Stupidly, since no matter how ferocious bin Laden and his buddies get, they are not “Islam” and if we were to equate them to Islam and begin killing Indonesians, Filipinos, and the inhabitants of the east side of Dearborn, MI, we would be justifiably scorned as worthy inheritors of the mantles of the worst mass-murderes of the 20th century.
If you want to know the technical aspects of how the world’s most powerful nation might carry out a campaign of terror on any generic opponent, I suspect that we could find people to discuss that in a Tom Clancy sort of way.
Posing a question that includes massive misunderstandings of who our enemy might be does tend to derail rational discussion, since it has no rational basis.
(a) To observe that blindly nuking folks for the accidental sharing of religion with some extremist is moronic and displays no understanding at all of the situation is not to make a comment on what ObL et al would do.
(b) To undertake a massive terror war against a group, again for the sole accident of their religion, would be to descend into profound idiocy, and to see the US in an apocalyptic war with the world.
The pertinent question is, WHY would the U.S. engage in an “al Qaeda-style” war?
Answer: They wouldn’t. The United States is a large, geographically determinant, politically diverse, democratic nation. There is no analogy to a small, cell-based, geographically dispersed, single-minded fanatical terrorist organization. Doesn’t matter “how far you push” the U.S. - The United States is not going to engage in terrorist actions because they largely don’t work. They are the act of desperate losers that are insane enough to do so and lack the resources to engage in any other way. The United States would be stupid to engage in such tactics.
Sorry, no offense, but this is a silly question. The only “predominantly fundamentalist” Muslim nations are maybe a couple of Gulf States that happen to be formal allies of the United States. Iran doesn’t even qualify - The vast majority of the population isn’t fundamentalist - A minority, including the leadership, is. Since Islam isn’t, and never has been, a monolithic entity ( in partial contrast, perhaps, to the Stalinist-aligned communist nations Alessan alluded to ), the concept of a “war on Islam” is virtually meaningless.
If you want to discuss fantasy scenarios, I would suggest the IMHO forum is better suited to the task.
Of course he would. And? The United States is not going to retaliate by dropping a nuke on some random country just to look important. It would accomplish absolutely nothing ( other than to lose every ally the U.S. has ever had ). It certainly wouldn’t bother al Qaeda much - They’d revel in the propaganda coup.
No-o-o-o, inheritors of the titles (or mantles of “honor”) earned by the worst mass-murderers of the 20th century. So far, while the 21st century has seen horrible acts of violence, no single leader or group has racked up 1,000,000 or more deaths in the last couple of years.
Tamerlane, I like your view - I sure hope none of this ever comes to pass. If humanity would just pursue science instead of trying to appease some invisible Magic Sky Wizard, we’d all be better off.
I believe it is true that failing causes often resort to exteme violence in their last attempts to prevail. Maybe there is a ray of hope there.
Actually, IMHO Arab countries are coming to grips with the Western world slowly but surely. Many governments are lightening their stances towards western countries. Hell, a couple even have peace treaties with Israel. Afghanistan is working on building a democracy. Palastine might be a democracy soon. It’s getting harder and harder for governments to keep their populations in a protective bubble and only feed them propaganda the state wants them to hear. I think it’s only a matter of time before their societies begin to embrace western culture. Even China (I know they aren’t Arab, but they do use some of the same propaganda tactics on their people) are starting to open up.
If “the West” becomes convinced that “Islam is evil,” then wouldn’t “the West” also be convinced that Judiasm and Christianity are evil, too? After all, they share the same core philosophies, the same deities, and most of the same key characters.
So maybe lots of people in “the West” would have to off themselves, and leave the planet to the Buddhists and Hindus and atheists.
But then we’d have the Scientologists as well… Hmmm…
I don’t want to treat this subject too seriously, but I’d like to make an observation.
It is very, very difficult to destroy a belief. Generally, you can’t kill enough people to drive a religion into extinction, and as we regularly see right here, it is nearly impossible for an outside source to reverse a living person’s religious convictions.
Beliefs can, however, be moderated and/or co-opted over time. How do you fight radical Islam? By encouraging it to moderate itself.
I am well aware that the vast majority of Americans are jolly pleasant people who would be appalled by the act of genocide suggested by Dragline.
My point in challenging his use of the phrase ‘The West’ was that current allies of the US, including the UK, would be horrified by the callous idea of germ warfare.
I don’t know Dragline’s ancestry - perhaps his family came from Britain after the blanket incident. I don’t really care, because that wasn’t the point.
I did intend to try to shock him, since people of his sort usually value 1 American life as worth about 1,000 ‘foreigners’.
