I fear you and Spavined Gelding are more experienced and wiser in these matters than I.
Luc: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation
in the pursuit of justice is no virtue”
Berkut: I promise you, on my honor, that someone surely has reported the post.
Finn Real fond of Ol’ Barry. Great respecter of principle. He says the voted against the Voting Rights Act as a matter of principle, and I believe him. Still wrong. Rigid principles are very little improvement over none at all. IMhO.
Sev, perhaps. I have no special experience to claim expertise. I also respect friend Spavined’s wisdom, but he is older than I, so I am deferential.
Heh, knew I rushed that post. 
Anyway, you’ll see from my other posts I agree. It shouldn’t have been taken as a direct threat.
Uh, perhaps I’m wrong, but I didn’t think there was anyone here at the SDMB who was older than you…
Can we get a cite for a time in which a poster said he was going to go shoot Iraqis and it didn’t get a warning?
Aldebaran- You are arguing the meaning of a statement with native speakers of that language when you haven’t even taken an English class? Give me a break.
Whoa, this is a trainwreck.
As to the issues about rules enforcement, it’s taken a little while to reread all the (lengthy) posts in detail, track down the ‘report this’ notices and double-check our precedents. We do try to keep essential principles consistent among the fora, with varying degrees of strictness observed. I wanted to check out the GD thread to clarify whether the warning was something that would have pertained to GD but not the Pit, for example.
The original rule prohibited wishing violent harm to other posters, but was extended to under the hate speech prohibition to include entire groups of people. As was noted originally (see the Pit sticky above), context counts. Facetious and hyperbolic zingers are one thing; actually wishing harm or death on others is another. The war in Iraq changed the context for discussion along with many other things. This SDMB is largely American in membership but that doesn’t limit where posters–American and others–may have kin, friends and loved ones. The scope for “wished death” being personal as all hell has been widened considerably. Posters should keep in mind that even the most impassioned opinion still concerns other peoples’ lives.
This goes beyond the line, Cloth, in the wish to nuke the entire region. The outrage over 9/11 is particularly inappropriate given your relegating ME civilian casualites to “broken eggs.” Don’t do this again.
Man, but this thread has shown some bone deep ugliness.
TVeblen
Pit mod
Please reread what I posted. Here’s what you quoted:
There’s a bigass chunk missing out of your quote, to wit:
But Mr. Bush is doing the right thing. He is helping Iraq become a free nation, one that will (hopefully) NOT harbor and/or support terrorists like it did under Saddam. Afghanistan is becoming a free country, one that will not harbor and/or support terrorists like it did under the Taliban.
That sentence follows “crosses my mind again.”
As you will notice, I specifically am NOT advocating that we should nuke the entire region. Your warning was uncalled for.
And BTW, my comment on breaking eggs was not relegating anyone into that category. It was solely aimed at pointing out that the whole thrust of his message was aimed at the wrong target. We are at war. Civilians, especially children, are killed during war and we can’t stop that from happening. But the reason that it is happening is because of the actions of the terrorists, not of the United States.
Get this: Mr. Bush did not kill her. The United States did not kill her. The terrorists who attacked the United States killed her. Blame them.
But no, you’ll never accept the reality of what I said. Besides, it’s just too damn much fun to dump on the USA and George Bush.
Clothahump, the purpose of the SDMB is to fight ignorance. You fulfill a specific need here.
Giving us ignorance to fight?
One of the many, many reasons why debating sociopathic wingnut filth like you is such a fucking chore is because you allow the linguistic frames of reference (terms and labels like ‘Culture’ ‘Civilization’ and, in this case, ‘terrorist’) which comprise your waterheaded, vapor-induced perspective to be defined primarily by your rabid xenophobia, Nationalism and hate. This creates serious ambiguities when you deploy words like ‘terrorist’ because it seems that, from your POV, the label could be applied to anyone who has ever taken up arms against the USA, ever burned a flag, ever not burned a flag after accidentally letting it touch the ground, ever spat on US soil, worn white shoes after labor day, or shut off Mr Rogers.
Take your quote clinton’s penis* above. What, precisely do you mean by “The terrorists who attacked the United States”? Are you referring to (A) Al-Qaeda, (B) Iraqi insurgents, (C) fighters from neighboring states like Syria? (D) Those troublesome Wedding Party guests, or (E) any ungrateful brown skinned Mahound worshipping dune coon with the brass balls to question your nations presence in his country? It’s all so gosh-darned confuzzling!
In any case, “The terrorists” as characterised by any of the above definitions, were not responsible for the death of this little girl. She was killed by a bullet from a gun held by a US Soldier. Even if the soldier were battling insurgents at the time, blame still couldn’t be laid with them because they wouldn’t be there were it not for your nations initial pre-emptive attack. True, if the insurgents had just rolled over and accepted American occupation there would have been no battle in the first place but to expect no backlash against the occupation is hopelessly panglossian and endemic of the rose-tinted, neo-con view of the Iraqi people as primitive hive-minded submissives.
Put simply, because I think that works best for you, the Bush Administration knew full well that their actions would be met with violent reprisals from some quarters, and that these reprisals would result in innocent casualties. They took on the burden of these casualties when they pre-emptively invaded.
[sub]*Just checking to see if you still were paying attention.[/sub]
It is odd… but I think the war in Iraq is, or is fast becoming, our generation’s Vietnam. Not even, necessarily, its status as a quagmire. No, I’m talking about the deep societal divisions, and, more likely than not, lasting hurt this is going to cause to the national psyche.
