Congress may take up a prohibition against koran abuse

[Kathy64]

Controlling an unstable region and exploiting its resources is called the spread of civilization.

[ScottLC]

Zing!!

[Timberwolf]

1.I have studied history. Trying to control unstable areas of the world and exploit their resources looks and sounds to me like imperialism. There is no other word for it.

Who's doing that?

2. You'll never be able to "kill 'em all". It's a stupid, sick, childish fantasy. You kill one terrorist, and his son, brother, cousin will take up arms as well. The only solution is to get out of their countries and leave them alone.

Then you kill those who take their place(s)...btw, if they would leave us alone and play nice in the world sandbox, I'd agree. But, those of us who "have studied history" know that they won't leave anyone alone until every knee bows to allah.

3. And you claim not to support imperialism? "To the victor the spoils" is imperialism.

Not when they screw with you first. It's called "reimbursement for 'services rendered'".

4.We are meddling with Libya because western companies have invested a lot of money in the oil industry there, and western governments are protecting that investment.

We don't get our oil from Libya, so I have to agree....why are we there? Why were we in Egypt? Makes no sense to me.

5. You can't possibly fight against a global religion with billions of adherents. That would be like fighting the hydra, you cut off one head and two more will spring up. Islam is not your enemy.

islam is EVERYONE'S enemy. Open your eyes to reality. Riots in Britain, France, and to a lesser extent, here in the States. They are NOT your friends.

6. So, an eye for an eye is your solution? You've had one significant terrorist attack ten years ago, by a small group of people. That's totally outbalanced by the enormous financial, technological, and military power of the United States, which can reach into every corner of the globe.

Small group? Did you not see the MASSES of "peaceful" muslims rejoicing and dancing in the streets AROUND THE WORLD when the WTC came down? Try again.

7. To me there is a difference between the military blowing up, blinding, or maiming a child with a bomb and a woman freely choosing not to bring an unwanted child into the world. Why are you so anxious for every single child to be born? So you can further flood the jails, so you can send them overseas to be killed in pointless wars?

It's called taking responsibility for one's actions. You don't want a kid, don't have sex...simple really. But, your "if it feels good do it" is kinda diametrically opposed to that....

8. Islam is not a homogenous mass which all acts and thinks exactly the same. The Koran can be interpreted in lots of different ways. There are liberal Muslims, moderate Muslims, fundamental Muslims. I agree that fundamental Islam must be fought against, but so must fundamental Christianity, which is very similar.

Bullmuffins. When is the last time a Christian took off someone's head for no other reason than their Holy Book told them to? Don't cite the Inquisition either, because that unholy organization was a bastardization of Christ's words. islam is evil...READ the koran, the surrahs and the haddiths...

9. Again, that's only a tiny minority of Muslims, a lunatic fringe with a literalist approach to interpreting the Koran and hadith. It is not the vast majority of Muslims who just want to get on with living their lives.

If that's what you think, you need to brush up on "what islam really is". It is NOT merely a religion, it is a system of life including governance, judiciary AND religion. It is a theocracy. islam and shari'ah are inseparable

10. ALL of Islamic commentary for the past two decades? Really? Do you know what a vast range of material that encompasses? The stuff I usually hear them say is something along the lines of "we want to remove the infidel crusader from the lands of Islam". Anyway, even if that were true, would the correct response to it be to say exactly the same thing, to escalate the conflict? Do two wrongs make a right?

Actually, it should read, "We want to withdraw from the Holy Land of the Jewish People".

11. Stop making assumptions about me. I don't have an agenda, just an analysis. And your analysis is this: "They're trying to kill us, so we have to kill them". It's crude, oversimplified fantasising which no doubt makes you feel good but has nothing to do with the real world.

Get back to us when you live under shari'ah because you didn't have the balls to stand up to them.

12. Yes I do know why. Because United States foreign policy was based on "my enemy's enemy is my friend", and they're not alone in that. Thus they propped up and supported any disgraceful tinpot dictator who proclaimed himself to be anti-communist. Thus they armed and trained reprehensible guerilla terrorist groups in Latin America, and Islamic extremist nutjobs in Afghanistan. What variables am I leaving out?

