Michael vents at the knee-jerkers

The BBQ Pit
1

:rolleyes:

God damn it, you’re not clever. You’re not original. You’re not even thinking!

I’m referring to morons who spraypaint slogans like ‘Bin Laden: CIA Trained’ ‘Non-violence starts on your plate’ and ‘Bombing for Peace?’ on sidewalks around my campus, those who spout off against a war we aren’t in and dribble about Mumia at the same time, those who call for ‘Justice, not War’ without the vaugest notion of what that Justice should be, and all the other naive people shouting “peace” or “no more killing” or “a day of action” or similliar feel-goodisms.
I’m now going to disect these slogans:

bin Laden: CIA trained
Maybe, but that’s been discussed elsewhere
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=89267

Bombing for Peace?
Ironic, ain’t it? I’m sure you thought about this for a whole 10 seconds before concluding that it was the greatest thing since the wheel.

Non-violence starts on your plate
:rolleyes: x (6.02 x 10[sup]23[/sup]) x several assloads more
Using these attacks as an example of the evil caused by eating meat is not only offensive, but just about the dumbest thing I’ve heard in my life. No, it is the dumbest. It beats the Flat-Earth Society, Titanic, Fred Phelps, Otto’s dribble about the firemen chanting “USA! USA! USA!”, DPWhite calling me a fascist, Seethruart’s moon hoax theory, that stupid Canadian professor mentioned a few days ago, and every other moron on Earth including Jack Dean Tyler and those Leet-speak pissants.

Every time I see a flyer for an anti-war rally or what have you, I want to put up my own. It would just be a picture of a mushroom cloud superimposed over a city skyline reading “If we ignore terrorists, this will happen.” Stupid and inflammitory it may be, but I’m sure I put more rational thought into it than they did.

Damn it, we’re not at war, we aren’t going to start WW3, the Taliban and bin Laden don’t deserve your sympathies.

I’ll be happy to respond to anyone who disagrees with me, because I want a chance to answer each argument individually.

Not much of a vent, but I’m not in the mood for cursing. I’m just sick of it all.

2

It doesn’t appear that you actually put more thought into it, just that you completely disagree with the side you are not on.

No one is suggesting we ignore it, but there is definitely a need to not “bomb them to the stoneage” while I am not saying you advocate that, a lot of your examples were slogans of people who are just speaking out against that mentality, and not people that advocate doing nothing. I would prefer peace and think we should try for that if we possibly can, but that doesn’t mean I think we should do nothing.

On the other hand, I like starting violence on my plate…mmmm steak. My main argument against vegans is that plants are just as alive as animals. I’ve also seen scientific research that says that plants do have feelings and other research that says animals are not sentient. Sorry no cite available on that. So I’m not gonna go either way. Not to mention that plant or animal you are destroying an entire ecosystem of microbes.

Erek

3

Which is exactly my point. From what I can tell, these people seem to think if we don’t react, nothing else will happen.

I could be wrong though, and I’d be happy if I was.

4

Is that a metric assload or English standard?

5

Well, while there are people who are idiots on both sides. “Turn the sand into glass” or conversely “ignore the terrorists, they only keep doing it because you respond.”, I don’t think that necessarily means that all the people in question advocate doing nothing. There are extremists on every side of an equation. It’s up to those in the middle to decide which roads to take and that’s where we end up going MOST of the time.

Erek

6

I’m afraid you’re not. I just removed myself from an email list after reading a message about what we really need to do is talk to the terrorists until they apologize (I swear, the guy thinks they’ll APOLOGIZE) and then everything’ll be peace and love and happiness…

Arrrrgh! It’s one thing to have idealistic fantasies, but another to cling to them in a situation like this. I do not like the idea of a war. I don’t think it’s right to go around killing people. However, the terrorists made it abundantly clear that they are willing to kill, and to die doing it. If the only way to stop them is to kill them, then I’m regretfully for it.

I am NOT, however, one of those with the “kill 'em all and let God sort them out” mentality. That’s the thing – it’s not all peace and love, or else nuclear war. There are other options. Black-and-white thinking gets you nowhere in the real world – or worse, it gets you to do things like take out the WTC.

sigh

7

I actually meant to add a section on how the “Bomb everything” camp were just as stupid, but I forgot.

