Multiple terrorist attacks in Paris 13.11.2015 - Page 8

On November 20 2015 05:08 VanDerMeyde wrote: Show nested quote + On November 20 2015 04:47 Baalim wrote: You keep babbling on how bad Islam is... nobody has said Islam is a religion of peace or anything remotely positive about it, who the fuck are you even talking to? In my country, and especially in Sweden, there is a contest in how to be as most politically correct as possible. Every time some muslim kills a lot of people everyone will say "oh it has nothing to do with Islam" "they are not really muslims" bla bla bla. I just cant take this bullshit anymore

Totally, as I said, this problem rarely has any objective smart people, and mostly are polar opposites and both are incredibly stupid.

On November 15 2015 09:34 Spitfiree wrote: Show nested quote + On November 15 2015 00:43 traxamillion wrote:   On November 14 2015 15:40 Spitfiree wrote:   On November 14 2015 13:03 chris wrote: People were being beheaded, raped, and enslaved, with crops salted, long before the US existed. For a fun read , look up Saladin and the wars fought in the Muslim world as they built their own empires. This is also where assassins come from. Are you for real ? :D Did you really give Saladin as an example ? Holy fucking shit Give the guy that OPPOSED the Crusades as an example- you know the same crusades that killed babies and raped women. CHRISTIAN crusades. And now idiots all around the world want border closure in Europe, so refugees can suffer. Those same refugees that are fleeing from the terror that happened in Paris, except where they live thats something that happens on a daily basis. Hypocrite society. You deserve to be the sheep that you are Mad Arab? Border closure is completely logical. Islam is backwards and dangerous. Europeans want it out of their society (and it's not even that drastic they just don't want a flood of Muslims coming in. Who knows if all of these refugees are even what they say they are. Could be plenty of extremists creeping in under the guise of being displaced). Let Islamic peoples live in Islam controlled territorries and leave them be as they leave everyone else to themselves. If you want to live in the past fine but we decent people have no obligation to allow you to drag down modern society You do have obligations considering its your government that has been leading such politics for decades, its the fruit of their actions. Every single person that has brain and awareness has obligations. Of course you can be a shallow american who's first response to a humanitarian is " Mad Arab ? ". I feel jealous that im not so mind restricted as u are Of course you can argue about whos fault it is and go for days or you can watch a video of any international relations expert and shut up @Santafairy I have no idea how Baal has not called you an idiot yet. Its totally in his style, but since he hasn't. You sir are a brainwashed idiot living in fairy tales

Don't worry. He's not part of the left, but he already called me a racist, so that means he "wins" the discussion.

On November 17 2015 04:22 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + On November 16 2015 13:54 dogmeat wrote: i mean its sad when you were born into islam and have to go with it for your whole life, but anyone who beliefs in it in the west is a human scum and pos Ok after this Im done replying to this dumbass, he clearly isnt prepared to engage in an intelligent discussion

On November 15 2015 06:58 Baalim wrote: 1 - You continue to believe that your military incursions have anything to do with justice, and again I repeat to you that they are not, they are driven by political and corporate interests and the goal is profit, setting up regimes that are friendly towards us interests is the objective and the reason the CIA has been orchestrating coups since the 70s causing war, strife and resentment to the west in the area. 2 - Im not saying "dont send firefighters", Im saying that you arent firefighters, all you carry are buckets of fire... and by the way, YOU are on fire, how about putting you out first? 3 - Im not saying let them destroy themselves, I am saying this is not your war and you cannot help by massacring the side that is less favorable to you that coincidentally you deem "evil" When you see things as simple as seeing your enemy as evil and consider yourself to be the saviour you must know you are wrong, I dont remember who im paraphrasing here... and this is where you explain to me how ISIS beheads gays etc and the point goes over your head one more time.

Here's your problem, which I've also explained, but was lost on you. You think that because two things are bad, or not perfect, that they're equal. You're unable to see anything in degrees. You're more interested in having some irrelevant theory craft debate with dogmeat about how one holy book is just as bad as another holy book. If you can't see that Islamic extremism, Islamic totalitarianism, is a threat to civilization on a short list only with things like nuclear proliferation, disease, and famine, then I speculate that a part of your body is going soft, and it's not the part you can fix with a daily pill.

1. Maybe Iran or Russia's intervention will be driven by justice, then.

2. Don't give me "physician heal thyself." The US is not in a civil war that has killed 2% of its population and displaced 20%. There will always be problems everywhere on Earth. The US can continue working on its various problems, most of which pale in comparison to those of your motherland, whose in turn pale in comparison to those of Syria and the surrounding area.

3. You're saying to let them destroy themselves because that's what's happening and what's going to happen. If you do nothing, that's where we're headed. If you pushed someone out of an airplane and told the judge you didn't murder him, you only wanted to push him out of the plane, it wouldn't matter because what happens when you push someone out of a plane is that they die.

And yes, it's our war. No man is an island. The west drew the fucking map of the Middle East. Pumps hundreds of billions of dollars into Wahhabism and conservative regimes. Do you think that that, the theocratic control of all aspects of life, might have a little bit more to do with the way people over there "see" us (which doesn't matter - what do you care how somebody sees you? what role does vanity play in defeating extremism?) than the CIA staging a coup somewhere once?

Besides which, you do not get to decide whether it's your war when someone attacks you.

