No, those are examples of incredibly complex situations with few clear bad guys and some questionable long term results of military intervention.
The problem with a military solution is that you can't just bomb the problem away. If you kill the bad guys, you also need to address the reason for the bad guys or you're just going to get more.
Whats the reason for these bad guys?
It's not "they hate our freedoms".
Come on man...
It's an honest question because I still don't think I've ever heard an addressable reason for these horrible people to be doing what they do.
It's like the guy who shot up that church earlier this year. I really don't care why he did what he did and I don't think capitulating to his reasons is actually gonna solve anything. We've gotta make it clear that this kind of hate can not exist in our world today, regardless of the race or marginalization level of the people involved.
No, those are examples of incredibly complex situations with few clear bad guys and some questionable long term results of military intervention.
The problem with a military solution is that you can't just bomb the problem away. If you kill the bad guys, you also need to address the reason for the bad guys or you're just going to get more.
Whats the reason for these bad guys?
It's not "they hate our freedoms".
It depends on what you mean by freedom...
But you're wrong
Extremist Islam is totally against the kinds of freedoms that France and the United States have
That's what they're opposed to
The freedom to worship who you want, or not to worship anyone at all
The freedom to wear what you want, the freedom to say what you want, the freedom to do what you want
They hate all that
They think it's an affront to God
Yes, they totally have political motivations. Absolutely they do. But they absolutely also hate American/French freedom. Absolutely.
The experts whom have actually interviewed surviving martyrs & studied the unifying principles of these groups would not agree.
The ultimate root causes seem to me to be: people with the wealth to pursue education but without the ability to wield political power combined with a large population with little hope. The former usually lead to revolutions, often violent; the latter creates a ready source of recruits.
More than anything else, I suspect the root problem is the West's support for the Saudi monarchs and Egyptian dictators.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
No, those are examples of incredibly complex situations with few clear bad guys and some questionable long term results of military intervention.
The problem with a military solution is that you can't just bomb the problem away. If you kill the bad guys, you also need to address the reason for the bad guys or you're just going to get more.
Whats the reason for these bad guys?
It's not "they hate our freedoms".
Come on man...
It's an honest question because I still don't think I've ever heard an addressable reason for these horrible people to be doing what they do.
It's like the guy who shot up that church earlier this year. I really don't care why he did what he did and I don't think capitulating to his reasons is actually gonna solve anything. We've gotta make it clear that this kind of hate can not exist in our world today, regardless of the race or marginalization level of the people involved.
Capitulating and understanding their motivations are not in any way the same thing, though.
Understanding not only what the leaders of these groups want (generally, power of some sort, whether under the guise of religion or what have you) but also why it is so easy for them to recruit people to their causes is hugely important in fighting this sort of extremism.
It's not nearly as simple as 'well they're evil so they do evil acts!' because a lot of these people don't start out like that. They become that way and figuring out why and how allows you to address the why and how.
No, those are examples of incredibly complex situations with few clear bad guys and some questionable long term results of military intervention.
The problem with a military solution is that you can't just bomb the problem away. If you kill the bad guys, you also need to address the reason for the bad guys or you're just going to get more.
Whats the reason for these bad guys?
It's not "they hate our freedoms".
Come on man...
It's an honest question because I still don't think I've ever heard an addressable reason for these horrible people to be doing what they do.
It's like the guy who shot up that church earlier this year. I really don't care why he did what he did and I don't think capitulating to his reasons is actually gonna solve anything. We've gotta make it clear that this kind of hate can not exist in our world today, regardless of the race or marginalization level of the people involved.
I mean, Hitler happened. Then the world united in saying "fuck off die", and made it happen. I know I'm simplifying things to the nth degree, and am too uneducated to see why this is completely different, but right now it feels like there is an evil group of shitheads that needs to be swept off the face of the earth.
No, those are examples of incredibly complex situations with few clear bad guys and some questionable long term results of military intervention.
The problem with a military solution is that you can't just bomb the problem away. If you kill the bad guys, you also need to address the reason for the bad guys or you're just going to get more.
Whats the reason for these bad guys?
