SubJeff on 27/9/2013 at 16:33
Quote Posted by faetal
Your OT boils down to "why muslims be crazy?"
That's really unfair and untrue.
faetal on 27/9/2013 at 17:32
"In the past few days the news has been about nutters blowing stuff up in different parts of the world. It's all a bit crazy really and it makes one realise how lucky one is to a. live in relatively safe/stable country (yes, I know craziness goes on here - it does everywhere) and b. not have been caught up in any such craziness to a large degree.
Now this is going to seem controversial and maybe even prejudicial but it's just an observation. The three countries I've mentioned in the title have craziness going on in them that has one unifying factor - Muslim fundamentalists. I know that the problems in Syria didn't clearly start out as sectarian but they have become so. So what I'm wondering is - what is UP with that?"
Ok then, why muslim fundamentalists be crazy.
Again, the short answer seems to be - the US seems to be using the Middle East as its high ordnance playground, doesn't need to be there, is killing civilians by accident in high numbers and is propping up Israel. Turns out this kind of thing makes people crazy / nutters. Now I'm sure a large part of their perception is exaggerated, untrue, biased by media, misrepresented etc... but you've got to admit that bombing inside your country's borders, for no good reason, resulting in a multitude of civilians casualties, is very much not going to ingratiate you to the values of Western democracy. Also, you're not going to have much cause to separate the people from the country when those countries make a regular point of saying "our system is superior to yours because the people are in control of the government".
[EDIT] To add a little, I'd say that muslim fundamentalists worldwide might be reacting to the fact that the US is waging war against countries which predominantly have Islam as their primary religion, so a proportion of muslims are conflating this with the US waging war against Islam. This I think has been caught up in the fact that the Israeli decimation of Palestine as a nation has also been conflated with Judaism vs. Islam and has snowballed into totally unnecessary West + Israel vs. Islam mentality which on one side, is being used to justify attacks out of desperation due to no military support (which we nickname terrorism) versus sustained "anti-terror" operations being justified by the fundamentalist attacks. The stupid thing being that they create feedback between themselves. For every accidental civilian killing, a whole bunch of people go from moderate to militant, because seeing your relatives blown to shreds by huge bombs dropped by the nation's foremost superpower, for reasons which don't seem clear, is one of the few things that is likely to turn a person from reasonable to desperate. Likewise, for every suicide bomb, car bomb etc... the US & chums have to be seen to be stepping up their efforts to fight back (particularly if it's nice white folk being killed, then it's actually necessary to make a lot of noise). And so the whole stupid cycle continues - the point is that the large and organised needless bombing by the US & allies in the middle east as well as the hugely disproportionate propping up of Israel (US veto every time their illegal occupation of Palestine is raised as UN resolution for one), is every bit as key to the cycle as the car bombs and suicide attacks. Intent doesn't matter - the result is lots of dead innocent people.
DDL on 27/9/2013 at 18:19
I dunno, I think it's more that fundamental islam is the current "fave crazy magnet" for the media.
Crazy people blow shit up all the time, some times it's fundamentalist christians, sometimes muslims, sometimes even fucking bhuddists, sometimes it's just angry people with an axe to grind, and sometimes it's just people who want to watch the world burn.
There's no monopoly on crazy, really. It makes a nicer story if you can blame it all on hardline islam (not least because you then have a media-friendly target to aim your drones at), but it's always going to be both more complicated (a whole ton of economic, social, and educational issues) and simpler (angry people with bombs) than that.
Sure, destabilising a region previously kept roughly in order (via IRON FIST) doesn't help matters much, but the crazy was already there. The crazy has always been everywhere.
EDIT: if anything, there are better parallels between 'educational level' and 'lack of crazy' than there are between religion and crazy.
SubJeff on 27/9/2013 at 19:40
Quote Posted by faetal
attacks out of desperation due to no military support (which we nickname terrorism)
I just can't agree with this.
I understand that there is frustration because of Western imperialist behaviour but whatever happened to talking to people? You also appear to be arguing that bombing civilians is some form of legitimate action, or at the very least equivalent to military attacks on military or armed militant targets. It just isn't. The idea behind terrorist attacks is to get rid of your enemy by terrorising them though murder of non-military personnel. I cannot believe you are equating this to military actions against armed targets.
Anyway, I'm out of this thread now. I don't like being accused of what I'm being accused of so that's it for me an political discussion at TTLG.
faetal on 28/9/2013 at 01:22
Jeez, don't get defensive just because I condensed your post for the sake of brevity (still ended up having to copy-paste it though).
