hepcat wrote:
You're attempting to expand the discussion to now include expressions of antisemitism.
You're missing the point entirely.
No, I just don't think you have a valid one.
Those that believe in a scapegoat ("It's all a western plot!") are performing self deception, rather than acknowledging that there is an Islamic nature to the extremism.
Your view is too simplistic. As I noted, there's a largely political component to those "performances" of self deception that you linked to. The involvement of Islamic issues is secondary at most in those instances.
There needs to be a struggle within Islam against those who try to hijack it towards extremism. And that struggle wont be fought if it's leaders stick their heads in the sands, blind themselves to the Islamic nature of the extremism and just claim that it's all a western plot
You say there's a struggle within Islam against those who are trying to hijack it, and I agree. Yet you mistakenly think that we can help make them aware that this is happening by pointing out what they already know. Those who are struggling against extremists are fully aware their religion is being subverted. Those who are subverting Islam won't be swayed even one iota by the addition of the word "Islamic" to public discourse...they'll actually see it as a reinforcement of their beliefs. And those who are in between, who can fall on either side of the fence, will be swayed by the propaganda that both sides put out. And if those who are fighting extremists are trying to tell their fellow Muslims that "these people aren't true followers of Islam!", we can only hurt their cause by labeling their enemies as Islamic in any way. While extremists will point towards the word and use it in their propaganda as proof that the West and its allies are waging war on their religion itself.
Pyperkub wrote:A qualified yes. I don't seem to recall any drone strikes in Saudi Arabia for example, and I don't think we've struck any in Gaza or Iran either.
I'm assuming we were going after specific terrorist groups/camps (eg, Al Qaeda and it's associates, etc)
hepcat wrote:
And those who are in between, who can fall on either side of the fence, will be swayed by the propaganda that both sides put out. And if those who are fighting extremists are trying to tell their fellow Muslims that "these people aren't true followers of Islam!", we can only hurt their cause by labeling their enemies as Islamic in any way.
Except that's the self deception I'm talking about. Saying ISIS aren't really Muslim just feeds into the conspiracy theories rather than addressing the roots of the problem.
Long standing political policies and corrupt middle eastern regimes have fed into those conspiracy theories and feelings of antisemitism far more than any form of "self deception" surrounding the nature of the extremism behind ISIS. If conspiracy theories and antisemitism were newer problems in the Islamic world, you might have a point. But they're not.
Politifact has a great piece on why this administration is carefully wording things in the way they are. And the chief of Homeland Security agrees with him.
Last edited by hepcat on Mon Mar 02, 2015 5:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
hepcat wrote:
Politifact has a great piece on why this administration is carefully wording things in the way they are. And the chief of Homeland Security agrees with him.
In his view, we’re not just fighting men with guns. We’re fighting a story.
I think we're in the midst of a war that has no precedent...at least not in the last few hundred years. Thus we can't approach it like we have other conflicts in recent memory.
It also bears repeating something else mentioned in both the politifact article and the slate piece: Bush did essentially the same thing after 9/11. He drew a very clear distinction between Muslims and extremists when he said, "We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam."
Last edited by hepcat on Mon Mar 02, 2015 5:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
It can't be said enough: those who insist that this is a war between Islam and the world are playing right into the extremists' hands. It endorses their narrative, and that narrative is the key to their attempt to seize Islam (its authority, its cultural weight, its rising generation) from non-extremist Muslims.
hepcat wrote:Long standing political policies and corrupt middle eastern regimes have fed into those conspiracy theories and feelings of antisemitism far more than any form of "self deception" surrounding the nature of the extremism behind ISIS. If conspiracy theories and antisemitism were newer problems in the Islamic world, you might have a point. But they're not.
Politifact has a great piece on why this administration is carefully wording things in the way they are. And the chief of Homeland Security agrees with him.
The kind of extremism that is behind ISIS is nothing new either. it has just become more emboldened by their enemies willingness negotiate, capitulate, and barter away everything for nothing. We are doing it now with our left hand while the right hand is alternating between ISIS, Al Queda, and the Taliban. In specific the left hand is negotiating when they will let Iran have a nuclear weapon.
ISIS is not being emboldened by the lack of the word "Islamic" in Obama's speeches. Fox news would like you to think that though, I'm sure.
But we've already beaten that horse to death in multiple replies and numerous links.
The rest of your reply is just your usual political venting that bears very little relevance to what was being discussed. So I'm not sure why it was included in a reply that quoted me.
Also, couldn't you have just written THANKS OBAMA! and saved yourself the typing?