It's not "they hate our freedoms".
It depends on what you mean by freedom...
But you're wrong
Extremist Islam is totally against the kinds of freedoms that France and the United States have
That's what they're opposed to
The freedom to worship who you want, or not to worship anyone at all
The freedom to wear what you want, the freedom to say what you want, the freedom to do what you want
They hate all that
They think it's an affront to God
Yes, they totally have political motivations. Absolutely they do. But they absolutely also hate American/French freedom. Absolutely.
The experts whom have actually interviewed surviving martyrs & studied the unifying principles of these groups would not agree.
Expert speaking: It's complicated, and there is likely an association between certain types of martyrdom and suicidal ideation / other mental issues not really ideology related, and there is often an intersection between wholly worldly crime and "religious" organizations, BUT! we shouldn't pretend that, again, no one is motivated by motivations, and that backwards reactionaries in an already regressive part of the world don't genuinely dislike modern innovations in human dignity and development like gay rights.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
One root issue are the particular sects involved (more importantly their dogmas) and their tacit support in many areas. If I'm remembering correctly, Wahhabism is strongly backed by Saudi Arabia; if this support did not exist - among other factors, like educational or economic opportunities - what would be the effect with respect to militants?
No, those are examples of incredibly complex situations with few clear bad guys and some questionable long term results of military intervention.
The problem with a military solution is that you can't just bomb the problem away. If you kill the bad guys, you also need to address the reason for the bad guys or you're just going to get more.
Whats the reason for these bad guys?
It's not "they hate our freedoms".
Come on man...
It's an honest question because I still don't think I've ever heard an addressable reason for these horrible people to be doing what they do.
It's like the guy who shot up that church earlier this year. I really don't care why he did what he did and I don't think capitulating to his reasons is actually gonna solve anything. We've gotta make it clear that this kind of hate can not exist in our world today, regardless of the race or marginalization level of the people involved.
They're doing it for revenge for perceived or real attacks against them. When the WTC was hit by planes a lot of people defaulted to "kill all Muslims". That was just one attack. Muslims in the Middle East have been bombed for the last decade with a death toll far above that of 9/11, it's no wonder why they feel resentment towards the West.
I mean, Hitler happened. Then the world united in saying "fuck off die", and made it happen. I know I'm simplifying things to the nth degree, and am too uneducated to see why this is completely different, but right now it feels like there is an evil group of shitheads that needs to be swept off the face of the earth.
Without actual evidence in this particular case, earlier European terrorist attacks were made by second or third generation immigrants, not flown in terrorists.
Steam: SanderJK Origin: SanderJK
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FakefauxCóiste BodharDriving John McCain to meet some Iraqis who'd very much like to make his acquaintanceRegistered Userregular
Aren't those all examples where we didn't kill all the bad guys though?
I think that was the point being raised.
Check the death tolls. You dropped more bombs on Cambodia than you did on Japan, and you assassinated the opposing leadership.
I suppose you can always say, "Well, we clearly just didn't kill enough people,"
I would love to see the compelling piece of evidence that supports the idea that peace follows after the application of unrestrained military force.
Why aren't Germany, Japan, and First Nations all examples where military force was used until violence stopped?
Don't experts agree that dropping the nuclear bomb saved more lives than it took?
No. The necessity of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings is fiercely debated in academic circles to this day. There are many experts who argue it wasn't necessary at all.
Total elimination removes the need for weak rhetoric. ISIS cannot defeat France militarily, so rather than being shrinking violets and willing victims, I'd suggest we, not just the French, but everyone in the world who wants a peaceful society that believes in human rights and seeks human development and advancement, take robust measures to destroy ISIS personnel, assets, etc. This attack is the result of a cavalier and half-hearted approach to dealing with extremists who literally hate everything good and decent in the world.
Appeasement doesn't work.
This has historically been a very successful approach to securing peace & stability. Cambodia, Afghanistan (both in contemporary and historical terms), Iraq, Israel, etc.
But no, I'm sure this time killing the bad guys will do the trick and finally make the world better.
