Please stop the "we support democracy" stuff

METALLICA
believe that youre safe all you want, safety just like the threat is just an illusion anyway. other than that read AFKains response, no need to iterate why your conclusion is wrong.

About religion, jerusalem and history one shouldnt mix up history too much with the actual religious believes. Religions have often been, and still are being, used as tools to achieve a goal rather than enforcing the actual religious themselves. Intolerance through out history has been seen in all of these religions and so has tolerance. The question isnt as simple as what the religion says or doesnt say. As for your interpretation of islam (i doubt you actually read the quran though that view is hardly prominent among the islamic community even though some share it to this date, but the same can be said about jews and christians aswell. So really your argument holds no value. That Islam holds the view that all people should be converted to be saved is hardly unique either, thats equally true for Christianity and most likely for Judaism as well.

A quick question though, how are they going to avoid befriending them if they want to convert them? Hard to convert someone you dont talk with. And if you want to interpret things in ways that fit you i can just throw it around and claim that Christianity teaches the exact same things. Once again, your argument holds little value.

Religions have always been used in the way that fits the one proclaiming the word, sad but true. We shouldnt blame religion itself for its acclaimed followers misinterpretations of the word though. I mean, i can hardly blame Jesus for Bush (and tons of other so called American christians) for their un-christian behaviour can i?

Either way its pretty much like modern "democracy" everyone else can do whatever they want as long as they dont threaten our position. Then our tolerance of other peoples opinions and belives goes out the window. To blame religion for it is just dumb.

(Oh and yeah, the conflict over Jerusalem did hardly start with Mohammed, it existed long before he was ever born, and quite frankly long before Jesus was born as well. But in terms of these three religions the conflict between Jews and Christians obviously predates that of Jews and Muslims)

Freemehul

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that doesn't mean though that closing down Gaza, isn't working, as despite how wrong it is, it is working

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In what way is it working? Oppression of normal people are hardly the way to create stability and order in a region, it just feeds hate and creates an even bigger Us vs Them situation. A situation that is never beneficial in terms of peace and order. By your logics we might as well kill everyone, because then theres no problem anymore. Guess Stalin was right after all in saying:
Death solves all problems - no man, no problem

Lets kill all Jews all arabs all muslims all russians all communists all democrats and all hippies. Yeah that sounds like a good solution! That way there will be no more terrorist attacks on american soil, at least not muslim ones! Great thinking.

"Absence of proof is not proof of absence. That there hasn't been a second WTC doesn't mean that your mistreatment of muslims is doing any good. In order to back that claim up you need to show that racial prejudice of 1.5 billion people is making you safer, not just state that it does. And if you should manage to do that (which I highly doubt) you need to show that that racism is proportional to this alleged increased safety."

it isn't mistreatment as much as it is extreme suspicion. we are overly suspicious of muslim activity, mainly because we obviously weren't suspicious enough prior to 9-11. and if we are suspicious now, and a valid threat is still present as you say, than maybe we should be even more suspicious?

and ya, i realize that not all muslims are terrorists, and that not all terrorists are muslims.

but if you say "terrorist", the image in my head is osama bin laden. i doubt that i'm the only one that finds that image popping up when thinking of the word.

it's basically social paranoia. and if it's present in society, you can bet it's present in the government too. and why shouldn't it work at least a little bit? are these 'rare' muslim terrorists having as easy a time performing acts of violence with these newly focused skeptical eyes, searching for suspicious behavior?

i bet that if a terrorist wants to kill today, he'll have to spend more time and money than he would have 8 years ago, and that in and of itself is a victory in my mind, if there ever was a chance for a real victory.

"A quick question though, how are they going to avoid befriending them if they want to convert them? Hard to convert someone you dont talk with. And if you want to interpret things in ways that fit you i can just throw it around and claim that Christianity teaches the exact same things. Once again, your argument holds little value."

usually, conversion was done by force, and BOY, was it done.

like has been said, there are a large number of muslims throughout the world. you think that was accomplished by sitting back and being peaceful? nations were threatened into conversion for risk of death. some fought, but most surrendered because those that fought, got slaughtered.

if i can give muslims anything, its that they kicked a lot of ass 1000 years ago.

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Originally Posted by METALLICA

it isn't mistreatment as much as it is extreme suspicion. we are overly suspicious of muslim activity, mainly because we obviously weren't suspicious enough prior to 9-11. and if we are suspicious now, and a valid threat is still present as you say, than maybe we should be even more suspicious?

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I didn't say anything about there being a valid threat I said that your claim that the suspicion made you safer was false.

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but if you say "terrorist", the image in my head is osama bin laden. i doubt that i'm the only one that finds that image popping up when thinking of the word.

it's basically social paranoia. and if it's present in society, you can bet it's present in the government too. and why shouldn't it work at least a little bit? are these 'rare' muslim terrorists having as easy a time performing acts of violence with these newly focused skeptical eyes, searching for suspicious behavior?

