Because I care about the board in general. I never followed him around, I’m not trying to impress or annoy anybody else, but we have similiar interests and when he started I thoughtm “Wow! A chance to learn about a different culture? But what Arab country is he from? They’re all so different and I’d like to know what he’s been taught about us…” What a waste that this “Arab” is so hard to deal with.
If it was just me, you’d have a point. But of the six Pit threads about him, NONE have been started by me. I was just hoping he could be saved–that I could help him see the mistakes he was making here, just in case he. I can’t. I don’t want to try any more.
I’m sorry you feel the way you do, but I really wouldn’t waste my time worrying about the feelings of someone who blithely insults entire nations. But it’s your time, of course, and your right to do so. Trouble is, I don’t think the OP reciprocates your concern.
See, I’ve never figured out WHY he annoys people so much. He doesn’t annoy me. He brings a generally non-European, non-American viewpoint to the table and I can see how that can get some folks wound up. His English isn’t the greatest and because of that he’s fairly often misunderstood, and I can see how THAT could rile people up. But I don’t understand how I, a fellow American of most of the people who get riled up about him, can overlook or understand these stumbling blocks and the folks who get wound up can’t.
Aldebaran does not agree with the American worldview. You all know that. How is it, then, that every time he then proceeds to post something disagreeing with the American worldview, fourteen people jump on top of him?
The thing that bothers me, as it bothers several people upthread, is the double standard. Praise the Americans who invaded Iraq, state that you either are or wish to be enlisted and fighting over there, and you’re a hero, praised to high heaven. State the exact same thing from a mirror view, and you’re warned not to advocate the deaths of American soldiers.
I don’t CARE where the Reader is headquartered. I don’t CARE who the majority of posters here are. Either you can advocate what’s happening in Iraq from both sides, or you can’t advocate it at all. I don’t want ANYONE to get shot over there, on either side. While I want all American soldiers to get out of there safely, I can’t fault the Iraqis for the Insurgency. They’re defending their home from invaders. That those invaders happen to be us is irrelevant (and shameful, but that’s another Pit thread).
You’re missing the point. I think ‘I want to go shoot Iraqis/Americans’ is unacceptable while ‘I want to go to Iraq and join the resistance/fight the terrorists’ is acceptable. I realize that ‘joining the resistance/fighting the terrorists’ involves shooting them. I am trying to come up with an analogy but I am coming up blank.
Illusionary or not its an important distinction. Saying I want to go and shoot in essence board members and their families is unnacceptable under any circumstances on this board no matter how justified the reasoning is behind it.
The distinction that the first statements leave the connection for the reader to make the other doesn’t. Like I said its a very sensitive issue and unless we want the board to decend into screaming matches opinions need to be expressed in the least inflammatory way possible.
In my opinion, yes. If Aldebaran had said he wanted to go fight in Iraq that would have been fine.
I am not making a claim whether it is right or wrong for Aldebaran to want to kill Americans. I just find the wording he used too inflammitory for such an emotionally charged debate. It does come down to a matter of semantics but we aren’t debating a revision to the zoning code. We are talking about Doper’s and their sons and daughters. Saying you want to go and shoot one of them is unacceptable.
I am neither qualified nor particularly interested in the legal points which brought upon the warning from Gaudere, OTOH, what **Abeldadan ** wrote, is simply a *rational * response to the prevalent irrationalty of this invasion.
Yes, I realize that American soldiers are being placed in the very difficult quandry of figuring out for themsleves what is right and what is wrong – but I refuse to denigrate the whole of them as being of one mind. There’s more than enough information out there for those that wish to look for it that proves beyond any reasonable doubt that this war is being fought for all the wrong reasons; especially when we’re talking about “traditional American Values.”
Heroes? Those that refuse to do the bloody bidding of their Masters – not the gung-ho MF that still think this is some kind of ‘revenge’ for 9/11.
You haven’t been so far off-kilt since Vietnam, and it appears that the new generation – along with significant segments of bitter Americans that are still looking to “justify” that particular clusterfuck – has learned precious little from that particular Imperialist missadventure.
Support your troops? Bring them the fuck home and quit butchering countless innocents…whose survivors are only too willing to perpetuate the circle of violence. Reparations are in order too – who the fuck gave you the “right” to act as you have in the first place? Your ‘gods’? Fuck 'em. And all the rest of the True Believers.
As many have mentioned already on this thread, try an exercise in empathy and ask yoursleves if you wouldn’t feel exactly as Abeldaran does.
Fuck the invaders, long live the Iraqui Freedom Fighters! Iraq for Iraqis, USA out of Iraq now!
Don’t like what I am saying? Might as well ban me too. It’s called reality. And as **Alde **well said, you all could have done a lot better than to re-inforce the murderous policies of your current incumbents by finally electing him for the first time. Gone is the pseudo-justification that “most Americans voted against him.”
Sorry, you’re all out of excuses for your behavior – sadly, massive amounts of returning body-bags seems to be be the only thing you understand.
Wishing death on American troops, to the point where a SDMB poster says he’d like to get a gun and shoot them, himself, is not only beyond the pale, but disgusting.
Of course, there are no Dopers with families who may live in Iraq, right? There are no Dopers who may be Iraqis who are actually fighting in the resistance, right? There are no non-Insurgent Iraqis who might be Dopers who are in danger every day of being rounded up and imprisoned because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time or made enemies of the wrong people, right?
No, I don’t know for sure either. That’s the point.
There is no semantic difference, twist about as you may. Nobody seriously believes that “fight the terrorists” means the poster writing it intends to engage in fisticuffs with an Iraqi.
Whatever pussyfoot, but I don’t personally distinguish between American lives and Iraqi. Clearly for a nationalist ignoramus like yourself, that makes me part of the opposition.
Why, cumstain? Why should one desire the death on an Iraqui over the death of an American? Don’t bother replying, squirt. Not a question meant for sheeple.
Meantime, if you hadn’t gone ahead with your murderous, illegal and unnecessary invasion, there’d be no need to make said choice.
And don’t even try to use the fallacy of the excluded middle, asswipe.
I couldn’t say how you misrepresented because I don’t and didn’t make that claim.
I still don’t get the second half of your equation though, about Americans killing foreigners…
Wouldn’t a true double standard be that when other people talk about killing American soldiers there’s a problem but when Americans talk about killing foreign soldiers there’s no problem? The way you phrased it suggests that Americans would see a problem and debate if violence was the best method.
I merely meant that American use of foreign invasions is a matter of intelectual discussion but foreign attacks on the US are immediately denounced as “terrorist”.
IMHO, it is a perfectly understandable perspective- but short of the ideals of this message board.
Obviously, can’t speak for Carnack, so I won’t. But the fact of the matter is that you’re in such deep shit in Iraq precisely because you’ve adopted such an insanely haughty attitude vis-a-vis the international community. Namely, the great majority of us.
The Price? You need to go begging for international help.
So far it’s been a dud of an effort. Hopefully, it’ll stay that way until worthless cumbags such as yourself learn the lesson.
Here, kitty kitty, here…you’re not so tough after all. Fuckin’ pussies acting as bullies.
With moronic posts like that one, Aldeberan’s post is all the more understandable.
Why MilroyJ? What makes our soldiers so special and sacred that one must never wish them dead? Is it because you’re an American? Is it because the SDMB is based in the US?
What about the armed forces of
Australia, Canada, Panama, England, Ireland, New Zealand, and all the other countries that SDMB members live in?