Look, I understand that the broader solution is one of politics, open arms, mutual understanding and all that, and I think it's important to make sure people understand that these wahhabi extremists are a rotten twig on an unpleasant branch of a perfectly good tree; the Westboro Baptists of Islam.
But sometimes you need to drain the abscess while you treat the disease. Killing the Nazis didn't end racsim, but it was necessary. When a bad idea reaches critical mass, allowing it's adherents to gather and militarize openly just invites more bad things happen.
If ISIS has reached a concentration we can effectively attack, then we absolutely should. As a planet. What they do is not ok, and it angers me a little more every day the world does not stomp their guts out.
-.-
'The Nazis' (and Imperial Japan) were the state administrators for actual countries, with logistics chains that could be attacked, an identifiable front, organized troop movements, etc. These are not at all analogous to the entanglements in the Persian Gulf right now.
Germany was actually invading invading other countries, for example, whereas ISIL's actions more resemble a civil conflict (albeit it's more complex than that because it straddles a border) and is part of a sectarian fight where the other belligerents are no better. It's not even the same as Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, where there was an obligation to go rescue an allied country from foreign occupation.
If we're not sure what a good solution is - and I think this is more or less the overwhelming consensus - then surely saturating the area in munitions and hoping for the best is about the stupidest move one can make. And we've already made that mistake many times, and guess what? This has not ended terrorism or even reduced the number of terrorist atrocities that occur every year.
Arafat, Gaddafi, Saddam, Bin Laden... where is the peace & prosperity that was supposed to materialize after the lives of these men ended? It certainly was promised, and yet it seems to remain elusive. "Well, we just haven't killed enough of them yet!" is not a very convincing argument.
I did not mean to allege that we can bomb terrorism away. Wahhabi extremism is an idea, ISIS is an active group of criminals openly engaged in the extermination of regional ethnic and religious groups. Destroying the latter will not prevent, or even diminish, the former, but addressing only the idea will not stop the marauding assholes currently under its spell, nor help their victims. This situation warrants both, and your post seemed to imply you felt military action was entirely inappropriate.
Perhaps you meant reverse-genocide was not the answer, or violence and nothing else. I would agree with this.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
No, those are examples of incredibly complex situations with few clear bad guys and some questionable long term results of military intervention.
The problem with a military solution is that you can't just bomb the problem away. If you kill the bad guys, you also need to address the reason for the bad guys or you're just going to get more.
Whats the reason for these bad guys?
It's not "they hate our freedoms".
It depends on what you mean by freedom...
But you're wrong
Extremist Islam is totally against the kinds of freedoms that France and the United States have
That's what they're opposed to
The freedom to worship who you want, or not to worship anyone at all
The freedom to wear what you want, the freedom to say what you want, the freedom to do what you want
They hate all that
They think it's an affront to God
Yes, they totally have political motivations. Absolutely they do. But they absolutely also hate American/French freedom. Absolutely.
The experts whom have actually interviewed surviving martyrs & studied the unifying principles of these groups would not agree.
This idea that Islamist extremism actually has nothing to do with opposing liberal values is insane. It's an affront to rational thinking. It's wrong.
Yes, ABSOLUTELY there are political reasons for Islamist terrorism. But to say that opposing liberal values has nothing to do with it is just bonkers.
I'd be interested in you citing one of those experts though.
This guy became an Islamist extremist and went to the Middle East to go fight for extremists. He eventually came around, converting away from his extremist views to something far more reasonable. He cites political AND religious/ideological reasons for his turn towards extremism in his youth.
From the interview--
GROSS: Preach to me. Like, pretend like I'm a potential recruit, and you're trying to get me. This is, like, years ago, and you're trying to get me to join your group.
NAWAZ: Yeah, so - but, you know, depending on the person you are, we would use any given number of approaches. We would say that there's a scriptural approach. If you're a particularly religious Muslim, we would argue from scripture. So in the case of - let's take an example of Charlie Hebdo. Scripturally, we would bring all of the passages that prohibit blasphemy and mockery of religion to rile you up and to then link it to the next point, once you're riled up and sufficiently emotional about it, to say, how are you going to stop this? You know, the religion obliges you to do something to stop the insult to your prophet. Well, you can't stop it unless you have the strength and the power of a caliphate to intimidate people from taking such action.
