how much attention do you think this would have received in the media?
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7004369153
Last edited by 2centsworth; 08-12-2006 at 02:21 PM.
That got plenty of attention in the media.
Despite his announcing, "I am a Muslim American, and I am angry with Israel," media types tried to explain it away as "he was mentally disturbed" and "this actually is Christian terrorism because he purportedly converted last year."
Remember, if we appease them enough, maybe they'll leave us alone (whimper).
Are we acting like it wasn't covered at all?
http://news.google.com/news?q=muslim...=news&ct= le
Yep, those on the left obviously skipped history class when their teachers talked about the late 30s.Remember, if we appease them enough, maybe they'll leave us alone (whimper).
OK, some insane starts shooting some people in Seattle. Who are you speaking of appeasing? I understand that you are ridiculing people whose viewpoint is different on how to prevail against the terrorist who wish to do us harm but my point is what is your appropriate response to this?
Are you advocating we round up all Muslims and put them internment camps?
Are you saying we invade Iran or Syria because some hate-filled crackpot started shooting innocents?
Are you advocating we nuke the middle east until it turns to glass?
Let's see, Hitler gets power in Germany and begins invading his neighbors. Which country is Osama Bin Laden in charge of? Which countries are they invading and occupying?Yep, those on the left obviously skipped history class when their teachers talked about the late 30s.
The differences are more than subtle. You have some outlaws who wish to harm us western nations harm. They are hiding in caves and recruting people to their cause of intense hatred of the west and all things not Islam.
So you are ready to go in with guns a blazing. Well we did that in Iraq and the result has been a recrutiing tool for al Quada. al Quada has morphed into something it was not before. Rather than all be under the control and part of the Bin Laden organization, you have other disaffected Muslims acting independently doing what al Quada would like.
If it was as simple as bombing them into the stone age then why not do that. It is more nuanced than that though.
Hezbollah are a bunch of extremists who are in the minority even within the Islamic world. Yet they are winning with their latest provocation against Israel.
You and I who are over here safe in the U.S. understand Hezbollah is lobbing rockets and aiming them at civilians. We understand they are hiding amongst the civilian population. We understand they are oppressors of freedom and the Israel is a democratic society.
If you are brought up hating Israel and are su ious of their goals, when Israel takes the sledge hammer approach and bombs places that result in massive loss of civilians, what do you expect the Arabs and Muslims who don't have a dog in that fight to believe?
What is the difference? Hezbollah are a bunch of thugs and murderers yet Israel responds in kind. Better to support the killer who is with me than the one against me.
When we give up our freedoms, consent to torture, kill innocents in the pursuit of evil is it any wonder that the people who hate us continues to grow.
Nonetheless, tell me what your goal is? Do you want to exterminate Muslims? Do you want to conquer the middle-east? If so, what do you propose to do with it? How are you going to finance this undertaking? Where are you going to get the volunteers to join the military and begin the new crusades? Aren't there like a billion Muslims and only about 280 million Americans?
So what do you want to do?
It's only possible to think about how to act when one accepts that there is a threat out there and evaluates it rationally.
It was a case of admittedly isolated Islamic violence in America.
The media was trying to rationalize it away I guess because they don't want to accept that an American could do that.
They also don't want to report things like half the Arab population of Dearborn, Michigan attending a Hezbollah rally.
I'm well aware that the vast majority of Muslims in this country mean us no harm. But the number that does is not infintesimal. There is a fifth column here just as in Britain and we have to be on the lookout for those in it.
One thing I would like us to do is cut through the PC crap and accept that there is a profile of potential terrorists: young Muslim men or Arab or South Asian descent between the ages of 17 and 40. Focus on those people. Watch them.
I would like to accept that when these acts of violence happen, it is not because of mental illness but because this is how someone has interpreted what their religion compels them to do.
Accept that the biggest reason they are angry with us is because our nation has supported Israel, and they cannot tolerate, must less accept its existence, and that their hatred which drives them to violence is not because of some other ambiguous set of bad things we have done.
Accept that after 58 years they equate us with Israel, and that there is nothing in the world we can do to placate those that view us that way, even if Israel itself were destroyed, they would still come after us; any concessions we make will be seen as having come as a result of their violent resistance, and will only result in more violence.
Accept that this is something that will be going on long after historians have closed the book on George W. Bush as one of the worst Presidents ever; that this will be a long, bloody, difficult war.
Accept that just because we are a wealthy and powerful nation does not mean we cannot bleed to death from a thousand cuts, and that it is not guaranteed that the center always holds.
You probably understand all that. A lot of Democrats in office understand that. Fine. Their platform has language that as far as I can read says that if Iran keeps trying to develop nuclear weapons, Iran should cease to exist. That sounds strong enough to me. Goody.