Last edited by hepcat on Mon Mar 02, 2015 6:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
hepcat wrote:ISIS is not being emboldened by the lack of the word "Islamic" in Obama's speeches. Fox news would like you to think that though, I'm sure.
But we've already beaten that horse to death in multiple replies and numerous links.
The rest of your reply is just your usual political venting that bears very little relevance to what was being discussed. So I'm not sure why it was included in a reply that quoted me.
No, that is just a symptom. The problem is a lack of resolve in going after these obvious lunatics and developing a plan to wipe them out. The longer we put it off the more daunting the task will be.
hepcat wrote:Long standing political policies and corrupt middle eastern regimes have fed into those conspiracy theories and feelings of antisemitism far more than any form of "self deception" surrounding the nature of the extremism behind ISIS. If conspiracy theories and antisemitism were newer problems in the Islamic world, you might have a point. But they're not.
I'm not sure I understand why I don't have a point. What I said is still true regardless. There is self deception with regards to ISIS and other Islamic extremist groups that they have nothing to do with Islam, and having their leaders insist that those extremists aren't really Muslim just feeds into that self deception and avoids addressing the problem of extremism in Islam.
Last edited by Defiant on Mon Mar 02, 2015 6:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
No (well...I sometimes suspect Rip believes that to be the case. ). And that's probably why Holman didn't say "here". But the world outside "here" is vast and most certainly contains such people.
hepcat wrote:Ah Rip, he still believes in 2 day wars. You gotta love that level of innocence.
...or be frightened of it.
I'm going with the latter, now that I've thought about it.
Well we have been fighting them for what 6 years now? So I think it is a little late.
I have to admit though the Israeli's set the mark at 6 days to defeat the middle eastern anti-semites and I wouldn't mind seeing us at least match that mark.
hepcat wrote:Ah Rip, he still believes in 2 day wars. You gotta love that level of innocence.
...or be frightened of it.
I'm going with the latter, now that I've thought about it.
Well we have been fighting them for what 6 years now? So I think it is a little late.
I have to admit though the Israeli's set the mark at 6 days to defeat the middle eastern anti-semites and I wouldn't mind seeing us at least match that mark.
Your problem is found in your use of the word "them".
hepcat wrote:No (well...I sometimes suspect Rip believes that to be the case. ). And that's probably why Holman didn't say "here". But the world outside "here" is vast and most certainly contains such people.
I can't speak for them but I have no problem with Islam or Muslims until it is used to punish or oppress those who are not Muslim, and especially when they engage in holocaust denial and antisemitism.
hepcat wrote:Ah Rip, he still believes in 2 day wars. You gotta love that level of innocence.
...or be frightened of it.
I'm going with the latter, now that I've thought about it.
Well we have been fighting them for what 6 years now? So I think it is a little late.
I have to admit though the Israeli's set the mark at 6 days to defeat the middle eastern anti-semites and I wouldn't mind seeing us at least match that mark.
Your problem is found in your use of the word "them".
Them being ISIS. Is there anyone else in the area we have been fighting for six years I don't know about?
Resolve is the only thing stopping us? How ridiculous. President Obama had the resolve to track down Osama bin Laden. He does not lack resolve except in neocon fantasies.
Did Eisenhower lack resolve to defeat Hitler earlier? Or the Russians during the Cold War? Maybe wishing harder will bring back fairies and unicorns, too.
ISIS is not engaging the West in a juvenile staring contest. We have to fight smarter, have moral persuasion, and win the hearts and minds of Islamic people who are at risk of radicalizing. A cowboy attitude makes for a great movie, but bad policy.
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." - Albert Einstein "I don't stand by anything." - Trump “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” - John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867 “It is the impractical things in this tumultuous hell-scape of a world that matter most. A book, a name, chicken soup. They help us remember that, even in our darkest hour, life is still to be savored.” - Poe, Altered Carbon
Zarathud wrote:Resolve is the only thing stopping us? How ridiculous. President Obama had the resolve to track down Osama bin Laden. He does not lack resolve except in neocon fantasies.
He didn't have to do anything special. He just kept on keeping on till he showed up.
Did Eisenhower lack resolve to defeat Hitler earlier? Or the Russians during the Cold War? Maybe wishing harder will bring back fairies and unicorns, too.
No Roosevelt lacked the resolve to get in the war early on when we should have.
The Cold War was a faux war, like the drug war. You can't really win or lose, just waste a lot of money. We had more money to waste than they did. Yea, capitalism!
Let's not turn this into a gay rights discussion.
ISIS is not engaging the West in a juvenile staring contest. We have to fight smarter, have moral persuasion, and win the hearts and minds of Islamic people who are at risk of radicalizing. A cowboy attitude makes for a great movie, but bad policy.