That the world would be a FAR worse place had the USSR not been opposed. SOMETIMES, "the lesser of two evils" is the only choice one has...and many times, the choice made comes back to bite one on the backside.

13. And how exactly do you "verify their loyalty and history"? How do you finance it? How do you get around the logistics and the morals of rounding up and interring mostly innocent men, women and children in the supposed land of the free? Please come out of fantasy land.

You first.

"If the muslims lay down their weapons, there will be peace. If Israel lays down her weapons, she ceases to exist". Tell me that is wrong.

14. Your parting shot is insufferably arrogant. To call me a "leftist" is a very good ad hominem way of ignoring all of my points. And as for "a lion's den of my betters", please. I see a group of grown men quaking in fear about imaginary jihadists, and plotting violent revenge fantasies while clinging blindly to gutter patriotism and silly screen-names, a bunch of armchair keyboard warriors. Thank you. Michael

Tell ya what, junior. When these "imaginary jihadists" fly jets into Westminster Abbey, the Eiffel Tower and/or set off a dirty bomb in Frankfurt, Paris and/or London, get back to us. They already took out a subway in ?Madrid?...you think they'll stop there if you don't give in to their demands or if you try to deprive them of shari'ah?

If you do, YOU are the one living in fantasyland.

[Wyatt Junker]

1.I have studied history. Trying to control unstable areas of the world and exploit their resources looks and sounds to me like imperialism. There is no other word for it.

If only we exploited Afghanistan and Iraq's resources. And that's the problem. We didn't. I wish we did. Sign me up for imperialism. War games and debt have to be repaid somehow and I'd love to get a ROIC back from the various shit holes. That said, we should have never gone to war like Bush did. Instead, we should have razed Afghanistan and took over the natural resources. We should have become imperialists. Its too bad we didn't because that's a lot of waste for merely projecting multicultural niceties(ie, bullshit) to throw on the back of the American taxpayer who continues to get douched by a politically correct Pentagon.

Libya OTOH is a war for oil. But it was conducted stupidly. We should have backed Momar and helped get at the oil. So, in the end, we backed the wrong side and will probably lose out on the oil too, in our war for oil. DC is incompetent all the way around.

2. You'll never be able to "kill 'em all". It's a stupid, sick, childish fantasy. You kill one terrorist, and his son, brother, cousin will take up arms as well. The only solution is to get out of their countries and leave them alone.

Study history then. It is littered with ancient, dead civilizations either killed off by war, plague or natural disaster.

Study history. After firebombing Tokyo and killing over 900,000 Japs we then turned around and atomized them twice only to have them summarily surrender. After that lovely sunset, there were no more terrorists(yes kamikazes were the first ones) left or committed to takes up arms for their brother. Study history.

We agree on at least one part though. I am not an interventionist either. However, when the cost becomes too unbearable then destroy your enemy. I, too, believe in fewer wars, but meaner ones. I want shorter, fewer more devastating wars.

3. And you claim not to support imperialism? "To the victor the spoils" is imperialism.

Great. Sign me up. Let's get the spoils. "Oh noes. I'm an imperialist!" LOL.

Sorry white boy, but that's your problem with being labeled a word you call 'bad'.

4.We are meddling with Libya because western companies have invested a lot of money in the oil industry there, and western governments are protecting that investment.

Better not vote for the tan war monger then.

5. You can't possibly fight against a global religion with billions of adherents. That would be like fighting the hydra, you cut off one head and two more will spring up. Islam is not your enemy.

Yeah, you've already said this same boring, untrue bullshit up above. Number 2, I believe. Consolidate.

6. So, an eye for an eye is your solution? You've had one significant terrorist attack ten years ago, by a small group of people. That's totally outbalanced by the enormous financial, technological, and military power of the United States, which can reach into every corner of the globe.

I agree. We need to take the fins off our bombs before dropping them.

7. To me there is a difference between the military blowing up, blinding, or maiming a child with a bomb and a woman freely choosing not to bring an unwanted child into the world. Why are you so anxious for every single child to be born? So you can further flood the jails, so you can send them overseas to be killed in pointless wars?