And no, I was not alive during Vietnam… but it is hard to imagine our nation being any more divided than it is now. And at such a time we are waging a poorly planned poorly justified war against a nebulous foe. When America and Americans gets behind a war, a just war, we are capable of great things. We fought on the right side in both world wars, and we helped stop the march of fascist powers across the entire globe.
But this is not right. And this is not just. And this was never really about the Iraqi people. We lack purpose, we lack unity as a nation. We lack a cause and a moral vision as we attempt to decide who the ‘good Iraqis’ are who we’ll give freedom to, and who the ‘bad Iraqis’ are who will have to be killed for exercising their freedom to remove us from their once-sovereign nation. And yes, I know on paper that Iraq has its own government, but if the US pulls out now without any plans for the aftermath, the country disintegrates. Any ‘sovereign’ nation of Iraq now exists at our mercy.
I mourn for every American son and daughter who is forced to take a human life, who is maimed, mutilated, killed. I mourn that they are fighting because they love their country and agreed to defend it, and they were sent to Iraq on false pretenses by a man who has not even had the basic human decency to attend one of their funerals. I mourn that their desire to protect their country was subverted and perverted and twisted into an international horror.
I mourn for the Iraqis who are doing what many Americans would do; defending their homes from foreign invaders. For their killing and dying, for their suffering.
I mourn for those who, from all over the Arab and Muslim worlds, feel that they need to fight against what they view as an imperialistic invasion, for all those who do give their lives in defense of their beliefs. On both sides.
This whole thing is a mess, and we need to find a way to get out of it. And no, I don’t know exactly how we can even do that, or if we can do that anymore. We’ve crossed the Rubicon, and had no plan for what to do once we got to the other side.
We are so steeped in blood that to go forward is as tedious as to go back. To steal a phrase.
We crushed a tyrant and left a leadership vacuum. We had virtually no international support and with Bush’s re-election, it doesn’t appear that we’ll see a true coalition in the next four years.
I am saddened, I am numb, I am angry, and I mourn for the whole fucking human race if we can’t get our shit together.
War is hell, it’s about fucking time we realized that.
griffen2 - with your permission, I’m going to submit this to the SDMB “Hall of Flames”. That was beautiful.
Wow, thank you. Permission granted
That’s tough, life is tough. Do you want us to cry about it? It certainly doesn’t make us pigs that she was unfortunate enough to die, and it doesn’t make me feel a bit of sympathy for your cause.
In 10 years the Iraqi government probably would have collapsed anyways as things were entering an ever increasing spiral there.
As hard as it is to admit it, sometimes innocent people die, but that doesn’t mean the entire operation was bad, it just means life happens, and that’s something that takes a big man to deal with, and some people don’t have the mettle to deal with it in a rational way.
Also don’t talk about sovereignty like it is an absolute right. The only absolute rights are rights that you can defend, rights that are only existant on paper stop mattering the second force becomes involved. This globe is dominated by the strong and the weak are subjugated. The United States however does not flaunt the power it has, despite the tinfoil hatted conspiracy theories the United States typically interferes in the affairs of other nations only with the intent to do good, for the most people involved. During the Cold War there are many situations that are tough to defend using that argument, but I can if it is so needed.
Unfortunately the lessons of appeasement taught us that sometimes, just because a nation is sovereign, doesn’t mean we let said nation grow or develop as a threat. A lot of good would have been done if the sovereign nation of Germany was invaded in 1933.
Also I find it greatly disturbing members of this forum would outright lie about what was contained in my post. It made no threats towards anyone and was not racist to any degree.
Nice try, though.
I’ll even break it down for you here in about 30 seconds.
Firstly I’ve been forced to quote myself here because some people have blatantly lied about the contents of this post, so I need to defend my honor from these vile aspersions.
In the above passage I said nothing racist or threatening. I did say that people who mindlessly swallow fundamentalist bullshit from terrorist organizations are stupid chattel. I guess I’m crazy in believing people who swallo propaganda are sheep.
Nothing in the above passage makes any threats, obviously, and is also not racist in the least.
I made the comment that right now the Iraqis cannot effectively govern themselves. Even the staunchest anti-Bushite would have to accept that, at least on the grounds that since we have torn their established government down it is very unrealistic to expect a serious and stable government to have been established so soon.
Furthermore speculation on Iraq devolving into anarchy and civil war without our presence there isn’t that out of line, as the large presence of fractious militia group s makes it obvious bad things would happen if the organized military presence was reduced by 90% with the withdrawal of the United States.
All I said here is that if anyone takes MARTIAL ACTION to oppose the war in Iraq they deserve to be hunted down and killed. This certainly isn’t out of line. If you don’t think people who go over to Iraq and shoot and kill soldiers should be killed, then you don’t understand what war is about. And if they chose to do it on U.S. soil they would be criminals and would definitely need hunted down (but only killed after a lengthy appeals process.)
I certainly never threatened to hunt anyone down, nor did I say anyone specifically needed to be hunted down and killed. But I did say people who are militarily opposing the United States ought to be hunted down and killed because they are infringing on the civil liberties of Iraqis.
On the contrary: I understand enough of what war is about to know that you just called for the death of tens of thousands of US servicepeople.
Daniel
I think his OP was typed while he was in a rage. When that happens, it’s quite normal for non-native speakers (of any language) to write or speak less well than they normally do. It took me a minute or two to figure out what the title was supposed to mean.
That said, I wish he’d drop that “US’er” schtick.