faetal on 28/9/2013 at 15:31
No, I've never said it's ok for people to blow others up, or that both actions are the same. I've said this again and again and again earlier in the thread. What I'm saying is rather than support our government and media's opinion that all militants are cartoon bad guys which need exterminating, no matter what the civilian cost (like I say, we don't need to be doing the bombing and we know that civilians are going to die, yet we carry on with it), then people who are affected are going to continue hating the US / UK and their people (again, because we lord over non-democratic nations how enlightened we are because the people choose) and attacks are going to continue happening. If instead of labelling all of these people lunatics but rather trying to unravel the root causes, the eventually, with enough effort, we might be able to reduce the killing over time. Because this tit for tat shit is breeding generations who don't remember who started what, so the "you kill one of ours, we kill ten of yours" strategy isn't doing anyone any favours.
Of course, if we did that though, the US wouldn't have an excuse to stay at war and keep the money rolling in.
SubJeff on 28/9/2013 at 19:20
Your argument seems to hinge on the need to bomb or not. I'd say that you need to if your enemy is planning or carrying out violence against you.
The fact is the Western/Israeli military doesn't attack unless there is a threat so you can say all you want about collateral damage - Kenya is likely going to carry out airstrikes on Al Shabab positions now. Would that have happened a week ago? No.
faetal on 28/9/2013 at 20:41
I'm sorry, but I don't think every militant in the Middle East is a threat to the US with enough immediacy to write off civilian lives, knowing that there are always civilians casualties. I'm all for ground troops capturing individuals who are found to be planning an attack on the US, but drone strikes against anyone found to be engaged in "militant behaviour"? What's to differentiate that from political assassination? I'm not even getting into how wrong you are about Israel, because I just don't have the time to fish through 12 years worth of reading to give all of the references (all from official Israeli sources) essentially detailing some fucking horrific human rights abuses by Israel. Every time I start typing out a paragraph to summarise, I find myself deleting, as it just isn't worth getting into a discussion about it with anyone who hasn't properly researched it, as that discussion would mostly just be me typing essay length responses to the common media-driven misconceptions. So re Israel - believe whatever you like about it, but don't start a discussion with me about it until you've done a LOT of reading about the history of the conflict, because the way it is summarised in the media is a heinous bias.
SubJeff on 29/9/2013 at 01:39
I know all about Israel, believe me. I don't agree with Israeli strategy but I do understand why they do some things they do. They are heavy handed and always have been. I think initially it kind of made sense post-WW2 to just not take any crap at all. These days it seems it just more of a mindset and they are so used to operating that way that they cannot see how ott it is.
I'm not agreeing with the US striking every person who has "militant behaviour" either.
But neither of these things is equivalent to saying "Hey guys, why don't we go shoot/blow up a bunch of families cause that's how we roll".
Vivian on 30/9/2013 at 08:51
That's just the egotism of the currently living. Worse than the fucking crusades, worse than slavery, worse than the expansion period of the modern european empires? Shut up.
Gryzemuis on 30/9/2013 at 10:34
Yes, of course these guys are utter nuts.
The problem, as Faetal has said a few times now, is that large amounts of different people are all being thrown on the big pile of terrorists. And they are all seen as equally bad. They are all made to be faceless enemies. In short: if you vote for Obamacare, you are a terrorist, and thus you are just like these guys in Nigeria. (Not my line of reasoning).
It's like the word communist. In the fifties, if you didn't like something, you'd call it communism. During the last decade, the word terrorist has literally replaced that word in its function.
We're discussing the fact that not everything can be called terrorism. Not all terrorists are the same. Some of them have reasons for what they're doing. They have goals. Some of them you could call freedom-fighters even (if in another setting, in another age, with different media reporting).
What do you do ? Point at one incident and say: "see, all terrorists are worse than us".
DDL on 30/9/2013 at 11:04
I'm not actually seeing this "lumping together", hell, not even in the mainstream media, let alone this thread.
Maybe if you get all your news from tabloids, where KENYAN TERROR SCUM is in bold (usually mysteriously juxtaposed with a photo of jenny from hull, 19, showing us her 'war assets', nudge nudge), but if you read anything broadsheety you usually get a much more nuanced approach.
You still need to apply a little brain to it, sure, but it's a lot easier than fighting through all the stupid in a tabloid (where you have to struggle through the mangled syntax and apostrophe use before you can even start to critique the terrible reporting).
I was pretty sure the debate here (or...one of the debates at least) was over whether terror attacks were morally or idealogically or physically equivalent to drone strikes, not "everyone we don't like is a terrorist, lol amirite guise?".
And the conclusions we were reaching is that they CAN be, I think. (i.e. an attack that deliberately targets a school is worse than an attack that targets a high-ranking enemy but that accidentally also blows up a school)
Vivian on 30/9/2013 at 12:31
You blow up a school because you were aiming at something else and missed, you're a dick. You blow up a school on purpose, you're a cunt. That's the difference. You're both arseholes though.