Yes, yes, hating liberalism isn't the ONLY thing driving Islamist extremism. But it's absolutely a part of it. To deny it is... I don't even know, it's up there with other terrible intellectually dishonest positions.
Melkster on
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GatorAn alligator in ScotlandRegistered Userregular
Also IS is hardly the lone Salafist paramilitary willing to commit atrocities.
Are we also attacking other Al Quads factions in Syria, Al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, the Taliban round 2, and their friends in Yemen (who have Saudi air support, icky diplomatic situation), and in Libya....
Or maybe it is actually really hard to defeat a decentralised enemy that willingly accepts 10:1 losses and uses them to recruit more soldiers.
No, those are examples of incredibly complex situations with few clear bad guys and some questionable long term results of military intervention.
The problem with a military solution is that you can't just bomb the problem away. If you kill the bad guys, you also need to address the reason for the bad guys or you're just going to get more.
Whats the reason for these bad guys?
It's not "they hate our freedoms".
It depends on what you mean by freedom...
But you're wrong
Extremist Islam is totally against the kinds of freedoms that France and the United States have
That's what they're opposed to
The freedom to worship who you want, or not to worship anyone at all
The freedom to wear what you want, the freedom to say what you want, the freedom to do what you want
They hate all that
They think it's an affront to God
Yes, they totally have political motivations. Absolutely they do. But they absolutely also hate American/French freedom. Absolutely.
The experts whom have actually interviewed surviving martyrs & studied the unifying principles of these groups would not agree.
This idea that Islamist extremism actually has nothing to do with opposing liberal values is insane. It's an affront to rational thinking. It's wrong.
Yes, ABSOLUTELY there are political reasons for Islamist terrorism. But to say that opposing liberal values has nothing to do with it is just bonkers.
I'd be interested in you citing one of those experts though.
This guy became an Islamist extremist and went to the Middle East to go fight for extremists. He eventually came around, converting away from his extremist views to something far more reasonable. He cites political AND religious/ideological reasons for his turn towards extremism in his youth.
From the interview--
GROSS: Preach to me. Like, pretend like I'm a potential recruit, and you're trying to get me. This is, like, years ago, and you're trying to get me to join your group.
NAWAZ: Yeah, so - but, you know, depending on the person you are, we would use any given number of approaches. We would say that there's a scriptural approach. If you're a particularly religious Muslim, we would argue from scripture. So in the case of - let's take an example of Charlie Hebdo. Scripturally, we would bring all of the passages that prohibit blasphemy and mockery of religion to rile you up and to then link it to the next point, once you're riled up and sufficiently emotional about it, to say, how are you going to stop this? You know, the religion obliges you to do something to stop the insult to your prophet. Well, you can't stop it unless you have the strength and the power of a caliphate to intimidate people from taking such action.
Yes, yes, hating liberalism isn't the ONLY thing driving Islamist extremism. But it's absolutely a part of it. To deny it is... I don't even know, it's up there with other terrible intellectually dishonest positions.
While normally I would say, "It is easier to be blase about this when you aren't on their hit list," we're talking about ISIS and/or the unrestricted murder of wholly innocent civilians, so you [anyone reading this] are on their hit list.
Conventional wisdom suggests that negotiators should either leave sacred values for last in political negotiations or try to overcome them with sufficient material incentives. Our empirical findings and historical analysis suggest that conventional wisdom is wrong. In fact, offering to provide material benefits for giving up a sacred value actually makes settlement more difficult because people see the offering as an insult rather than a compromise. Leaving issues related to sacred values for last only blocks compromise on otherwise mundane and material matters.26
But there is another way: in wide-ranging talks with terrorists and their supporters across the world, and in interviews and surveys in global hot spots with leaders and their people, I have found clues for how we might leverage the “unreason” of religion and sacred values to end conflict.