Starting wars because people were born in the wrong part of the desert or are the wrong kind of Muslim is not a defensible form of self-determination. You have some delusion where you believe that some radical totalitarian people, because they happen to be brown skinned, have an inalienable right to destroy their own countries and kill their fellow man, and the victims have an inalienable right to permanent residency in Europe, but nobody without a relative named Mohammed can do something about fixing the problems and saving that part of the region. If this is all stemming from your misinformed anarchism, I don't see what your beef is with US foreign policy when you sit there saying anyone else can do whatever the fuck they please.

Actually, I think I found your problem. This is not a case of the pot calling the kettle black. People aren't calling ISIS evil just because they're the other side. They are the "other" side because they are fighting and murdering people. Because they murder, massacre, rape, and torture people, not just as a political tool, but simply for the fuck of it. They are even doing this on an international level. If you can't tell that ISIS is pure evil, you don't know evil when you see it.

On November 17 2015 23:53 Liquid`Drone wrote: in regard to US foreign policy, the country has a very long and very consistent streak of rhetorically arguing for its principles while actually pursuing its interests. Wars/military involvement are sold to the population under the more or less truthful goal of helping the population (for the more, there's WW1/2/Korea/Rwanda, for the less there's pretty much every other military involvement I can think of, I guess like Afghanistan can be argued for), but (with the possible exception of Rwanda), there's pretty much never involvement without self interest, and sometimes (Vietnam, Iraq) the rhetoric is filled with deliberate lies and distortion.

I agree there are always differences between rhetoric and reality. But... helping what population? The population of the country gone to war with? I don't think that's true. In WW2, the country was attacked by Japan and mainly had the goal of defeating them. And the Third Reich declared war on the US, not the other way around. None of us was alive at the time, but in my understanding, that war was sold to the public very much in a jingoistic way, as well as a case of stopping evil. Not that we were fighting directly to save Hans Doe or something.

My point is that if you defeat Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, it doesn't matter what anybody believes about what happened or what misapprehensions people carry, you did something that was objectively good.

Korea and Vietnam were definitely portrayed as part of the struggle against communism. It happened to be the right thing to do in Korea as the country was fucking invaded, and it happened to be wrong in the case of Vietnam because Kissinger is a war criminal (among other reasons). Someone having lied or made a mistake in the past isn't an argument against doing the right thing now, despite what Baal would have us believe.

On November 18 2015 23:26 devon06atX wrote: ^ Very true that the vast majority of people that hold views similar to mine have most likely never experienced anything of this nature first hand. I guess I'm lucky enough to have the luxury to look at these things objectively and not be swayed by media propaganda and what have you. Don't mean that in a sarcastic way at all btw, just wanted to clarify. I would totally have a hate-on for any 'group' of people that instilled fear in my community. I like to think that I'd be above that line of reasoning, but I probably wouldn't be. That being said, I doubt any of the 'muslim-haters' here have any firsthand experience that they can relate to to justify their views.

This isn't about anecdotes, or I would point out one of my best friends is a black Muslim, but I won't do that because it isn't about anecdotes. This is not about you knowing a super friendly dentist who's an ethnic Arab. These are serious political issues. These are at a societal level. This is about extremism, and it's about fundamentalism, and it's about literally a class of people. The fact that there are people who can't openly talk about this without calling people who disagree with them ''muslim-haters'' and ''racist'' is a failure we owe to cultural marxism.

It's also ironic to call people victims of propaganda when the MSM is left-leaning.

On November 15 2015 19:19 Liquid`Drone wrote: what about family members of known terrorists? I mean these people are often patriarchal figures with large families. those families have members who may or may not be involved in the terrorist agenda. These family members have friends who will be very upset to learn about their demise. Like, I get that if there's a secret meeting in hidden shack between the two mountains with four known terrorists from different factions trying to coordinate a massive action then it's like, yeah, you're there on your own responsibility, but it just seems to me like that's not the typical scenario. Baal's hydra allegory is dead on. As long as there are like, any genuinely civilian casualities at all, then for each terrorist you kill, another (or more) will plop up in his place. Each civilian death grants legitimacy to the fight that the terrorists are fighting, each grants more legitimacy to their claim that no option is too extreme, each death grants more legitimacy to the opinion that our (democratic) populations deserve to be hit strong and hard right back for electing leaders that continue to bomb them. Of course it's fucking difficult as hell, because many current terrorists are in the 'can't be rehabilitated' camp. But the current situation, that's just leading up to perpetual war imo, and I'd rather take the moral high ground.

Yes. Let's take the moral high ground. Hundreds of innocent people shot in the cultural capital of Europe? Just turn the other cheek. Be the bigger man. Or rather, close your eyes and stick your fingers in your ears and wait for the problem to go away by itself.

When the US killed Osama bin Laden, Muslim views on US foreign policy took a hit. Maybe that means killing him was a mistake. I ask you, is this a tenable thesis?

On November 20 2015 06:17 spugru wrote: How are you not a conspiracy theorist when you believe 9/11 and Paris were false flag operations Spitfiree looks really really dumb in this thread.

learn to read
then judge the capabilities of someone's intelligence
quite sure Finland has the best educational system in Europe so you must really fall off the natural selection
never did i say i believe Paris was a false flag, too hard to comprehend I guess, all I said is there are potential arguments about it which doesn't mean it is so or that I believe it to be so - not gonna bother about 9/11 part at all

On November 20 2015 04:45 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + you think us foreign policy is terrible and also like Noam Chomsky, the guy whos opinion on international relations has been asked for @ every international relations topic by the USA government? that irony -_- Noam Chomsky is not only against US imperialism, but against the existence of your governments at all, he is an anarchist ffs, do you think anarchist support foreign invasions across the globe for economical and political reasons? lol

im well aware of his opinions, but these are somewhat irrelevant in that sentence either way. its just spitfres attempt to sound smart and sophisticated that went wrong