Let me say it now:

Turn the sand to glass

What exactly would this solve other than pissing off the Arabs (Not familliar with that term, eh Billy John? OK, Arabs = a nice way of talking about Towelheads, get it?) who don’t hate us, i.e. most of them?

Oh dear, your bigotted head exploded. Better get a mop now…

8

Whichever is larger (Fatter?).

9

The day everyone agrees with everyone else, I’m worried. We are at war and we need to decisively defeat our enemies. Revenge and punishment have nothing to do with it.

There are a number of people against any forcible response, but they are a minority. While I disagree with them, I respectfully disagree and when they offer some intelligent response, we should give it our attention. This conflict is an attack against our pluralism, our right to disagree.

10

i believe that it is avogadro’s assload.

11

And we have also solved the mystery of who is The Mole only a couple weeks into the season.!

12

hmmmm
justice. what about looking back to WW II?
nuremburg trials, the isreali executions of nazi criminals, that sorta thing? get bin laden and the members of his organisation, and TRY them. nice and legal.

better than carpet bombing civilians because of the actions of their “government” (the taliban is NOT the legitimate government of afghanistan, therefore you cannot declare war on the country, only on the taliban) which just brings us down to the level of the terrorists.

a dead civilian is a dead civilian. white, black,christian, muslim or any other thing.

not to mention that if america does enter into a war with afghanistan in the traditional sense, it is only going to get MORE people to sympathise with the terrorists. nothing looks more like US imperialism in foreign affairs than bombing a country and replacing the government (however illegitimate) by force.

as for nukes…grow up. america is not the only country with hydrogen bombs at its disposal. Mutually Assured Destruction remember?

the taliban has massive popular support in pakistan…which has nuclear capability… which could be fun for all concerned.

i’m not saying ignore the issue, just tread carefully…

13

Clarification: You’ll be overjoyed to know that very few people are actually endorsing “carpet bombing civilians”.

But don’t they lack any long-range missile delivery system?

14

Reminds me of a comic I saw where a scientist was working on some complex equation on a blackboard. There were three basic steps visible. Steps one and three were all sorts of mathematical formulas. Step two was “and then a miracle occurs”.

Your plan falls into the same trap of just assuming that getting bin Laden and the rest of Al-Quaeda is an easy thing to do. If you know how to do so, please fill us in. Or are you the type that assumes that if you don’t mention the details, they must be trivial.

And use capital letters, for fuck’s sake.

15

Yes, but I’m sure they have the capability to lob nukes over a short range, say, over to a former Soviet airbase on the Uzbekistan/Afghanistan border, or over to a certain concentrated naval grouping in the Indian Ocean (if they have the capability to find it.)

16

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by waterj2 *
**

Taking someone’s grammar to task should only be done when the grammar can change the meaning of the sentence, otherwise you are just taking a cheap shot at someone. When a comma is needed to clarify what they are talking about, then by all means have at it. But getting upset that they didn’t capitalize proper nouns is juvenile and almost always used only when one disagrees with that person’s point.

Erek

17

No, I think that people failing to use proper capitalization is rude to those you expect to read your writing. If someone makes mistakes, or is ignorant of rules, I don’t give a shit. If someone knows the rules, but doesn’t care enough to bother with them, it pisses me off. My eyes (and most other people’s) are used to certain conventions, such as paragraph breaks and capitalization. It is harder to read something when someone simply decides they are too damn lazy to bother with my comfort.

I don’t feel that I should be required to take anyone seriously if they don’t show me the respect of taking the time to write stuff that can be read comfortably.

18

so much for bringing OBL to trial and punishing them
the next thing you know youll have a hijacked plane with the terrorists demanding the release of OBL or they’ll blow a few more innnocent civilians
as for bombing afghanistan into the stone age its already there
weve been talking to terrorists for twenty years and it just makes them fucking bolder
high time someone bombed their fucking homes or caves or wherever it is they live

19

Erm…

Nuking that base in Uzbekistan would start a nuclear war with the United States and Russian…

That just strikes me as being very poor planning…

20

Of course it would, but we’re talking worst case scenario here, if extremists somehow got the upper hand in Pakistan, and everything went to hell anyway.