Shall we take it from your need to resort to insults and unbacked claims that you don't actually have a rational point of disagreement to raise? Sure seems that way...
You can't stop at `in some ultimate sense' -- once you claim that these two cultures have equal claim on being right, you have to admit that any two views of what is right are equally valid. Is this really what you mean?
If that were so, it would be the height of arrogance to ever try to convince anyone of anything, as by definition your view is no more right than theirs -- yet here you are, typing away on slashdot. Explain?
The problem is, if morality is not external to us, how can we ever judge one action to be better than another? We believe that death camps are wrong. The Nazis believed that they were right. If these two moral ideals are not two attempts (both imperfect, but one much better) to model an external, objective moral ideal, how can we speak of one being better than the other at all?
There is (to put it politely) valid room for disagreement as to whether any abuse at all occurred in this case. The police acted with a search warrant, siezed the items specified in the warrant, and are presumably going to bring charges. If not, the items will presumably be returned with damages paid. If this is not what happens, then you can start talking about abuses. Even then, unless you are claiming that a forged search warrant was used, we are not discussing `unlawful search and siezure' at all.
But none of this has anything to do with the discussion at hand. The point here is that it is possible to object to something reasonably and proportionately. Trying to convince people that if something is undesirable then it is `just like the holocaust, man' is absurd.
Well, as they say on the tv, `we report, you decide'. If you can say with a straight face that legal action against cable-theft `is as horible' as the murder of 18 million people in death camps, and then go on to say with a straight face that these actions (which are of course, perfectly legal -- you haven't presented any argument that they are not) are ` worse than the Nazi concentration of Jews', I think the readers of this thread have all the information they need to decide which one of us is a raving loony.
The problem is that what the US thinks is right (for themselves) isn't alway what is right. And the us should start listening a little to the opinions of other countries that they share this planet with
We spend a great deal of time listening to what other countries say, but we decide for ourselves. Who are you arguing that we should be listening to anyway? Europe (continental pastime: burning synagogues and appeasing dictators)? The Arab World (not a democracy in sight, from Morocco to Indonesia)?
There are lots of other countries that do what they believe is right without beeing the target of terrorists
Indeed, there are a lot of countries where being terrorists is what they believe is right, and more which believe in appeasement. We believe (rightly, I would argue) that appeasement is much more dangerous in the long run.
USA have a foreign policy where they've interfered in just about every conflict. Standard practice is: choose one side help them as long as it fits US policy, then when it don't you cut all support and let them rot. End result: both sides hate the US. (afaik this is how Osama bin Laden became the monster he is)
It sure sounds like you've now arguing that we don't interfere enough, doesn't it? Which is it? At any rate, the idea that Bin Laden was created or trained by the US is a myth -- check out
this article, from The New Republic (hardly a mainstream or conservative publication).
US foreign policy has been based on the bully in class principle: "We're big, noone can touch us, we do whatever we feel like, it doesn't matter if they hate us because they can't do anything".
Ours is the policy not of bullies, but of the heroes who actually change anything in the world: ``I am going to do what is right to the best of my ability. If the world loves me for it, great. If they hate me for it, at least I've done what was right.''
I don't know how it's portrayed in the US news, but here in the current conflict Israel is definitively portrayed as the bad guy, and in the background is the US supplying with everything they need to keep opressing the palestinians
This is a false portrayal, plain and simple. Far from `oppressing' the Palestinians, Israel has been trying to reach peace with them for decades, and in fact has left them completely to their own devices since Oslo. In peace offering after peace offering, Israel has offered the Palestinians land, independence, and everything else they claim they want, and asked only for an end to the murder-suicide bombings in return. They never got that end.
So yes, this illustrates what I am talking about perfectly. While the Arab world calls for genocide against Israel, and the Europeans rush to wash their hands of the Jews for the second time in three generations, the US sees a free, liberal democracy under assault by neighboring dictatorships, and says `this will not stand'.
I do not sympathize with the methods of any terrorists, but there are times I can sympathize with their cause
Which cause? The murder of civilians? Genocide against those whose religion is different? The destruction of those whose culture is not yours? These are the causes of the terrorists attacking us and attacking Israel. Do you really sympathize with these?
The main problem I have with belief that morality is merely pain avoidance (or, alternately, with the utilitarian view that morality means doing that which results in pleasure) is that we quite clearly hold as moral some actions which in no way result in pain avoidance (or happiness) for the person doing the action.
We (correctly, of course) look at the firemen who ran into the World Trade Center on September 11 as heroes, and salute their attempt to save as many as they could at the cost of their own life -- but if morality is pain avoidance, then we would be forced to consider their actions as deeply immoral.