On November 20 2015 04:47 Baalim wrote: You keep babbling on how bad Islam is... nobody has said Islam is a religion of peace or anything remotely positive about it, who the fuck are you even talking to?

thread about muslim terrorist attacks, why do i even bother to talk about islam?
b/c you among the others are constantly trying for find another reasons for their actions besides religion. you brought up comparison with christianity into this with all your knowledge and expert bible analysis

On November 20 2015 05:33 Stroggoz wrote: I agree with Baal on drone strikes, i don't think any serious observer would disagree. As for Islam being more barbaric than Christianity, i have to disagree. And there are different types of Islam and Christianity connected to different institutions. Some are violent, and crazy, some are not. in 2003 a group of powerful and fanatic christian fundamentalists invaded iraq, which has killed over 700,000 people. That's one example of extremist christian violence, but there are others. ISIS has so far, killed many people but not as many as the neo conservatives who draw their power from christian fundamentalism in America. I read a book today by Syrian historian Sami Moubayed, called 'under the black flag'. He has lived under ISIS's regime and describes Abu Bakr al Baghdadi's regime as almost identical to Saddam Husseins in its practices of torture and savagery, which is understandable, since he learn't all his techniques living in Husseins regime and he uses former Baathist party members as his henchmen. We should remember most of Europe and the neo-cons like Raegan and bush senior supported Saddam Hussein up until 1990, germany and america even gave him weapons of mass destruction like mustard gas. You can read this in 'The great conquest of civilization' by Robert Fisk. ISIS grows out of something that has built up over hundreds of years, from a culmination first of salafi-wahhabi religion which was founded by the Saud family and some crazy religious fanatic. Their conquests in the middle east eventually led to the founding of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which are spreading this violent religion everywhere they can. America and Britian, the west in general have always opposed movements that try to seek to nationalize their resources, that is 'secular nationalism', so they support crazy fanatic totalitarian regimes like the saud family. It's a cheap way to conduct an imperialist policy. You keep get an elite group to do your dirty work for you, and let them keep a little of the money. America supported Al Qaeda in 1979 in their plan to draw russia into a war they couldnt win. This plan was drawn up by the American statesman zbigniew breziznski. in 1982, the Hafez al Assad regime in syria massacred their opposition who were wahhabi salafists, which then vowed revenge and joined Al qaeda and bin laden in afghanistan. Now they are back as Al Nusra. ISIS was a branch off from Al qaeda, which is even more extremist than the Al qeada group is. ISIS is what you get when you rape a country as hard as the mongols did in 1258. It's easily predictable that when you destroy a country you will turn them into a bunch of fanatics. Any student of history will know this. And their are other factors which have helped create ISIS, like the ones i have pointed out. It's quite complex. I havn't posted very often on LP and hardly visit anymore, but i came back and found a thread on one of my topics so i thought i would comment. One of the reasons i left is people like dogmeat. I am no fan of being around stupid people. People like you don't respond to argument, for you to look in the mirror and think about what your responsible for is crazy, since it would be rational. that's why you blame problems on arabs and their inferior culture or whatever it may be. This is why the powers in Europe still rape the poorer nations with their neo-colonial policies.

i love how you blame christianity for terrible us foreign policy. yet when it comes to isis etc, you search for every reason but islam. you even use the term wahhabism, which is just a fancy term for following islam fundamentals. pretty much what chomsky would said

i take being called stupid by a syndicalist as a compliment

Santafairy, I think you are a little misguided in this and I think Baal is far closer to the truth. I've enjoyed all your previous posts (not this thread) and I think you need to take a look again at how you are viewing this (type of) issue.

You seem to have it ingrained into you that even if the USA made mistakes in the past, now they're trying to help people. This has never been the case of the USA or really any other country (and it never will be), every other thing in your history (and ours) has been in self interest. You got involved in WW1 and WW2 to varying degrees before getting troops on the ground involved? Why? Because it was in your interest to see the allies win both times, it was only when your hand was forced that boots were on the ground and you were involved. Remember Germany declared war on the United States in WW2, not the other way around. There is some belief among Americans that you go around saving the world because you're the land of the free, its just not true and I believe it's so far ingrained into you that you can't see the simple truth that every country does what is in its self interest. Western influence in the middle east has destabilized the region. Why is Saudi Arabia allowed to act the way it does, so barbaric? Because it suits your country and my country to have the people who are running Saudi continue running it.

I don't want to get too involved with bringing up random points so you can just make one comment and deflect everything I've said, just take a step back and try to look at it from someone elses point of view rather than someone who has been brought up in an oversized bubble of a country (this isn't supposed to be offensive, it is true though, all your influences come from the same people spewing the same rhetoric again and again that you never get to question the validity of it). I think you will understand that this is nowhere near as black and white as you think it is.