Sacred values provide the moral frame that delimits which material trade-offs and agreements are possible. For the most part, members of a moral community—be it a family, ethnic group, religious congregation, or nation—implicitly share their community’s sacred values. Thus, there is usually no need to refer to these values or even to be conscious of them when pursuing trade-offs or negotiations within a community. In most cases, sacred values become highly relevant and salient only when challenged, much as food takes on overwhelming value in people’s lives only when it is denied. Direct threats to a community’s sacred values are most apparent when different moral communities come into conflict. These conflicts cannot be reduced to secular calculations of interest but must be dealt with on their own terms, a logic very different from the marketplace or realpolitik.
Take the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which Muslims across the globe refer to as “the Mother of All Problems” and which may well be “the World’s Symbolic Knot.” Rational cost-benefit analysis says the Palestinians ought to agree to forgo sovereignty over Jerusalem, or the claim of refugees to return to homes in Israel, in exchange for an autonomous state encompassing their other pre-1967 lands because they would gain more sovereignty and more land than they would renounce. They should support such an agreement even more if the United States and Europe sweetened the deal by giving every Palestinian family substantial, long-term economic assistance. Instead, Jeremy Ginges and I repeatedly found in studies involving thousands of people that the financial sweetener makes Palestinians more opposed to the deal and more likely to support violence to oppose it, including suicide bombings.15,27 The Israeli settlers also rejected a two-state solution that required Israel to give up “Judea and Samaria” or “recognize the legitimacy of the right of Palestinian refugees to return” (with the agreement not actually requiring Israel to absorb the refugees). But they were even more opposed if the deal included additional long-term financial aid for their resettlement or a guarantee of living in peace and prosperity.
Fortunately, our work also offers hints of another, more optimistic course. Absolutists who violently rejected offers of money or peace for sacred land were considerably more inclined to accept deals that involved their enemies making symbolic but difficult gestures. For example, Palestinian hard-liners were more willing to consider recognizing the right of Israel to exist if the Israelis simply offered an official apology for Palestinian suffering in the 1948 war. Similarly, Israeli respondents said they could live with a partition of Jerusalem and borders very close to those that existed before the 1967 war if Hamas and the other major Palestinian groups explicitly recognized Israel’s right to exist.
Remarkably, our survey results were mirrored by discussions with political leaders. Mousa Abu Marzook (the deputy chairman of Hamas) said “no” when we proposed a trade-off for peace without granting a right of return. He became angry when we added the offer of substantial American aid for rebuilding: “No, we do not sell ourselves for any amount.” But when we mentioned a potential Israeli apology for 1948, he brightened: “Yes, an apology is important, as a beginning. It’s not enough because our houses and land were taken away from us and something has to be done about that.” His response suggested that progress on sacred values might open the way for negotiations on material issues, rather than the reverse.
We got a similar reaction from Benjamin Netanyahu shortly before he became prime minister of Israel for the second time. We asked him whether he would seriously consider accepting a two-state solution following the 1967 borders if all major Palestinian factions, including Hamas, were to recognize the right of the Jewish people to an independent state in the region. He answered, “OK, but the Palestinians would have to show that they sincerely mean it, change their anti-Semitic textbooks.”
Later, when I asked if Prime Minister Netanyahu might have a question for Hamas politburo chairman Khaled Meshaal (whom Netanyahu previously had tried to poison), whose answer might change Israel’s attitude toward Hamas, I was asked to pose the following question: “Is there any possibility that Hamas could ever recognize Israel, not necessarily now but in the future, under whatever conditions?” When I put the question to Mr. Meshaal in Damascus in December 2009, he answered that his people had been in jail for 60 years and he was not about to discuss recognizing the rights of his jailer until they had been freed from prison. (Needless to say, this response did nothing to change Israel’s attitude toward Hamas.) Then, I asked Mr. Meshaal if he might have a question for the Israeli prime minister, whose answer might change Hamas’s attitude toward Israel. His response: “Will Israel ever recognize the harm it has done to the Palestinian people?”
