Again, navel gazing mate.
BA
Yes, they are. Do the names Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph mean anything to you?
Granted, these men did not commit suicide when they perpetrated their terrorist bombings, and “blowing people up in a terroristic fashion” is not anywhere near as prevalent in the US as it is in the Middle East these days. But given the fact that war is not being actively waged within the US, that is to be expected.
The point is, American Christians are indeed “blowing people up in a terroristic fashion”.
As I said above, let’s start by asking “Why is this happening?” rather than jumping to “What’s wrong with Islam?”
We are not in Iraq and Afghanistan because of Timoth McVeigh and Eric Rudolf, which is the thrust of my OP.
BA
We’re not in Iraq because of “Moslem fundamentalism,” either.
You only arrived this month from the look of things :). I’ll also assume you are not a long-time lurker or this thread would never have been opened.
In point of fact this is a topic that has been debated endlessly ever since I’ve been here ( and occasionally by me, though I’m a bit burnt out these days ). A lot of people are nearly as sick of those discussions as they are of the election stuff. I don’t blame you for not knowing that and I certainly don’t blame you for not being able to search.
However, I will say that if you are trying to debate a proposition, the Pit is a piss-poor place to start it. Debating drunk is probably an even worse idea. If you just want to rant on the other hand, have at it.
If you want an old debate thread on Islam to read, here’s a particularly long one to start:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=145514
- Tamerlane
We have this thing called ‘an election’ coming up. It sorta, you know, dominates discussion.
Ha! I can’t even see my navel. It were the presidential debate drinking games that did me in. “Don’t drink beer for the presidential debate drinking games, This Year’s Model” I sez to myself. “Drink scotch. You know if you drink beer for the presidential debate drinking games you’re just going to gain 90 pounds in two weeks.” But did I listen? Ha!
Blackacre, there’s nothing stopping you from starting a debate about this in GD. Simply start with a premise, add some wordage that supports your premise, then end with a conclusion. It’s that easy. The threads you’re starting now aren’t even discussion.
Or, if you want to see what’s already been discussed and don’t want to pay, set your display options to last year and start scrolling. Have fun!
Really? Who’s running? Anyone I know?
Give proper recognition to baseball. 
No one you’d care to.
Trust me on that one.
Hehe, am not drunk, was just watching back-to-back epis of Sex in the City and Cosmos were mentioned a time or two. Does not detract from my OP, which I believe goes hand in hand with election, but seems to be being glossed over by all the self-loathing.
BA
Is it also, then, fair to ask “How about them Christians?” and point to the decades-long bombing campaigns in the Basque region or Northern Ireland? These are not suicide bombings, but I doubt the victims’ families much care whether the perpetrators decided to martyr themselves or not.
Y’see, this all hits a little close to home, literally, for me. Erich Rudolph set off a bomb right next door to my grandmother’s home, and then fled to an area where, as fate would have it, other members of that same side of my family sympathized with his cause!
To say that Christianity is somehow to blame here would gloss over the fact that most Christians condemn terrorist bombings. Similarly, to say that we need to look at Islam for the reasons behind the suicide bombings in the news these days is to ignore the fact that most Muslims condemn the violence.
As for this assertion: “We are not in Iraq and Afghanistan because of Timoth McVeigh and Eric Rudolf, which is the thrust of my OP.”
That most certainly is NOT “the thrust of [your] OP”, which makes no mention of US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. The thrust of your OP is explicitly to assert that Islam should be examined to discover the cause of the recent prevalence of suicide bombings.
As my grandfather used to say, if you’re going to piss in my ear, at least do me a favor and don’t try to tell me it’s raining.
You shouldn’t have surrendered that excuse so quickly.
What is the Islamist connection to our invasion of Iraq?
Baathis were blatantly secular, not connected to 9/11, and no more connected to al Qaida than the US was.
If you would like to carry on this discussion you feel is so eminently pressing you should indeed sober up and write an Op for GD. Can’t promise I’ll get around to participating in the thread any time soon, though.
However, if you cough up the $15 bucks, you can search and read as many threads on this subject as you like.
You got to know when to hold 'em
know when to fold 'em
know when to walk away and
know when to run
Btw, you should read, for example, “The Price of Loyalty” by David Suskind and Paul O’Neill, George W. Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury, which documents (and the White House has not denied this) that George II had relatively detailed plans to invade Iraq as early as January of 2000 and that W’s administration engaged in a systematic program to justify an invasion of Iraq well before the 9/11 attacks.
In any case, the argument that Iraq was involved with 9/11 or provided support for Muslim fundamentalist terrorists has been well debunked by now. Saddam was, after all, a fascist who considered Muslim fundamentalism a threat to his power and worked to keep it at a low boil lest it become a real challenge to his regime.
Sober up and educate yourself, ya drunk bigot.
All right. You want evidence in Islam to support the view these fanatics having been taking?
There is none. Got that? There is no more assertion in Islam to go out and kill all the unbelievers than there is in Christianity, Judaism, or any other major religion.
I think that it’s entirely germane to point out that you’ve done nothing in this thread, and nothing in any of your posts on this board, so far as I can tell, except “navel gaze.” You want a debate, start a debate. Just stop with the endless, content-free threads that consist of nothing but you whining that no one is talking about the subjects you want to talk about.
This is apparently a euphemism to which I’ve just never been exposed, but what the hell is navel gazing?