What ever happened to talking? No one listens! How much do you think large scale plans get changed when some villager is screaming about their family being collateralled? The whole reason most of this stuff isn't army versus army is because no one listens to or stands up for the people having their lives torn to shreds to satisfy some big picture that they probably don't care about. "What's that sir - your family was killed by a drone because there was a bit of oil on the lens? We're sorry to hear that, but we need to be killing people in your country right now because of an attack on our country 12 years ago which may or may not happen again - either way, nothing is ever going to be done about it and we're going to carry on doing what we're doing". I don't get how anyone can really believe that "terrorism" is some lifestyle choice made on some kind of culturally-inspired whim. It's what people are reduced to when a power as colossally large as the US basically treats them as things that are in the way. Once you have been bereaved and stripped of your dignity - what's left? Talk to who? As I've said earlier, the only way we can just brand all of these people as terrorists is to remove any and all justification for their anger, which usually starts by dehumanising via projection of caricature "bad guy" archetypes.
Utlimately - what is more important: the US killing every insurgent target it can identify in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen etc... to avert attacks that are being incited by the US basically behaving like it's in charge of the whole world, or civilian lives? The longer they continue the killing, the more the scenario is guaranteed to continue. Since the US isn't stupid, I can only assume that continual conflict might be the plan. Probably for reasons as boring as transferring funds from public to private coffers.
faetal on 28/9/2013 at 01:27
Quote Posted by DDL
I dunno, I think it's more that fundamental islam is the current "fave crazy magnet" for the media.
Our media, sure.
Quote:
Crazy people blow shit up all the time, some times it's fundamentalist christians, sometimes muslims, sometimes even fucking
bhuddists, sometimes it's just angry people with an axe to grind, and sometimes it's just people who want to watch the world burn.
About a third of those school bombings listed earlier were in the US.
Quote:
There's no monopoly on crazy, really. It makes a nicer
story if you can blame it all on hardline islam (not least because you then have a media-friendly target to aim your drones at), but it's always going to be both more complicated (a whole ton of economic, social, and educational issues) and simpler (angry people with bombs) than that.
Religion has this way of amplifying crazy.
Quote:
Sure, destabilising a region previously kept roughly in order (via IRON FIST) doesn't help matters much, but the crazy was already there. The crazy has always been everywhere.
EDIT: if anything, there are better parallels between 'educational level' and 'lack of crazy' than there are between religion and crazy.
I'd agree with you there, but a confounding variable is the positive correlation between religion and lack of education. I agree with crazy being all over, but that crazy condenses pretty quick when you provide polarisation, which the West + Israel vs. Islam construct is doing pretty effectively, with the help of the press and total lack of ordinary media portrayal of people from the middle east (best lampooning of that was probably Team America: World Police with its uniformly fierce-faced, angry, stern, fanatical arabs).
SubJeff on 28/9/2013 at 08:35
Quote Posted by faetal
Religion has this way of amplifying crazy.
How is this different to what I said in the OP?
I resent the accusation that I'm saying "Muslims be crazy" but I agree mixing religion up with craziness amplifies the craziness.
faetal on 28/9/2013 at 09:54
Like I said, don't get defensive - I was just being glib, I wasn't calling you a bigot. I was never contesting the fact that fundamental religion played a part, just giving a host of reasons why people from certain cultures feel like killing people from ours. Doesn't make it less loathsome, but the causality is all I was trying to approach. If we want to keep going over and over about whose killing is the best killing, then the violence continues. If on the other hand, we want the violence to end, we need to seriously examine why it happens in the first place and take measures to abrogate the violence at source, rather than keep attacking back in the hopes that eventually, all the terrorists are dead and people stop caring about civilian deaths.
faetal on 28/9/2013 at 10:00
Quote Posted by Chimpy Chompy
I don't disagree about the recruitment drive the war on terror has probably (and self-defeatingly) been. Invading Iraq was an especially stupid move, I think. I'm less ready to say something specific like bombing a house with a known terrorist leader is unjustified.
Just to highlight this, how do we feel if Al Qaeda bombs a US army general's house in New York, killing the general, his family plus a number of US citizens who happened to be nearby? Is that OK? How many times is that kind of thing OK? For how long? Obviously, that's not happening, but it is what we're expecting The Terrorists to accept as good killing.
june gloom on 28/9/2013 at 11:25
Er, wait, hold on, are you still claiming there is no fundamental difference in the goals, values and tactics of terrorist groups and western military operators re: blowing stuff up?
This entire thread you've more or less been saying it's okay for terrorists to intentionally bomb civilians because militaries do it by accident. And then you claim that this is an argument over which kind of killing is superior -- but the thing is, that's how you're characterizing it. What the argument actually is about is you saying that intentional attacks on civilians are of equal value to "collateral damage" because you want to make the point that all killing is wrong and that to stop terrorism we need to solve the root cause rather than just kill all the brown people with guns. That latter bit -- root causes, etc. -- is a good point to make, but you're basing it on a ludicrous argument. The conversation about root causes is worth having, but you're not going to steer it that direction by claiming that something like suicide bombing a funeral for victims of a suicide bombing is fair play.
