DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: The_Professor on October 05, 2006, 05:15:56 PM
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I have found an article I find to be both enlightening and accurate. Do you?
Will the West survive?
By Walter Williams
The Muslim world is at war with Western civilization. We have the military might to thwart them. The question is: Do we have the intelligence to recognize the attack and the will to defend ourselves from annihilation? Their intent is clear, but let's refresh our memories with a bit of history.
At the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, several athletes were massacred. In 1979, the U.S. embassy in Tehran was taken over and 52 hostages held for more than a year. In 1983, U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut were blown up, killing 241 U.S. soldiers. In 1988, Pan Am flight 103 was bombed, killing 270 people. In 1993, there was the first bombing of the World Trade Center, and in 2001, it was reduced to rubble, killing more than 3,000 Americans. In 1998, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed, resulting in more than 200 dead and 4,000 injured. Who are the people responsible for these and other wanton murders of innocents, including the recent barbaric beheading of two innocent men? They were all Muslims.
You say, "Williams, you can't make an indictment of a whole people and their religion!" I'm not, and let me clearly state: By no means are all Muslims murderers. But on the other hand, I've never heard broad Muslim condemnation of their fellow Muslims' murderous acts committed in the name of their god. If anything, there has been jubilation and dancing in the streets in the wake of Muslim attacks on Westerners. Contrast their response to the widespread Western condemnation of the, mild by comparison, behavior of a few coalition forces in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
Muslim atrocities, and the collective Muslim response to those atrocities, might be better understood knowing their belief system as spelled out by a few, among many, passages from the Quran: "Fight those who do not believe in Allah" (Surat At-Taubah 9:29). "I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers, Smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger tips of them" (Quran 8:12). "The unbelievers among the People of the Book and the pagans shall burn forever in the fire of Hell. They are the vilest of all creatures" (Quran 98:1-8). "Fight against those who believe not in Allah, and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (Islam), until they are subdued" (Surat At-Taubah 9:29).
Phil Lucas, editor of the Panama City, Fla., News Herald, in his April 4, 2004, editorial "Up Against Fanaticism," asks, "Can anybody name three ongoing world conflicts in which Muslims are not involved?" Lucas says, "They can't get along with their neighbors on much of the planet: France, Chechnya, Bosnia, Indonesia, Spain, Morocco, India, Tunisia, Somalia, etc., etc., etc."
My colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell observes, "Those in the Islamic world have for centuries been taught to regard themselves as far superior to the 'infidels' of the West, while everything they see with their own eyes now tells them otherwise." He adds, "Nowhere have whole peoples seen their situation reversed more visibly or more painfully than the peoples of the Islamic world." Sowell adds that few people, once at the top of civilization, accept their reversals of fortune gracefully. Moreover, they don't blame themselves for their plight. For the Muslim world, it's the West who's to blame.
History never repeats itself exactly, but we might benefit from the knowledge of factors leading to the decline of past great civilizations. Rome was one of those advanced civilizations. Rome was so caught up in "bread and circuses" and moral decline that it couldn't manage to defend itself from invading barbaric hordes who ultimately plunged Europe into the Dark Ages. The sooner we recognize the West is in a war for survival, the more likely we'll be able to escape the fate that befell the Roman Empire.
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Does the west get to choose the battlefeild?
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I believe the battlefiedl is where you are standing, among others, Plane.
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By Walter Williams
The Muslim world is at war with Western civilization. We have the military might to thwart them. The question is: Do we have the intelligence to recognize the attack and the will to defend ourselves from annihilation? Their intent is clear, but let's refresh our memories with a bit of history.
At the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, several athletes were massacred. In 1979, the U.S. embassy in Tehran was taken over and 52 hostages held for more than a year. In 1983, U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut were blown up, killing 241 U.S. soldiers. In 1988, Pan Am flight 103 was bombed, killing 270 people. In 1993, there was the first bombing of the World Trade Center, and in 2001, it was reduced to rubble, killing more than 3,000 Americans. In 1998, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed, resulting in more than 200 dead and 4,000 injured. Who are the people responsible for these and other wanton murders of innocents, including the recent barbaric beheading of two innocent men? They were all Muslims.
My Reply:
This time line of events is accurate. However, it makes no mention of the reasons for the attacks. Muslims around the World believe the U.S. conspired with Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran (a secular socialist) to nationalize Iran's oil fields and plaqce them under total control of Pahlavi. In 1978, Pahlavi, imposed martial law to put an end to anti-government protest. Iran's oil industry was shut deown by striking workers. Pahlavi, government was a puppet government of U.S. interest.
Saddam Hussien, (a secular socialist) was also supported by the U.S. and the presecution of Muslim sects by Saddam Hussiens's government was funded by the U.S. and aided with U.S. special ops, spys and intelligence.
It is now 2006. The Pahlavi' government was deposed and Pahlavi is dead. Saddam Hussien's government was deposed and Saddam is on tral. There are many questions that need to be ask. Is the U.S. seeking justice or a cover up of its terrorist activities towards the Muslims around the World.? What is the end game of Israel and the U.S.? If it is to convert Muslims by military occupation. I say, that agenda will only lead to the total destruction of Israel and the coalition of the willing will fail its objective. The U.S. will survive and the secular socialist regimes will continue to be aided by the capitalist of the New World Order, Leadership. Globalism is being imposed upon the World by the Military Industrial Complex.
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Yes
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Sorry, Professor, there is nothing new in this article, it's just standard Daniel Pipes/Bernard Lewis bullshit, SZE (Standard Zionist Edition.)
Parts of it are just pure hate-mongering. I'm really sorry to see this stuff being circulated. The reasoning is sophomoric at best, and Hitlerian at its worst. I refer specifically to the following passage:
<<Phil Lucas, editor of the Panama City, Fla., News Herald, in his April 4, 2004, editorial "Up Against Fanaticism," asks, "Can anybody name three ongoing world conflicts in which Muslims are not involved?" Lucas says, "They can't get along with their neighbors on much of the planet: France, Chechnya, Bosnia, Indonesia, Spain, Morocco, India, Tunisia, Somalia, etc., etc., etc." >>
Hitler used exactly the same line of reasoning with regard to the Jews: they were hated and persecuted in Spain, they were expelled from Spain, they were expelled from England, they were attacked by mobs in Russia, in Poland, in Hungary, in Romania - - well, shit, must be something wrong with THEM.
It's bad enough that people who are the victims of hatred and prejudice should be persecuted in many places but to use their victimization itself as more proof of their moral turpitude is really sick.
I will point it out once more (at the risk of boring Ami) - - the "Muslim World" does not have armies at war in America and Europe; rather it is the Americans and Europeans whose armies are at war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and (if we can believe some reports) Iran at this moment. The "Muslim World" did not have bases in America, although America had or has bases in Saudi Arabia and one or more of the Gulf States. The "Muslim World" does not engineer regime change in America, it is America that engineers or engineered regime change in Iran and Iraq, to name the two examples we know about.
There is no war of civilizations. It's pure BS.
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Hitler used exactly the same line of reasoning with regard to the Jews: they were hated and persecuted in Spain, they were expelled from Spain, they were expelled from England, they were attacked by mobs in Russia, in Poland, in Hungary, in Romania - - well, shit, must be something wrong with THEM.
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The Jews were 99% falsely accused , what purportion of what Islam can be accused of is not true?
So do you see a Hitler style solution being proposed?
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<<The Jews were 99% falsely accused , what purportion of what Islam can be accused of is not true?>>
Since you ask, 100%. The West is making war on Islam, not the other way round. They have always, since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, illicitly interfered with and stage-managed the local governments, replacing them virtually at will, and are now supporting the European Jews' colonization of the West Bank, and a 39-year-old military occupation of over three million people living without rights and without any basic human dignity under Israeli guns and boots. When they choose to lash back at their tormentors, you characterize it as "making war on the West." Fucking bullshit. Let the West get off their backs first, and then if they no longer have any legitimate grievances to rectify, then you can complain that they are "making war" on you.
<<So do you see a Hitler style solution being proposed?>>
I see a living hell being imposed right now on the people of the West Bank, Iraq and Afghanistan. A living hell that lacks only the gas chambers and the genocidal intent to exterminate an entire population. I see torture chambers. I see arbitrary arrests and indefinite detention without any of the safeguards normally extended even to enemy combatants. Hitler was unique in the history of the planet. The current American/Zionist onslaught on the Middle East lacks only the fully- industrialized, factory-type approach to mass murder, otherwise it would already BE a "Hitler style solution."
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The current American/Zionist onslaught on the Middle East lacks only the fully- industrialized, factory-type approach to mass murder, otherwise it would already BE a "Hitler style solution."
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We have that in stock , we are not useing it because there would not be enough public approval.
At this point.
Your point about Western oppression of the East would have been more valid an hundred years ago or even fifty , but the era of Colonialism is definately over and has been since the Eisenhour decision to force France and England to give over the Suez.
Most of the Middle East is thriveing on a steady diet of Dollars , we we foolish to pay for the oil we have been needing when we could have colonised these backwards countrys with little effort a half century ago?
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<<Your point about Western oppression of the East would have been more valid an hundred years ago or even fifty , but the era of Colonialism is definately over and has been since the Eisenhour decision to force France and England to give over the Suez.>>
That's not true at all. The US intervenes massively in Middle East domestic affairs, propping up corrupt dictatorships and supporting Israel, enabling it to continue the occupation of the West Bank and continue its slow-motion ethnic cleansing.
<<Most of the Middle East is thriveing on a steady diet of Dollars , we we foolish to pay for the oil we have been needing when we could have colonised these backwards countrys with little effort a half century ago?>>
The British and French got out of the business because it took a lot more than a "little effort." The steady diet of dollars splits up into some for the "multinational" oil companies owned by Bush and his pals, some for the corrupt dictatorships maintained with U.S. support by force over their own people, and some for the mainly U.S. contractors who service the oil companies and the corrupt dictatorships. They'd "thrive" a whole lot more if they took back the wells and sold the oil on their terms, for what they wanted (which is not necessarily dollars, probably it's euros) and kept all the profits for themselves or- - if they needed foreign technical expertise - - opened the opportunity to the world and let the world's experts bid freely for the job.
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- - opened the opportunity to the world and let the world's experts bid freely for the job.
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It is otherwise?
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The West is making war on Islam, not the other way round
Bzzzzzz, wrong answer. The correct answer would be radical islamic militants, which comprise only a small % of "Islam". And they did make war on the West
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I have found an article I find to be both enlightening and accurate. Do you?
No, not really.
Will the West survive?
It might if the people in the West don't turn it into a fascist police state first.
The Muslim world is at war with Western civilization. We have the military might to thwart them. The question is: Do we have the intelligence to recognize the attack and the will to defend ourselves from annihilation?
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The sooner we recognize the West is in a war for survival, the more likely we'll be able to escape the fate that befell the Roman Empire.
My major problem with Walter Williams' analysis is that he, like many others, is trying to paint our current situation as a (cue the dramatic yet patriotic musical flourish) war for survival. In a war for survival, there are two basic options, either you learn to peaceably co-exist, or you completely destroy that which you are warring against. Any attempt to promote the notion of peaceable co-existence in this current "war for survival" is called "capitulation to the terrorists". Which leaves annihilating all of them.
"So?" says you. "What's wrong with annihilating the terrorists?" says you. I'll tell you. Annihilating just the folks that are terrorists now won't be enough. More folks will become terrorists, because they too see themselves in a war for their survival. I'm not saying we would have to kill all Muslims. I am saying there would be truly horrible amount of people dead, tens of millions if not hundreds of millions. It would be a slaughter on a scale that would out do Hitler and Stalin and any other murderous dictator you can name.
"But they want to kill us," says you, "so shouldn't we be defending ourselves?" Let's make one thing very clear, in a war, any war but particularly a war for survival, the only way to win through annihilation is not to defend oneself from attack, but to attack before the other can do harm to you. Not only that, it means doing whatever is necessary to kill the enemy as completely as possible, to prevent any chance that the enemy might later recover and again be a threat. So anyone who believes this to be a war for survival, anyone who really wants to kill all the terrorists should seriously consider if America should do that kind of killing. This isn't a case where a couple of nukes is going to compell the enemy to capitulate and the threat dissapears forever. This is a case of all out annihilation, killing off every last man, woman and child who sides with, sympathizes with and/or in anyway gives aid to the terrorists. Is that really the path America needs to take?