You are going after hearts and minds of people you aren't going to sway. You have a better chance of convincing Putin to give back all the territory he is taking. The pool of people who will fight against ISIS doesn't include the people who would join them. IMHO.
Rip wrote:
You are going after hearts and minds of people you aren't going to sway. You have a better chance of convincing Putin to give back all the territory he is taking. The pool of people who will fight against ISIS doesn't include the people who would join them. IMHO.
The hearts and minds that matter belong to kids growing up Islamic in the Middle East today. They're not Putin. They don't know the world yet, but pretty soon they'll see that lines are drawn. For many of them, ISIS or some successor will look like a beacon of idealism and faith and acceptance and brotherhood in a world that otherwise means shit.
We judge ISIS by whether it's good or bad for the U.S. and our allies. Those kids are going to judge ISIS by whether anyone in the world is offering more.
Last edited by Holman on Mon Mar 02, 2015 10:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
hepcat wrote:Long standing political policies and corrupt middle eastern regimes have fed into those conspiracy theories and feelings of antisemitism far more than any form of "self deception" surrounding the nature of the extremism behind ISIS. If conspiracy theories and antisemitism were newer problems in the Islamic world, you might have a point. But they're not.
I'm not sure I understand why I don't have a point. What I said is still true regardless. There is self deception with regards to ISIS and other Islamic extremist groups that they have nothing to do with Islam, and having their leaders insist that those extremists aren't really Muslim just feeds into that self deception and avoids addressing the problem of extremism in Islam.
There is no self deception involved. They insist extremists are not acting like true followers of Islam. Not that the extremists aren't claiming to be acting in the name of Islam. They're attempting to change the narrative ISIS is presenting.
I'm not sure if you just aren't grasping what I, Holman and the numerous editorials we've linked to have repeatedly said about this, or you simply refuse to accept it. ISIS wants this to be a holy war. We cannot afford to legitimize that claim with poorly worded catch phrases that essentially do nothing but bring a jingoistic blood rush to the average American watching Fox News in the comfort of their home. Muslim leaders who are fighting against ISIS are working hard to keep the Muslim world from buying into the claim this is a holy war. They don't need a western leader announcing to the world that the fight is against Islamic extremists because that's the sound bite ISIS needs. It gives them a legitimacy we're trying to take away from them.
And using the term Islamic extremists is not going to help Islam address the antisemitism or conspiracy theories you mentioned earlier simply because those are based more on a culture that has arisen after decades of political policies that caused a lot of bad blood, and the actions of corrupt middle eastern regimes.
...it's amazing how many words have been expended on just one in this thread, by the way.
Rip wrote:He (Obama) didn't have to do anything special. He just kept on keeping on till he showed up.
You weren't not paying attention. It was Obama's decision and gamble:
The president listened (to the CIA director), but he had already pretty much made up his mind. “One of the things you learn as president is you’re always dealing with probabilities,” he told me. “No issue comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable. No issue comes to my desk where there’s 100 percent confidence that this is the right thing to do. Because if people were absolutely certain then it would have been decided by someone else. And that’s true in dealing with the economic crisis. That’s true in order to take a shot at a pirate. That’s true about most of the decisions I make during the course of the day. So I’m accustomed to people offering me probabilities. In this situation, what you started getting was probabilities that disguised uncertainty as opposed to actually providing you with more useful information.” The president had no trouble facing reality. If he acted on this, he was going to be taking a gamble.
The conversation about percentages wore on, and the president finally cut in. “This is 50–50,” he said. That silenced everyone. “This is a flip of the coin. You guys, I can’t base this decision on the notion that we have any greater certainty than that.”
Rip wrote:The Cold War was a faux war, like the drug war. You can't really win or lose, just waste a lot of money. We had more money to waste than they did. Yea, capitalism!
Especially for many of my younger students, the victory of the American-led coalition of democracies now seems like a natural end to a struggle that really wasn’t all that dangerous, and whose outcome was foreordained. But to the people who fought the Cold War, there were many days where it all seemed to be a lot more tenuous. There were many moments where this planetary conflict—as I called it in a 2003 book, the fight to “win the world”—with the Soviet Union seemed a near-run thing.
History only seems inevitable in retrospect or fiction.
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." - Albert Einstein "I don't stand by anything." - Trump “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” - John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867 “It is the impractical things in this tumultuous hell-scape of a world that matter most. A book, a name, chicken soup. They help us remember that, even in our darkest hour, life is still to be savored.” - Poe, Altered Carbon
Rip wrote:He (Obama) didn't have to do anything special. He just kept on keeping on till he showed up.