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I'm sure this social paranoia is present in the government as well, after all that's where it originates from... IMO these "skeptical eyes" probably do more harm than good, setting aside the mistreatment of the muslims for a while you can just look at the number of false reports that these eyes must generate. Massively increasing the work-load of the branches of government in question makes it easier to perform acts of terror.

Terrorists do not look like Usama. If the public expects that the terrorists will look muslim then they will look like your average office worker instead. They are not going to go to airports muttering in Arabic about jihad and politely ask to be taught how to fly a plane.

1. the government isn't overworked, it just looks like it is.

2. those skeptical eyes aren't just racial profiling, they are using trends of behavior and activity. large amounts of money coming and going to unknown places, moving around a lot, buying suspicious items, etc....

1. Are you sure it isn't just a little bit overworked? Last I heard the FBI had some real problems handling the white collar crimes for example... False reports take away time from real reports, it's not like there are thousands of agents sitting around waiting for someone to ask them to investigate something.

2. We were talking about how those skeptical eyes impacted the lives of muslims, that is purely racial profiling and as mentioned earlier racial profiling is not going to catch any terrorists.

"racial profiling is not going to catch any terrorists."

what does?

the question isnt really how many terrorists you catch but how many innocent civilians that get caught in the same net. if you sacrifice all freedom youd probably catch most of them, but if you did what have you really won in the end? Trading freedom for relative safety is never a good deal. Since a terrorist can be anyone at anytime the only way of catching them is to watch everyone, all the time, or just admit that you cant catch them all and hope for the best. Racial (and all other hard) profiling is retarded even out of safety reasons since it just makes you vulnerable for individuals that doesnt fit the stereotype.

As i see it your current scarepolitics is a larger threat to your democracy and freedom than terrorism ever was. Im glad im not American.

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Originally Posted by METALLICA

"Terrorism is a symptom, not the disease itself. The best way to fight terrorism (god that word is so overused by now) is to cut supply line of new terrorists. Terrorism cannot only be seen as evil and fanatic, you also have to understand what pushes someone as far as killing oneself for his cause. Im not saying you shouldnt fight terror, but your war on terror hasnt made you safer, on the contrary it only aids those you claim to fight."

fyi, the terrorist effort existed long before the u.s. wrote its declaration of independence

the terrorists of today aren't just terrorists by nature, they are terrorists by birth, by religion, by geographic and sociological influence. there is no cutting of supply lines unless you wish to kill every last muslim, most of which don't even relate to the interpretation that breeds terrorists acts.

and in reply to what is safe or not, we ARE safer, in case you haven't noticed, the u.s. security measures have been drastically raised to a much higher standard, and as a result, there have been no more mass killings on u.s. soil. i doubt there ever will be again.

and our strategy was never to destroy the enemy, it was to bring the fight to them, so that they would expend their resources and panic themselves into exposure (ie: saddam)

the interpretation of islam that leads to terrorist acts will never be eliminated, therefore, the fight will never end. it isn't a matter of supply lines, it's the simple fact that there has been a holy war in the middle east/east europe/western asia for over a thousand years, ever since muhammad saw that judaism and christianity were working for the people of the west, ever since he adapted it to his own people and proclaimed himself a prophet, as a result giving all 3 religions the same location of origin, thus commencing an age-long quarrel for ownership over said land.

the reason that muslim terrorists hate the u.s. is because the u.s. created israel, and gave a foothold to their enemy that was otherwise long-lost

nothing will take that hate away, and there will always be a supply line of hate as long as there are religious beliefs

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All I can say is holy crap. I haven't seen such racism since the 40s ...

The people of the middle-east hated the christians and the western world long before Israel ever came to be. We have waged war in that area of the world for over 1000 years, they hate us because we keep invading, killing and suppressing them. The western aggressions started long before the crusades, the romans, the greeks, european civilizations have always invaded the middle-east.

The current one, the christian civilization, is no exception. We started off with the first crusade in the 11th century and we kept these crusades going until 1798 when Napoleon killed off the last crusade. During most of this time they were governed by the Ottoman empire who allowed western europe to keep crusading them. From 1798 to 1914 the middle-east was at relative peace. No major wars went on, but they were still opressed by the Ottoman empire from the west. After The Ottoman empire was crushed in WW1 Great Britain and France took over and though they had peace buisness was back to usual. They had to obey the laws of others who didn't see them as equals.
Then came WW2 and what was to becomme the "liberation" of the middle-east.