"But if we don't stop them from killing us," says you. Let me stop you right there. Before we start getting into this whole "if we don't stop them, they're going to kill us all" bit, there is something that must be made extremely clear. If we start all out annihilation of our enemy in this so-called war for survival, we are the ones who are going to be doing the killing. Killing people. Hunting people down and killing them. Bombing homes and killing people. Killing people however we can. If we do this, we will be doing the same thing we claim they're wrong for wanting to do to us. Oh yeah, we have justifications out the wazoo, but we would still be engaging in the slaughter of millions of people. We would become both the fulfillment of what they already claim we are and what we claim them to be.
"So are you saying we should give into them?" asks you. No, says I. I'm not saying that at all. I don't believe we are in a war for our survival. We are not in any kind of war at all, except the ones we make for ourselves. Absolutely we should be going after the terrorists who have and are trying to attack us. Absolutely we should hunt down those who are responsible for crimes against us. But we are not in a war for survival with the Islamic terrorists any more than we are in a war for survival with the mafia or folks like Timothy McVeigh. Did we start hunting down and killing radical, anti-government racists after the Oklahoma City bombing? No. We went after the people responsible for the bombing. Does anyone argue that we capitulated to the radical, anti-government whatevers because we haven't made "war" on them or had more incidents like the ones at Ruby Ridge and Waco? No. In fact we've mostly forgotten about them.
"Yeah, but," says you. I'm not finished yet. The question that someone made the headline for Walter Williams' column is "Will the West survive?" The biggest threat to the survival of the West is not the terrorists but ourselves. Everytime we surrender our rights to give government more power over society, we lose just that much more liberty. The more we insist government protect us from everything, the more we erode the very thing that made Western civilization the world dominating success that it is. And I find it ironic that the people who keep trying to make the "war on terror" into a war of survival are the ones who seem most willing to make that erosion happen. The more that we demand government make the rules for our lives, the more we become like the society that the Islamic extremists want, which is to say, the closer we get to a society wherein everyone's life is defined by a strict set of laws and the only liberty anyone has is the liberty to follow the letter of the law. If the goal is to see Western civilization survive, then we need a little less "war on terror" and a lot more protection of individual liberty. Otherwise, the West may indeed not survive. In which case we will have strangled it with our own hands.
Okay, I'm done for now. What were you going to say?
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Well, here's what I have to say. Perhaps Prince, if we didn't have any historical precedent to go by, your commentary on Mr. Williams might have substantially more merit, as it relates to your claims of "trying to paint our current situation as a (cue the dramatic yet patriotic musical flourish) war for survival"
Mr. Williams, like many others, which would include Bush I would imagine, sees the threat of militant Islam for what it could become. It's like catching Hitler and the Nazi party back in the 20's. Now, I'm sure that if folks like Mr. Williams started opining how dangerous the Nazi party could be, he would have been denounced with comments along the line of "There he goes again, trying to paint our current situation as a (cue the dramatic yet patriotic musical flourish) war for survival". In actuality it's recognizing the threat for what it could and likely will be if left unchecked. Not so much for what it is right now, right this minute. IMHO, a "war for our survival" would mean Iran already had nukes, AlQeada had already taken charge of the entire Middle East, and Israel was on the verge of ceasing to exist.
And the interesting thing is, to the best of my recollection, you were making these same arguements as to what the real agenda of what Militant Islam was all about, power and expanding it to cover as much of the Middle East and beyond, as they could. I vividly recall you making that accurate case to the likes of Brass & co. Has the war in Iraq changed your assessment on their agenda? Am I simply rememebering it wrong?
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Mr. Williams, like many others, which would include Bush I would imagine, sees the threat of militant Islam for what it could become.
So they're all trying to get us to latch onto their fear of a possibility that is by no means inevitable? Not an improvement. But I don't believe that is what Walter Williams is trying to say. He did not say, for example, "Will we have the intelligence to recognize the attack and the will to defend ourselves from annihilation?" He said, "Do we have..." And he did not say, "The sooner we recognize the West will be in a war for survival," but rather, "The sooner we recognize the West is in a war for survival". So I think Mr. Williams is not talking about what may happen, but about the threat, as he sees it, right now.
It's like catching Hitler and the Nazi party back in the 20's.
Is it? Suppose one could travel back in time and accomplish raising awareness of the Nazis. What then? Hindsight is said to be 20/20. It's easy to say, oh, if only we'd recognized the Nazis for what they were before the got into power, but even if they had recognized them for racist, evil bastards, no one in the 1920s would have any grounds for extrapolating onto the Nazi Party crimes that none of them had committed yet. Similarly, trying to use the Nazi model as a means of pinning future crimes onto Islamic fundamentalists is something we have no grounds to do. We are not God, so we don't get to claim we know what they're going to do and so punish them for something they supposedly will do. I'm all for punishing terrorists responsible for crimes they have committed. This "what they could become" bit, however, strikes me as a load of propaganda proping up a desire for American hegemony. Thus does it lead Mr. Williams to compare America to the Roman Empire.
Now, I'm sure that if folks like Mr. Williams started opining how dangerous the Nazi party could be, he would have been denounced with comments along the line of "There he goes again, trying to paint our current situation as a (cue the dramatic yet patriotic musical flourish) war for survival". In actuality it's recognizing the threat for what it could and likely will be if left unchecked. Not so much for what it is right now, right this minute. IMHO, a "war for our survival" would mean Iran already had nukes, AlQeada had already taken charge of the entire Middle East, and Israel was on the verge of ceasing to exist.
I have no problem with someone trying to point out the agenda of Islamic terrorists is to create a fundamentalist Muslim state/world free from Western influence and to convert or kill as many people as that takes. I'll say it myself (like I just did). However, moving from there to a "war for survival" is an error. And as I pointed out before, Mr. Williams is talking about a "war for survival" not in the future tense but in the present tense.
And the interesting thing is, to the best of my recollection, you were making these same arguements as to what the real agenda of what Militant Islam was all about, power and expanding it to cover as much of the Middle East and beyond, as they could. I vividly recall you making that accurate case to the likes of Brass & co. Has the war in Iraq changed your assessment on their agenda? Am I simply rememebering it wrong?
No and no. For a time after September 11, 2001, I was deliberately equating Usama bin Laden with Adolf Hitler. The threat of the terrorists loomed large before me as it did for most of the country. I was already questioning that stance by 2003 when the case for war with Iraq was being built. Even so, I was still on the fence about war with Iraq at the time. The more I examine the situation, trying to place events in context and consider them rationally rather than emotionally, the more convinced I become that we have we overblown the threat of terrorism—and it is a threat, make no mistake—into something bigger than it really is because it feeds, on an emotional level, a romantic notion of America taking a stand against injustice and tyranny, and the popular notion that without us fighting for influence in the world, the world would be overrun by despots and genocidal fanatics. The thing that makes me the most cynical about this is that the supposed struggle against totalitarianism is resulting in the U.S. government itself becoming more authoritarian, demanding more power in its pursuit of terrorists et al.
And then, sadly, along come folks like Michael Savage and even Walter Williams who insist that America is under threat of cultural and physical annihilation. Michael Savage is a mean-spirited crackpot who gets mean-spirited morons calling into his show and congratulating him for being the lone voice of sanity. So I can pretty much dismiss him. Walter Williams, on the other hand, respresents a more mainstream, if not necessarily widely accepted, position on the matter. But Walter Williams makes his case in clear language. The "West is in a war for survival" he says. And if we don't recognize this, he implies, America will fall like the Roman Empire to barbaric hordes, leaving the world to fall into a new Dark Ages. You can't get much more romantic about our situation than that. And if you believe the world needs an American hegemony run by the U.S. government, then his case is very appealing. But I don't believe that. And I don't believe the Islamic fundamentalists are even close to being the Nazis of the 1920s, unless we make them that way. What I do believe is that to take a stand against totalitarianism in a situation like the one we are in, the answer to totalitarianism is not war but liberty.
To paraphrase the old 1960s cliché, we need to make trade not war. The only American hegemony worth pursuing is one of free trade. And before someone tells me that we can't trade with them or they won't trade with us, or whatever along those lines, yes we can, but that isn't something we need to worry about. If no American business ever did trade with a Middle East business, it would not matter. Ludwig von Mises said, "The idea that political freedom can be preserved in the absence of economic freedom, and vice versa, is an illusion. Political freedom is the corollary of economic freedom." And he said, "When men have gained freedom in purely economic relationships they begin to desire it elsewhere." And I think he was right on both counts. Let the Middle East not trade with us. If economic freedom world wide were to grow, as those in the Middle East did business with someone, their desire for political freedom would also increase. The point here being not that money will make things better, but that there is no sort of oxymoronic situation where people can be subdued into freedom. Freedom comes by liberation, emancipation, the empowerment of the individual. And if we really want to fight tyranny and totalitarianism, if we really want to influence the world and save ourselves from annihilation, then we need more freedom, not more war.
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So they're all trying to get us to latch onto their fear of a possibility that is by no means inevitable?
If left unchecked, yes, I'd opine, as many, using history as a learning tool, that it would indeed become inevitable
So I think Mr. Williams is not talking about what may happen, but about the threat, as he sees it, right now.
I disagree, but that's cool
Is it? (like catching Hitler and the Nazi party back in the 20's.)
Yes, it is
Suppose one could travel back in time and accomplish raising awareness of the Nazis. What then?
You do what you can to prevent the future wonton slaughter of Jews, and the global goal of Nazi rule. Kinda like what we're doing currently, but aimed at militant islam vs fascist nazis
However, moving from there (pointing out the threat of militant Islamic terrorists) to a "war for survival" is an error. And as I pointed out before, Mr. Williams is talking about a "war for survival" not in the future tense but in the present tense.
Which again, I disagree with. I see Mr Williams as simply being more aware of the threat, and passing that awareness as he sees it, on to the rest of us
The thing that makes me the most cynical about this is that the supposed struggle against totalitarianism is resulting in the U.S. government itself becoming more authoritarian, demanding more power in its pursuit of terrorists et al.
Oh, I completely agree with the concern. And when I see start seeing such in the way of overt unconstitutional behavior by the U.S. government, I'll be right on board. FBI getting red flags about jihadist & bomb making library books being checked out doesn't make me flinch in the least. Neither does the NSA listening in on Foreign terrorists calling in & out of the U.S. Neither does holding these enemy combatants taken off the battlefield and held indefinately, as any other war has done. Neither does perfectly legal datamining. Neither does harsh interrogation tactics in trying to learn about the next 911. I do draw the line at the infliction of any acute physical pain & suffering. I'll leave that to the enemy
sadly, along come folks like Michael Savage and even Walter Williams who insist that America is under threat of cultural and physical annihilation
I'm stunned you'd put the 2 togehter. Savage I completely agree with, but Williams is no where close to the fringe as Savage is. And we ARE under a threat. It's been made perfectly clear by our enemy what their intentions are. Convert or die, with convert largely a questionable option. One more time, they can't be placated, they can't be appeased, they can't be made to be nice-nice. They can only be defeated. And that's about as optimistic as I can be, on this subject. We're not Rome, we're not trying to make everyone govern like us, or behave like us. Due to the complete impotence and non-credibility of the UN, we've become the defacto Global security force. I don't like it, but that's just how it's become. We could just turn tail and hide within our borders, and pray that everyone will leave us alone, but reality dictates that won't happen. they will come, and they will kill. Our options are largely limited to killing them either closer or farther away from our country. The farther away we can kill them, the less potential death they can inflict within our country
And I don't believe the Islamic fundamentalists are even close to being the Nazis of the 1920s, unless we make them that way.
Which is fundamentally what seperates our way of thinking as it relates to this issue. I DO believe that, and that they COULD achieve being the Nazis of not just the 20's, but the 30's as well, if left unchecked. And my POV is reinforced not just by their rhetoric, not just by their actions, but by the large support and minimal condemnations they receive from other countries, especially Muslim countries
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Well, of COURSE "the West", whatever that might be, "will survive", whatever is meant by survival. Jews survive. Armenians survive. Cambodians survive. There are still Samaritans who have survived.
The question is idiotic. Germany survived Hitler, the Nazis and the Occupation. Nations do not cease to be, even when defeated.
Enlightened?
Accurate?
How about "silly" and "pretentious"?
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The question is idiotic. Germany survived Hitler, the Nazis and the Occupation. Nations do not cease to be, even when defeated.
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Lets plan a vacation in Constantinople , I hear that Bizantium is lovely this time of year.
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The West has been fucking with the Middle East since the Crusades amd more recently since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
The War of Civilizations is bullshit. It was invented by people who fervently support the State of Israel and want to drag the US even more firmly into the Israeli-Palestinian struggle on the side of Israel.