Or a headchopper cutting off a child's limb or head. You forgot the headchoppers who live in the sandy places 'over there'. Throw them into the mix then rank them. I would put abortionists at the top of the list of things I hate and the women who allow them to ram steel up their junk to Benihana their child. At least in Islam they allow their children to grow a little before they rape them and cut them up. That's better than doing it right in the womb. They don't even get to see daylight at a Planned Parenthood. At least the headchoppers have a little more decency.

8. Islam is not a homogenous mass which all acts and thinks exactly the same. The Koran can be interpreted in lots of different ways. There are liberal Muslims, moderate Muslims, fundamental Muslims. I agree that fundamental Islam must be fought against, but so must fundamental Christianity, which is very similar.

No. They're pretty homogenous, at least when it comes to their negligence at reforming the extreme members of their group either through censorship or outright condemnation. A silent, dumb mob of a group. Homo-JUH-Nus.

9. Again, that's only a tiny minority of Muslims, a lunatic fringe with a literalist approach to interpreting the Koran and hadith. It is not the vast majority of Muslims who just want to get on with living their lives.

Dude, when even the infrastructure is like Mississippi Burning water fountains, I think they've kind of jumped the shark and have mainstreamed their feelings which are very much out in the open.

10. ALL of Islamic commentary for the past two decades? Really? Do you know what a vast range of material that encompasses? The stuff I usually hear them say is something along the lines of "we want to remove the infidel crusader from the lands of Islam". Anyway, even if that were true, would the correct response to it be to say exactly the same thing, to escalate the conflict? Do two wrongs make a right?

You're assuming there's two wrongs. Stopping an invader is not becoming the invader. A right can stop a wrong and sometimes it can stop it dead in its tracks.

11. Stop making assumptions about me. I don't have an agenda, just an analysis. And your analysis is this: "They're trying to kill us, so we have to kill them". It's crude, oversimplified fantasising which no doubt makes you feel good but has nothing to do with the real world.

You don't have an analysis because your mind, its all fuked up. Its impossible for you to have 'an analysis'.

12. Yes I do know why. Because United States foreign policy was based on "my enemy's enemy is my friend", and they're not alone in that. Thus they propped up and supported any disgraceful tinpot dictator who proclaimed himself to be anti-communist. Thus they armed and trained reprehensible guerilla terrorist groups in Latin America, and Islamic extremist nutjobs in Afghanistan. What variables am I leaving out?

It was smart. The Red Scare was real. It was spreading through proxy wars everywhere. Study history. Its not your fault. You're just ignorant.

We should have kept propping up dictators that were against our primary enemies. Smart. It would have kept us out of wars. Ooooops! Wait a minute. You don't want us propping up dictators to keep us out of wars but you don't want us in wars either! I'm sensing a contradiction.

So, what is it? Wars or no wars with lame, dictator propping foreign policy. Neither is not an option, but I'm sure you'll try.

13. And how exactly do you "verify their loyalty and history"? How do you finance it? How do you get around the logistics and the morals of rounding up and interring mostly innocent men, women and children in the supposed land of the free? Please come out of fantasy land.

Internment camps, detentions, mosque raids, and finally deportations. We don't lack ideas only leaders with sac.

14. Your parting shot is insufferably arrogant. To call me a "leftist" is a very good ad hominem way of ignoring all of my points. And as for "a lion's den of my betters", please. I see a group of grown men quaking in fear about imaginary jihadists, and plotting violent revenge fantasies while clinging blindly to gutter patriotism and silly screen-names, a bunch of armchair keyboard warriors. Thank you. Michael

Imaginary jihadists?

Do you read current events? Have you read any history of the Ottoman Empire? Have you seen the list of terrorist attacks since Arafat's assumption of power?

Imaginary?

Are you on drugs, son?

[Monarch]

Hey there tarnishedmike77....send more of your kind with the canned demagoguery and DNC rhetoric. You guys are a lot easier to dismantle than you think you are. Unlike your boards, we don't ban and delete posts of opposing views that are expressed rationally. Been to your kind of boards seen too many opposing voices banned for picking on pet subjects there.

I suggest you take a 2 week vacation in some place like Saudi Arabia or Iraq. You will certainly have a more qualified perspective on the situation there than you do now. I did 3 tours in SWA. I met the people, read their papers, listened to their intel chiefs talk.