Making these sorts of wholly intangible symbolic concessions, like recognition of a right to exist or an apology, simply does not compute in any utilitarian calculus. And yet the science says they may be the best way to cut through the knot. There are also historical precedents. For example, in the lead-up to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that largely ended sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, Protestant Unionists and the Catholic IRA each offered apologies for the harm done to civilians on the other side. These gestures greatly facilitated negotiations.28 But many agree that the conflict neared its end when, on a state visit to Ireland in May 2011, Queen Elizabeth expressed sincere regret for those who had suffered for centuries of conflict between Britain and Ireland. This was a symbolic follow-up to British prime minister David Cameron’s unequivocal apology the year before for the brutality of British troops in the shooting of unarmed civil rights protestors and bystanders in Derry, Northern Ireland, on January 30, 1972—an incident that generated critical popular support for the Provisional IRA’s campaign of violence.
GatorAn alligator in ScotlandRegistered Userregular
Also, on more important matters:
You'll probably hear a lot of statistics from now on. From my experience with this sort of thing (I'll take the Fifth here, please don't ask me to elaborate), there'll be well-meant conflicting statistics.
Case in point: Some networks are saying that four policeman died during the Bataclan takeover, while others say those four people were the terrorists. Take anything you hear (up until, I dunno, Sunday?) with a large pinch of salt.
I've heard a lot of "the french should be killed, because they're rude". And a lot of poorly veiled cheering whenever it does happen.
Of course people like to keep the badguys as a "them", and the goodguys as an "us", but the terrorist-approach itself isn't actually that unpopular or foreign. Everyone in the west hates everyone in the west.
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
"Bad guys" can be a useful tactical term but not a strategic or political one.
Aren't those all examples where we didn't kill all the bad guys though?
I think that was the point being raised.
Check the death tolls. You dropped more bombs on Cambodia than you did on Japan, and you assassinated the opposing leadership.
I suppose you can always say, "Well, we clearly just didn't kill enough people,"
I would love to see the compelling piece of evidence that supports the idea that peace follows after the application of unrestrained military force.
Why aren't Germany, Japan, and First Nations all examples where military force was used until violence stopped?
Well, did you kill all of the Imperial Japanese forces, or did you force them to surrender? How about Germany?
A centralized military force can eventually fold to your demands and issue a stand-down order. ISIL doesn't even have that capacity.
What about the First Nations approach. Look at th difference between unrestrained force (US) and restrained force (Israel).
So you're saying that.. Israel should have killed more Palestinians?
I'd like to give you some sort of benefit of the doubt but I honestly don't know how.
For the moment I'm going to assume the mention of the First Nations is probably less the thrust of the initial idea than of Germany & Japan post-WWII, notably their extended military occupation to ensure certain things did and did not happen. Among those things:
Assured total military superiority
The destruction or declawing of certain dangerous political or ideological groups through a variety of means, notably via the legal and political system
Reconstruction to engender goodwill
To some extent, re-education (tying into the destruction of dangerous groups)
The tricky part today about even raising the topic of doing this is that it's considered imperialist or subjugating a country as a colony or vassal territory (which may be true, but when it goes the way it has in Germany and Japan it's something to think about).
Edit - It's also worth noting that we only went to these lengths with Japan & Germany because of the extreme threat they posed. We're unlikely to feel compelled to do this with ISIS or other Middle Eastern countries unless they posed a real threat to our military or national sovereignty.
No, those are examples of incredibly complex situations with few clear bad guys and some questionable long term results of military intervention.
The problem with a military solution is that you can't just bomb the problem away. If you kill the bad guys, you also need to address the reason for the bad guys or you're just going to get more.
Whats the reason for these bad guys?
Most generally? Any group of people that feels marginalized and unable to make social and/or economic progress become unhappy. If they are oppressed in some way (no food / no water / other mental or physical hardships), they become desperate. Desperate people are prone to violence. This leads to genocide and civil wars and all sorts of shit. Overlay a shared belief (religious or not) and the promise of reward (physical or not) with one or more charismatic leaders and you have an army or a cult or a whatever. (without that, you "merely" have individuals or small group violence)
You can kill the soldiers (and usually have to), but you can't stop the fighting until the people stirring up the shit agree to stop. That's the difference between stuff like Hitler and other wars that are "won": people agree to stop fighting. And if you don't work at making peace afterward, shit doesn't get better.