It very cleverly takes advantage of widespread Muslim rage against the West (itself a very natural reaction to economic exploitation, colonialism and neo-colonialism) and conflates it with the somewhat later and also very natural reactive rage to the establishment of the State of Israel and the ethnic cleansing that accompanies it.
The very idea of a Muslim war against the West is absurd. The numbers tell the story. There aren't enough Muslims to conquer the West. The most successful Muslim attack in history on the USA was a flea-bite when you compare it with the devastation visited upon both Iraq and Afghanistan by the US.
The authors of this War of Civilizations baloney would have you believe that the Muslims are stupid enough to think they can take down America and/or Europe. Does it look like they are taking them down?
What the War of Civilizations authors won't tell you is that the real target of the jihadi attacks are the puppet governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. And Algeria and Morocco after that. They want America to lean on its puppets to crack down on militant religious Muslims, and "terrorists," i.e. Palestinian resistance fighters, so that the generalized Arab resentment against America and Israel can be mobilized, focused on the puppet government and its servitude to America and the Jews, hopefully resulting in Sadat-like assassinations and regime change.
In reality the so-called War of Civilizations is nothing more than a Muslim civil war of religious fundamentalists against Westernized elites.
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Some folks just have no concept of how religion can drive one to think, and more imortantly believe that they can do things that rational (and even irrational leftists) would think impossible :-\
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"The very idea of a Muslim war against the West is absurd. The numbers tell the story. There aren't enough Muslims to conquer the West. The most successful Muslim attack in history on the USA was a flea-bite when you compare it with the devastation visited upon both Iraq and Afghanistan by the US.
The authors of this War of Civilizations baloney would have you believe that the Muslims are stupid enough to think they can take down America and/or Europe. Does it look like they are taking them down?"
HA!
Take that Osama!
Last time I heard one of your tapes you were still talking about your inevitable victory , you havent even convinced MT (and he is kinda easy).
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If left unchecked, yes, I'd opine, as many, using history as a learning tool, that it would indeed become inevitable
So, it would be inevitable, if left unchecked, because... you think so? Is that all you've got?
You do what you can to prevent the future wonton slaughter of Jews, and the global goal of Nazi rule. Kinda like what we're doing currently, but aimed at militant islam vs fascist nazis
So what does that mean? You'd advise Roosevelt and Churchill to make a preemptive strike against Germany? Based on what? How do you justify taking out people based on actions you believe they will take but have not yet happened? Isn't punishing people based on what you think they'll do eventually rather arrogant? I mean, it's easy to say let's stop the Nazis, but just why does that give you or anyone else a position to declare definitively what other people will do in the future?
And when I see start seeing such in the way of overt unconstitutional behavior by the U.S. government, I'll be right on board. FBI getting red flags about jihadist & bomb making library books being checked out doesn't make me flinch in the least. Neither does the NSA listening in on Foreign terrorists calling in & out of the U.S. Neither does holding these enemy combatants taken off the battlefield and held indefinately, as any other war has done. Neither does perfectly legal datamining. Neither does harsh interrogation tactics in trying to learn about the next 911.
The first sentence there seems in conflict with the rest of the paragraph. Unless you mean you're willingly turning a blind eye to the unconstitutional behavior so that you don't see it. Yeah, yeah, I know, the courts say blah blah, and foreigners are not protected blah blah. I am not so cavalier with human rights or the nature of the Constitution. The Constitution exists to restrict government and protect the rights of people, even the bad ones. And spying on what people read is far too close to policing what people think for me to stomach it. It makes me ill to think of it. I frankly don't understand how people can be not bothered by such things. Yes, I understand the rationalizations, but that anyone would actually say, oh sure, holding someone indefinitely without a trial, nothing wrong with that, what the f...? I expect that of the mafia, of criminals, of terrorists, but we're supposed to be the good guys, the folks who give a damn about the rights of other human beings. Apparently this is not the case. We only care about the rights of our people, and anyone else gets treated like a wild dog. Frankly the extent to which we're willing to ignore the rights of people who are not us, not Americans, not on our side, is rather scary.
I do draw the line at the infliction of any acute physical pain & suffering. I'll leave that to the enemy
Well, I suppose that is something. I'm glad to see you're willing to draw the line somewhere.
but Williams is no where close to the fringe as Savage is.
Didn't I say that?
And we ARE under a threat.
We may face a threat but we are not under a threat.
It's been made perfectly clear by our enemy what their intentions are. Convert or die, with convert largely a questionable option. One more time, they can't be placated, they can't be appeased, they can't be made to be nice-nice.
All the more reason to leave them alone.
They can only be defeated.
Yes, I know. We must beat them into submission or kill them. Remind me why we're the good guys... oh yeah, because we're not Islamic terrorists who want to control the world. We're just Americans who want to influence the world. Right. Yeah. Sure.
We're not Rome,
Your pal Williams made the comparison, not me.
we're not trying to make everyone govern like us, or behave like us. Due to the complete impotence and non-credibility of the UN, we've become the defacto Global security force.
You probably believe that. I don't.
We could just turn tail and hide within our borders, and pray that everyone will leave us alone, but reality dictates that won't happen. they will come, and they will kill. Our options are largely limited to killing them either closer or farther away from our country. The farther away we can kill them, the less potential death they can inflict within our country
Or instead, we could simply start leaving other countries alone and take care of our own concerns. Leaving other people alone is not the same as running away. I'm not suggesting that if we leave them alone, then no one will try to hurt us. But that other people might try to hurt us is not a valid excuse for us to decide we know what is best for other countries. If we really want to deter other countries from screwing around with world, then we should lead by example and start following our own advice. And if we want to maintain the safety of our people, then we establish that anyone who attacks us or our people is going to end up bombed, hunted down and killed, or otherwise made irrevocably dead. No negotiations, no Jimmy Carter hand-wringing, just retaliation. That would be protecting Americans. This nonsense about a "war on terror" is a lot of rhetoric, and a lot of people are dying, but we are no closer to accomplishing our goal now than we were before the Iraq War. The U.S. government is making the wrong decisions and pursuing the wrong foreign policy. No amount of talk about "capitulation" or "turning tail and hiding" alters that fact one iota. And we will not be pursuing a policy of protecting Americans from the terrorists until the U.S. government starts making the correct decisions and pursuing a rational, non-interventionist foreign policy. Instead of continually acting as if America is afraid that the terrorists are going kill us all, the government needs to take off the temper-tantrum shorts, put on some clean long pants, grow a damn spine, and start acting like the leadership of a strong and free nation.
I DO believe that, and that they COULD achieve being the Nazis of not just the 20's, but the 30's as well, if left unchecked. And my POV is reinforced not just by their rhetoric, not just by their actions, but by the large support and minimal condemnations they receive from other countries, especially Muslim countries
If left unchecked, if left unchecked, if left unchecked. You keep saying that, but what does that mean? Is someone around here suggesting we ignore terrorist activity? Is some one suggesting Chamberlain-like treaties with the terrorists? I realize that some folks want to equate a non-interventionist policy with appeasement of the terrorists, but that is really stupid and not even remotely accurate. One thing people tend to overlook about the rise of the Nazi Party is that this was really an extension of events that started with the damn Treaty of Versailles, governments pushing around the defeated Germany. So even if a defeat of the terrorists is achieved, you have no guarantee that your end result will not be something worse than what you started with. Which is to say, we could end up being the catalyst that leads the Islamic extremists to becoming the Nazi-like horror you keep insisting they will be. Unless of course you intend to advocate their complete annihilation as I discussed before. In which case, I'll repeat what I said before. To take a stand against totalitarianism in a situation like the one we are in, the answer to totalitarianism is not war but liberty.
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sirs: Some folks just have no concept of how religion can drive one to think, and more imortantly believe that they can do things that rational (and even irrational leftists) would think impossible
Well, I suppose we do have the example of George W. Bush believing that he can conquer Iraq and Afghanistan and maybe Iran too and turn them all into constitutional democratic republics just like America.
plane : Last time I heard one of your tapes [Osama] you were still talking about your inevitable victory [over the West] you havent even convinced MT (and he is kinda easy).
Right, plane. They can conquer the West because Osama says they can. I didn't realize you had such faith in Osama's words.
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Well, I suppose we do have the example of George W. Bush believing that he can conquer Iraq and Afghanistan and maybe Iran too and turn them all into constitutional democratic republics just like America
Strange, I have yet to see or hear Bush claim that "God will see us thru to victory". Must be that upside down alternate reality you frequently vacation at. In this reality, it's the terrorists and insurgents who consistently & on videotape I might add, use Alllah as their rallying cry, who have a can't lose attitiude that allows them to kill infidels in the name of Allah, and if they get killed, there's all these virgins Allah has waiting for them.
I don't suppose you want a do-over, do you Tee? Naaa, don't even bother making yourself look that much sillier
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So, it would be inevitable, if left unchecked, because... you think so? Is that all you've got?
Well, I've got history as well, if that helps
So what does that mean?
I didn't think that was complicated concept. It means killing them before they kill us. It means targeting those who are planning, organizing, and carrying out attacks on us, before those attacks see the light of day. It means that Usama and Islamofascist terrorists are a tad farther down the road than Hitler and his Nazi party were in the early 20's. Hitler did have the luxury of Germany's borders and remedial scouting technology on our part, to build his war machine. That's the advantage Hitler had. The advantage that militant Islam has is widespread muslim support, and the ability to hide among the civilian population. I do wish they'd play by the rules of war, wear uniforms & adhere to the Geneva Convention, but they just don't seem to be the "do-it-by-the-book" type of soldiers
The first sentence there seems in conflict with the rest of the paragraph
Not at all, since I don't see any overt unconstitutional acts. What I do see is Bush bending the constitution as far as he can, withOUT breaking it. What I do see are efforts and actions by the Administration, that make perfectly sound sense, and appear to be within the legal boundries of the CnC, in a time of war. I realize you don't see that, but then again, our biases do tend to shade towards our respective ideologies, your Libertarian & my Conservative, and thus modify what we see, and why we're seeing it
All the more reason to leave them alone
Addressed already in that such an (in)action will NOT stop the threat, will NOT impair their ability to train, plan, and instigate attacks on us, will NOT diminish their goal of both killing us and installing some global Muslim Governance
Yes, I know. We must beat them into submission or kill them. Remind me why we're the good guys...
Because we're doing it to defend ourselves, and to prevent what we had to prevent back in the 1940's. Hopefully this time around, we can do it with a lot less American & civilian casualties
But again, it really comes down to this; you don't believe the Islamic fundamentalists are anywhere close to being the Nazis of the 1920s, thus that's what drives your thought process. I DO, again reinforced by their rhetorical goals & actions upon us. That's what I believe, and despite how articulate and patient you've been in this debate, have been unable to convince me otherwise, thus I'm going to continue to give the benefit of the doubt to Bush and our military until clear evidence, (not just the rabid left's incoherent say so, as typified by Tee & Brass), shows me otherwise
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Well, I've got history as well, if that helps
I don't believe you. Yeah, I know you keep comparing the Islamic extremists to the Nazis, but that is rather selective.
It means killing them before they kill us. It means targeting those who are planning, organizing, and carrying out attacks on us, before those attacks see the light of day.
So if I understand this correctly, your position is that we should kill people not just for what they do, but also for what we thinking they could, would or might do if we don't kill them. We are to take the position of world authority on what other people are allowed to think, and to kill people whose thoughts are too dangerous. We, of course, are to be left free to plan and organize attacks that we may or may not ever carry out on other people, left free to decide for ourselves what is and is not a threat and how to defend ourselves, but no one else should be allowed this freedom. No, I cannot go along with that.
It means that Usama and Islamofascist terrorists are a tad farther down the road than Hitler and his Nazi party were in the early 20's. Hitler did have the luxury of Germany's borders and remedial scouting technology on our part, to build his war machine. That's the advantage Hitler had. The advantage that militant Islam has is widespread muslim support, and the ability to hide among the civilian population. I do wish they'd play by the rules of war, wear uniforms & adhere to the Geneva Convention, but they just don't seem to be the "do-it-by-the-book" type of soldiers
Once upon a time, we had people fighting for the U.S. who could hide in the civilian population, who didn't wear uniforms, who didn't fight by the book. They were called militias and helped win the American War for Independence. I find it hard to hold such tactics as criminal behavior. Anyway, you have yet to demonstrate how the Islamic terrorists are even close to the Nazi Party in terms of preparedness to make war.
