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Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Yeh, lots of bad shit. Of course, there's other bad shit in the world. Ask yourself, would you rather go out at Abu Gharib or with a beheading?
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You act like it's all filet mignon and blowjobs during the time prisoners are held before beheading. What a stupid thing to say.
I do not understand why we can't have a conversation about one thing without you constantly saying, "Hey! But look at all this other bad shit!" Yeah. That shit is bad too, whether it's in the past or being carried out right now. I don't need to talk about why McVeigh is drawn to radical militia-type groups. He's a fucking poor white man who thinks the government hates him and loves minorities. I don't need to talk about why the klan committed acts of terrorism. They're poor white people who were always told they were better than jews and blacks and who desperately wanted to hold on to that belief in a changing world.
If the answer to why so many people commit violent acts in the name of Allah is as simple as they are poor, disaffected and angry at the West, who they have been told is waging a religious war against muslims and brown-skinned people in general, then ok. Maybe that's the answer. But I don't get why we can't have a discussion about all the evil shit so many mullahs do in the name of Islam to women and non-western non-believers. It's like it's perfectly acceptable to read an article by a muslim woman who was raped and had to flee her homeland so she wouldn't be subject to an honor killing. But when
I point to that article, all of a sudden it's a fucking problem.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
One of the things you are seeing with ISIS in terms of military strategy is a fundamentalist version of shock and awe, a policy we carried out behind a ton of armor and often from the safety of drone control rooms. A key goal for IS is to absolutely terrify people so they will surrender or run, making the military conquests much easier.
Similar approaches were used by Christians in the Balkan ethnic cleansing and the Ugandan genocide, though things like gang rapes (including of children) and mutilation were the Christians' preferred weapons of choice, and in each of those cases the places to run was much more limited so the death toll considerably higher. If they had our armor and our weaponry, more of their killing would be civilized like ours - you know, blowing people's limbs off so they bleed to death at a wedding, bombs filled with shrapnel so they shred a lot of flesh, whether they kill or maim. But we like to be smug and say we're civilized. It's an old story.
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What's funny about this is that your buddy Bill Maher was fired way back because he said that the people who flew the planes into the WTC weren't cowards, as every Western person was calling them at that point. He said committing suicide in furtherance of their cause (no matter how fucked up the cause) was the exact opposite of cowardice. But that is neither here nor there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Once again, not denying that lots of bad stuff happens in countries that are Islamic, but I fail to see Islam as intrinsically or particularly evil.
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Why are you even saying this. Roughly NO ONE has made this argument anywhere on this board. Jesus fucking Christ.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Also, if we really looked hard at what fuels political Islam, we would be dealing very, very differently with our good friends in Saudi Arabia, who are at the very root of the problems and always have been, and also very differently with many people in places like Lebanon, Turkey, and even Iran, where there are Islamic groups we could work with who would be a more effective alternative to some of the bad guys.
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Yes. Let's.
Sidd's right. This conversation has gone off the rails. One side is continually talking about the problem with a not insignificant part of the Islamic community, particularly in the Middle East, and wondering why that portion is so violent not just with acts of terrorism against us, but against women, people who live as neighbors who don't share the same beliefs, people who draw cartoons, people who write books, etc. Apparently no one can even ask that question because there are other groups of people out there who do evil shit too, like us. The other side keeps insisting that we stop talking about how Islam is evil. What the fuck? This is ridiculous.
TM
