Quote Originally Posted by Husar View Post
Perhaps it just doesn't exist in a vacuum? There'd be no racism in Britain if only Britain existed. Although, perhaps the Northumbrians would then think the Wessexians (?) were subhuman or so...Why is Estonia suddenly afraid of Russian invasion? Did it accidentally radicalize regardless of the happenings in Ukraine?

Islam as a religion goes beyond borders. There are Christians in Germany who are more afraid of persecution because persecution of Christians happens in Asia and Africa every day. They don't just live in a vacuum and ignore what happens to people they associate with elsewhere.
The same applies to terrorism. The attacks in the UK, France and Germany tend to put all of Europe on altert to some extent and not just the affected country. So if you invade every other muslim country, you think the others will just shrug and ignore it?

The real problem of course, is how to fix it now. I agree with you to some extent that in some situations it's a damned if you do and damned if you don't thing. In some of those it might just be about what we do or how we do it though. Supporting thugs and dictators with weapons to "help" because it's cheaper/easier may not be the kind of help people were asking for for example.
Or you could read explanations by Pakistanis looking at Pakistani history. They trace it back to when the Pakistani government started to admit religion into the state, and from there it perpetuated itself, with each generation deepening the hold of religion. And extrapolating from that, you can see practically the same situation beginning in Turkey. And in the conditions which advocates of liberal democracy in the middle east have created, Islamists have had the chance to exploit the link between Islamic religion and Islamic state.

I'm not arguing that we should support thugs with weapons and such. Note that I said, "If there is an existing dictatorship, count ourselves lucky and leave alone. Never push for more democracy in Muslim countries." Iraq should have been the lesson (that I opposed, so don't point that at me). Libya and Syria already had dictators keeping down the Muslim population. We shouldn't have been doing anything to destabilise them. But we encouraged freedom and democracy. And predictably, the Muslim population used their freedom to turn to Islamism. If these oppressed populations want to overturn their dictators to gain freedom and democracy, that's their right. But we shouldn't be doing anything to help them. There are far better prospects elsewhere in the world, if we want to play liberator.