One point I will address directly is when you mentioned a mistake made was leaving Saddam in power after the first gulf war... That wasn't the plan its just Geopolitics, politically you (we) had the mandate to invade kuwait and take it back from Iraq, we had other arab countries supporting this, but we had no support from the countries in the region to invade Iraq to topple Saddam, because he invaded Kuwait. Countries don't have a right to just choose whether someone should run another country. Of course this is only half the story, the US believed that after being beaten so quickly and completely in Kuwait that there would be an uprising and Saddam would be removed, just you wouldn't have to invade Iraq to do it. You were unprepared for the ability of Saddam Hussein to hold on to power and keep everyone in line. I believe the US helped start an uprising and bombled the entirity of Saddams fleeing army across the bridge to Iraq (in cold blood) in order to help this uprising succeed. However once again politically after kuwait was taken back it wasn't acceptable to continue helping the uprising you had started in Iraq so to a certain extent you just crossed your fingers and hoped it worked, it didn't they were all massacred and two hundred and fifty thousand more poople died. Bush stated
“There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: and that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations' resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_uprisings_in_Iraq

This story that you're being sold that the USA is trying to help people around the world... It's a lie, unless the USA has just changed its stripes in the last 10 years or w/e because I can bring examples of when the USA acts in self interest but claims otherwise (engineering wars, meddling for self interest in other countries with no care for civilians/liberty/rule of law (in their country) etcetc) from pretty much every other point in your history. I mean just look at the Monroe doctrine, on the face of it it's saying that no european power should be allowed to meddle in the Americas, reading between the lines what it's saying is "only the USA" from now on are allowed to meddle with the Americas.

You're reading the apple pie American airbrushed version of history Santafairy, not the true facts.

The U.S. is I think the biggest distributor of "Aid" all over the world, weapons food etc. They've done so much for the countryside here in the Philippines thru different government and non government agencies and yes they don't have U.S. bases here anymore, we kicked them out a decade ago. Yes, they do help people more than Islamic countries sorry. Whether its some ploy for future use, well I'll let the conspiratards take over on the subject.

On November 20 2015 13:56 KeyleK_uk wrote: Santafairy, I think you are a little misguided in this and I think Baal is far closer to the truth. I've enjoyed all your previous posts (not this thread) and I think you need to take a look again at how you are viewing this (type of) issue. You seem to have it ingrained into you that even if the USA made mistakes in the past, now they're trying to help people. This has never been the case of the USA or really any other country (and it never will be), every other thing in your history (and ours) has been in self interest. You got involved in WW1 and WW2 to varying degrees before getting troops on the ground involved? Why? Because it was in your interest to see the allies win both times, it was only when your hand was forced that boots were on the ground and you were involved. Remember Germany declared war on the United States in WW2, not the other way around. There is some belief among Americans that you go around saving the world because you're the land of the free, its just not true and I believe it's so far ingrained into you that you can't see the simple truth that every country does what is in its self interest. Western influence in the middle east has destabilized the region. Why is Saudi Arabia allowed to act the way it does, so barbaric? Because it suits your country and my country to have the people who are running Saudi continue running it.

I literally just posted that Germany declared war on the USA. What bleeding heart point are you honestly trying to make? Imperial Japan and the Third Reich did nothing wrong until the USA forced them into war?

There's also at least one sentence about Wahhabism and oil money in every post I make. What's your grand suggestion? That the developed world stops driving cars tomorrow? Overnight we could either destroy everyone's economy or turn every Middle Eastern country into a beautiful copy of Turkey.

On November 20 2015 13:56 KeyleK_uk wrote: One point I will address directly is when you mentioned a mistake made was leaving Saddam in power after the first gulf war... That wasn't the plan its just Geopolitics, politically you (we) had the mandate to invade kuwait and take it back from Iraq, we had other arab countries supporting this, but we had no support from the countries in the region to invade Iraq to topple Saddam, because he invaded Kuwait. Countries don't have a right to just choose whether someone should run another country. Of course this is only half the story, the US believed that after being beaten so quickly and completely in Kuwait that there would be an uprising and Saddam would be removed, just you wouldn't have to invade Iraq to do it. You were unprepared for the ability of Saddam Hussein to hold on to power and keep everyone in line. I believe the US helped start an uprising and bombled the entirity of Saddams fleeing army across the bridge to Iraq (in cold blood) in order to help this uprising succeed. However once again politically after kuwait was taken back it wasn't acceptable to continue helping the uprising you had started in Iraq so to a certain extent you just crossed your fingers and hoped it worked, it didn't they were all massacred and two hundred and fifty thousand more poople died. Bush stated “There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: and that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations' resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_uprisings_in_Iraq

I am aware that removing Saddam was not the plan in the first Gulf War. That's what makes it a mistake that he was left in power. If your mechanic says your brake lines need repaired and you don't have it done, then you Paul Walker your car into a tree, it can be said that you made a mistake, not despite that, but because repairing your brake lines was just "never the plan." This is a pretty common way to understand a mistake. It shouldn't be controversial to you in this case given that you just told us the hope was for the Iraqi people to do it themselves, and that never came to pass, and we went into the country a second time and removed him later.

Countries do have a right to choose who runs other countries. They in fact have an obligation to do so. Do you know why they have the right to? Ironically because governments don't have rights. They're not people. They don't have the right to rape their populace and fuck up their region with impunity. Why should you think a government has the right to do whatever it pleases? The Baathist regime 1) committed genocide 2) had and used WMDs 3) invaded its fucking neighbor, no it attacked multiple neighbors, and you don't suppose these things brought their legitimacy into question? I'm seriously puzzled by how morally fashionable cowardly bystanding has become.

On November 20 2015 13:56 KeyleK_uk wrote: This story that you're being sold that the USA is trying to help people around the world...

I can't read the rest of this when you open with such a cock-eyed misunderstanding of what I'm saying while apparently calling me a puppet or propagandist. If you want a refutation about US foreign aid, it looks like you can ask whamm!, but I'm not going to address it because it's irrelevant. (The Monroe Doctrine. I mean, really.)

