Five? How about 1,000 killed in the 1969 Football Warin Central America?
I was just a kid during the Watts riots in 1965, where 35 people died, and the whole town seemed to be burning down from our viewing point- atop an old hotel behind Wilshire Blvd. The cause was described by locals to be a man and a woman getting upset with a cop over the “unfair” arrest of their family member. It was later said to be caused by racial tension, and defined in more sociological terms.
my two cents:
i don’t think it’s at all a common disposition to want to kill, at least not on a per capita statistical level. i think you could say the same thing about school shootings if you wanted to build a similar case.
but you have to understand the circumstances there: it’s a war-torn nation, one impoverished and extremely uneducated, with years of ongoing wars not even counting the current conflict.
violence becomes a language under those conditions, so it’s more common to become bloodthirsty.
i still don’t think that on average the typical Afghan wants to kill anyone.
i don’t think on average the typical Muslim wants to kill anyone, either–
but you also have to keep in mind: how many reports do they do on the peaceful people? the violence gets the headlines.
Off-topic and evasive.
If certain Central Americans were uhinged in 1969 that does nothing to atone
for the guilt of 2012 Muslims. The same applies to the 1965 Watts rioters, who
at least had real material grievances in the form of generations of real and intended
discrimination. As stupid as it was to burn the Korans it did no physical harm to
anyone, and did not take money out of anyone’s pocket.
In no way, shape, or form did you indicate that this little assertion of yours was Afghanistan specific, and dropping it into the middle of a conversation specifically about the Iraq war action sans explanation wasn’t too helpful if that was your rhetorical intent.
Again .. this is delusional. A good chunk of the intelligence re Iraq that Bush received re Iraq was so directed, washed and cherry picked by Cheney et al that it was pratically manufactured to justify a unitlateral invasion. The raw intelligence Gore’s adminstration would have received might have been similar, but what would have reached the President (if Gore was POTUS) would have been completely different sans the gatekeepers Bush’s information had to go through.
(bolding mine)
I can understand that Muslims find it highly disrespectful, and if as you say, it “is the equivalent to burning down a church. No less.”, it is NOT a church with a human being inside of it. Consequently, I find that killing people over it is grossly out of proportion to the “crime”.
ETA And since we’re on the subject, does anyone here know what exactly, if anything, the Quoran (Kuran, Koran?
) has to say on the subject, concerning mistreatment of said book?
Afghanistan was the country addressed in OP. Furthermore, It does not get
any more specific than this, short of repeating the name of the country:
(from reply#7 to this thread)
As a matter of fact Gore agreed that the Iraqi WMD issue was serious enough
to require eventual action by the US:
Al Gore Speech on Iraq 9/23/2002
(from link, Gore speaking, emphasis added):
The only disagreement Gore had with Bush over Iraq was the timing;
otherwise Bush followed Gore’s advice as much as Cheney’s.
And this link provides quotes and leads to other similarly aggressive statements
by other prominent Democrats:
i can’t find any specific quotes in the Qu’Ran about desecration of the book, but
here are a few articles explaining the offense:
from a Muslim
news article
i would strongly like to reiterate that violence proliferates quicker in a war-torn nation than elsewhere.
i can’t over emphasize the significance.
You were responding specifically to my post and my remark re the unilateral declaration of war on Iraq not the OP.
What you are quite deliberately leaving out here is that the intelligence that was being delivered to Congress and the American public (and Gore) was being filtered by Cheney and his minions at the source point. The possible presence of Iraqi WMDs was not presented as a guess needing confirmation, it became a fact. Dissenters in the CIA and elsewhere were deliberately shunted aside. Most American people were convinced that Saddam was getting ready to whip out a bunch of killer WMDs on us. Given BS facts even reasonable people will come to the conclusion Saddam must be stopped by any means necessary.
You seem (somehow) to believe that this deliberate corruption of intelligence confirming mass stockpiles of WMDs as a hard fact and would have been happening even if Gore was in office. I’m not clear how you come to that conclusion. The whole intelligence filtering scenario was only possible because of the unprecedented level of power wielded by Cheney and his mastery of bureaucratic infighting. He had the CIA thoroughly cowed.
Here is a well reviewed book you might find interesting - Fiasco
And you were responding to OP which was about Afghanistan.
“In no way, shape, or form did you indicate that this little assertion of yours was
(Iraq) specific”. If you were talking about Iraq you should have said so.
Stop right there.
The fact of the matter is that although the issue was controversial within the CIA,
its director George Tenet, a Clinton appointee, came down on the side of those who
viewed the situation as urgent.
And even though it was not urgent in 2003 Saddam was durely never going to stop
trying to obtain WMD, and despite sanctions he had 10s of billions$ to spend on the
effort. Therefore, given his record as a serial agressor who had already invaded two
countries it was necessary for us to depose him sooner or later.
