Quote:
Originally posted by KMA-628
wilbjammin,
Taking a step back, I think we are on the same side of this but just looking at it from different angles.
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Well, I'm just pointing out the humanity aspect of the issue. I think that the rhetoric that has been going on in this thread indicates the inherent abstraction of our perceptions of people.
Like I said before, I'm not going to say who's right or wrong about whether the leadership in the Philippines is correct in pulling its troops out a month early or not. Foreign policy is such a complicated issue that there is often no way to predict completely what the ramifications are of decisions in the immediate future, and in the long-run. In the end, from a realist point of view, all nations have to act in what they consider their self-interest to be.
In regards to this situation, I think there is a point that isn't being addressed very well. These terrorist-labelled kidnappings (I would say they are blackmail more than terrorism personally) are taking place outside of the home country of the people affected. Terrorism that takes place in a home country as opposed to elsewhere is going to be taken a lot more seriously because of the immediacy to the threat to the citizenry at large. I don't see an end in sight for these kidnappings and executions, and given the numbers of Filipinos in Iraq I don't think the scale of the decision is large enough to indicate much of anything. We will see, however, where this trend leads to in the coming months. This is a matter that I simply cannot make predictions on because of the lack of information I have about what the situation in Iraq really looks like.