I'm talking about something very specific. What's the right thing to do in Syria now. If you have an alternative or supplement to military intervention against the group that's carving a country out of other countries in the name of Islamic nihilism and attacking everyone around it, if you want to make a salient point on current events, that would be really cool. If not, I will ring you when I need advice to give Thomas Jefferson about the impressment of US sailors by the Royal Navy.

let's move on guys there'll be a new thread each month anyway

It's not a debate anyway. It's a shouting contest. Dunno why I wasted my time posting in this stupid thread.

On November 20 2015 05:52 Stroggoz wrote: Show nested quote + On November 17 2015 23:53 Liquid`Drone wrote: in regard to US foreign policy, the country has a very long and very consistent streak of rhetorically arguing for its principles while actually pursuing its interests. Wars/military involvement are sold to the population under the more or less truthful goal of helping the population (for the more, there's WW1/2/Korea/Rwanda, for the less there's pretty much every other military involvement I can think of, I guess like Afghanistan can be argued for), but (with the possible exception of Rwanda), there's pretty much never involvement without self interest, and sometimes (Vietnam, Iraq) the rhetoric is filled with deliberate lies and distortion. The bombing of afghanistan was one the most immoral acts in modern history, in my view. It was predicted that the bombing would put 2.5 million extra afghans into starvation. It didn't happen though, but that doesn't stop the action from being terribly unethical. As for Rwandan genocide, the party line given by US, EU and UN officials was that they didn't do anything to stop the atrocities. This is false, both the UN and American media have lied to the point that would make stalin proud. The Tutsi leader Paul Kagame is one of the most sadistic torturers in modern history. He invaded rwanda from uganda, assassinated the rwandan president by rpging his plane, and then preceded to carry out a genocide where most who died were Hutu.. This is ignored by the UN war tribual on rwanda and western intellectuals. 20 years later he is still one of the west's favourite dictators (gets his picture taken with bill gates at the economic forum ). And he's been plundering the congo ever since, where 6-10million have died since 1995. There's a good book on this called 'enduring lies' by edward herman and david peterson.

I was no fan of the invasion of Afghanistan. But I do think it's at least possible to argue for the legitimacy of it, both from a political sciency view (US was attacked) and from a moral perspective (betterment of afghani lives impossible without ousting the taliban, even if it creates temporary problems, enabling the afghanis to become masters of their own destiny is a long term good).
Now, I'm fundamentally skeptical towards bombing (well, almost any non-defensive military action basically), because the inevitable civilian casualities will always create more hatred and tension, but at the same time, what are the options? Could the US just tolerate that the Taliban was ruling Afghanistan and harboring terrorist leaders who were plotting how to inflict most possible damage towards them?

Obviously they should never have created what eventually became them back in 79, obviously they should not have deliberately armed the Afghanis with just enough weaponry to defend against the Soviets but not enough weaponry to repel them (I don't remember where other than it being a source I considered trustworthy, but I recall reading about how the US intentionally avoided giving the Afghanis some particular anti-air missile because if the Soviets kept losing helicopters they would be more likely to withdraw quicker, and the US wanted the war to last as long as possible), obviously mostly any current hellhole on earth can wholly or partially be attributed to some geopolitical gameplay by the major powers, cold war was dirty as fuck, but still it's like, while we got here because of interventionism, what amount of civilian suffering, 'our' fault or not, should we currently tolerate? Would there be any possible way of reforming and moderating the Taliban without taking them out? I don't know this stuff, but what I'm saying is just that, unlike Iraq and Vietnam and multiple other scenarios where it's hard to find a single true, idealistic selling point for US military involvement, it's possible to make a different argument for Afghanistan.

As for Rwanda, I don't really know enough about the conflict to engage in a real discussion, because it's a really really complex conflict and my knowledge is rudimentary. But I do know that for example the shooting of the plane you refer to is a contested issue - in 2012 a French court ruled from the ballistics that the shots originated from a Hutu-controlled area - thus that Kagama was not involved. However, it does stand out as somewhere the US intervened (but very lacklustry so, and probably for this very reason) without much being at stake for them. Then again, from quickly wikiing, I'm seeing that the entire US effort largely seemed focused around saving US citizens, so I guess they shouldn't really be part of the rhetorically idealistic camp anyway. ;p The 'majority died were hutu' also seems contested - although the numbers of dead-estimates also seem to vary from 500000 to 1.1 million, so whatever, hard to know.

thread about muslim terrorist attacks, why do i even bother to talk about islam? b/c you among the others are constantly trying for find another reasons for their actions besides religion. you brought up comparison with christianity into this with all your knowledge and expert bible analysis

I said why do you keep repeating how bad is Islam when in this thread I havent seen anybody saying things like "they are not real muslims" or "terrorism has no faith", I think everybody in this thread agrees that Islam is the most violent religion in our time.

And yes there are other reasons why they attack, and that is the west imperialism and constant military presence in their region, it is not the only one, but a big one, along with their faith.

Santafairy, as for the first post you replied to, both WW1 and WW2 were largely sold to the american public as efforts to help free the world from tyrrany. I didn't really mean it as liberating the germans or japanese, but as liberating the countries invaded by them. Particularly in WW1 was the government propaganda towards the american population massive to build support for conscription. And yeah the US didn't actually engage until they were attacked/declared war upon, but when they did, the effort to sell the good vs evil, of saving the world from tyrrany (which in the case of WW2 genuinely has some merit) story was massive.

As for the second post, that post of mine was specifically regarding drone strikes. (Well, any type of 'surgical bombing' that happens to have 'unintended civilian casualities'). I don't believe that these attacks are instrumental towards stopping more incidents like the Paris terror attacks, rather I think they are instrumental in causing more of these types of incidents, because they invariably create hatred, which is pretty much the prime ingredient in any terrorist's mind. And please don't equate this position to me thinking that we should do nothing, because at no point did I say such a thing. I just have little faith in military solutions alone, especially drone strikes or bombing raids, solving this issue at all.