Of course I am not suggesting any moral superiority of the UK - we’ve got similar appalling incidents in our past.
You’ve undoubtedly read many of my posts - surely you know I’m a pacifist who does not blindly think my country (or any other) is automatically right.
I don’t drink tea. You use a lot of stereotyping, don’t you? :rolleyes:
Bit of a relief there.
Let’s just run through your idea again, so you can see how it might ‘work’.
Following an appalling act of violence against the US, you propose to unleash germ warfare - the ultimate killer that doesn’t discriminate against civilians, children or even Muslims.
Realising that just killing most of the planet might not be very ‘helpful’ :smack: , you come up with a wizard plan. You’ll inoculate the proposed survivors.
Well let’s see how just one country, India, would fit in to this. As I expect you know, it’s got Muslims, who, under your definition, are the terrorist enemy.
You may (or may not) know that it’s got some Hindu-types too (and even Christians :eek: ). Under your fascinating definition these are not enemies of the US.
So you’re going to inoculate them. What a relief. :rolleyes:
According to you, there are about 90 million Muslim ‘terrorists’ in India.
There are about 670 million Hindus.
There are about 18 million Christians.
There are about 25 million others.
So your ingenious idea involves the innoculation of about 713 million specific people. They would all have to be checked, in case any of them were … Muslims.
I could go on.
Perhaps you would like to reconsider? :wally
What I don’t understand is why you think retaliating for the deaths of millions of Americans by killing billions of innocent people world-wide is not (as Collounsbury politely put it):
“a proposition of such stunning drooling idiocy as to be surprising that anyone of something approaching an ordinary level of intelligence who took a moment to reflect would have gone ahead with it as opposed to have shamefully deleted the text before posting.”
I am not judging your position or your opinion on this matter at all.
However, I simply found your one-liner about handing cholera blankets to indians overwhelmingly ironic considering the evidence we have about who actually handed disease-laden blankets to indians.
Your point was fair; your choice of example was most unfortunate.
'Uigi, allegedly of the US armed forces obviously skipped the part of the training course during which they quickly browse over those silly rules of engagement such as preciously listed by Monty.
An opinion which makes one look dashingly bright, intelligent, tolerant and informed, I might add.
One might want to note that to be a member state of the EU it is a pre-requisite that the death penalty is not a part of the penal code. One might also want to read those old documents that Ben, Tom, George and the boys drafted back in the days of the American Revolution. I vaguely recall there being some such parts in those that makes the idea moot.
I ain’t biting.
Who am I to tell what anyone should do, but let’s see what I’d do. I’d try refraining from comment on subject matters that I am clued in on not at all. I’d pick up some books at the nearest library and learn a little about the Semitic cultures and I might read some newspapers other than the National Enquirer on a regular basis. If none of that worked I might go get counseling for my anger problems. Oh yeah, and I’d eat lots of fish, it apparently does marvels for the old brain region.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with Islam, and there are hundreds of millions of Islamic people in the world who simply want to live their lives, raise families, and hope their children do better than they did.
However, the reason that so many people are conflating Islam with Islamic terrorism is because there is a fairly large strain of radical Islamic belief, primarily in some Arab countries but really throughout the world, that is causing all the trouble. As we learn more about Al-Qaida, we’re discovering threads and tendrils throughout many countries. They are recruiting in American jails. They no doubt have followers or even paid officials in a number of countries. They have a large organization. They are aided and supported by some Arab countries. Other organizations such as Hamas and Hizbollah may not be officially part of them, but they are ‘fellow travelers’ to the extend that their goals coincide.
Imagine if the U.S. lost control of the ‘militia’ movement, and it grew. Imagine that some wealthy industrialist like Ted Turner or Bill Gates believed in their cause, and started funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to them. These guys then started going around the world, recruiting agents, and planning the destruction of other countries. Maybe there would even be a senator or two that happened to agree with them and supported them by looking the other way or quietly sabotaging bills that aimed to stop them.
That would be a far more analogous situation. And would the solution to that problem be to eradicate the United States, or to declare war on Capitalism or Christianity? No. The proper response would be to attack the radicals in other countries, and to issue strong demands that the U.S. clean up its act and stop harboring them and looking the other way and giving them free passage and stuff. Maybe even to launch some incursions into militia camps in the U.S.
If the war escalates into a war against ‘Islamists’ (Lou Dobb’s term for this radical strain), it would basically involve just stepping up pressure on countries like Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, etc. Perhaps some limited special forces engagements inside these countries to eradicate particularly dangerous cells and operations. And if some countries refuse to cooperate and give aid and comfort to them, those countries in turn could come under attack.
Hmmm…