They hate life, apparently

Located safely behind five feet of concrete and a large armed guard, Jack Straw bravely stood up to al-Quida's cowardly offer to declare a truce and negotiate with europeans.

Apparently, it's not done to negotiate with terrorists. The only course of action is to declare war on them, and win a decisive victory. As we did in Northern Ireland, and Sharon's currently doing in Gaza. These people are different.

It's a seductive thought isn't it? There's nothing we can do about them except anihilation. With some really high tech weaponry. As an Al-quida spokesman put it "We love death, as much as you love life." You can see why McDonalds eventually settled on "I'm lovin' it" though.

But then we thought that Bin Laden had blown that world view, offering to negotiate like that. Luckily, though, Jack Straw helped us resolve our moral difficulty.
"This is a murderous organisation which seeks impossible objectives by the most violent of means."

Like the IRA always talked about then, with "Brits out". Or the PLO with their threats to "drive Israel into the sea". Or George Bush with "Iraqi Freedom." Impossible demands. But the IRA were happy to settle for a negotiated power-sharing. And the PLO and Israel got *so* close, or at least closer than they did by lobbing bombs around the place.

That was all different though. Big demands, legitimate grievances. All we're doing in the middle east is installing dictatorships and illegally occupying a sovereign nation.

Impossible objectives. Let's have a war instead.