Addressed already in that such an (in)action will NOT stop the threat, will NOT impair their ability to train, plan, and instigate attacks on us, will NOT diminish their goal of both killing us and installing some global Muslim Governance
So? You seem to keep confusing "leave them alone" with "never do anything about them". "Leave them alone" means we stop screwing around in the Middle East, bring the troops home and adopt a non-interventionist foreign policy. It does not mean ignore them and do nothing if they decide to attack. Frankly, I don't give a damn what they plan. They can plan until their lips turn blue and their fingers fall off. Our military constantly plans for what to do if we should defend or attack some place or other. If someone tried to stop that, you would be against that, wouldn't you? I fail to see why we should stop other people from doing what we do unless we're willing to stop doing it too. This "do as we say, not as we do" policy seems rather... what's the word... hypocritical.
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Yeah, I know you keep comparing the Islamic extremists to the Nazis, but that is rather selective
And I'd add effective as well
So if I understand this correctly, your position is that we should kill people not just for what they do, but also for what we thinking they could, would or might do if we don't kill them
No, apparently you don't understand. We should kill those not for "thinking" about it (killing Americans & Israelis, and anyone who doesn't covert to Islam), but those actively working on it. A distinct difference, I might add
Once upon a time, we had people fighting for the U.S. who could hide in the civilian population, who didn't wear uniforms, who didn't fight by the book.
Perhaps you can point out the chapters in the history books, that demonstrated where our militia were fighting from positions amongst the civilian population. Perhaps you can also show where these militias actively targeted and killed innocent civilians
You seem to keep confusing "leave them alone" with "never do anything about them"
Not at all. "Leaving them alone" does zilch to lessen the threat. "Leaving them alone" does nothing but embolden them to do more, since we'll have been perceived as running away with our tails between our legs. "Leaving them alone" does nothing to lessen their ability to wage war on us. "Leaving them alone" is not a smart option, IMHO, given the many negatives that go along with such a tactic.
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<<Strange, I have yet to see or hear Bush claim that "God will see us thru to victory". Must be that upside down alternate reality you frequently vacation at. >>
It's not strange at all. If you live with your head up your ass, as most conservatives do, there are a lot of things that you have yet to see or hear. Although I did not claim that Bush ever said "God will see us through to victory," (another example of your over-active imagination, never lacking for invented words and phrases to put in other people's mouths as an alternative to intelligent argument) there are numerous occasions where Bush has claimed to be working on God's side, unlike his enemies. There are numerous references he has made to the "evil" of his opponents contrasted with the "goodness" of America.
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I did not claim that Bush ever said "God will see us through to victory," there are numerous occasions where Bush has claimed to be working on God's side, unlike his enemies. There are numerous references he has made to the "evil" of his opponents contrasted with the "goodness" of America.
Which has pretty much next to nothing to do with your implication how he's using God as his rallying cry & justification for our military intervention in Iraq & Afghanistan. Nor does it debunk your obvious ignoring of the terrorists & insurgents that do
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On the contrary, I did not ignore the "terrorists" who claim that God is on their side. I said that they are just like Bush, who thinks that God is on HIS side.
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On the contrary, I did not ignore the "terrorists" who claim that God is on their side. I said that they are just like Bush, who thinks that God is on HIS side.
Is that so, let's look at my comment and your response. You'll note that at no time, did you reference the terrorists in any way, much less in comparison. That, in this reality is called "ignoring". Now, I will concede that I believe that Bush believes he's acting in how God would want him to. Most Christians believe that, and endeavor to act in such a way that will make God prowd & pleased. Far cry however in claiming that "God will lead us to victory", and "God will provide heavenly sanctuary for all those who die in our cause". Actually, that's more like Objective minded folks are frm Mars and and Hard core leftests are from Venus.......in another galaxy
sirs: Some folks just have no concept of how religion can drive one to think, and more importantly believe that they can do things that rational (and even irrational leftists) would think impossible
Well, I suppose we do have the example of George W. Bush believing that he can conquer Iraq and Afghanistan and maybe Iran too and turn them all into constitutional democratic republics just like America.
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And I'd add effective as well
I'm sure you would, but you haven't done anything to support that assertion.
No, apparently you don't understand. We should kill those not for "thinking" about it (killing Americans & Israelis, and anyone who doesn't covert to Islam), but those actively working on it. A distinct difference, I might add
You're missing the point. You're advocating going after people based on what you believe they will do in the future. You talk of targeting people because they're planning an attack. The American military plans attacks all the damn time. And I'll ask again, if someone tried to stop that, you would be against that, wouldn't you? If you're targeting people for planning something, you're targeting people for thinking about it. And poof, there goes your distinct difference.
Perhaps you can point out the chapters in the history books, that demonstrated where our militia were fighting from positions amongst the civilian population. Perhaps you can also show where these militias actively targeted and killed innocent civilians
Back then the militia were civilians. And I didn't say they targeted or killed civilians. I said they could hide in the civilian population, didn't wear uniforms and didn't fight by the book. If it makes you feel any better, during the American Civil War, both sides had folks who killed plenty of civilians.
"Leaving them alone" does zilch to lessen the threat.
So? Not that I agree with you, but even if you're right, so what? Quite frankly, what we're doing now does nothing to lessen the threat. But leaving them alone means we're not wasting our military and resources. How is that not an improvement?
"Leaving them alone" does nothing but embolden them to do more, since we'll have been perceived as running away with our tails between our legs.
A position we would not be in if we had been leaving them alone in the first place. But regardless of how it is perceived, it is still the right thing to do. Continuing to do something stupid because quitting would make you look bad doesn't make continuing to do the something stupid a good idea or the something stupid any less stupid. And frankly, this whole "emboldening the terrorists" bit is really lame. It doesn't matter what we do, they're going to spin it to their advantage. If we remain, we're emboldening them by being there to be seen as an invading/oppressive force to fight. So I could care less if leaving makes them happy or not.
"Leaving them alone" does nothing to lessen their ability to wage war on us.
So? What has that got to do with it? Their ability to wage war on us is minuscule. You don't really think mixing chemicals on an airplane was a plan that was really going to work do you? They're shooting into the darkness, hoping something gets hit. That is not exactly what I would call a serious ability to wage war on anyone.
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So? What has that got to do with it? Their ability to wage war on us is minuscule. You don't really think mixing chemicals on an airplane was a plan that was really going to work do you? They're shooting into the darkness, hoping something gets hit. That is not exactly what I would call a serious ability to wage war on anyone.
UP, I think you fail to see it as the terrorist war it is. It is a war, not in a conventional sense, but one where one fanatic idiot can go into the mall down the street from where you live and set off a bomb, all the while crying Allah's name. It is the fear factor that it might happen anywhere because it did happen down the street that can decimate a democractic society. This is why eternal vigilance is needed. Protect your borders as best you can, cooperate with other nations, educate people on the situation and so on. All the while realizing that our personal liberites must be balacned against this vigilance.
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Will the West Survive?
Now that's a dumb question. IT will change, as everything does over time, according to the Hegelian formula Action > Reaction > Synthesis. The Syntheses becomes a new Action and the process repeats itself all over again.
The West willl change, the Middle East wil change, Islamic nations will change, as will everything else.
Al Qaeda is a reactionary organization: it is trying to preserve a society which is changing against the medieval structure of the Koran. Before, Arabs could shelter their women and young men from change. Now satellkite TV makes it possible for women, even illiterate women, to see other women drive cars, work in an office or a factory with men. Young men can watch Baywatch babes spilling out of their bikinis, their boobs a-bouncing as they run along the beach.
American troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia. Some military personnel smuggled Bibles into Saudi Arabia and were passing them around. Booze was being drunk by US troops stationed in the sacred sands of Saudia.
It is the Muslims who will change the most as a result of the increased contact via the media between the West and Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Muslim world. The struggle to prevent modernity from coming to Saudia that will end, as Prohibition ended, after some violence, with an abandonment of the idea that Arabia can stay in the XIII century forever.
Consider that the IRA in the UK, with all its bombs and all its protests, did not really change British society. Al Qaeda is less well organized than any branch of the IRA.
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Xavier, I, miraculously, find that we agree! And, some say miracles simply do not happen!
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UP, I think you fail to see it as the terrorist war it is. It is a war, not in a conventional sense, but one where one fanatic idiot can go into the mall down the street from where you live and set off a bomb, all the while crying Allah's name. It is the fear factor that it might happen anywhere because it did happen down the street that can decimate a democractic society. This is why eternal vigilance is needed. Protect your borders as best you can, cooperate with other nations, educate people on the situation and so on. All the while realizing that our personal liberites must be balacned against this vigilance.
I disagree. That people could be killed does not make it a war. And we do not need to balance our personal liberties against national security. If anything could genuinely be said to be at stake in this matter, it is our liberty. We do not protect our liberty by whittling it away to achieve a false measure of security. If we sacrifice protecting our liberty for the sake of stopping the terrorists, we lose. I'm not suggesting we do nothing about terrorism. I'm suggesting that if the security we seek to maintain does not include our liberty, our free exercise of our rights, then the security is a fraud. If we cut down the protections of our liberties to keep the terrorists at bay, there will be nothing to protect us from our government. We do not need to balance our liberties against national security because protecting our personal liberties is our national security. If we must have a war, let us have a war to protect our liberty, our rights. Without that protection, our borders might be intact, but America will have lost.
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So? What has that got to do with it? Their ability to wage war on us is minuscule. You don't really think mixing chemicals on an airplane was a plan that was really going to work do you? They're shooting into the darkness, hoping something gets hit. That is not exactly what I would call a serious ability to wage war on anyone.
Yes ,I do think that mixing chemicals on an airplane could pose a real danger, with a large team of suicidal terrorists several Aircraft could be brought down killing a few thousand persons.
Should we just put up with the the loss of a few thousand persons now and then?
I do not think that leaveing them entirely alone would be suficient to them , several Al Quieda tapes present their demands which are wide rangeing and sometimes even include us all embraceing Islam. As long as some portion of their demands were not met they would very likely continue just the same, if all of their demands were met , they could always get more demands.
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"If we must have a war, let us have a war to protect our liberty, our rights. Without that protection, our borders might be intact, but America will have lost."
I disagree, in time of war the emergency does justify sacrifices.
Seen from the other side , in time of peace liberty ought to be maximised to the best extent that is possible while keeping the peace.
Should our discipline and level of sacrifice always be at a wartime level? or when the threat is lower can our exercise of freedom be less restricted?
If the level of sacrifice and discipline ,must always be the same , then it must always be set at a level compatible with war.
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I'm sure you would, but you haven't done anything to support that assertion
No? History books referencing a similar history doesn't count, huh? I'll have to remember that. But what I'll remember more so is that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. You may be ready and willing to risk repeating history. I prefer not
You're missing the point. You're advocating going after people based on what you believe they will do in the future
No, that would be you missing the point. I'm advocating going after people who have pledged to do what I believe they have pledged to do in the future. A DISTINCT difference, I might add
Back then the militia were civilians. And I didn't say they targeted or killed civilians.
Yet the current crop of non-unifomred terrorists are doing precisely that. Again, a DISTINCT difference than the militias of the U.S Revolution
So? Not that I agree with you, but even if you're right, so what? ("Leaving them alone" does zilch to lessen the threat.)
I'm stunned an objective person as yourself needs to ask such a question. Perhaps I can get Pooch or Majorstrictland to answer that one for you, Prince
A position we would not be in if we had been leaving them alone in the first place. But regardless of how it is perceived, it is still the right thing to do.
Well, that's one person's opinion, that IMHO doesn't have much realistic merit to it. As I gather, you're advocating a complete "do-over". We bring everyone home. close up shop, let AlQeada and the growing militant Islam movement get completely rehabilitated, re-supplied, re-armed, double/triple the amount of new recruits, train with abandon with no interference. And seeing how they "scared those cowardly americans away", motivate them for the next few 911's they can cause. And of course it'll be made easier, because we shouldn't be listening in on their phone conversations....noooooo, perish the thought. We ought not tracking their bank records or datamining calls......noooooo, baaaaaaad. Just when they do hit, we........hit back hard, and hold nothing back........kinda like what we're doing now, but with alot more loss of both our civilian life from those 911-like events, and thousands more sodliers as we try to take on new refortifie, rearmed, and fresh terrorist forces. I'll be honest here Prince.......I don't see that as the "right thing to do"
They're shooting into the darkness, hoping something gets hit. That is not exactly what I would call a serious ability to wage war on anyone.