IRAN
Persia had been it's own country for a long time, but they hadn't really governed themselves for a long time. The Shah, a lengthening of the british empire had held control with an iron fist for a long time and this continued for a while after WW2 aswell until the revolution where Mossaddeq got to power as the first democratically elected leader in the middle-east. He got to stay in power for 2 years until an american and brittish led coup d'état reinstated the Shah who would lead the country until the islamic revolution in 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini recived the power. Khomeini set up several courts around the country to prosecute those who had assisted the Shah in killing and imprissoning a large portion of the iranian population. In their quest for evidence they eventually took over the american embassy where they found evidence that the USA and Isreal had assisted the Shah in these acts. The documents recovered consists of over 3000 pages classified by the americans. These documents were published, but are still considered illegal to posses in the USA since they are classified documents. The personnel of the embassy was taken prisoner and their release many years later culminated with the Iran-Contras affair.

IRAQ
They were a puppet to the Brittish empire prior to WW2, but when King Ghazi died in 1939 a nazi friendly leader took over and Great Brittain invaded them straight away to ensure oil supplies. The occupation ended in 1947 and they were returned to beeing a Brittish puppet until 1958 when Quassim took power trough a military coup d'etat. This lasted for 5 years until 1963 when yet another coup d'etat put Arif in power. He was later subsidiced for his brother who got overthrown by the Arab Socialist Baath Party in 1968. Saddam Hussain quickly rose to power and in 1979 he proclaimed himself as president after killing most of his opponents. During his first years of power thousands of people were convicted and hanged for various crimes such as treason and espionage.

IRAN-IRAQ
The war between the 2 countries broke out in 1980 after Saddam accused the iranian goverment to attempt to take over Iraq. Saddam used this war to "take care" of domestic ememies such as the curds and this reached it's culmen in 1988 when mustard gas was used to kill about 5,000 kurds. It was the iranians who reported this to the world and the condemnation of the act was vetoed by the US since this would make further weapons trade impossible, they instead claimed Iran was responsible for the attack. The war ended shortly after since neither side could achive victory largely due to western support for Iraq.

IRAQ
After the war with Iran ended Iraq was in a serious economic situation and Saddam figured an invasion of Kuwait and seizing their recourses would help. The occupation of Kuwait was swift, but after coalition forces retalliated he was forced to withdraw and accept a number of sanctions in exchange for peace. The refusal to follow some of these sanctions led to embargoes beeing taken into action in 1998. Saddam claimed that 500,000 children died as a result of these embargoes. In 2002 he budged and allowed the sanctions again, but america responded with an invasion none the less.
The reasons for this invasion have been debated to boredom, WMD, terrorists, oil etc etc. I belive that the US had allready begun planning this attack when Saddam refused to follow the sanctions and by 2002 they had allready invested to much money and time on the issue to just let it go. Especially when Saddam could just go back on his word like that and force the US to start it all over again. It was easy to get american support after 9/11, all that was needed was to claim they were terrorists and claim those who didn't support it were unpatriotic. In the rest of the world support wasn't needed, but some form of belivable excuse was needed so the claim was made that Iraq possesed WMDs.

AFGHANISTAN
Apart from a few brittish invasions in the 19th century where they lost most of their land they have been left alone due to the desolate nature of it's lands. No riches have been found here and that have been their salvation ... until 1979 when the russians invaded them. The invasion resulted in up towards 2 million dead civilians and to 5 million fleeing the country. After the war the avarage age was 14, all infrastructure and social establishments such as schools and hospitals were destroyed and all intellectuals and those with money had fled. Left were the mujahideen tribes who had been equipped by the US during the war. These were to a large part extrimist muslims who had come from all over the world to help free Afghanistan from the russians. They now had a tremendoes amount of armement and the country recived no outside help to stabalize the situation. The result was another devestating war, this time between different factions of the mujahideen. In 1996 the talibans took control of Kabul and declared themselves as winners, 4 years later they controlled most of the country.
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What kind of person would you be if you had lived in one of these countries the last 20-30 years?

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The people of the middle-east hated the christians and the western world long before Israel ever came to be.

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hate is a strong word, as i mentioned earlier people are usually tolerant towards others until they feel threatened. christians, jews and arabs have had their feuds through out the years, but to say that one side hates the other one is a bit over the top imo. There is very little hate as long as there is prosperity and people live decent lives. Christians jews and muslims have lived side by side successfully plenty of times.

i know you probably didnt intend to come out the way you did, i just think you need to be careful what you say on boards like these since people are obviously deluded already. The average joe of the middle east dont hate america or the west, nor do they hate christians or jews, they just want to live their lives in peace and have some control over their future.

Anuways.. gonna top it off with a quote i once intended to post here (and maybe i did i dont remember)

Of course the people don't want war.
But after all, it's the leaders of the country
who determine the policy, and it's always
a simple matter to drag the people along
whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship,
or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always
be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is tell them
they are being attacked, and denounce
the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and
exposing the country to greater danger.