Armchair QBs that have an imaginary life on a college campus are more worthless than piss in a urinal.

[Kathy64]

There is a huge difference between studying history and actually learning anything. Those who study history context what they studied esoterically and academically, A historian, on the other hand, will look at cause and effect. Alexander Tyler's short essay on the Fall of the Athenian Empire is a great example of the purpose and functions of historians who have really learned something. Imperialism specifically British Imperialism has done the world more good than any other, including Roman imperialism.

Probably the most harsh of imperial oppression was in India by the British. I will only go through two lessons.

There existed a cult of the followers of Kali. They were called The Thugees. This is where we get our word "thug" from. The Thugees practiced the murder of innocents as their religious devotion. The British outlawed the entire cult, hunted down the Thugees and executed them on the spot. I'm sure the Thugs found this oppressive having their religious rights violated like that but the townspeople were definitely grateful. The world was not better off with the Thugees killing whoever they found as devotion to Kali. The world was infintely better off with no Thugees at all. They were at times hunted for sport.
A good time was had by all, except for the Thugs, but that's understandable.

British Imperialism put an end to the horrific cultural practice of Suttee. I know that serious studiers of history know what this is, but for those that don't. It is the practice of dressing a widow as if she were a bride, by her friends and her female relatives. Mother, sister, daughters. Then forcing her to walk or dragging her if she didn't to the center of town where she was burned alive. The British Governor of India at the time put an end to this horror by the simple edict of saying that the next person that forced a woman to Suttee would be burned alive themselves. It only took a couple of times before the Indian village leaders knew he was serious.

HOORAY for IMPERIALISM.

Of countries that lived must better under imperialism than without it, well, lets just say Africa and be done with it. Civilization, the rule of law, infrastructure improvements, advances in medicine have all been spread through imperialism of some kind. Once the imperialistic whites were removed from Africa, the Flower of Rhodesia became the starving poverty stricken Zimbabwe. Without an imperial force, Nigeria is in a religious civil war right now. The colonial government of Somalia left and we have - Somalia. Without an imperial army, we had the Hutu Tutsi war, starving Biafrans and the genocidal war of Rwanda. It's a wonder what's left of the sane people in Africa haven't asked the Boers to come back!

Imperialism is a necessary component of progress. I'm certainly happy that there was an Imperial Rome, an Imperial Britian and if there wasn't an Imperial Spain, we likely wouldn't be here.

If you want to get right down to it. The middle east has been unable to govern itself for thousands of years. It got some semblance of civilization from the Imperial Ottoman Empire in Turkey which exploited, pillaged and whacked some serious booty in the bedoin tribes until they started behaving themselves. That lasted until some of the Ottoman muslims thought that it was a good time to spread Islam by allying with the German (Imperialists too) in 1914 WWI. Other Ottoman muslims thought they would have more butter on Allied bread. By the end of WWI, the Ottoman empire had disintegrated and was formally dead in 1922. That left British Imperialism the sole power in the region but too much of an informal and unserious imperialism permitted the tribes to war, with Britian and each other. Oh boy does that sound familiar! In 1956 Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal that started the British withdrawal, by 1967 it was all over. British imperialism had gone, unfortunately for the occupants, it began a period of endless wars between tribal warlords that exist today. The best thing to bring stability to this unstable part of the world and exploit its necessary natural resources IS a strong and effective imperial overseer. Make it a colony without the ability for independent actions. It would bring peace and prosperity. See, you can't have peace or prosperity without stability. Only India proved capable of governing itself (largely because it adopted the civil, criminal and judicial systerm of England) and even that is under constant muslim harassment.

To hear "I studied history" from someone who has a total absolute lack of knowledge of basic historical facts about imperialism its use, its spread and its necessity tells me one thing about this "study". You really read one book by a leftist professor and never went any further.

[Kathy64]

Oh my.

Did I scare him off?

[tac]

I doubt it. Do a google search and you'll see his MO.

[Wyatt Junker]

He's writing for Hallmark Greeting cards it seems.

http://twitter.com/#!/blackmichael77

[Wyatt Junker]

Good Lord. This reads just like a Jared Loughner soundbite.

http://blackmichael77.blogspot.com/