Hitler did pretty much the same thing when he sent a small underarmed contingent of troops into the Rhineland. We turned a blind eye to that one to. We have history to tell us where it went from there
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UP, I think you fail to see it as the terrorist war it is. It is a war, not in a conventional sense, but one where one fanatic idiot can go into the mall down the street from where you live and set off a bomb, all the while crying Allah's name. It is the fear factor that it might happen anywhere because it did happen down the street that can decimate a democractic society. This is why eternal vigilance is needed. Protect your borders as best you can, cooperate with other nations, educate people on the situation and so on. All the while realizing that our personal liberites must be balacned against this vigilance.
On the contrary Plane, I think it is you who fails to see terrorism for what it is. Yet, you write about it well. Let's look again:
one fanatic idiot can go into the mall down the street from where you live and set off a bomb
You want to know the cold, hard truth? Anyone can do this at any time. It really isn't all that damn difficult. There's no such thing as 100% safety and security. Look at what you are talking about. Semtex is a 1960's technology. Dynamite is a century older. Or for pure evil without the mess, look to the Chicago Tylenol murders of 1982.
For some reason many of you see 9/11 as this great awakening. You see UP and others (probably me as well) as people who don't see this "war on terrorism" correctly and have not "awakened" to the threat exposed on 9/11.
Have you ever thought that perhaps we were awake and aware before the eleventh of September 2001?
You're right. Much of the defenses against "one fanatic idiot(s)" are weak. Mainly I rely on the notion that none of you are going to run into my place of work with semtex strapped on your chest yelling "God Save the Queen," "Mark Richt is god," or "I'm a Lumberjack" before shooting us all to the moon.
Yet, that's life. The other less palatable option is to live in a truly 99.9% secure state like Papa Doc Duvalier's Haiti or Franco's Spain.
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You miss the point. 9/11 WAS a wake up call because we were lax in security. Now, we are NOT so lax. I am convinced, as is apparently Plane, that one of the primary reasons another such event has not happened since is the vigilance by the FBI, among others.
Sure it can happen anytime, but how often has it? Let me provide an example. Grab 100 people off the streets in Gaza and 100 off a street in Mt. Airy, NC. Tell 'em they can set off a bomb in the midst of a mall. Now, count the number of folks that possibly would, given the opportunity. And don't give me all that CRAP MT spouts about how the poor Arabs are downtrodden by the big and mighty Jews and so that is why they will do these descpicable acts. Wrong is wrong. Period.
When I was in college, you could have lit a match around me sometimes and I would have gone up in smoke due to the alcohol content in my blood. But, deep deep down, I knew it was wrong. If you had asked me, I would have denied it perhaps, BUT I KNEW.
Contrary to what many nowadays believe, there is truth and then there is Truth. Your concience may be seered, but deep down there, people know what is RIGHT and what is WRONG.
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Mainly I rely on the notion that none of you are going to run into my place of work with semtex strapped on your chest yelling..."I'm a Lumberjack" before shooting us all to the moon.
I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay.
I sleep all night. I work all day.
Boom!
Dang, someone else in here remembers Monty Python?
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You're right. Much of the defenses against "one fanatic idiot(s)" are weak. Mainly I rely on the notion that none of you are going to run into my place of work with semtex strapped on your chest yelling "God Save the Queen," "Mark Richt is god," or "I'm a Lumberjack" before shooting us all to the moon.
Yet, that's life. The other less palatable option is to live in a truly 99.9% secure state like Papa Doc Duvalier's Haiti or Franco's Spain.
There is a line to be drawn and a balance to be struck.
Before 9-11 there was a strict prohibition against the CIA and FBI shareing resorces in order to limit their power in our lives.
Now that this prohibition is practicly gone , do we really miss that rule?
I don't want cameras to be inescapable , but cameraas in public places wouldn't bother me , even if they were attached to an AI device that could recognise and catalog people as they passed.
Could we have enough police power running around to eliminate terrorism without also makeing ourselves miserably repressed?
No , but...
Can we have enough police power invested in the right sort of police to make reasonably terrorism difficult without going so far as to cause repression?
I see this as a spectrum of tolerance , Daniel Boone might have felt crouded if he could see his neighbors cabin's smoke, modern circumstances have millions of us liveing in each others pockets , we tolerate crouding and observation already more than we used to, because we need to.
I think that the need will determine the amount of police pressure we will tolerate.
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Yes ,I do think that mixing chemicals on an airplane could pose a real danger, with a large team of suicidal terrorists several Aircraft could be brought down killing a few thousand persons.
I think you're naive about how easy (difficult) setting up and carrying out such scenario would be. Everything I have read on the matter leads me to the conclusion that not only would it be extremely difficult, the people charged with the plot didn't have the skill to carry out such an inherently risky plan.
Should we just put up with the the loss of a few thousand persons now and then?
No, of course not. But every time someone mentions the people killed in Iraq, I see the response that war is hell and people are going to die. Why is it okay for you to be concerned about dead people in America, but wrong for other people to be concerned about dead people in Iraq. And before you start in with but our troops knew blah blah blah, civilians are being killed in Iraq as well. Civilians who did not sign up to be in a war zone. And I repeat, every time someone mentions the people killed in Iraq, I see the response that war is hell and people are going to die. So why is it okay for civilians in Iraq to die because of this war, but not Americans? And please do not misunderstand me. I am not in favor of Americans getting killed. But when you ask me "Should we just put up with the the loss of a few thousand persons now and then?" my first thought is, aren't we doing that now? We're putting up with our troops being killed. We're putting up with Iraqis being killed. I just want to know why people who are in the U.S. of A. are more important than people who are in Iraq.
I do not think that leaveing them entirely alone would be suficient to them , several Al Quieda tapes present their demands which are wide rangeing and sometimes even include us all embraceing Islam. As long as some portion of their demands were not met they would very likely continue just the same, if all of their demands were met , they could always get more demands.
I could care less what their demands are. My proposal to leave them alone has nothing to do with their demands. My proposal to leave them alone is based on what I believe is the only appropriate foreign policy, non-intervention. What I believe the government should do at home—leave people alone—is what I believe the government should do abroad. I don't believe there should be seat-belt laws or massive business regulations or bans on weapons. And likewise, I don't believe the government should be telling other countries what to do. Government should have one main purpose, protecting the rights of its people, and purt' near anything else should out of bounds for the government. I realize that you and others paint the "war on terror" as protecting our lives, but I believe that story less and less everyday. Not because that isn't how it is intended, but because that simply is not what it is accomplishing. And frankly, the notion that America can protect Americans if can just control the rest of the world or even just the Middle East is ludicrous. It's the same thinking that says America can protect Americans if we just ban enough guns or mandate enough safety requirements or legislate enough control over business. It does not work here and it does not work there. It does not work now and it never has. The fact is that we will never save the world by trying to control it, either here or overseas. It's a fool's dream, and one we would be better off discarding sooner rather than later.
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I think you're naive about how easy (difficult) setting up and carrying out such scenario would be. Everything I have read on the matter leads me to the conclusion that not only would it be extremely difficult, the people charged with the plot didn't have the skill to carry out such an inherently risky plan.
I think you're overestimating the difficulty of the plan. Liquid explosives are difficult to use because they are inherently unstable; however safety of the user is not at the top of a list of suicide bomber's priorities. There are many liquids are are, in and of themselves, stable, yet highly volatile when mixed with another liquid. For some combinations, the skill required is no more than is required to use home hair color treatments - mix in the correct proportions and shake.
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I disagree, in time of war the emergency does justify sacrifices.
Not of liberty.
Seen from the other side , in time of peace liberty ought to be maximised to the best extent that is possible while keeping the peace.
You say that as if you think maximizing liberty might somehow endanger the peace.
Should our discipline and level of sacrifice always be at a wartime level? or when the threat is lower can our exercise of freedom be less restricted?
The free exercise of our rights should never be restricted, and this free exercise is in point of fact at no time more crucial and more needed than in time of war.
If the level of sacrifice and discipline ,must always be the same , then it must always be set at a level compatible with war.
When are we not at war? Before the "war on terror" we had the Cold War. And if the "war on terror" should falter or have a lull, we still have the "war on drugs". And we may soon have a war with North Korea. At what point do we stop being at war so that we can have all of our liberty back?
And frankly, if the free exercise of our rights is so incompatible with war, then perhaps we should work harder on achieving and maintaining that liberty rather than on telling other countries what to do. If we kept a "cleaner house" at home, we might have better grounds to chastise other countries for their lack of such "cleanliness".
But beyond that, where do you draw the line? What is the acceptable level of risk? If you sacrifice this much liberty, and the attack or threat of attack still comes, do you sacrifice more liberty? At what point do you say, this much and no more? And if you say this much and no more, how can you justify not sacrificing more liberty if it means more security? (Not that it ever does.) I draw the line back at the beginning of the process, liberty complete and no further, because no sacrifice of liberty makes us safer and because whatever power is given the government to do things for us ipso facto carries with it the equivalent power for the government to do things to us. And because the only real purpose government should ever have is to protect the free exercise of the inherent and unalienable rights of the people. Any sacrifice of that is a corruption of government and should be abolished.
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No? History books referencing a similar history doesn't count, huh? I'll have to remember that. But what I'll remember more so is that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. You may be ready and willing to risk repeating history. I prefer not
You're clearly assuming your comparison of current events to history is the only valid one, and this I doubt seriously. And you have yet to give me any reason not to do so.
No, that would be you missing the point. I'm advocating going after people who have pledged to do what I believe they have pledged to do in the future. A DISTINCT difference, I might add
When did the Islamic extremists pledge to become like the Nazis?
Back then the militia were civilians. And I didn't say they targeted or killed civilians.
Yet the current crop of non-unifomred terrorists are doing precisely that. Again, a DISTINCT difference than the militias of the U.S Revolution
Yet your initial complaint was, "I do wish they'd play by the rules of war, wear uniforms & adhere to the Geneva Convention, but they just don't seem to be the 'do-it-by-the-book' type of soldiers". And so my point remains. Not wearing uniforms and not making war "by the book" is hardly a reason to condemn them. And quite frankly, that our own government seeks to use the letter of the Geneva Convention to circumvent the intent of it, we hardly have much high ground there either. Stick to arguing your distinct differences, not some lame anti-enemy propaganda.
So? Not that I agree with you, but even if you're right, so what? ("Leaving them alone" does zilch to lessen the threat.)
I'm stunned an objective person as yourself needs to ask such a question.
You might not be so stunned if you had included the rest of my comments in that paragraph: "Quite frankly, what we're doing now does nothing to lessen the threat. But leaving them alone means we're not wasting our military and resources. How is that not an improvement?"
As I gather, you're advocating a complete "do-over". We bring everyone home. close up shop, let AlQeada and the growing militant Islam movement get completely rehabilitated, re-supplied, re-armed, double/triple the amount of new recruits, train with abandon with no interference. And seeing how they "scared those cowardly americans away", motivate them for the next few 911's they can cause. And of course it'll be made easier, because we shouldn't be listening in on their phone conversations....noooooo, perish the thought. We ought not tracking their bank records or datamining calls......noooooo, baaaaaaad. Just when they do hit, we........hit back hard, and hold nothing back........kinda like what we're doing now, but with alot more loss of both our civilian life from those 911-like events, and thousands more sodliers as we try to take on new refortifie, rearmed, and fresh terrorist forces. I'll be honest here Prince.......I don't see that as the "right thing to do"
Wow. You give them an awful lot of credit. Double to triple the amount of new recruits? What makes you think they can so dramtically up their recruitment rate with American troops not there? And what makes you think they're not being resupplied and rearmed now? And given their track record, what makes you think they'll get in a "few 911's"? Where was this massive militant Islamic extremist uprising before September 11, 2001? I just don't buy it. I'm not saying they'll all go away, I'm just doubting this scenario you're proposing.
But let's look at how things are stacking up now. American troops are getting killed. Iraqi citizens are getting killed. People are having possessions large and small taken away from them at airports and never returned. Some folks here in America got arrested because they had "too many" cell phones. Some people are being held indefinitely, without trial, and if they get a trial, it may be one where they are not allowed to mount an appropriate defense against the charges due to "national security" issues. And the terrorists are rearming and resupplying anyway. And their recruitment rate has, as I understand it, gone up since the beginning of the Iraq war. And they have new excuses to spin themselves as victims of American aggression. And the American government continues to insist it needs more power to go after terrorists at home and abroad. Folks like you and Plane are telling me how we need to be willing to sacrifice liberty for the sake of national security. Nothing about this situation is the right thing to do.