Nor does falling back on instinct get us out of this mess -- we humans are a mess of conflicting instincts, and often the action we feel an instinctive urge to do is not the most moral action, or even the action which is most in our interest. We spend a lot of time choosing between conflicting instincts, so there must be something outside of instinct which guides our choice.
On the contrary, the height of arrogance would be to say that although we understand that liberty is valuable of itself, we feel that only we deserve it, and `those other people over there' deserve something less because of an accident of history.
To do otherwise is to suggest that there are no moral values which transcend individual cultures. If we do that, we sacrifice the ability to ever consider something another culture does as wrong, whether it be totalitarianism, genocide of minorities, slavery, or what have you.
Basic ideals for humankind -- ideals which are universal, and correspond to our best understanding of what is objectively right.
It is a cop-out to say that `if their culture doesn't value human rights, individuals who want to be free don't deserve to be, as it assumes that people born into those cultures are some how less worthy as human beings than people born into cultures which do value these ideals.
The next poster makes the same point (and rather more civilly). The point is that arguments over what is or is not objectively right do not in any way detract from the idea that their is an objective right. On the other hand, if you argue that there is no objective right, then you lose the grounds to object to anything at all.
With due respect, I'm not the one arguing that there are not objective moral criteria for action. I happen to believe that there are, and that our best understanding of it suggests that systems based on forcing people to labor are wrong, while systems based on selling labor voluntarily are not. I'd certainly welcome (as I said!) a rational argument that there is an objective moral theory which does not approve of selling labor, but you can't hold that this (or anything else!) is wrong if you don't accept that there is an objective moral criteria of some sort.
There are plenty of valid arguments to be made here, though some of your complaints (such as wanting to know how the warrants were acquired -- this is presumably a matter of public record, if you want to check for yourself) are a little odd. None of these arguments are served well by trotting out the Niemoller quote or making vague insinuations that if theft of service is considered to fall under the cable-theft laws (which it seems to, by at least a plain reading of those laws) then we're `just like' the Nazis.
Re:the real terrorists are governments and media
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Cyber-Attacks?
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first off TNC is a conservative publication.
I'm not sure what this `TNC' you refer to is, but if you are arguing that
The New Republic (TNR) is a `conservative' publication, you don't even pass the laugh test. They hang way to the left of mainstream on any issue you could care to name.
we have trained and/or armed EVERY enemy we have faught since WW2.
I hope you don't expect readers of this thread to take this on assertion. Perhaps you can back this claim up with something resembling a credible cite?
al qaida would not exist if not for the cia.
Again, this is simply false, as many people, including the author of the piece I link to above, have pointed out. If you want to convince us otherwise, you'd better have a cite...
of course, repeat the party line, they attacked us because we're free, they attacked us because we're free.
What you call the `party line' here is what they themselves are saying. We are facing an enemy who talks about the `tragedy of Andalusia' (the reconquest of spain in 1492) as a motive for his attacks, and you think some minor foreign policy changes we make 600 years later are going to change his mind? Really?
and yes they are planning further attacks. you want to know how to stop them, it easy. stop giving military aid to isreal, pull out of saudi arabia(we've already started this), and now pull out of afghanistan.
First off, we seem to be on a very good track as far as preventing future attacks is concerned. Second, are you really suggesting that we should be making foreign policy decisions based not on what we believe is right but on what will appease madmen like bin Laden? Really?
boo fucking hoo 3000 people died
Ah, so now your true feelings on the matter come out. OK.
how many palestinians died in the occupation this year?
Not very many, in fact, at least according to
Arafat's own numbers, which also confirm that almost all those who have died have been combatants. In the Egyptian weekly al-Ahram, a spokesman for Hamas
confirms that almost all those killed were combatants. This doesn't count, of course the several dozen lynched by Arafat's own security services.
how many columbians died because of the american puppet govt.?
First off, it's Colombians, unless you are suggesting that there have been deaths at Columbia University. Second, do you have any credible cite to back up this claim? Sure seems to me like the violence in Colombia has much more to do with the vicious marxist rebels, but perhaps you can argue otherwise?
how many venezuelans almost died because of a CIA instigated coup.
Poppycock. Provide one shred of credible evidence linking the CIA to the abortive coup (or even suggesting that any significant number of people died!)
how many vietnamese nationalist died defending thier country?
Actually let's look at who was `defending' the country and who it needed defense against, shall we? You are, I hope, aware that more Vietnamese were murdered by Ho Chi Minh's government in the first three years of `peace' following the war than had died in the entire twenty-five years of fighting leading up to that point? No, the tragedy of Vietnam is not that we helped the South Vietnamese defend themselves against a brutal invader. The tragedy is that the arrogance of JFK and LBJ led them to not make a strong case for why the war was just, leading to our abandoning our allies to their fate.
how many hondurans, salvadoreans, afghans, serbs, guatamalans, grenadans, panamanians, and americans have died from the actions of the US govt?