I think you then greatly overestimate how much we care about church buildings. Unless people were actually in the church, I can’t imagine an actual riot happening. I mean, the Simpsons even makes a joke about a pastor burning down his church for the insurance money. I’m pretty sure even talking about burn a Qur’an is offensive.
And, to be honest, I really can’t understand the impulse to do something to protect your book that is forbidden by that book itself. It doesn’t have to do with being in a Christian country, but in not thinking disrespect is a murderous offense.
Ispo facto “Therefore”? Son… that argument is some weak, weak shit. There are lots of local and regional bad guys on this planet bullying their neighbors, and while we might lend a hand from time to time, we typically don’t feel compelled to unilaterally mount an invasion of their country and go to war with them because of what we suspect they might do.
The Iraq War is regarded even by most die hard hawks at this point as a massive boondoggle resulting in an absolute squandering of US blood and treasure based on poorly vetted and manipulated intelligence, and horrifically bad decision making on multiple levels. Some believe the actions of members of the the Bush Administration in prosecuting the war were so inept and damaging to the US they bordered on treason.
That you cling to the tiny little fig leaf of “Therefore his record as a serial aggressor who had already invaded two countries it was necessary for us to depose him sooner or later” is sad. It was not necessary at all. There were lots and lots of ways to deal with bad guys short of war, especially when those bad guys pose little danger to our sovereignty.
I seriously urge you to read Fiasco. The author does not have an anti-Bush agenda. The facts of the situation are damning enough in and of themselves.
Our action was not unilateral, although our resolution to stick it out
was nearly so. Saddam was uniquely the only person since the end
of WW2 to have started two wars and gotten away with it.
The timing may or may not have been the best. I wonder how many
who now deny the eventual necessity of ousting Saddam were among
those quoted by the Snopes link as considering it a necessity years ago
(e.g. H. Clinton and others).
Given the character of the nightcreatures who replaced Saddam as
the enemy we could not have spent much less blood and treasure than
we did, regardless of the timing or the forces commited.
Mistakes, which are bound to occur, have no rational bearing on the
justice of employing armed force. Deceit would lend taint even to just war,
and I would condemn any administration for it. However, I will also give
any administration benefit of the doubt. If no smoking gun has yet been
uncovered now, 9 years later, then none will ever be.
“Treason” means specifically to wage war against the US, or to give aid
and comfort to its enemies; it is therefore “ipso facto” an ignorant and
stupid accusation to make.
What us sad is your coarse disregard of the hundreds of thousands who died
as the result of Saddam’s invasions of Iran and Kuwait.
Actually, there is often no way to deal with an entrenched enemy other
than by invasion. That is an obvious, uncontroversial, recurring fact of history.
As for Saddam specifically, we had since 1991 been “dealing” with him by
letting him have his way domestically, the Kurds aside, and by paying him
several billion$ per year in trade sanction exceptions. His ability to withstand
the uprising after the end of Gulf War 1 suggests he could still be sitting pretty now.
Sovereignty? Even 9/11 represented no threat to dispossess us of territory
or self-rule. Threat to sovereignty is only the most extreme justification for war.
I do not trust your recommendation, although I may peruse the net for reviews
pro and con.
In any meaningful sense of the word it was a unitlateral invasion by the US and its allies. Are you clear on what this word means?
Again, you speak of this as a “necessity”. It was not a necessity by any stretch of the imagination no matter have many times you tell yourself this bald fiction.
Smoking gun? You seem to think historians are waiting anxiously for some other shoe to drop. As a helpful hint the shoes have already dropped in a huge bumper crop of footwear. The number of fuckups the Bush Adminstration made in planning and implementing the war are legion and legendary and are part of the record. No one is looking for a “smoking gun”. The facts are on the table.
This was obviously hyperbole by those disgusted with the Bush Administration’s wildly incompetent decision making in the handling of the war. However, this references a larger point. You, personally stand firm against the surging tide of historical opinion that considers the Iraq War one of the most ill advised and ineptly prosecuted wars in the history of the United States. If you are going to do this in good faith and not just as a rhetorical exercise you really need to read “Fiasco”.
Odd… I thought it was a distinctly liberal inclination to view the US as the world’s Batman. It’s a tragedy that thousands to millions die every year in wars and various clashes, but we are not the global police. Pouring our soldiers precious lives and our limited resources into a bottomless rat hole to (in part) punish Saddam’s abuse of his regional neighbors and subject populations was a stupid plan plain and simple.
Your entire point here (and much of your argument in general in this discussion) swings on the hard presumption that we HAD to deal with (ie eliminate) Saddam and our only real option was invasion. There is no logical realpolitik basis whatsoever for this conclusion that we HAD to take him out. There are lots of bad actors all over this planet doing bad things to their people and neighbors, and somehow we manfully resist the urge to go to war with them and root them out. The imperative “necessity” to get rid of Saddam was largely a manufactured crisis and at some point you are going to need to acknowledge that.
