothing magical about an airport in that regard.
Where do they get the explosives? Who makes the vests? Where do they make these bombs? Who else knows? Just as I never believed that the mother of the San Bernardino bomber didn’t know he was making bombs in the garage (and yet she has not yet been charged with anything), you know that there are people out there who knew this attack was being planned. The bombers are now beyond the law, but those who knew and did not go to authorities are not.
TatinG, you seem determined to point fingers. Fact is, you can make bombs with materials easily obtainable anywhere. The Columbine kids made bombs in their parents’ garage over the course of 1 afternoon. (Now, lots of “recipes” are to be found online.) Likewise the vests you refer to - crude but effective homemade stuff.
For every complex problem – such as international terrorism – there are “easy” solutions… that prove worthless.
I think there needs to be harsh criminal penalties for those who know where these terrorists live, who know or should know bombs are being made, who provide support to these people, etc. the actual bombers are not fearful of criminal penalties because they know they will be dead.
Who “should” know? How do you prove that?
@TatinG, has it ever occurred to you that people don’t speak up because they, too, are TERRIFIED for their lives and that of their loved ones? You act as if it’s just a simple thing to report these terrorist activities, as if there will be no downside for those who turn in members of their own families and communities.
This is an issue way beyond domestic or international terrorism. In many communities witnesses are afraid to testify against the perpetrators of crimes they’ve actually witnessed. Being a “snitch” can cost you your life.
Also, unless you want to amend the law, wives cannot be compelled to testify against their husbands; clergy cannot ethically report their congregants, etc. Not to mention parents and grandparents who have to weigh whether or not to report their own offspring.
You’re looking for simple solutions that would destroy what makes the U.S. a free society.
Evil thrives when ‘good’ people do nothing. Are these lone wolves or do they have people taking care of them?
That is very true, and I think it would be very hard to try and, for example, prosecute someone who didn’t turn in someone they suspected was a terrorist if there are grounds to believe they were afraid for their safety or their family. In general, they will only prosecute people who they can prove active aided and abetted a terrorist, it is one thing not to report someone, it is another to hide them or help them.
I think that in some cases, people may weigh the risks of reporting someone they suspect versus the risks if they don’t. What risks if they don’t? If you are a member of the muslim community in Belgium/Brussels, every attack like this is going to make your lives more difficult, and there can come a time when it does blow back on the community. Likewise, there are those who say “I know they did badly, but they are a member of my faith, and I cannot betray them”, and they will have to look hard and deep and come to the realization that what terrorists are doing is defaming their own faith, making their lives miserable, and counting on others to understand that this has nothing to do with the faith they themselves practice gets harder and harder.
Islam in particular is difficult, because it isn’t one faith, and it goes beyond sects. There are no ruling bodies, and when it comes to the faith, any loon with an agenda can declare himself an Iman and preach something horrible, and there is no one to sanction him or whatnot. Obviously, Muslims have and do speak out against outrages like this, but it is also not the same thing as if let’s say a Catholic Priest started preaching terrorism, and it is limited what other Muslims can do. It is interesting that the Saudis, who so go around proclaiming how they are the keepers of the faith, have done very little against ISIS or Al Qaeda leaders who use the faith to justify terrorism, you would figure they would put prices on the heads of ISIS and Al Qaeda for blasphemy or defaming the faith, have their religious leaders put of Fatwahs against Islamic based terrorism, but to my knowledge, they never have (and note that the Saudi effort against ISIS is all but nonexistent). Hopefully people will keep an eye on their friends and family members if they seem to be turning radical, and get to them before it blows up, but that is not exactly always so easy, either.
People do take action. Shortly after 9/11 my cousin who had a rental property at the time became suspicious of one of her tenants who was in the states for flight school and reported him to the FBI. I never learned what became of him ultimately, but he was no longer her tenant… maybe he was innocent, maybe not… but for as many people who might do as my cousin did, there are others who would not, giving everyone the benefit of the doubt and not my business anyway and many others who are totally oblivious to the world around them in general.
Since I work in midtown Manhattan and am in Penn Station every day I am always aware of the people around me and yes there is a good deal of security and bomb sniffing dogs. I was coming home very late last week and I did see the police handle a suspicious duffel bag that was tossed in the trash. They had a bomb sniffing dog and they had special gloves to handle it, they removed it from the trash and slashed it open with a knife in case there was some kind of device affixed to the zipper. They didn’t clear the area however because every situation is different. Presumably this was nothing and how many more people might have been injured if everyone starting running and panicking.
I just took myself to Macy’s Flower Show as a pick-me up on a day like today… realizing all the while that a terrorist could decide that the main floor of Macy’s New York crowded with shoppers, tourists and people like me would be a perfect target… what about a casino, what about a shopping mall, what about any crowded street or venue?
“Evil thrives when ‘good’ people do nothing.”
TatinG, who says good people aren’t doing anything? Have you been living under a rock that you haven’t noticed the dramatic increase in security just about everywhere? Ever hear of the Department of Homeland Security? Guantanamo? Did you “miss” the fact that EU countries are closing and securing their borders in the wake of the France attacks and massive immigration?
Just what exactly do you propose since you apparently think of yourself as an expert?