The best way to do that is to figure out how to help, then do that. Which really fucking sucks after violence like this one, because many humans (like me!) want to respond to violence with more violence. But violence alone doesn't work, and it's gross and people die and the only thing worse than violence is purposeless violence.
...would be totally cool with that. I mean, we -are- talking about people who gang-rape children in addition to killing thousands of innocent people around the globe.
If you ever find yourself saying something like "wipe them out, all of them*" then maybe you oughta take a step back and re-evaluate what you're thinking. *or euphemisms like "unrestrained use of force"
...would be totally cool with that. I mean, we -are- talking about people who gang-rape children in addition to killing thousands of innocent people around the globe.
Where can I find this translation of the bible where Jesus is secretly The Punisher?
When I visited Paris last year, I was sort of freaked out by the number of obvious soldiers I saw at the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, openly carrying weapons. It was the first time I had seen assault rifles in real life actually being carried by people. Growing up here in Canada, the only live weapons I ever saw were police handguns, always holstered, not just being openly carried around by a person actively looking around for potential threats.
I think that if I return, I'll be substantially less freaked out to see them, and more grateful for their presence, while being angrier than before at their necessity.
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Come on man...
It's an honest question because I still don't think I've ever heard an addressable reason for these horrible people to be doing what they do.
It's like the guy who shot up that church earlier this year. I really don't care why he did what he did and I don't think capitulating to his reasons is actually gonna solve anything. We've gotta make it clear that this kind of hate can not exist in our world today, regardless of the race or marginalization level of the people involved.
The experts whom have actually interviewed surviving martyrs & studied the unifying principles of these groups would not agree.
More than anything else, I suspect the root problem is the West's support for the Saudi monarchs and Egyptian dictators.
Capitulating and understanding their motivations are not in any way the same thing, though.
Understanding not only what the leaders of these groups want (generally, power of some sort, whether under the guise of religion or what have you) but also why it is so easy for them to recruit people to their causes is hugely important in fighting this sort of extremism.
It's not nearly as simple as 'well they're evil so they do evil acts!' because a lot of these people don't start out like that. They become that way and figuring out why and how allows you to address the why and how.
I linked to Mr. Atran's articles earlier.
The reply I got was, "I don't have time to read that,"
Funny how people don't have time to actually got informed about an issue, but have plenty of time to voice their uninformed opinions on it.
Expert speaking: It's complicated, and there is likely an association between certain types of martyrdom and suicidal ideation / other mental issues not really ideology related, and there is often an intersection between wholly worldly crime and "religious" organizations, BUT! we shouldn't pretend that, again, no one is motivated by motivations, and that backwards reactionaries in an already regressive part of the world don't genuinely dislike modern innovations in human dignity and development like gay rights.
Why aren't Germany, Japan, and First Nations all examples where military force was used until violence stopped?
Those were all actual nations.
Because two of those are very distinct situations where it was one alliance of nation states versus another and the third is genocide?
Don't experts agree that dropping the nuclear bomb saved more lives than it took?
Well, did you kill all of the Imperial Japanese forces, or did you force them to surrender? How about Germany?
A centralized military force can eventually fold to your demands and issue a stand-down order. ISIL doesn't even have that capacity.
Without actual evidence in this particular case, earlier European terrorist attacks were made by second or third generation immigrants, not flown in terrorists.
No. The necessity of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings is fiercely debated in academic circles to this day. There are many experts who argue it wasn't necessary at all.
It's pretty disputed. You can make a pretty convincing argument that it was the Soviet invasion that really forced Japan to surrender.
Regardless, total war can work, yes, but we are not exactly willing to do what we did to Dresden, Tokyo, etc. anymore. Nor should we be.
I did not mean to allege that we can bomb terrorism away. Wahhabi extremism is an idea, ISIS is an active group of criminals openly engaged in the extermination of regional ethnic and religious groups. Destroying the latter will not prevent, or even diminish, the former, but addressing only the idea will not stop the marauding assholes currently under its spell, nor help their victims. This situation warrants both, and your post seemed to imply you felt military action was entirely inappropriate.
