The Obama Faction

[darrelljs]

That's an excellent point, although I disagree with the characterization that the entire Iraqi population was branded as terrorists. Also, Israel has indeed been labeled as a terrorist state by many. If I may be so blunt, when I engage in discussions on this topic with Europeans, there often seems to be an assumption on their part that they are debating the U.S. government instead of little 'ol me . In any case the many mistakes made after 9/11 don't change whether the approach is correct or not, they just illustrate how critical it is to have your facts straight and how hard it is to keep politics out of the decision making process.

Darrell

[Qgqqqqq]

Nice article, dont want to discuss polotics, but re: your first point darrel; should we not attempt to redeem people i.e. attempt to convince them of their wrongdoing (as we see it) or at least try to understand their viewpoint.
Or if we dont, why would anyone ever be let out of prison, if we as a society cant accept that people are "redeemable".
And taking that further, if there is no "redemption" why not chuck people in for life for stealing a phone, after all theyll never change!

[Yell0w]

When people say the terrorists were evil, or that they hate freedom, they are neither ignorant nor stupid. They are simply applying their frame of reference, shaped by the society they are part of, to interpret the event. Entirely appropriate .

Darrell

Not beeing able to see that this reaction is "shaped by society" and not by oneself makes them ignorant or stupid.

My own opinion is that the answer to a) is "no", and we are therefore better off allocating our limited resources to finding and catching the terrorists before they can commit another atrocity.

Darrell

Well in my opinion terrorism like a lot of other problems, is just a symptom and you can fight the symptom but it will be a Sisyphos fight.

It does mean that in another world, if they had been raised in a different environment, those hijackers might have been police officers. And that is indeed a tragedy. Welcome to Earth.

This is a really unsatisfying end to the article. "if they had been raised in a different environment, those hijackers might have been police officers" - that sounds nice in a vacuum, but I can't get behind that kind of thinking. What about all the other people raised in the same environment who went on to be ordinary, contributing members of society? To imply they are primarily a victim of the context they were raised in is an over-simplification.

Yeah it is.
But if you put people in impossible situations like war they tend to react irrationally and while not all people do that different people suffer different amount of loss and deal with loss differently, hence "creating terrorists" out of people who "might have been police officers" is just whats happening. (funny that they take police officers a group with a special psych profile as a comparison ^^) It is unsatisfying cause it would mean that the way we (the western world) react to the proverbial "evil" is stupid.

[Yell0w]

We can start by stop calling them "terrorists", try using whatever term they call themselves to begin with. Then we can begin to understand who they are and what "the problem" is.

And if rapists want to be called "liberators of unfertilized eggs"?

Darrell

This is really cheap to compare politically motivated militant organizations to sexual offenders, arguably the most hated people on the planet.

Btw. by focusing on rape we could save a fifth of our female population from being sexually abused, if I go into the numbers game fighting terrorism becomes ridiculous. Wars like the one against terrorism were are and probably will be always fought to a) enforce politics b) secure resources c) distract from national problems.

Who are your terrorists Darrell?

My terrorists are those that plan and attempt to carry out attacks on innocent civilians.

terrorists are also those that plan and enact attacks on innocent civilians by forcing them into slave labor, knowingly and willingly exploit them, rob them of their livelihood, risking their lives and never taking responsibility. Terrorists like Dow Chemical or Monsanto. Terrorists that start a war with over 80% civilian casualties, who we, the western world, take casually.

[Twinkletoes89]

To lighten the mood, here's something political and funny.

http://m.comedycentral.com/tds_video.rbm...ove-s-math

[Occhidiangela]

KOP, that wasn't rape, that was incest. And IIRC, they got him drunk first.

[KingOfPain]

Hehe Occhi. If I get what you said correctly, you are just being sexually biased? The rapist is not the father.

It's "Dislcosure" of the "Deliverance" kind

[antisocialmunky]

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/respons...re-looking

since this is the politics thread.

[NobleHelium]

[Viqsi]

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/respons...re-looking

since this is the politics thread.

That is beautiful.