I even kinda think that drone strikes are very likely to result in more retaliation towards civilian targets specifically because there are no military casualities. If the US is able to conduct warfare without soldiers getting killed, then the US will not feel the domestic pressure to disengage (once again, vietnam-iraq). Basically, if there are no military targets for people fighting against american (or western) involvement in a region, then they are only left with civilian targets. (And please don't equate this to me defending their actions, I'm merely trying to understand so that we can act in a way that makes these types of terrorist attacks less likely to happen. )

How the fuck did this turn from Islamic extremism to the states history of imperialism?

lol

pro-tip - don't discuss geopolitical shit with shouters.

hey if you read the thread you can see how it happened

and it is relevant, because part of the discussion is to what degree islam itself is part of the problem or entirely the problem. For example if you're arguing that while Islam has certain warlike-martyrdom-cherishing aspects to it, it's very possible for Muslim countries to be peaceful, it makes perfect sense to point to how it's the middle eastern muslims who are by far most prone to terrorism - the same group who happen to live in a part of the region which has been torn asunder on multiple occasions by geopolitics. Meanwhile, while I'm not claiming that muslims in south east asia have been entirely peaceful, the fact is that Indonesia is the country in the world with most muslims, but it's not nearly as plagued by acts of terror. Malaysia, mostly peaceful as well. In Myanmar, you even have Buddhists persecuting Muslims.

These examples imo do show that a country having a majority Muslim population does not necessarily entail it being a particularly violent country.

However, recent history is riddled with current examples of how in the context of warfare/rebellion, there are aspects of Islam that makes it a particularly dangerous religion, because there are ways of interpreting it (and yes, muslim scholars will happily point to areas where IS is in great conflict with the Quran. http://binbayyah.net/english/2014/09/24/fatwa-response-to-isis/ or http://lettertobaghdadi.com/14/english-v14.pdf ) But history is also rife with examples of Islam peacefully coexisting with other religions, at least compared with other contemporary religions.

Anyway, the reason why these historical discussions are relevant is because history should color your contemporary world view. But this also goes both ways - people also tend to color their historical view based on their contemporary understanding. And this isn't really weird, historical events are, with few exceptions, open for interpretation, and everybody is likely to make mental connections that rationalize a historical event to make it fit their personal world view, although sometimes, if a piece of information is sufficiently likely to be true and sufficiently at discord with your current idea, you actually adjust the idea instead. And thus, whatever your political agenda is, if you want to convince people that you are correct, you want to present as many pieces of evidence as you can, historical and contemporary and the relation between them, that back up the world view you are trying to make people adopt.

This is also why the discussions relating christianity earlier were of importance. Because if you showcase how in the medieval age Christianity was just as brutal as Islam was (and here it is easy to find historical examples to back up either point of view - history is so large that everything has happened on many occasions, and there doesn't actually exist statistics from year 650 - 1700 over how many people died at the hands of either religion, besides even that would be wholly up for interpretation because like, did native americans die at the hands of christianity or not? etc.. ) then you've showcased how clearly, that religion managed to evolve, because current day Christianity is not violent in the way medieval christianity was. (Or is it? To what degree does american imperialism constitute christian violence? ) And thus you've established the principle that religions can evolve - which is obviously relevant to Islam. If it's not static, it's possible to influence it, and then it what direction do we influence it?

Then from my point of view, one great historical, social, ubiquitous truth is that whatever feelings people are subjected to also tend to be the feelings they themselves subject others to. Thus, from my point of view, if you accept the notion that religions can evolve and that they are influenced by their surroundings, the best way to turn Islam away from war, hatred and ignorance is to be at peace with them, love them, and educate them. Similarly, from my point of view the best way to turn the religion into even more war, hatred and ignorance is to wage war on them hate them, and be ignorant of them. And thus also, the people who argue that there can be no peaceful coexistence, some of these people being highly intelligent and in need of a logical foundation for their world view, will be inclined to see Islam as, and argue that Islam is, more staticly warlike than what someone like myself would be inclined to do.

Indonesia threated boat refugees the same way as Saudi-Arabia, Kuwait etc do now. "not our problem".