I am under the expectation that the Democrats will control Congress starting in January. What do I not want to see is the post-modern elites and appeasement types and wackos on the far left who think that terror threats are just ploys to lift Bush's poll numbers hamstring the Democrats in power from doing what needs to be done to defend us.
I fear that the influence of those people will get us killed.
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Well, we invaded Afghanistan and accomplished our objectives. That didn't turn into a recruitment tool. Iraq as we found out was the fulcrum of the neoconservative plan to democratize the Middle East, a plan which we all witnessed turn to a steaming pile of crap.
Enough of trying to democratize the Middle East. Enough of trying to win "hearts and minds." I don't care whether they like us. I care that they fear and respect enough not to attack us. Right now we look simultaneously weak and debauched, like 5th century Rome ready to fall.
If we truly viewed them as an existential threat we would be willing to take more drastic measures. Our moral sense restrains us because we do not think we have been hurt badly enough to disregard innocent life to that degree.
As long as there might be another way, we will hold back.
That is what keeps us back, not "nuance."
Hezbollah of course was aided by an idiot Israeli PM in Olmert to match our own. (Don't start a campaign unless you have the resolve to finish it! Plan for the worst case, not the best case!)
Here's something I don't understand. NATO killed massive numbers of civilians in Serbia back in the '90s. We killed massive numbers of civilians in Afghanistan. Israel, when you get past the Hezbollah propaganda and look at the numbers, killed 500 or 600 civilians in a campaign where Hezbollah intentionally put them in harm's way, and yet now they're the worst country in the world.
Where does moral laziness like that come from? Why is there a double standard that applies to Israel but not to any other country in the world?
If we restored all our freedoms, stopped torture, and somehow found a way to wage warfare without killing any innocent people whatsoever they would just make up stories about us doing those things just like the Palestinians do about Israel, and they would be believed.
The best way we could start to change hearts and minds is to stop caring about hearts and minds and take propaganda off the table as a weapon. Right now all the gentlest efforts in the world can be undone by one jihadi with an AP file photo and Photoshop.
you sound like a black person.
Last edited by Oh, Gee!!; 08-13-2006 at 01:38 AM.
Christians must be the new z
Last edited by Oh, Gee!!; 08-13-2006 at 01:58 AM.
just 2 comments:
as i see it there were 3 main objectives in Afganistan:
* capture/kill Osama and those behind 9/11 (failed)
* destroy the Taliban and their regime (regime destroyed, Taliban not)
* establish a democratic/free country (they succeded in this, but things are not going so well right now)
so i wouldn't classify this as mission accomplished.
Someone who's ready to blow himself up is not going to fear you.
I don't think anyone stated or believed that all remnants of the Taliban would be erased but they have been relagated to being little more than a disbanded isolated, extremist faction, and Osama's no more that an after-thought in the terrorist realm.
As stated by ES, Mission Accomplished.
What bothers me about this incident is how a hate crime against Jews is twisted into a story of phantom Muslim martyrs because of the alleged potential backlash against Muslims. How did that story become the main headline?Quote=2centsworth: how much attention do you think this would have received in the media?
Agreed. Olmert's hot, tepid and then hot again response against hezbulloh from day to day isn't typical of the resolve and for ude exhibited by an Israel Prime Minister.Quote=ExtraStout: Hezbollah of course was aided by an idiot Israeli PM in Olmert to match our own. (Don't start a campaign unless you have the resolve to finish it! Plan for the worst case, not the best case!)
I've come to expect a staying of the course from an Israel P.M. Someone cut out of the mold of the Biblical Joseph whose (as described in the writings of Flavius Josephus) 'soul became as iron' as a result of a lifelong, unwavering faith in God even after being wrongfully imprisoned as a result of false accusations made by Potiphar's wife.
Olmert has not exhibited that faith.
Well, by the end of the year Benjamin Netanyahu will be PM again.
"we invaded Afghanistan and accomplished our objectives"
huh? Osama wasn't killed. the Taliban are resurgent, the warlords are running their territories again, and heroin production is exploding, democracy doesn't fit the primitive tribal mentality that dominates most of Afghanistan. The US really didn't finish the job (dubya sniffed in 2000 he didn't do nation building and, rarely, was telling the truth) while running off to start the phony Repug war in Iraq.
Punishing and knocking the Taliban out power was accomplished.
After that, the big picture looks extremely precarious.
"I care that they fear and respect enough not to attack us."
After the first overwhelming victory in the first Gulf War, after the invasions of Afgahnistan and Iraq, the terrorists don't fear or respect the USA's power, as the UK bombers demonstrated this past week.
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