Perhaps you meant reverse-genocide was not the answer, or violence and nothing else. I would agree with this.
What about the First Nations approach. Look at th difference between unrestrained force (US) and restrained force (Israel).
This idea that Islamist extremism actually has nothing to do with opposing liberal values is insane. It's an affront to rational thinking. It's wrong.
Yes, ABSOLUTELY there are political reasons for Islamist terrorism. But to say that opposing liberal values has nothing to do with it is just bonkers.
I'd be interested in you citing one of those experts though.
On my side of the debate I have this guy -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maajid_Nawaz
Really interesting interview with him and NPR's Terry Gross can be found here -- http://www.npr.org/2015/01/15/377442344/how-orwells-animal-farm-led-a-radical-muslim-to-moderation
This guy became an Islamist extremist and went to the Middle East to go fight for extremists. He eventually came around, converting away from his extremist views to something far more reasonable. He cites political AND religious/ideological reasons for his turn towards extremism in his youth.
From the interview--
Yes, yes, hating liberalism isn't the ONLY thing driving Islamist extremism. But it's absolutely a part of it. To deny it is... I don't even know, it's up there with other terrible intellectually dishonest positions.
Dude. It's been four hours since the attacks. It's in extreme poor taste to advocate for genocide at any time, but right now?
Are we also attacking other Al Quads factions in Syria, Al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, the Taliban round 2, and their friends in Yemen (who have Saudi air support, icky diplomatic situation), and in Libya....
Or maybe it is actually really hard to defeat a decentralised enemy that willingly accepts 10:1 losses and uses them to recruit more soldiers.
So you're saying that.. Israel should have killed more Palestinians?
I'd like to give you some sort of benefit of the doubt but I honestly don't know how.
While normally I would say, "It is easier to be blase about this when you aren't on their hit list," we're talking about ISIS and/or the unrestricted murder of wholly innocent civilians, so you [anyone reading this] are on their hit list.
That is from this article.
You'll probably hear a lot of statistics from now on. From my experience with this sort of thing (I'll take the Fifth here, please don't ask me to elaborate), there'll be well-meant conflicting statistics.
Case in point: Some networks are saying that four policeman died during the Bataclan takeover, while others say those four people were the terrorists. Take anything you hear (up until, I dunno, Sunday?) with a large pinch of salt.
Of course people like to keep the badguys as a "them", and the goodguys as an "us", but the terrorist-approach itself isn't actually that unpopular or foreign. Everyone in the west hates everyone in the west.
For the moment I'm going to assume the mention of the First Nations is probably less the thrust of the initial idea than of Germany & Japan post-WWII, notably their extended military occupation to ensure certain things did and did not happen. Among those things:
The tricky part today about even raising the topic of doing this is that it's considered imperialist or subjugating a country as a colony or vassal territory (which may be true, but when it goes the way it has in Germany and Japan it's something to think about).
Edit - It's also worth noting that we only went to these lengths with Japan & Germany because of the extreme threat they posed. We're unlikely to feel compelled to do this with ISIS or other Middle Eastern countries unless they posed a real threat to our military or national sovereignty.
This is about the people in Paris, not your personal pet fucking theories.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
You can kill the soldiers (and usually have to), but you can't stop the fighting until the people stirring up the shit agree to stop. That's the difference between stuff like Hitler and other wars that are "won": people agree to stop fighting. And if you don't work at making peace afterward, shit doesn't get better.
The best way to do that is to figure out how to help, then do that. Which really fucking sucks after violence like this one, because many humans (like me!) want to respond to violence with more violence. But violence alone doesn't work, and it's gross and people die and the only thing worse than violence is purposeless violence.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
edit- uh, not endorsing this kind of talk, just pointing out that is stereotypically evil.
Jesus.
Steam: adamjnet
Where can I find this translation of the bible where Jesus is secretly The Punisher?
I think that if I return, I'll be substantially less freaked out to see them, and more grateful for their presence, while being angrier than before at their necessity.