Open Spoilers in this thread
So, Liam Neeson and the League of Shadows, what do they do and why the hell are they doing it? I remember passing references to fighting crime and destroying corrupt civilizations. Is this their actual goal, or some kind of front? What good does it do them to destroy Gotham?
They believe Gotham is so evil and corrupt (he uses the fact that they’ve infiltrated every level of its political infrastructure and taken control of its law enforcement as an example of how completely fucked up it is) that it is beyond saving and that the only way it can ever be redeemed is through its destruction. They’re sort of like the aliens in The Day the Earth Stood Still.
I mean, that’s basically what you said. You’re asking if there’s anything more to it than that: No, I don’t think that there is.
I don’t read Batman comics but from what I know (read: Googled) about the League of [del]Shadows[/del] Assassins of the DC world they’re pretty different than as shown in Batman Begins. Their goal isn’t so much to destroy specific evil hotspots but to eliminate most of humanity so that everyone can go back to pounding corn in the empty car pool lanes of abandoned superhighways or something like that.
“The time for using the knife to remove this cancer is long gone. Bring forth the torch.”
“It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.”
Save the environment in general, endangered species in particular, and even humanity itself by wiping out 90% of mankind if necessary. (Or what Alessan said, for very high values of “destroy” and “village”.) Also, rope in Bruce Wayne to marry the boss’s daughter, because who else is qualified to eventually run the show?
Or, you know, God in the entire Old Testament.
-Joe
Ras claimed they had been responsible for The Black Death and fall of both Rome and Constantinople. – although he refused to detail why Constantinople got the works owing to neither of them being Turkish.
Because they are EEEEE-villlllll. Why should they need a reason?
None of your business.
-Joe
That’s the thing - that’s exactly the opposite of the League’s motivations in both the movie and the comics - they’re a classic example of what TV Tropes calls Knights Templar (ironically, the actual Knights Templar are NOT a good example of the TV Tropes version) - they’ve got a good goal, and they’re so devoted to it, they lose sight of the need for good methods, and have a very, very liberal definition of ‘acceptable collateral damage’.
Yes. That was the joke.
Why it it inevitable on the SDMB, and to a greater extent the entire internet, that any implicit joke will be made explicit? If it’s merely to signal that one is in on the joke, isn’t Futurama’s “I see what you did there” superior?
Call and response. If you don’t want people making the obvious response, don’t make the obvious joke.
It’s not a knock-knock joke. The punchline is delivered (subtly) and someone then restates it (blatantly).
What if I’m Turkish? Then it IS my business. 
WhoooooOhOhOoooooOhOhOoooooOhOh Istanbul!
You see, the hammer is my penis.
Some men just want to watch the world burn.
That doesn’t seem to apply to the League of Shadows at all.
The answer to my question seems to be that they genuinely believe that they will make the world a better place by killing a bunch of a people. They wouldn’t be the first with that idea.
I mainly wanted to know, did Liam and his boys really believe that, or was that some sort of front used to recruit billionaire ninjas. The consensus appears to be that Liam was a true believer. I’m still not entirely sure how wrecking Gotham was going to make the world a better place in the long run, but they wouldn’t be the first terrorists whose plan was essentially:
That’s the point of the cancer metaphors - the cancer - Gotham and its corruption - need to be excised before it can metastasise to the healthy flesh, from the League’s POV.
Gotham is a cesspool of corruption. We see corrupt cops, from Gordon’s POV, we see a doctor abusing his patients in the Arkham scenes, we know the politicians are corrupt, though we don’t see it directly, if only because the blatantly illegal crap that happens in the legal system is tolerated.
Even the good guys in the Bat stories, both film and comics, generally agree that Gotham is a blight (the final arc of Detective Comics, pre-relaunch, has Gordon on the verge of a nervous breakdown because of it) they just think it can be cured without the extreme measures, or, even if it can’t, that that still doesn’t justify the League’s methods. It’s why Gordon accepts Batman at first - there’s only so much he can do, operating within the rules, but the Bat can operate without those constraints. But, unlike the League, he’s got other constraints that he holds to.