American politics 101?

"Fear leads to anger.
Anger leads to hate.
Hate leads to suffering."

I don't think hate is too strong a word. What would you feel if your wife had been killed, 2 of your kids had been killed, 2 others handicapped for life, your house and everything you own destroyed, your workplace destroyed, the watersupply destroyed, the electric grid destroyed etc etc?

I don't think hate would even be quite enough.

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Originally Posted by RAKIdaRHINO

Anuways.. gonna top it off with a quote i once intended to post here (and maybe i did i dont remember)

Of course the people don't want war.
But after all, it's the leaders of the country
who determine the policy, and it's always
a simple matter to drag the people along
whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship,
or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always
be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is tell them
they are being attacked, and denounce
the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and
exposing the country to greater danger.

American politics 101?

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That's a quote by Hermann Göring from captain Gilbert's Nurenberg Diaries. Are you comparing the politics of the US today with those of nazi Germany during the late 1930's?

"As i see it your current scarepolitics is a larger threat to your democracy and freedom than terrorism ever was. Im glad im not American."

scare politics is a byproduct of the theory, that politicians try to use to their advantage.

the theory is that racial profiling is the only way to catch more terrorists. it might not work, and it might cost more than it's worth. the sad part is that we have no other way of catching and stopping terrorism. as you have said, a terrorist can be anyone at any time.

i guess we should just walk around with gas masks and bullet proof vests?

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That's a quote by Hermann Göring from captain Gilbert's Nurenberg Diaries. Are you comparing the politics of the US today with those of nazi Germany during the late 1930's?

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Göring was commenting on how a democratic country can be dragged into a war by the will of the leader(s), you don't think that it would be possible to use that definition to describe what GWB did?

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Originally Posted by METALLICA

i guess we should just walk around with gas masks and bullet proof vests?

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and then you get hit by a car and die

Killed in car accidents 42,116*
Killed by the common flu 20,000*
Killed by murders 15,517*
*Average annual totals in United States.
http://www.unitedjustice.com/death-statistics.html

Of the 5.8 million people who died of injuries in 1998, 1,170,694 died as a direct result of injuries sustained in a motor vehicle accident.
http://www.safecarguide.com/exp/stat...statistics.htm

between 1995 and 2000 a total of 1671 ppl died around the world as a result of terrorism. Only a small portion of these were carried out by muslims.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern...obal_Terrorism
http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/

If you're that scared I'd suggest you'd build a padded nuclear shelter somewhere in northern Alaska and live there, the world is not a place for you.

neder
i know very well where the quote is from.. and no, i wasnt comparing nazi germany to america. and hate is too strong of a word because the people in these regions dont hate each other.. not in general. Visit them and youll see for yourself.

any way as for the quote i think its quite representative of what has happened in America since 9/11.. Sad but true.. it has nothing to do with nazism or nazi germany at all, but that doesnt change that its just as true today.. just like Göring himself said, it doesnt matter if its a facist, communist or democratic state. Its equally true for all, even America.

metallica

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i guess we should just walk around with gas masks and bullet proof vests?

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Gasmasks and bulletproof vests or the state constantly watching over your every step. Whats the difference really? Your freedom is still lost and youre still living trapped in a world of fear.

And like neder said, there are tons of things that are a much larger threat to you than terrorism, whatever the state might want you to believe. Open your eyes amigo. 'Terrorism' is just another tool to control the people, believe it or not.

And yeah, to carry on the numbergame.. on 9/11 roughly 25000 people died from starvation, the vast majority of them children. By now we are probably not far from one death per two seconds. Think about it for while. And then think about how many people that die from starvation each time you login to utopia. Scary thought? Well, its the world we live in. Now add to those numbers the huge amount of people that die from preventable diseases. Well, were probably up to one every second. Im not saying we can help everyone, but we have to put things into perspective.

1.4 billion people live on less than $1.25 per day. Now take in the cost of the War on Terror. Actually finding a number for it is hard, because no one really seems to know how much ill cost, but lets use congress own numbers and go with 1 trillion dollars (a low figure, to be quite honest). Is it that hard to think that the money couldve been more effectively spent elsewhere? That these huge amounts of money wouldve lessened the threat against both America and humanity more if they had been invested in to building up these poor nations once and for all taking them out of their misery?

Sure, you have no obligation to do so, nor am i saying that you should. But at least take care of your own people first. Over 50000 people in detroit is disconnected from the water system. Geez.

If you want to deal with terrorism deal with poverty. Its well known by know that poverty, starvation and lack of water play a large role in conflicts around the world. Your enemies would have a hard time selling you as the devil if you did that much good in the world. Right now youre just fueling their flame.