Secular zealots who want to oppose all forms of Faith and Religion. Not just angry atheists or fame hungry artists and anarchists but govts and the politicians within them.

*Blink*. They're not leading the aggression on the Muslim world though. It's the extremist Christian groups that are doing that. The Secular zealots are generally the ones pissed off at the wars.

It is ironic that the 'War on Terror' is being funded by a communist country

It's probably fairer to say that it's ironic given China's human rights record.

*Blink*. They're not leading the aggression on the Muslim world though. It's the extremist Christian groups that are doing that. The Secular zealots are generally the ones pissed off at the wars.

Don't think that it's the fundamentalists who had the major hand in the invasion of Iraq. It wasn't, it was the neocons, and their ideology is quite distinct (and pretty secular).

I don't think you can made any claims about someone's religious beliefs based on their attitude towards the wars, really. You can find plenty of examples in all combinations.

Europe has its own breed of extremists, Secular zealots who want to oppose all forms of Faith and Religion. Not just angry atheists or fame hungry artists and anarchists...

I don't deny that these groups exist, but so what? They're tiny, powerless and marginalised. I wish anarchism mattered in some way in today's world, but you're unlikely even to encounter it unless you go looking. If there was any mass secular opposition to religion then attendance at the counterdemonstrations against the cartoon protests wouldn't have been so pathetic. There may be plenty of people who hold secular views in Europe, but they don't form much of a pressure group and I find it hard to see them as "extremists".

...but govts and the politicians within them.

Surely you jest. No current European government would ever have a policy of this kind, nor would any individual politician ever say anything of the sort. In fact, I'd say they're at least as likely to profess a belief in God as they are not to. The suggestion that despite the lack of any evidence, this is what large numbers of politicians secretly want is what one calls a "conspiracy theory". And anyway, the idea that any more than a tiny handful of people can get anywhere in politics without realising how absurdly childish and unrealistic the idea of destroying religion is seems pretty silly to me.

They may argue for separation of church and state, but this does not equate to opposition to religion, nor is it in any way an extremist notion in this day and age.

I don't know if you were meaning to include our government in this, but the idea that an administration led by a man as pious as Blair, which wants to see more faith schools and tried to introduce the "incitement to religious hatred" bill, "opposes all forms of Faith and Religion" is just absurd. I'm guessing you're thinking of the French headscarf ban, but cack-handed as that may be, it was an attempt to fix a genuine social ill and to say that it was just done because the French government wants to destroy Islam is an extremely unhelpful oversimplification.

Europe is sleepwalking into a potential conflict thinking it can cope with it, I doubt it. America is far but Europe is near. Southern Europe is struggling to police its borders let alone defend them against invaders.

If the Muslim world could successfully invade the West, do you really think Israel would still be there? That's a lot closer than Southern Europe, and is a lot more hated in the region. I honestly don't see where this invasion force is coming from, but even if I did, pretty much the entire Western world would step in to prevent the invasion of Greece or whereever. Granted that it's possible that an Islamist superpower will arise with the manpower and technology to win out, but until we actually see some signs of it, worry about something else. Terrorism or riots would be good choices, because the real danger Europe has from Muslims comes from extremist elements in their own populations, in part stemming from genuine grievances whose root causes Europe is not, in my view, doing much to deal with. Communities who are happy with the way their country is treating them are less likely to resort to violence.

As for WMDs, the deterrent effect of having both sides so armed worked in the Cold War and I don't see why it shouldn't work now. Iran's position is never going to be as strong as the USSR's was and its leaders aren't idiots. (That doesn't apply to terrorism, but however far away America is, it's still going to be the biggest target for that.) I'm much more concerned by the prospect of the US being stupid enough to invade another country in that region. Much as I'd like to see the mullahs kicked out of Iran, it should be obvious by now that the West are not the people to do it. (Before the Iraq debacle, the Iranian regime showed signs of being on its last legs. Now it's much more secure.)