Please do!
It’s probably time to move this over to GD.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
You are not using the word in any meaningful sense, and no, I am not clear.
This is the first occasion where you have interjected “and allies”. You had
focused solely on the US, giving the impression thought it acted alone.
It is certain that such necessity was perceived by bipartisan consensus of
electors and electorate, even if it was wrong, and that this consensus preceded
the administration of GW Bush.
By “smoking gun” I was referring to deceit, as in concocting evidence or
interpreting evidence in a manner known to be specious.
As for the conventional military side of the war it was run to near
perfection, Iraq being conquered at the cost of only about 100 dead.
Then the war turned asymmetrical where everyone in the country
became targets for terrorist nightcreatures, a situation where conventional
military force is much less useful than against an enemy who stands up
and fights. Nevertheless, we lost less killed than during the Revolutionary War
all the while ensuring normal Iraqis a chance at Democratic government,
a chance for which there was no prospect as of 2/03.
You used the phrase “Some believe”, which is not a figure of speech,
and I believe your retroactive qualification is dishonest.
The main US failure consisted of inability to predict the terror that followed
conclusion of conventional military operations, which went without a hitch,
and any historian who does not recognize that as established fact is deluded
or prevaricating, and I do not care how many favorable reviews he gets.
I have repeatedly said the timing may have been wrong, but there is no doubt
that a proven threat to the world was removed and replaced with a Democracy
at little cost in blood to the US, although sadly much greater than expected cost
to Iraq.
If Democracy succeeds in Iraq and if Iraq is never again a violent threat then
our soldiers’ lives will have been well spent, Rest In Peace.
Invasion was the only real option, given that 12 years of sanctions had done
nothing to erode Saddam’s grip on power. Logically, the argument’s premise
is that a person’s past behavior is a reliable guide to his future behavior. You
do not have a problem with that, I hope. As a matter of realpolitik, therefore,
we were confronted with a literal serial war monger who was sole heir to a
constant stream of billions$ with which to plot further aggression, at a time
which we could not be confident of predicting.
Saddam Hussein himself was permanent crisis, personified.
As a matter of realpolitik Saddam was in a position to do the most damage
to the US and its allies, and so comparison with others is irrelevant, although
opponents of the war were never bright enough to realize it. The crisis was
not manufactured, it was chronic, and in being since the 1980s.
colonial, astro, and others: drop the hijack about the Iraq war immediately. You can start a new thread if you much debate this issue yet again, but it’s not relevant to the original topic of this thread.
I have no idea what things are like for Jewish- and Muslim-country people, but I can’t help wonder if part of the difference with first-world Christian-dominate countries is the mass produced nature of Bible.
I’ve got at least half a dozen bibles kicking around this house. Maybe more. And we’re not a particularly religious house either. Somehow, bibles are just everywhere. They aren’t treated differently than any other book. They’re just on the shelves and in boxes, and so on. If they all go up in smoke, I can run right out to Barnes & Nobles and buy another dozen just like them. I can probably call around to the churches near me and they’d all be happy to just give me a bible.
It’s hard to work up much concern about objects - even a sacred objects - when they’re so cheap and easy to come by.
I suspect that a hundred years ago, bibles were rare and precious. But today? They’re everywhere. I don’t know if that situation pertains to other peoples’ holy books in other countries. I can’t help wonder if peoples attitudes about the Koran isn’t tied in part to a time when printed books were hard to come by.
Since Afghanistan is not in the Middle East I think both the title of the thread and the above question are a bit wrong-headed.
There’s a big difference between sports-related rioting and the strain of Islamic idiocy that results in killing over Koran burnings or any other perceived insult. The sports-related violence and deaths is true result of inflamed passions of the moment, which results in a mob, and mobs can do ugly things. Koran burnings and the like are perceived to be justified. And justifiable. Meaning that you could put a bunch of Muslims in a room, have them deliberate about it, and come to the conclusion that because people from a largely Christian country “defiled” the Koran, Muslims should, in fact, kill Americans and/or Christians. This is what is so whack about some strains of Islam. Just do a search of Sharia Law and look at the atrocities committed against people (particularly women) as a result of court deliberation. Here’s my favorite. Girl seen walking home from school with boy who was not a relative. The girl’s family is up in arms and this gross indignity. Takes to to the village court which holds court over the matter. The verdict. Yes the girl’s family suffered an unimaginable insult. The remedy? Well, the boy just happened to have a sister. So, the idiots figured, let’s even things up by allowing all the male members of the family—father, brothers and uncles—rape the innocent boy’s even more innocent sister. No, you couldn’t make this shit up. And we need to keep in mind that these are the type of people we’re talking about when they’re killing innocent people because a book was desecrated.