By the way, I'm no pacifist, and I absolutely hate the "religion" of Islam. I wish we could wipe every trace of Islam off of the map. But showing extreme violence against a large population of mostly innocent (if not incredibly ignorant) people is no solution to the extremism. What is the solution? I don't know. Maybe go more surgical? Round up all of the religious leaders and silence them? Destroy their temples? Burn piles of the Koran? Make the mention of the word Mohammed punishable by prison? At this point, I'm thinking there is no long lasting solution born of violence. The only thing that will cool the ragheads down is change and reform from within. But as we see with most religions, most people do not like to have their beliefs even questioned, much less changed. Good thread though, Sour. I like hypotheticals.
I was honestly hoping and waiting for someone to bring this up! I really haven't said anything about killing or genocide others have. First of all why did Christ let the holocost happen to the Jews if you are correct? What is christ like about Muslims killing innocent people including 9/11? Nowhere did I say I support killing of innocent people! Anyway lets talk about christ and god and how many times in the bible they actually killed people, struck them down, talked about stoning people. Then there were Aaron's sons, the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah. There are plenty of people that were killed because off lesser offenses than what radical muslims do which are sponsered by the countries I listed. And again I have said nothing about killing people, consider it another episode of Survivor!:lol: :grin: Nowhere did I claim to be anywhere close to god as far as stature, I am nothing more than a mortal person known as Sourdoughman here. I could even make up all this stuff for discussion for the heck of it if I wanted to because this is entertainment!:lol: I just don't see how you can fix or deal with this problem when the kids become polluted then you have to fight them as well. How would you feel about killing kids because they were going to kill you? Still waiting for others to give their 2 cents?:dis: Anyway I don't think any of us know what the single answer or fix is. The scary thing is they no longer fight each other, they are coming after us, Will we be ready? One more thought is that these people are a minority for now but that may change in the future! (scared face)
Honestly, in hindsight, a brutal secularist is what is required to keep the Muslims in line. Look at Saddam or the Shah of Iran. I used to feel bad for the people living under those regimes, but not so much anymore from what we've seen from Iraq's citizens. If you look at the toppling of these secular leaders, you see a vast Islamic revival each time it happens. That's why Pakistan is off the hook at the moment. Mussariff (sp) almost fits the bill, but he needs to be taught how to be more brutal with the populace. Maybe we can send SaltyOne over there to get class started? It's a shame that a bloodthirsty dictator is what is required to keep the peace in certain areas of the globe, but commonplace for most of man's history.
Democracy doesn't work in places where the hate goes back for centuries and they use the ruse of religion to justify their hatred for each other. Not every country will cherish and fight for freedom. We need to understand that better so we don't attempt to try to fix something that the populace in those countries doesn't think is broken. God help us if the Saudi regime is ever toppled.
Another fantasy. Why are you determined to make this a religious war? A jihad! You want to kill all the muslims in the world, which makes you as much of an extremist as Al Qaida. It is Al Qaida strategy to use their crimes and our overreaction to manufacture an international holy war and you are falling right into it. The tens of millions of muslims are NOT the problem. The problem is several thousand muslims extremists, who are committing international crimes against America. Focusing on their demise is the only possible way of stopping them. These childish notions of wiping out all the muslims are beyond absurd. The utter unreality of it is astonishing to me. Such a genocide isn't even do-able and must be the result of a childhood of playing "kill-them-all" video games. Things don't work like that in the real world. A country has not made war on us. A religion has not made war on us. Many of these muslims are allies of ours, you know. Some radical islamist criminals have attacked us and they must be captured or killed to end it. Indulging in puerile fantasies and traisping around the world vainly trying to kill all the muslims is an absolutely ASININE strategy for defeating international terrorists. It just creates more of them while failing to destroy the 9/11 masterminds who still run free. That's not being a pacifist, its being a pragmatist. We must do the do-able. Chit-can the fantasy vanquishing of an imaginary monolithic religious enemy and get to work on identifying and solving the real problem. This isn't the evil Galactic Empire we're dealing with. It's a small mob of islamic raghead gangsters who do NOT rule or lead international Islam. The failure to pursue and kill bin Ladin is arguably a worse blunder than the invasion and occupation of Iraq. If we absolutely quash al Qaida, the rest of Islam will respect us for it. If we attack all of Islam, we will have fallen into bin ladin's trap. And we will fail.
Ahhh, you are learning, Grasshoppa. There isn't a democracy anywhere in the Arab world. Ask any Iraq War veteran--they just don't understand what democracy is. Every Arab country is ruled by a ruthless strongman, including our allies in Egypt, Saudi, Kuwait, and the Gulf States. This is all they have ever known. A Jeffersonian democracy is simply incompatible with Islam. They have found their own way. And you also perceive correctly that a secular strongman is better than an islamic strongman. The Shah fell and Iran became an Islamic state and an enemy. The big irony of both Iraq wars is that Saddam's Iraq was the most westernized Arab country before 1991. Women could work and didn't wear the veil, the government was secular, and his iron boot kept security and order among the citizenry who all hated each other. In the Gulf, Saddam was a powerful balance against radical islamic Iranian ambitions, but we removed it. Nobody misses Saddam, but history indicates that we are likely going to end up with another strongman in charge when we inevitably leave Iraq and he's going to be an Islamic strongman, probably Muqtada al Sadr, not a secular one. A more prudent US strategy at this point is not a futile attempt to create a US-style democracy, but to install a secular strongman that can keep the country from becoming another radical islamic state like Iran. But since the Shiites, Kurds, and Sunnis all hate each other, I see little alternative but to partition Iraq into three countries that have a chance to be united and cohesive.
You know Red, you're right. And it's probably why the Bush administration wrongly thought the transition post-Hussein would be an easy one. What a monumental mistake. I read the below in the 'Marginalia' section of the June 2007 Playboy. From a declassified British Intelligence document from 1983: "The Saddam Hussein regime is likely to pursue policies more favorable to the United States than any other successor regime.....Saddam Hussein's removal could usher in an extended period of instability in Baghdad...Any post-Saddam Hussein regime is almost certain to fall into factional fighting." How prophetic. Seems like if we could've somehow made peace with him (like we did in the 80's), we would be alot better off. I know, I know. Hindsight is 20/20. Before those of you say something to the effect of 'we could never make peace or support a brutal dictator", well that's hypocritical and uninformed because we do it all the time.
I find this very interesting as well and now I can see why going into Iraq could've been a very bad move. The only thing I can say about this is that I don't know what classified intel there could be out there that would justify such an invasion, we wouldn't know what the future looks like had we not gone into Iraq. History seems to repeat itself so another thought comes to mind: Jimmy Carter didn't back the Shah and he fell then the ayatollah came to power, sounds all too familiar.