And I'll tell you the same thing I told Plane. What I believe the government should do at home—leave people alone—is what I believe the government should do abroad. We will never save the world by trying to control it, either here or overseas. It's a fool's dream, and one we would be better off discarding sooner rather than later. And I'll repeat what I said to you. Continuing to do something stupid because quitting would make you look bad doesn't make continuing to do the something stupid a good idea or the something stupid any less stupid. And frankly, this whole "emboldening the terrorists" bit is really lame. It doesn't matter what we do, they're going to spin it to their advantage. If we remain, we're emboldening them by being there to be seen as an invading/oppressive force to fight. And while we're here, I should add that just because doing the right thing might make you lose face doesn't mean it isn't still the right thing to do. And just because doing the right thing might seem to let the bad guys win doesn't mean it isn't still the right thing to do. Or do you advocate that previously convicted criminals should not be given a fair trial and reasonable defense because it might let them back on the street?
They're shooting into the darkness, hoping something gets hit. That is not exactly what I would call a serious ability to wage war on anyone.
Hitler did pretty much the same thing when he sent a small underarmed contingent of troops into the Rhineland. We turned a blind eye to that one to. We have history to tell us where it went from there
And you expect me to believe your comparison of the terrorists to Nazis is accurate?
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9/11 WAS a wake up call because we were lax in security.
We were not lax in security or intellegence. We were lax in listening to them. Or rather, our leaders were. (Both the Clinton and Bush administrations.) The actions taken since have not helped that one bit.
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Prince, when did I EVER claim that Islamofacists were identical to German Fascists? When did I ever opine that militant Islam is trying to copy Hitler & Nazi Germany? If you recall, I made it painfully clear that their not "identical", simply historically comparable. So why the continued questions or implications along the lines of "when did the Islamic extremists pledge to be Nazis", is a question I might see knute or Brass ask, but not you.
You're clearly assuming your comparison of current events to history is the only valid one, and this I doubt seriously. And you have yet to give me any reason not to do so.
Again, if you wish to run the risk of repeating History, by all means, ignore the signs of Militant Islam, ignore their rhetoric, ignore their actions, and keep condeming Bush for daring to try and listen in on their overseas phone calls. I've given you ample reason, that of a repeat of the likes of the Nazi war machine of the 30's & 40's. It is you that are chosing to ignore that potential.
You give them an awful lot of credit. Double to triple the amount of new recruits? What makes you think they can so dramtically up their recruitment rate with American troops not there?
Again, another question I'm stunned that you'd even ask. Suffice to say, without our military intervention, they can recruit, train, and re-arm to their heart's content, without any obstrution or hiccup of impedence. This should fall into the category of what I'd dare say is "obvious", though I'll concede on how we all know how that term has been mutated by the likes of Xo
And you expect me to believe your comparison of the terrorists to Nazis is accurate?
And you expect me to believe that its not?
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I think you're overestimating the difficulty of the plan. Liquid explosives are difficult to use because they are inherently unstable; however safety of the user is not at the top of a list of suicide bomber's priorities. There are many liquids are are, in and of themselves, stable, yet highly volatile when mixed with another liquid. For some combinations, the skill required is no more than is required to use home hair color treatments - mix in the correct proportions and shake.
From what I have read, mixing the chemicals via the proper procedure and in the proper contitions to create an explosion large enough to actually destroy the airplane would be a nearly impossible task on an airplane even if one could get into the lavatory for the amount of time needed without anyone noticing. While I am sure there are some simpler combinations, the reports I have read say the terrorist plot was to create triacetone triperoxide, which is not something one just mixes in the correct proportions and shakes in a bottle. And as for the safety of the user, I should think that would come into play in so far as the terrorists would not get very far if they blew up only themselves before they got to the plane, or if fumes from the process of making the explosive killed them or made them pass out. And as for the simpler combinations, my understanding is that most of them require more than a 20oz bottle to create a large enough explosion to bring down a plane.
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From what I have read, mixing the chemicals via the proper procedure and in the proper contitions to create an explosion large enough to actually destroy the airplane would be a nearly impossible task on an airplane even if one could get into the lavatory for the amount of time needed without anyone noticing.
You'd be surprised. I've been on flights where someone was in the bathroom for nearly the entire flight. Also, TATP has been used in terrorist attacks previously, including the attempted "shoe bomber" and the London subway attacks.
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Prince, when did I EVER claim that Islamofacists were identical to German Fascists? When did I ever opine that militant Islam is trying to copy Hitler & Nazi Germany?
I don't recall that you did. But then, I don't recall having said or implied that you did.
If you recall, I made it painfully clear that their not "identical", simply historically comparable.
No, I don't recall that, but I'll take your word for it.
So why the continued questions or implications along the lines of "when did the Islamic extremists pledge to be Nazis"
Uh, I believe my question was "When did the Islamic extremists pledge to become like the Nazis?" Notice that word between the words "become" and "the Nazis"? You get to say, "you don't believe the Islamic fundamentalists are anywhere close to being the Nazis of the 1920s, thus that's what drives your thought process. I DO, again reinforced by their rhetorical goals & actions upon us." But I don't get to ask "When did the Islamic extremists pledge to become like the Nazis?" What's up with that? This hardly seems fair. You get to compare the two, but I don't get to call you on it? Frack that.
You're clearly assuming your comparison of current events to history is the only valid one, and this I doubt seriously. And you have yet to give me any reason not to do so.
Again, if you wish to run the risk of repeating History, by all means, ignore the signs of Militant Islam, ignore their rhetoric, ignore their actions, and keep condeming Bush for daring to try and listen in on their overseas phone calls. I've given you ample reason, that of a repeat of the likes of the Nazi war machine of the 30's & 40's. It is you that are chosing to ignore that potential.
You have made the comparison of the Islamic extremists to the Nazis, yes, but you have not actually given a reason why your comparison of current events to history is the only valid one. And stop assuming that just because you haven't convinced me you're correct I must then be ignoring history. I'm chooseing to not be quite so singularly selective as to what history I compare current events.
You give them an awful lot of credit. Double to triple the amount of new recruits? What makes you think they can so dramtically up their recruitment rate with American troops not there?
Again, another question I'm stunned that you'd even ask. Suffice to say, without our military intervention, they can recruit, train, and re-arm to their heart's content, without any obstrution or hiccup of impedence. This should fall into the category of what I'd dare say is "obvious", though I'll concede on how we all know how that term has been mutated by the likes of Xo
Which leads me back to a question I already asked, but you ignored. Where was this massive militant Islamic extremist uprising before September 11, 2001? I mean if all they need is a lack of American military intervention, why were they not a vast military force before September 11, 2001? Our military presence in the Middle East was not nearly then what it is now, and the terrorists had years to recruit with virtually no interference during the Clinton administration. So why now are they going to suddenly surge in numbers, doubling or even tripling in size, if our troops depart? Please explain.
And you expect me to believe your comparison of the terrorists to Nazis is accurate?
And you expect me to believe that its not?
Well, no, not if you really think Hitler was blindly shooting into the dark when he sent troops to the Rhineland. But don't expect me to believe you.
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Also, TATP has been used in terrorist attacks previously, including the attempted "shoe bomber" and the London subway attacks.
Mixing it at home seems a tad easier than getting it all past airport security and standing in an airplane lavatory, while the plane is in the air, to mix it. I'm just not buying it.
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"...You'd be surprised. I've been on flights where someone was in the bathroom for nearly the entire flight..."
Yes, but that for for becoming a full-fledged member of the mile-high club! :-)
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Also, TATP has been used in terrorist attacks previously, including the attempted "shoe bomber" and the London subway attacks.
Mixing it at home seems a tad easier than getting it all past airport security and standing in an airplane lavatory, while the plane is in the air, to mix it. I'm just not buying it.
Mixing it at home runs the risk of premature explosion , mixing it onsite with a disposable person doing the mixing obviates this risk.
What requirement of an explosive would make mixing it on an aircraft impossible? The enviornment is not all that diffrent and the explosive being unstable is hardly a reason to prefer premixing.
Is one of us an actual Chemist ? I am not , just an interested ametuer.
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I disagree, in time of war the emergency does justify sacrifices.
Not of liberty.
On the contrary , when I enlisted in the Military I gave up a large amount of liberty because I beleived it necessacery to my countrys defence . On a periodic basis we have instituted a draft which is the forced removal of these libertys . These sacrifices are much greater than the ones we are currently speaking of , how about looseing the right to speak across the borders in privacy? Only a very few of us will miss that .
But giveing up the right to decide for myself where I would live , what I would wear and what I would do with my weekend was a major impact on my life.
We have always accepted that some of us will give up some libertys for the greater good , what makes the current sacrifices worse than usual in simular circumstances?
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On the contrary , when I enlisted in the Military I gave up a large amount of liberty because I beleived it necessacery to my countrys defence
You choosing to give up your liberty voluntarily does not give you the authority to decide for others that they should have to give up their liberty. And you choosing to give up your liberty is not at all the same as the government or even a voting majority to decide to take liberty away from others.
On a periodic basis we have instituted a draft which is the forced removal of these libertys
Which was wrong. And that something wrong has been done in the past does not make it something we should do now or in the future.
These sacrifices are much greater than the ones we are currently speaking of , how about looseing the right to speak across the borders in privacy? Only a very few of us will miss that
Many people make overseas calls, not just a few. But that is beside the point. What does it matter how many people's liberty you trample on? It is still wrong whether it is done for one million or merely one.
But giveing up the right to decide for myself where I would live , what I would wear and what I would do with my weekend was a major impact on my life.
An impact you voluntarily chose to accept by enlisting in the military. Again, not the same as deciding for other people what "sacrifice" of liberty will be imposed upon them regardless of their choice.
We have always accepted that some of us will give up some libertys for the greater good , what makes the current sacrifices worse than usual in simular circumstances?
To say some of us will give up some liberty is one thing. To say that all of us should "sacrifice" some liberty is altogether something else. To choose to agree to not do certain things is the free exercise of the liberty to do or not do those things. The liberty to exercise rights does not only mean the liberty to speak out or to choose where one lives, or the like. It also means the liberty to choose not to do these things. It means each person has the right to choose for himself how to exercise his rights. It means you choosing to make a contractual agreement to exchange part of your life and part of your decisions about your life in exchange for recompense from the government is you exercising your rights. This is fundamentally and substantially different from taking liberty away from people without their consent, whether by government fiat or majority vote.
The greater good is not served by taking liberty away from the people. (And before you start talking about how we put people in jail, that isn't what I'm talking about, and you know it. Punishing people who violate the rights of others is not the same as expecting everyone in society to "sacrifice" their liberty. And I would add that even accused people and convicted criminals have rights that should be protected, and the abuse of those rights also does not serve the greater good.) Protecting and preserving the free exercise of rights is the greater good, and that cannot be served by doing the opposite of protecting and preserving the free exercise of rights. The integrity of a house is not protected by knocking a hole in the outside wall. A family is not protected by child abuse. Your cake is not kept by eating it. The greater good is not protected by "sacrificing" liberty. The greater good is protected when we protect liberty.
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I don't recall that you did (claim militant Islamists were trying to be like Nazis). But then, I don't recall having said or implied that you did.
Your query "When did the Islamic extremists pledge to become like the Nazis?" was a direct accusation/implication of such, in response to my clarification of "I'm advocating going after people who have pledged to do what I believe they have pledged to do in the future. A DISTINCT difference, I might add"
I believe my question was "When did the Islamic extremists pledge to become like the Nazis?" Notice that word between the words "become" and "the Nazis"?
LOL....yea, no accusations/implications here
I don't get to ask "When did the Islamic extremists pledge to become like the Nazis?" What's up with that?
Because you're purposely phrasing the question in such a way as to make a bogus implication on my part. A better question would be along the lines of "When did Islamic extremists start demonstrating similar traits and tactics that the Nazis employed?" A much more accurate question without the underlying misrepresentation of my position. The answer to that question largely was when Usama declared war on the U.S. specifically, and western civilization in general. It began occuring as more and more soldiers of militant Islam, most exemplified by AlQeada and the Iranian President, began engaging in systematic attacks on both U.S. & Israeli populations. Unlike Germany of course, Islamofascists aren't limited to just being AlQeada. It includes Baathists, Suuni nationalists, Hamas, Hezbollah, just to name a few. All with differing leaderships, but all with a generalized goal of wiping Israel & America off, and implimenting their version of a some global Islamic governance. Convert, be subjugated, or die being the only viable options. I recall listening to an excerpt of a high ranking AlQeada member declaring precisely that agenda
You have made the comparison of the Islamic extremists to the Nazis, yes, but you have not actually given a reason why your comparison of current events to history is the only valid one
Show me one more valid, in your opinion
Where was this massive militant Islamic extremist uprising before September 11, 2001?