You weren't not paying attention. It was Obama's decision and gamble:
The president listened (to the CIA director), but he had already pretty much made up his mind. “One of the things you learn as president is you’re always dealing with probabilities,” he told me. “No issue comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable. No issue comes to my desk where there’s 100 percent confidence that this is the right thing to do. Because if people were absolutely certain then it would have been decided by someone else. And that’s true in dealing with the economic crisis. That’s true in order to take a shot at a pirate. That’s true about most of the decisions I make during the course of the day. So I’m accustomed to people offering me probabilities. In this situation, what you started getting was probabilities that disguised uncertainty as opposed to actually providing you with more useful information.” The president had no trouble facing reality. If he acted on this, he was going to be taking a gamble.
The conversation about percentages wore on, and the president finally cut in. “This is 50–50,” he said. That silenced everyone. “This is a flip of the coin. You guys, I can’t base this decision on the notion that we have any greater certainty than that.”
Rip wrote:The Cold War was a faux war, like the drug war. You can't really win or lose, just waste a lot of money. We had more money to waste than they did. Yea, capitalism!
Especially for many of my younger students, the victory of the American-led coalition of democracies now seems like a natural end to a struggle that really wasn’t all that dangerous, and whose outcome was foreordained. But to the people who fought the Cold War, there were many days where it all seemed to be a lot more tenuous. There were many moments where this planetary conflict—as I called it in a 2003 book, the fight to “win the world”—with the Soviet Union seemed a near-run thing.
History only seems inevitable in retrospect or fiction.
Mutually Assured Destruction. There are no winners. There was no war because both sides knew both would lose drastically. Neither could afford to fight it.
And yet they almost did. That's the thing about doing something insane -- first, you need to acknowledge that you can lose by trying to win at any cost. If you can't, then it's game over man.
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." - Albert Einstein "I don't stand by anything." - Trump “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” - John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867 “It is the impractical things in this tumultuous hell-scape of a world that matter most. A book, a name, chicken soup. They help us remember that, even in our darkest hour, life is still to be savored.” - Poe, Altered Carbon
Is that intentionally misspelled to make a Romney reference?
"The world is suffering more today from the good people who want to mind other men's business than it is from the bad people who are willing to let everybody look after their own individual affairs." - Clarence Darrow
Not by me, but I didn't feel like searching for a different image.
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." - Albert Einstein "I don't stand by anything." - Trump “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” - John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867 “It is the impractical things in this tumultuous hell-scape of a world that matter most. A book, a name, chicken soup. They help us remember that, even in our darkest hour, life is still to be savored.” - Poe, Altered Carbon
hepcat wrote: We cannot afford to legitimize that claim with poorly worded catch phrases that essentially do nothing but bring a jingoistic blood rush to the average American watching Fox News in the comfort of their home. Muslim leaders who are fighting against ISIS are working hard to keep the Muslim world from buying into the claim this is a holy war. They don't need a western leader announcing to the world that the fight is against Islamic extremists because that's the sound bite ISIS needs. It gives them a legitimacy we're trying to take away from them.
Bush used the word "crusade" when he went after the terrorists post 9/11, and the shit hit the fan. He was using it in a secular way, as in "we will not stop until our goals are reached" as any western person in modern times would. Unfortunately the actual crusades were a holy war against Islam. He backpedaled so fast it barely registered, because that was not the narrative he wanted, and for good reason. I was pleasantly surprised how well Bush tried to keep this from becoming a war on Islam/muslims. He worked hard, with specific purpose to avoid that. Now we've got people upset *because* it is not being couched in those terms. Those people are insane.
When I have to point at Bush as the voice of reason, something has gone incredibly wrong.
Nice to see you can get around the Lerner problem of having someone locate backups when you delete your e-mails to avoid people eventually finding out what you were up to by just grabbing a domain and hiding your delicate discussions there. Thank goodness for hackers.
Rip wrote:Nice to see you can get around the Lerner problem of having someone locate backups when you delete your e-mails to avoid people eventually finding out what you were up to by just grabbing a domain and hiding your delicate discussions there. Thank goodness for hackers.
This has got to be in the wrong thread. Otherwise, my brain can't wrap around what you're talking about.
Rip doesn't believe in linking and summarizing. He maintains the high ground on whatever hill he has selected until I come around to call him out on it and correct his shortcomings. Look for a new thread.
Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was shot to death in central Moscow late Friday.
President Putin was immediately informed of Nemtsov's assassination, according to Presidential Press Secretary Dmitriy Peskov. According to him, Putin expressed deep condolences to Nemtsov's family and loved ones. The president thinks the murder was a contract killing meant to be a political provocation, Peskov said.