On November 20 2015 10:31 dogmeat wrote: Show nested quote + On November 20 2015 04:45 Baalim wrote:   you think us foreign policy is terrible and also like Noam Chomsky, the guy whos opinion on international relations has been asked for @ every international relations topic by the USA government? that irony -_- Noam Chomsky is not only against US imperialism, but against the existence of your governments at all, he is an anarchist ffs, do you think anarchist support foreign invasions across the globe for economical and political reasons? lol im well aware of his opinions, but these are somewhat irrelevant in that sentence either way. its just spitfres attempt to sound smart and sophisticated that went wrong   On November 20 2015 04:47 Baalim wrote: You keep babbling on how bad Islam is... nobody has said Islam is a religion of peace or anything remotely positive about it, who the fuck are you even talking to? thread about muslim terrorist attacks, why do i even bother to talk about islam? b/c you among the others are constantly trying for find another reasons for their actions besides religion. you brought up comparison with christianity into this with all your knowledge and expert bible analysis   On November 20 2015 05:33 Stroggoz wrote: I agree with Baal on drone strikes, i don't think any serious observer would disagree. As for Islam being more barbaric than Christianity, i have to disagree. And there are different types of Islam and Christianity connected to different institutions. Some are violent, and crazy, some are not. in 2003 a group of powerful and fanatic christian fundamentalists invaded iraq, which has killed over 700,000 people. That's one example of extremist christian violence, but there are others. ISIS has so far, killed many people but not as many as the neo conservatives who draw their power from christian fundamentalism in America. I read a book today by Syrian historian Sami Moubayed, called 'under the black flag'. He has lived under ISIS's regime and describes Abu Bakr al Baghdadi's regime as almost identical to Saddam Husseins in its practices of torture and savagery, which is understandable, since he learn't all his techniques living in Husseins regime and he uses former Baathist party members as his henchmen. We should remember most of Europe and the neo-cons like Raegan and bush senior supported Saddam Hussein up until 1990, germany and america even gave him weapons of mass destruction like mustard gas. You can read this in 'The great conquest of civilization' by Robert Fisk. ISIS grows out of something that has built up over hundreds of years, from a culmination first of salafi-wahhabi religion which was founded by the Saud family and some crazy religious fanatic. Their conquests in the middle east eventually led to the founding of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which are spreading this violent religion everywhere they can. America and Britian, the west in general have always opposed movements that try to seek to nationalize their resources, that is 'secular nationalism', so they support crazy fanatic totalitarian regimes like the saud family. It's a cheap way to conduct an imperialist policy. You keep get an elite group to do your dirty work for you, and let them keep a little of the money. America supported Al Qaeda in 1979 in their plan to draw russia into a war they couldnt win. This plan was drawn up by the American statesman zbigniew breziznski. in 1982, the Hafez al Assad regime in syria massacred their opposition who were wahhabi salafists, which then vowed revenge and joined Al qaeda and bin laden in afghanistan. Now they are back as Al Nusra. ISIS was a branch off from Al qaeda, which is even more extremist than the Al qeada group is. ISIS is what you get when you rape a country as hard as the mongols did in 1258. It's easily predictable that when you destroy a country you will turn them into a bunch of fanatics. Any student of history will know this. And their are other factors which have helped create ISIS, like the ones i have pointed out. It's quite complex. I havn't posted very often on LP and hardly visit anymore, but i came back and found a thread on one of my topics so i thought i would comment. One of the reasons i left is people like dogmeat. I am no fan of being around stupid people. People like you don't respond to argument, for you to look in the mirror and think about what your responsible for is crazy, since it would be rational. that's why you blame problems on arabs and their inferior culture or whatever it may be. This is why the powers in Europe still rape the poorer nations with their neo-colonial policies. i love how you blame christianity for terrible us foreign policy. yet when it comes to isis etc, you search for every reason but islam. you even use the term wahhabism, which is just a fancy term for following islam fundamentals. pretty much what chomsky would said i take being called stupid by a syndicalist as a compliment

i don't blame US foreign policy on just christianity. I blame it mostly on the concentrations of power from its private and state institutions, but that's a long story. As for ISIS, of course islam is a reason for its creation. There are a lot of other reasons too, like the one's i pointed out. To blame any violence on just religion is not true in either of these cases. There are always complex reasons. As for wahhabism, every serious scholar and historian-not just chomsky, uses the term, how can they not?

On November 21 2015 06:59 Liquid`Drone wrote: Show nested quote + On November 20 2015 05:52 Stroggoz wrote:   On November 17 2015 23:53 Liquid`Drone wrote: in regard to US foreign policy, the country has a very long and very consistent streak of rhetorically arguing for its principles while actually pursuing its interests. Wars/military involvement are sold to the population under the more or less truthful goal of helping the population (for the more, there's WW1/2/Korea/Rwanda, for the less there's pretty much every other military involvement I can think of, I guess like Afghanistan can be argued for), but (with the possible exception of Rwanda), there's pretty much never involvement without self interest, and sometimes (Vietnam, Iraq) the rhetoric is filled with deliberate lies and distortion. The bombing of afghanistan was one the most immoral acts in modern history, in my view. It was predicted that the bombing would put 2.5 million extra afghans into starvation. It didn't happen though, but that doesn't stop the action from being terribly unethical. As for Rwandan genocide, the party line given by US, EU and UN officials was that they didn't do anything to stop the atrocities. This is false, both the UN and American media have lied to the point that would make stalin proud. The Tutsi leader Paul Kagame is one of the most sadistic torturers in modern history. He invaded rwanda from uganda, assassinated the rwandan president by rpging his plane, and then preceded to carry out a genocide where most who died were Hutu.. This is ignored by the UN war tribual on rwanda and western intellectuals. 20 years later he is still one of the west's favourite dictators (gets his picture taken with bill gates at the economic forum ). And he's been plundering the congo ever since, where 6-10million have died since 1995. There's a good book on this called 'enduring lies' by edward herman and david peterson. I was no fan of the invasion of Afghanistan. But I do think it's at least possible to argue for the legitimacy of it, both from a political sciency view (US was attacked) and from a moral perspective (betterment of afghani lives impossible without ousting the taliban, even if it creates temporary problems, enabling the afghanis to become masters of their own destiny is a long term good). Now, I'm fundamentally skeptical towards bombing (well, almost any non-defensive military action basically), because the inevitable civilian casualities will always create more hatred and tension, but at the same time, what are the options? Could the US just tolerate that the Taliban was ruling Afghanistan and harboring terrorist leaders who were plotting how to inflict most possible damage towards them? Obviously they should never have created what eventually became them back in 79, obviously they should not have deliberately armed the Afghanis with just enough weaponry to defend against the Soviets but not enough weaponry to repel them (I don't remember where other than it being a source I considered trustworthy, but I recall reading about how the US intentionally avoided giving the Afghanis some particular anti-air missile because if the Soviets kept losing helicopters they would be more likely to withdraw quicker, and the US wanted the war to last as long as possible), obviously mostly any current hellhole on earth can wholly or partially be attributed to some geopolitical gameplay by the major powers, cold war was dirty as fuck, but still it's like, while we got here because of interventionism, what amount of civilian suffering, 'our' fault or not, should we currently tolerate? Would there be any possible way of reforming and moderating the Taliban without taking them out? I don't know this stuff, but what I'm saying is just that, unlike Iraq and Vietnam and multiple other scenarios where it's hard to find a single true, idealistic selling point for US military involvement, it's possible to make a different argument for Afghanistan.