You do grasp the concept of a malignancy? That's the most accurate analogy I can provide for you in this case. This uprising has been hitting us since the late 80's, early 90's. 911 was simply a wake up call.
But don't expect me to believe you
Ditto, I'm afraid
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You have made the comparison of the Islamic extremists to the Nazis, yes, but you have not actually given a reason why your comparison of current events to history is the only valid one
Show me one more valid, in your opinion
How about comparing Islamic extremism to Islamic extremism? A novel approach indeed. Quite frankly you don't have the grasp of history or political philosophy to make a valid comparison between Nazism and Islamic Militancy, which is perhaps worse than your attempt to compare the same to fascism.
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To say some of us will give up some liberty is one thing. To say that all of us should "sacrifice" some liberty is altogether something else. To choose to agree to not do certain things is the free exercise of the liberty to do or not do those things. The liberty to exercise rights does not only mean the liberty to speak out or to choose where one lives, or the like. It also means the liberty to choose not to do these things. It means each person has the right to choose for himself how to exercise his rights. It means you choosing to make a contractual agreement to exchange part of your life and part of your decisions about your life in exchange for recompense from the government is you exercising your rights. This is fundamentally and substantially different from taking liberty away from people without their consent, whether by government fiat or majority vote.
The greater good is not served by taking liberty away from the people. (And before you start talking about how we put people in jail, that isn't what I'm talking about, and you know it. Punishing people who violate the rights of others is not the same as expecting everyone in society to "sacrifice" their liberty. And I would add that even accused people and convicted criminals have rights that should be protected, and the abuse of those rights also does not serve the greater good.) Protecting and preserving the free exercise of rights is the greater good, and that cannot be served by doing the opposite of protecting and preserving the free exercise of rights. The integrity of a house is not protected by knocking a hole in the outside wall. A family is not protected by child abuse. Your cake is not kept by eating it. The greater good is not protected by "sacrificing" liberty. The greater good is protected when we protect liberty.
Aren't we basically talking about balance?
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I don't recall that you did (claim militant Islamists were trying to be like Nazis).
Whoa. Hold it right there. No. Let's get this part straight right now. You said, and I quote (http://debategate.com/new3dhs/index.php?topic=234.msg2358#msg2358): "Prince, when did I EVER claim that Islamofacists were identical to German Fascists? When did I ever opine that militant Islam is trying to copy Hitler & Nazi Germany?" To which I replied, "I don't recall that you did. But then, I don't recall having said or implied that you did." Just so we're completely clear, you did not say they were identical, did not say the one was trying to copy the other, and I never said you did.
Now then, you have been comparing the Islamic terrorists to the Nazis for some time now, going to far as to suggest that current efforts to stop them are akin to if someone had tried to stop the Nazis in the 1920s or 30s. The Islamic extremists are the Nazis of the future if we do nothing about them was the basic gist of your argument. And, long story short, you said (http://debategate.com/new3dhs/index.php?topic=234.msg2235#msg2235) "I'm advocating going after people who have pledged to do what I believe they have pledged to do in the future." And my question to that was "When did the Islamic extremists pledge to become like the Nazis?" Nothing about that was any sort of "bogus implication". Either you think the Islamic terrorists are like the Nazis and will become more so in the future if not stopped, or you do not. If the Islamic extremists are pledging to act like Nazis—the meaning of the word 'like' in this context being 'of a similar manner, analogous, bearing a resemblance, corresponding in some aspect(s)'—then when did they do so? This is not a trick question. You are the one comparing the terrorists to the Nazis, so why do you protest that I'm misrepresenting your position if I should say that you're claiming the terrorists are like the Nazis? If the Islamic extremists are comparable to the Nazis, how are they somehow also not like—the meaning of the word 'like' in this context being 'of a similar manner, analogous, bearing a resemblance, corresponding in some aspect(s)'—the Nazis. Either they are like the Nazis, or they are not.
A better question would be along the lines of "When did Islamic extremists start demonstrating similar traits and tactics that the Nazis employed?"
I don't see how that is a better question. You said we had to go after the terrorists because they are like the Nazis and will become more so if they are not stopped. When challenged on how you can condemn someone for future actions, you insisted the terrorists were analogous to the Nazis and that you advocated going after them based on what they had pledged to do. The direct question is the one I asked.
The answer to that question largely was when Usama declared war on the U.S. specifically, and western civilization in general. It began occuring as more and more soldiers of militant Islam, most exemplified by AlQeada and the Iranian President, began engaging in systematic attacks on both U.S. & Israeli populations. Unlike Germany of course, Islamofascists aren't limited to just being AlQeada. It includes Baathists, Suuni nationalists, Hamas, Hezbollah, just to name a few. All with differing leaderships, but all with a generalized goal of wiping Israel & America off, and implimenting their version of a some global Islamic governance. Convert, be subjugated, or die being the only viable options. I recall listening to an excerpt of a high ranking AlQeada member declaring precisely that agenda
Seems to me they are very much unlike the Nazis. They may hate Israel and Jews, but that isn't sufficient to make them similar enough to justify the comparison you're making. And the fact they are a number of small groups rather than one united national war machine is also a huge and quite substantial difference, imo.
You have made the comparison of the Islamic extremists to the Nazis, yes, but you have not actually given a reason why your comparison of current events to history is the only valid one
Show me one more valid, in your opinion
So, you're not going to give me a reason. Okay. Anyway, off the top of my head, I'd say we need to go back further than the 1930s to the end of World War I. Germany was defeated, and the Allies essentially punished Germany by placing the blame for the war on Germany and demanding it pay all the costs of the war. This made many Germans bitter, and eventually became controversial among the Allied countries. Of course the bitterness among the Germans, along with the world wide depression of the 1920s helped contribute mightily to the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party. The contention over the severe punishment of Germany and a desire to avoid war is what resulted in many people being willing to turn a blind to the rise of Nazis and their excursion into the Rhineland. (And frankly, those who wanted to avoid war were not wrong in that desire. The problem lie not in wanting to avoid another war, but in the fact that Hitler was ambitious and untrustworthy. If Hitler had quit at the Rhineland, those who argued for peace would now be considered wise rather than foolish.)
The point here being that attempting to squash the terrorists may in fact eventually cause them to unite and to start to genuinely become like the Nazis. I'm not advocating that we do nothing about the terrorists, I'm simply saying there is more historical precedent to consider than just the Nazis and World War II. We need to learn from history certainly, but one of the most important lessons of history is that no amount of planning and comparison will tell you all the consequences of current actions. There are always unintended consequences. And one of the lessons I see in history is that trying to control other people who disagree with you is a really prime way to create bad unintended consequences. This is among the reasons why I doubt your comparison of current events to history is the only valid one.
Where was this massive militant Islamic extremist uprising before September 11, 2001?
You do grasp the concept of a malignancy? That's the most accurate analogy I can provide for you in this case. This uprising has been hitting us since the late 80's, early 90's. 911 was simply a wake up call.
So are you saying there was a massive militant uprising before September 11, 2001, or not?
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Aren't we basically talking about balance?
I'm sure Plane was talking about balance, and I think I've seen you talk about it before. Me, no, I'm not talking about balance. At least, not in the sense of balancing liberty and security. There is no balance between liberty and security. To the extent that we have liberty, we have security. To the extent that we do not have liberty, we are not secure. You might argue that an abridgement of my liberty allows the government to protect my life, but even if that is true, it does not mean I am then safe or have security. To the extent that government can abridge my liberty in the name of protecting me, government can also abridge my liberty to attack me. Therefore, there is no balance. It is the protection of the free exercise of our rights that makes us secure. The abridgement of that liberty is the abridgement of our security.
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If the Islamic extremists are pledging to act like Nazis...
NO NO NO. I never said that, I never even implied that, so I'd appreciate it you'd stop trying to claim such. The Islamic extremists are pledging to act like Islamic extremists.......THAT happens to be comparable to acting like Nazis, IN THE VANE of desiring to rule the world, with their version of how it's to be governed
I don't see how that is a better question.
It is because it doesn't have the above bogus implication attached
You are the one comparing the terrorists to the Nazis, so why do you protest that I'm misrepresenting your position if I should say that you're claiming the terrorists are like the Nazis?
That's not what you're claiming. It's coming off as me claiming that the terrorists are purposely trying to act like Nazis, as if they admire Hitler and his war machine, something along those lines. I never made such a claim, and the continued inferrence that I did is becoming very irritating. Starting to remind me of how I supposedly despise legal immigration for daring to despise illegal immigration. so, perhaps we should cease our debate on this topic, at this time, and move to another, before either of us begin saying things we don't mean.
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The Islamic extremists are pledging to act like Islamic extremists.......THAT happens to be comparable to acting like Nazis, IN THE VANE of desiring to rule the world, with their version of how it's to be governed
So they are pledging to act comparable to Nazis. What-the-frak-ever. You're being entirely too literal here, even after I explained exactly what I meant. This is not my problem.
Starting to remind me of how I supposedly despise legal immigration for daring to despise illegal immigration.
I believe what I said was that since you said you were in favor of immigration being difficult that you wanted immigration to be difficult. Kinda like now, you assured me both that you held the position I said you did, and that I was misrepresenting your position to say that you held that position. Which is a really neat sort of confusion, but I could never figure out how it worked. Apparently, I still can't.
so, perhaps we should cease our debate on this topic, at this time, and move to another, before either of us begin saying things we don't mean.
I rarely say things I don't mean (unless I'm being obviously sarcastic), but you seem to think I mean things I don't say. Again, not my problem.
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On the contrary , when I enlisted in the Military I gave up a large amount of liberty because I beleived it necessacery to my countrys defence
You choosing to give up your liberty voluntarily does not give you the authority to decide for others that they should have to give up their liberty. And you choosing to give up your liberty is not at all the same as the government or even a voting majority to decide to take liberty away from others.
On a periodic basis we have instituted a draft which is the forced removal of these libertys
Which was wrong. And that something wrong has been done in the past does not make it something we should do now or in the future....
...The greater good is not served by taking liberty away from the people. (And before you start talking about how we put people in jail, that isn't what I'm talking about, and you know it. Punishing people who violate the rights of others is not the same as expecting everyone in society to "sacrifice" their liberty. And I would add that even accused people and convicted criminals have rights that should be protected, and the abuse of those rights also does not serve the greater good.) ...[/color]
Intresting that you anticipated my bringing up jail, as if you saw the same path of arguments I did.
I don't think that the draft was an injustice , for the same reason that jailing people is no injustice.
Punishment of wrongdoing is only a part of the reason for jail , I would argue not even the greater part. People who cannot be trusted withthe safety of their fellow citizens or who interrupt the flow of business have to be put out of the way and out of circulation for the sake of haveing a society that will function . The right of a society to cull a person and take his rights away is essentially the right of civilisation to exist, as individuals it behooves us well to insist that this function of civil life be undertaken with due process that minimises its frivolus and unnecery use.
The Draft is not at all intended to be a punishment , even though a drafted person might feel badly used . A society has the right to compell its needs be met wnen now and then it runs out of volentary resorces. A society that compells its every need will naturally have a lot of miserable individuals in it , as individuals it behooves us to insist that only the most genuine need be taken with compulson , inducements twards volenteerism are much superior as the self selection of individuals for duty allows the society to be defended with the exercise of individual choice. But when there is a shortfall and an unmet need that is severe and genuine will a society have no recourse but to end?
Individual rights can be protected by a society this is the highest purpose to which a society can be put, but there have been long running societys that did not protect individual rights and there are societys now that dont, as societys they do work , if the society that protects individual rights may not outcompete these that do not a process of natural selection may eradicate the freer societys leaveing the fitter less free societys to be more common .
What will become then of individual rights when individuals may not band themselves together successfully and totaliarian societys may outcompete?
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Intresting that you anticipated my bringing up jail, as if you saw the same path of arguments I did.
I try to anticipate. I've been through this sort thing enough times that I can sometimes pick out the more obvious counterarguments to what I say.
I don't think that the draft was an injustice , for the same reason that jailing people is no injustice.
I don't see how they are comparable.
Punishment of wrongdoing is only a part of the reason for jail , I would argue not even the greater part. People who cannot be trusted withthe safety of their fellow citizens or who interrupt the flow of business have to be put out of the way and out of circulation for the sake of haveing a society that will function
I'm sure what you're saying is obvious to you, but what are you saying? "People who cannot be trusted with the safety of their fellow citizens" what does that even mean? People who have guns? People who smoke? People who oppose the government? People "who interrupt the flow of business"? What? I mean, I can see a whole lot of people who might fit inside your rather vague phrases, depending on whom one asks. So I'm asking you. What are you talking about? What do you mean?
