From my experience "bigots" are usually the ones who love to use that word, applying it to everyone who doesn't share their (usually liberal) point of view.
Actually yes.... you can be sentenced to death for entering Mecca as an in Mohammed's words the "idolaters are unclean". It really depends on how the judge is feeling that day but per Saudi law you can be executed although from what I understand the sentence is usually immediate deportation and a lifetime ban from Saudi Arabia.
I am a Democrat because the GOP is in thrall to trickle down economics, which is demonstrably a failure to serve the overall economy while it does contribute to income inequality, benefitting the very rich who bankroll the GOP. But that does not mean I must accept the false equivalence between Islam and other religions, especically Christianity. As you point out there is much mischief made in seeing the Crusades as some rough equivalent to Islamic terrorism. Putting asside what should be the obvious point that what some long dead people did centuries ago cannot possibly be used as an excuse for the murder of innocent people today, this perceptoin of the Crusades is based on a very poor reading of history. While there were many unfortunate aspects to the Crusades, to be sure, the notion tha they began as some sort of power grab instigated by the Catholic Church is wholly misleading and inaccurate. To the contrary Christianity had been under assault for several centuries by Islam which, as you correctly note, was being spread by the sword. In short, the Crusades should be understood as esseentially a defense of Christianity that otherwise would have been conquered by muslim military efforts. And while the Crusades failed to dislodge the muslims from Palestine, it was largely successsful in thwarting the advance of Islam at the expense of Christianity and western civilization. In general, facts have a liberal bias. But on this particular subject, too many who espouse a liberal pov do not really understand history.
Based on their ideology. Based on their warped version of the Quran. But this is too much for someone like you to understand. Your post was really lacking in the word "fuck" in any form
So ISIS just dropped a video threatening Washington DC. enough of this shit. They don't play by the rules. We shouldn't. Let's be proactive rather than reactive. This is getting ridiculous.
We don't play by the rules either. We just don't mass slaughter civilians most of the time. This is an asymmetrical conflict we're fighting. We're already bending and breaking plenty of rules trying to win it. We change the rules (Guantanamo Bay) when we see fit. At this point it makes more sense to go back within the rules and assemble the kind of coalition that HW assembled in 1991. We can't win the war against ISIS and Al-Qaida that way but we can certainly deprive them of the territory they hold at the moment. It would be a master stroke for the US and Russia to momentarily put aside the differences that divide us until ISIS is a receding memory.
being proactive in Iraq is what created ISIS in the first place. We should take them out if we want to take them out not because of some silly video or a feeling that we should be proactive
Then we should take them the fuck out. Not wait until we get attacked and hundreds of lives are lost. End this shit for once and all. Put our God damn foot on them and squash them. It's sick to say, but maybe everyone's sentiments towards it will change after we get attacked and hundreds of lives are lost because it's not a matter of IF.. It's a matter of when. I do agree with Brad. US and Russia need to put our differences aside for this matter and end this.
I don't disagree with you I guess I was focusing on the semantics. sorry. its a little too late to be proactive anyway
Problem is these guys are radicals and are amongst civilians. It is hard to annihilate them, they act like cockroaches. We can Hiroshima them, but it will never happen unless they give a reason that truly leaves the administration no options.
It's just crazy to think that we have the technology and capability to put people on Mars or space travel or spy on people anywhere but yet we can't get a clear location on these MOFOs
we can find them amongst the civilians, thats what drones are for but knowing where they are and destroying them without killing the civilians is another story. something has got to give there. either we put more boots on the ground or we look the other way if civilians get killed.
Unfortunately.. I'm starting to believe it has to be the latter. There is no way we can allow these savages to pop up whenever they want and kill hundreds of people over and over and over. It has to come to an end. If that makes me a bad guy, then so be it. There's no sitting down and having a meeting over a cup of tea with these savages.
You cannot slaughter civilians indiscriminately in the course of waging a war. This happens all the time of course and we know those regimes by labels like Nazis and Soviets and Baathists and Khmer Rouge. If we're ok with having American viewed by the average person as similar to those groups then have at it. Just look at it this way: if you had a Jihadist living above you would you be ok with hellfire missiles raining down on you and your family as an acceptable cost of eliminating them?
I'm worried about the safety of the people in this country. My country first. Everyone else's second. Like I said, if that makes me a bad person -- so be it.
So you'd be ok with it if we had a jihadist in our sights and he might get away if we didn't shoot first and the collateral casualties were you and your family? For the greater good?
I don't care about the what if's. That isn't the situation and it never will be. If my Aunt had balls, she would be my uncle.
I understand why you feel this way, but a government that does it to other countries for so long will begin to do it to their own once its population is infiltrated. The acceptance of wholesale slaughter being acceptable in the name of war cuts both ways. They've already begun monitoring our own population like they did the enemy 30 years ago. The rest of the rules will go out the window soon enough.
The way I see it Bradway- we're going to be looked at like those "bad guys" you mention by people in that region no matter what. The U.S. could decide tomorrow they are done with policing the middle east, turn into isolationists, and instead of dropping bombs, we drop kit kat candy bars and rice only and we are still going to be hated for generations by people over there. The bridge is burned and then pissed on, and then burned again. The extremists aren't looking at the U.S. policies and analyzing them and then through careful thought and analysis coming up with their hatred for the U.S. They are growing up with extreme hatred and they are irrational. That doesn't go away. ISIS was founded in the Bucca Prison Camp in Iraq. The U.S. guard soldiers there fought in Afghanistan against the Taliban but even they were blown away by how much hatred these ISIS (soon to be) people had for anything or anyone U.S. you can say thats our own fault and it may or may not be but at this point it really doesn't matter. Thats the facts of life. If we need personal justification for the loss of life over there we can tell ourselves that by ridding the world of ISIS we are saving the lives of a lot more worldwide civilians including those that live over there. We can say, like it or not, we invaded Iraq and created these monsters now we have a moral obligation to get rid of them.
^ good post Nagle, and i mostly agree with it. what worries me is what will spring up to fill the vacuum left by an ISIS eradication? one thing history has shown us, is no western solution to middle eastern problems ends well. we are always choosing between evils. in our attempts to put out one fire, that fire splits asunder, and eventually those separate fires rage larger than the initial one, and so on. ISIS does need to be eradicated. we also need to expand our longer term vision when doing so. no easy answers here. one thing i'd like to see is more accountability toward other Arab nations in dealing with the problems in their own region. Saudi Arabia, for instance, has been pulling strings for far too long without feeling the consequences.