If we want to get rid of the Taliban because its undemocratic then the safest option would be to give financial support to internal liberal democratic resistance in Afghanistan, if there is any. I do not think the Afghanistan war had any legitimacy. Suppose we want to bomb a country because it's harboring terrorists. Well, no one accepts that argument when the west harbors terrorists. Like, for example Orlando Bosch, a terrorist that blew up an airliner and was harbored by the Bush administration. This does not give Afghanistan the right to invade the US and start bombing the place.

Afghanistan invasion had less arguments than the Iraq invasion which had none. And if the USA didn't try to play god and only destabilized the region instead of on top of that tried to push their own culture and democracy things would've been far better, you can't force a society to change its ways over night.



p.s. inb4 the Saddam was a war criminal etc etc pathetic arguments by brainwashed ppl

On November 21 2015 13:32 Stroggoz wrote: Show nested quote + On November 21 2015 06:59 Liquid`Drone wrote:   On November 20 2015 05:52 Stroggoz wrote:   On November 17 2015 23:53 Liquid`Drone wrote: in regard to US foreign policy, the country has a very long and very consistent streak of rhetorically arguing for its principles while actually pursuing its interests. Wars/military involvement are sold to the population under the more or less truthful goal of helping the population (for the more, there's WW1/2/Korea/Rwanda, for the less there's pretty much every other military involvement I can think of, I guess like Afghanistan can be argued for), but (with the possible exception of Rwanda), there's pretty much never involvement without self interest, and sometimes (Vietnam, Iraq) the rhetoric is filled with deliberate lies and distortion. The bombing of afghanistan was one the most immoral acts in modern history, in my view. It was predicted that the bombing would put 2.5 million extra afghans into starvation. It didn't happen though, but that doesn't stop the action from being terribly unethical. As for Rwandan genocide, the party line given by US, EU and UN officials was that they didn't do anything to stop the atrocities. This is false, both the UN and American media have lied to the point that would make stalin proud. The Tutsi leader Paul Kagame is one of the most sadistic torturers in modern history. He invaded rwanda from uganda, assassinated the rwandan president by rpging his plane, and then preceded to carry out a genocide where most who died were Hutu.. This is ignored by the UN war tribual on rwanda and western intellectuals. 20 years later he is still one of the west's favourite dictators (gets his picture taken with bill gates at the economic forum ). And he's been plundering the congo ever since, where 6-10million have died since 1995. There's a good book on this called 'enduring lies' by edward herman and david peterson. I was no fan of the invasion of Afghanistan. But I do think it's at least possible to argue for the legitimacy of it, both from a political sciency view (US was attacked) and from a moral perspective (betterment of afghani lives impossible without ousting the taliban, even if it creates temporary problems, enabling the afghanis to become masters of their own destiny is a long term good). Now, I'm fundamentally skeptical towards bombing (well, almost any non-defensive military action basically), because the inevitable civilian casualities will always create more hatred and tension, but at the same time, what are the options? Could the US just tolerate that the Taliban was ruling Afghanistan and harboring terrorist leaders who were plotting how to inflict most possible damage towards them? Obviously they should never have created what eventually became them back in 79, obviously they should not have deliberately armed the Afghanis with just enough weaponry to defend against the Soviets but not enough weaponry to repel them (I don't remember where other than it being a source I considered trustworthy, but I recall reading about how the US intentionally avoided giving the Afghanis some particular anti-air missile because if the Soviets kept losing helicopters they would be more likely to withdraw quicker, and the US wanted the war to last as long as possible), obviously mostly any current hellhole on earth can wholly or partially be attributed to some geopolitical gameplay by the major powers, cold war was dirty as fuck, but still it's like, while we got here because of interventionism, what amount of civilian suffering, 'our' fault or not, should we currently tolerate? Would there be any possible way of reforming and moderating the Taliban without taking them out? I don't know this stuff, but what I'm saying is just that, unlike Iraq and Vietnam and multiple other scenarios where it's hard to find a single true, idealistic selling point for US military involvement, it's possible to make a different argument for Afghanistan. If we want to get rid of the Taliban because its undemocratic then the safest option would be to give financial support to internal liberal democratic resistance in Afghanistan, if there is any. I do not think the Afghanistan war had any legitimacy. Suppose we want to bomb a country because it's harboring terrorists. Well, no one accepts that argument when the west harbors terrorists. Like, for example Orlando Bosch, a terrorist that blew up an airliner and was harbored by the Bush administration. This does not give Afghanistan the right to invade the US and start bombing the place.

But it's not just the harbors terrorists. It's the 'regime cruelly oppressess its own population while funding and enabling terrorism.'

Once again, not that I am supporting the invasion of afghanistan. But I really have a hard time seeing how it's on the same level of bad as Iraq/Vietnam. Basically, if bombing ever actually worked, then Afghanistan 2001 would from an american point of view be just about the most legitimate target in the world. I guess that's what I'm saying.