The right of a society to cull a person and take his rights away is essentially the right of civilisation to exist, as individuals it behooves us well to insist that this function of civil life be undertaken with due process that minimises its frivolus and unnecery use.
Um, no. Unless you think society/civilization is more important than the individual, that the individual serves society and indeed belongs to society. Maybe you believe that. I do not. First of all, society has no right whatever to take away an individual's rights, because rights are not something given or taken away. Second, individuals have the right to defend themselves from those who would violate the rights of individuals. They have a right to agree that an organization be formed to play the role of the protector of rights and to punish those who violate the rights of individuals. The reason they have this right is not the right of civilization to exist, whatever that means, not because they belong to society, but because they own the right to the free exercise of their rights. Once you start saying society has a right to cull a person and to take away his liberty for the sake of civilization, the you place yourself, your liberty, your life at the mercy of society that then has the power to decide anyone, even you, are a threat to the existence of civilization. This is, unfortunately, the path that America seems to be on, but that doesn't make it the one we should be on.
The Draft is not at all intended to be a punishment , even though a drafted person might feel badly used . A society has the right to compell its needs be met wnen now and then it runs out of volentary resorces.
I know I already said this, but, um, no. In this context, to compel behavior from people who have not chosen or do not choose to engage in that behavior is nothing short of enslavement. And no, society does not have the right to enslave individuals. Because when "society" compells people to meet the "needs of society" what is really happening is one group of individuals is deciding that other people should be made to do the work that the first group wants done. It does not matter if that group is government, a majority of voters or plantation owners. Individuals do not own other individuals. And no individual's rights are greater than any other individual's rights. And no group of individuals has rights greater than any other group of individuals. So no, society does not have the right to compel its "needs" be met when it runs out of voluntary resources.
But when there is a shortfall and an unmet need that is severe and genuine will a society have no recourse but to end?
I know I'm being repetitive, but, um, no. No recourse but to end? What a ridiculous question. First define what is a genuine need of society. And who gets to decide what these genuine needs are? Protect liberty and leave people alone, and society will adapt when crises arise. Individuals and society can be remarkably good at adapting when we let it. Only a rigid social structure, for example fascist or socialist societies, have cause to worry about not being able to meet its "needs". Look at them. They are the societies that constantly find they must take away liberty for the "good of society". It is the hallmark of totalitarian power structures. In its most horrible form it manifests as killing people in the name of protecting society, but it also manifests in other ways like censorship laws or government control of industry and business. In any case, among the important needs of society is the protection of rights of individuals. Protect the rights of individuals, and society will adapt to meet its needs because it will be free to do so. Only those intent on controlling life fear that a change in society will result in the end of life as we know it.
Individual rights can be protected by a society this is the highest purpose to which a society can be put, but there have been long running societys that did not protect individual rights and there are societys now that dont, as societys they do work , if the society that protects individual rights may not outcompete these that do not a process of natural selection may eradicate the freer societys leaveing the fitter less free societys to be more common
Contrariwise, if the society that does protect individual rights outcompetes those societies that do not protect individual rights, then a process of natural selection may eradicate the less free societies, leaving the free society to prosper.
What will become then of individual rights when individuals may not band themselves together successfully and totaliarian societys may outcompete?
You might as well wonder what will become of honest competition when cheaters "outcompete" honest athletes and only cheaters win. Does the honest competitor strike a blow for honest competors if he cheats to win a competition? Can a person cheat in the name of protecting honest competition? Can you keep your cake if you also eat it? No, of course not. So a free society does not "outcompete" totalitarian regimes by abridging the free exercise of the rights of individuals. That only leads to a win for the totalitarians as the free society becomes less free and more totalitarian. The protection of a free society lies in the protection of liberty.
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Responding to :
Universe Prince
Re: Will the West survive?
« Reply #63
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Whoa! I had no idea this thread was so interesting! I'm getting popcorn. ;-)
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As I said, we best stop now before one of us says something out of anger, that they really don't mean to say
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JS, my view, and only my view, is that application of your libertarian views might result in anarchy. Where is order? Where are hthe times where the right of society must triumphed over the rights of the few?
I agree with Sirs. This is my last post on this subject. The feldercarb is simply too daunting.
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JS, my view, and only my view, is that application of your libertarian views might result in anarchy.
Since JS is not libertarian, I am going to guess that you're talking to me. And I agree with you that at some point my views could lead to anarchy. And I'm okay with that because I agree with Henry David Thoreau. He says, right at the top of his "Civil Disobedience" essay, "I heartily accept the motto,—'That government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—'That government is best which governs not at all'; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." I realize that for most people the term 'anarchy' means some sort of frightening chaos where there is no social order resulting in murder, rape and the like going unpunished; and I am guessing that your use of it here is intended to carry some similar meaning. I'm not sure why people seem to think that protecting the free exercise of the rights of individuals must lead to no protection whatever for the liberty of individuals, except that it must be fear.
Where is order? Where are hthe times where the right of society must triumphed over the rights of the few?
And there it is. There are no times when the right of society must triumph over the rights of the few. I realize that this is a frightening concept for some. We, that is we as Americans and even as Westerners, have been taught for decades that we need government, that we need government to decide for us when the so-called "right(s) of society" must trump the rights of the few. We have been taught that with without government protect us from economic depression and robber barons, from slavery and the break up of the Union, from Nazis and communists, from terrorism and whatever horrible threats to civilization that government may tell us lurks out there, without government to protect us from these things civilization would die, chaos and death would run rampant, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. The basic idea is that without government there is no social order. The problem with that idea is there is no reason whatever to believe that is the case.
Personally, I cling to the hope that idea will someday start to fade the way that other stupid ideas taught by societies have begin to fade. The inferiority of women, the inferiority of people with darker skin, that there is something wrong with interracial relationships, that sexuality is something to hide, these are ideas that are fading from our world. That they are not yet gone is to our shame. Some day the notion that without government there is only chaos and no order, I hope, will also begin to fade. I hope that one day the extraordinary failures of government and the abuses of power and rights will no long be presented to children as proof of our need for government but for the ways in which government can be and has been used for damage.
But there is a more fundamental issue here. You speak of the rights of society. What rights does society have? To exist? To pursue what it feels is best for itself? Okay, let's say that society has such rights. Why does it have these rights? Because individuals have these rights. Society is individuals. And to protect the rights of individuals is to protect the rights of society. There is no point at which the rights of society outweigh they rights of individuals because to protect society is to protect the rights of the individual. This the is path of liberty. The path of society's rights outweighing that of the individual is the path of subjugation of individuals to the state, in short, the path of totalitarianism. As I have pointed out before, adopting the methods of totalitarian regimes does not keep a society free. It only makes that society more totalitarian and less free.
I'm not looking for a utopia, and I'm not saying we should eliminate all social structures. I'm not even saying we should abolish all government. I do believe we need social structures, and I think as long as there are humans about there will be social structures. One of the reasons I support liberty is that I believe people should be free to create their own social structures. And no, that doesn't mean murderers, thieves and rapists getting to do whatever they want. Protecting the rights of individuals means protecting them from being abused or taken away by murderers et al and by people in power. I think government is one way to handle protecting the rights of people, but not the only way.
I agree with Sirs. This is my last post on this subject. The feldercarb is simply too daunting.
The feldercarb? If you think discussing liberty is feldercarb, that's too bad. But perhaps you meant my comments are feldercarb. In which case, well, you can just frak off. I make no apologies for arguing the case of liberty and peace.
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"Unless you think society/civilization is more important than the individual, that the individual serves society and indeed belongs to society. "
I do not think that society/civilization is more or less important than individuals the two things are not comparable in importance .
An individual is unlikely to last any more than one century and no society or civilization has ever had a thought.
Thinking is an individual persuit and it is the spread of thoughts among individuals that cause humans to regulate their society's .
Human beings are social animals less social than bees more social than Lions . If we were not social and lived as individuals the way Orangutans do, the issue of rights would never arise. If we were more social ,as Bees are we would not even want rights.
But since it is our habit to form society's and also to think in terms of rights we have to have some rationing of our individual rights, to enable the society that we desire to function.
Few of us are comfortable as hermits , equally few of us are comfortable as possessions of a larger system.
So we are gathered in social groups , and we give to the group some rights over the individual , we can't avoid this without a basic change in human nature.
A society constructed to enable the maximum individual liberty within the group has a lot of advantages , a society structured to indoctrinate and controll individuals to the maximum has a very diffrent set of advantages.
Often perfection kills the good , If we are set to inflexibly and always maximize individual rights to the cost of all else , our society may loose the cohesion that brought it first into being . The philosophy's of totalitarian states don't have this problem at all, will this make them out last us , or out fight us?
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Prince, I'll say two things, premised by my observation that you're a faux intellectual with actually very little of substance to say. First, it should be obvious to all that you have lingering issues with your parents. Most of us master the tasks of autonomy in the family and don't project them ad nauseam onto to the political scene where they are just childish clutter. Second, it's a good thing you concede the need for SOME social structure because without it the mob would run you out of town.
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Prince, I'll say two things, premised by my observation that you're a faux intellectual with actually very little of substance to say.
This from Mr. Smartass Peacock himself. Your post, Domer, fits the very definition of 'faux intellectual'. Make no mistake, I think you're a intelligent guy, Domer. But sometimes you're an asshole, pretending to be smarter than people with whom you disagree, because climbing on your high horse is easier than mounting an actual substantive counterargument.
Despite your attempt to put me in my place, Domer, I can't help but notice that while I argued about the actual ideas involved in the issue, the best you could muster up was a self-righteous ad hominem attack. Take your own advice, and try to elevate the debate. The pseudo-psychological analysis bullsh-- not only makes you look pharisaic, it is a personal attack that adds nothing to the conversation (or to the forum for that matter) but animosity. There is no need for you to stoop to such tactics. The conceited demeanor of your post is beneath your character, and your refusal to discuss libertarian ideas is beneath your intellectual stature. To persist in both damages you and drags down the forum. Rise above, my friend, and elevate the debate.
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In my measured opinion, my comments about you, UP, were on the mark and appropriate. I demean your ideas because it's a forensically acceptable way to strip the nonsense from your verbiage. The psychological analogy was not a gratuitous ad hominem, which would serve no point, but a sober and substantive appraisal of both the origin and the stature of your vaunted ideas.
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As I said before, Domer, your post fits the very definition of 'faux intellectual'. If such comments seemed on the mark and appropriate to you, then perhaps that says something about your status an intellectual.
As for you demaning my ideas, you didn't even address my ideas. Yeah, I get that you're saying my ideas are childish, but again, where I discussed ideas, you turned to name calling, personal insults, and self-righteous verbal bullying. Of the two of us, Domer, the one acting childish is you. You insulted me, made a couple of insulting comments about me and my relationship with my parents, and then insulted me again. If you could be said to have addressed my ideas at all, you did so indirectly at best, and even then you could not bring yourself to say they were bad because they were wrong but merely to imply they were bad because they came from me. Indeed, rather than stripping any nonsense away, you in fact unloaded steaming pile of unnecessary nonsense.
Your pseudo-psychological babble was not a substantive appraisal of anything, but rather a directly insulting comment about me and not my ideas. It was nothing if not a gratuitous ad hominem and served no point, except perhaps to inflate your view of yourself as an intellectual superior.
If you really want to keep this psychological analysis on the table, I can start talking about how your comments reveal in you some serious self-esteem issues and a desire to compensate by trying to make yourself appear intellectually superior to anything you are unable and/or afraid to confront honestly. I could also explain that while I have ideas, am willing to support my ideas and willing to let my ideas come into discussion because I am also willing to be proved wrong, you, Domer, are apparently afraid to discuss my ideas or any ideas contrary to your own because you are afraid to have your comments submitted to any scrutiny that might prove you are wrong. Of course, none of this would be an attack on you, Domer, but rather a sober and substantive appraisal of both the origin and the stature of your childish comments about me.
If you were to actually demean my ideas, I would welcome it. At least then your comments would have some relevance to the discussion. By all means, demean my ideas, but leave your personal issues out of it.
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I stand by my comments. We disagree. One is not forced to address the particulars of every wayward train of thought in order to comment at all. A summarizing shorthand is perfectly appropriate. It's like saying, in so many words, "male bovine excrement," one of your favorites.
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It's like saying, in so many words, "male bovine excrement," one of your favorites.
A term I use for ideas, things people say, et cetera, not of people themselves. And no one is asking to produce commentary on everything said. All I'm suggesting is that you should criticize the ideas, not the insult the messenger. You know, elevate the debate.