<p>ETA has committed hundreds of attacks in the last twenty years. Wikipedia has a list. It’s long.</p>
<p>OTOH, there have been less than ten Muslim terrorist attacks in the US in the last twenty years. Compare that to the dozens if not hundreds of attacks on abortion clinics (Dr. Tiller hadn’t even healed from a previous shooting attempt when he was murdered) and the hundreds of attacks and murders of gay, lesbian and transgender people, especially activists, for being out and gay/lesbian/transgender. Then there are events like the Knoxville shooting. In the US, a tiny minority of all terrorist attacks in the last twenty years have been committed by Muslims. A tiny, tiny minority.</p>
<p>Now, I don’t dispute that the few attacks by Muslims have been deadly. But, if you pick a domestic terrorist attack in the last twenty years in the US, and ask whether it was committed by a Muslim-- almost certainly, it wasn’t.</p>
<p>“But, if you pick a domestic terrorist attack in the last twenty years in the US, and ask whether it was committed by a Muslim-- almost certainly, it wasn’t.”#61</p>
<p>Who committed the two WTC attacks in the past 20 years???</p>
<p>The biggest violent threat facing America right now is Islamic terrorism. Hasn’t changed in the past 10 years. I’ll take 1,000 ETA-style attacks over one 9/11.</p>
<p>Heck, look at all the plots that have been busted in the past few years. Radical islamists attempted to blow up over a dozen jetliners, blow up the Sears tower, blow up the NYC subway system, blow up JFK airport by attacking a fuel storage depot, blow up a Christmas tree ceremony in Portland, blow up people in Times Square, attack military bases in New York and North Carolina, and shoot down airliners in New York City. These are all major, major events that would have killed hundreds if not thousands of people had they not been disrupted. </p>
<p>Not to mention the attacks that weren’t disrupted (Fort Hood, Arkansas recruiting center shooting, UNC-Chapel Hill attack, etc).</p>
<p>It is also worth noting that the biggest victims of Islamic terrorism throughout the world have been…other Muslims.</p>
<p>This will have something to do with immigration and the government’s relaxed approach to it, I have no doubt about that. Even in tolerant and law abiding Scandinavia there is a growing minority of people who are opposed to all immigration, but who especially hate what they see as the islamification of their society. Sad but true, Scandinavia is not as tolerant as it once was.</p>
<p>Pretty funny, in a sad and pathetic way, that a blond blue-eyed Norwegian right-wing Christian kills a hundred people, mostly youths, and all you can talk about is the threat of Islamic terrorism. We have, right here right now, horrible evidence that we’d better be concerned about right-wing Christian terrorism too.</p>
<p>Islamic terrorism is to Christian terrorism what brain cancer is to skin cancer. Both can kill you, but one is a heck of a lot more worrying than the other.</p>
<p>Well it’s metastasizing. This is the second-worst terrorist attack in Europe in recent years. How many people have to die before we take right wing fundamentalist violence seriously?</p>
<p>Islamic terrorists haven’t killed 10,000 people in the West in the last decade, or anything near that number. I’m astounded that a terrorist attack that results in a hundred dead people doesn’t concern you. Most people, as far as I see, are horrified.</p>
<p>Are we so foolish and blinkered that we can’t be concerned BOTH about Islamic terrorism and about other terrorism?</p>
<p>You are right; I was including Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan in those totals because those are countries that the United States is also currently involved in. Keep it in the west, and it is more like 4,000-5,000 in the last decade.</p>
<p>There’s no reason why we can’t focus on both; we should devote the most resources towards combating the bigger of the two problems though, which is Islamic terrorism.</p>
<p>“OSLO, Norway (AP) — Police arrived at an island massacre about an hour and a half after a gunman first opened fire, slowed because they didn’t have quick access to a helicopter and then couldn’t find a boat to make their way to the scene just several hundred yards (meters) offshore. The assailant surrendered when police finally reached him, but 82 people died before that…”</p>
<p>Wow! One and a half hours before they got there! That is terrible disaster response. I bet somebody’s career is over and deservedly so.</p>
<p>We really need to focus on the threat of ‘fundamentalists’ of any persuasion. Extreme dogma of any color tends to breeds an extremely narrow and strongly held viewpoint on the world, along with intolerance, hatred and fear of ‘other’, and motivation for behavior we would all be better off avoiding.</p>
<p>twomules, I was just about to bring up that horrible response time! The BBC is reporting it as 40 minutes, but either time is unacceptable! The thing that really sickens me is that when the police showed the gunman immediately surrendered, it makes me wonder how many lives could have been saved if they just <em>got</em> there sooner. Every time I see something about this, it makes me want to cry.</p>
<p>90 minutes to get there? What the heck?!!! I’m sure that it wouldn’t have taken 90 minutes to get there if there were a garden-variety medical emergency, but with a gunman on the loose, you have to take more precautions. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Very true and one that I often forget because, in the US press, the number of Americans killed are highlighted.</p>
<p>A lot of you keep ignoring the fact that a bomb just went off in downtown Oslo, and that the police and emergency services were busy with that particular emergency.</p>
<p>This wasn’t due to them being unprepared. This was done by a man who planned this perfectly. He used the bomb as a distraction so he could get onto the Island and kill as many people as he could. It also stands to reason that he chose the island because nobody there could actually escape.</p>