How many? Are you arguing that the US was wrong in these conflicts? On what grounds?
What's troubling is that this line of reasoning suggests that we should wait until things get "bad enough" before being angered enough to fight back. Then, of course, it is to late.
I don't think I've suggested anything of the sort. I have suggested two things:
First, that you have to, at the very least, provide evidence that things are on their way to getting `bad enough' (or even that things are getting worse!) before making extravagant claims, at least if you want to be taken seriously. In light of this, the rest of your post seems particularly odd, as you trot out all sorts of `principles' which you claim are lurking in the case being discussed without providing any credible argument that the raid under discussion was unprecedented, unusual, or even unjustified -- much less that it can be taken as a sign of a belief that `power justifies abuses'.
Second, no matter how bad you may think things are getting, arguing that an FBI raid on a cable-theft operation in which no one was hurt, no one was arrested, and nothing was taken without warrant is `like' the murder of millions by the Nazis doesn't make you `brave' or `insightful' -- it makes you ridiculous.
I'm willing to chalk it up to cultural differences and let it go at that.
Are you really? Are you arguing that because these people have a different history from ours basic ideals like free speech and the free exchange of ideas shouldn't be important to them? Really?
Nope, the onus is on those who would suggest we follow Marx's ideals to convince us that all of the terrible tyrannies perpetrated in Marx's name were a corruption of, not an inevitable result of, his program. `We'll be different this time, we promise' just doesn't cut it.
I would argue that, in fact, Marx's basic ideals, with their talk of reshaping humanity, and of use of force in affecting this change until some future date when this force would magically `wither away' is in fact directly responsible for the tyrannies committed in his name.
While I would question the claim that anything the US has done would warrant trotting out the Niemoller quote, that's not really the point here.
The point is that by drawing an analogy between a crackdown on cable-theft and the victims of whom Reverend Niemoller writes, the poster leaves us with only two possible conclusions:
that he considers the current crackdown to be serious enough to discuss in the same breath with the torture and murder of millions of people, or that he considers the torture and murder of millions of people to be as unserious as a crackdown on cable-theft. Either stance would be absurd on its face, and thus the poster has accomplished nothing but to make his own concern in the matter seem ridiculous.
If you have a coherent argument to make that these actions are leading to worse actions, go for it. There are plenty of reasonable arguments to be made against these actions (which is not saying I will necessarily agree with them -- an argument can be reasonable without being correct).
Trotting out the Niemoller quote is nothing but an insult to those the Nazis (and similar systems like the Communists) actually did `come for', without adding anything to the current debate.
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OK, let's go over these claims in order, shall we?
Slave labour so your levi's and t-shirts are cheap started this war.
Where do you get this? Care to provide any credible cite for anything even resembling `slave labor'? Even if we accept your representation of events, are you really suggesting that al-Qaeda's beef with us is the working conditions in Levi's factories? Really?
Putting 3/4 of the human race in 3rd-world lifestyles to support our's started this war.
Sorry to disappoint you, but if much of the rest of the world is not as rich as the US, it's not because we made them poor, it's because they insist on clinging to corrupt and backwards economic systems which produce poverty wherever they are tried. We've provided a shining example to the world of how free markets lead to improved standards of living at all levels of society. If they won't follow our example, it's up to them to come up with something as good, not up to us to keep paying them off...
And the CIA school of the america's training, among many other's, some middle-eastern prince named Osama Bin Laden to help take down the soviets DEFINETLY started this war.
This absurd claim has been thoroughly discredited in, among many other places,
this article in The New Republic (which is hardly
a mainstream or conservative publication). Sorry to disappoint you, but your claim here is pure fiction.
Who the bloody hell did you think started it?
Oh gee, I don't know, maybe the band of madmen who declared war on us, our culture, and our way of life? Who killed 3,000 people in downtown Manhattan, Pennsylvania, and Washington on September 11, while trying to kill ten times that many? Who are even now planning further attacks which, if not stopped, could be much deadlier than the attacks of September 11?
Ya think they might have something to do with it?
Or are you too caught up with trying to find ways to blame us for September 11? I thought you lefties were against blaming the victim?
Oh fer chrissakes, do you really think you're doing anything but cheapening the losses of people who were tortured and murdered by trotting this quotation out over a case of theft-of-service? Really?
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How do you sleep with all those black helicopters overhead?
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What utter nonsense. Can you provide any credible cite of the claim you're making here? Of course not.
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Tar an entire religion like that? You could travel from Morrocco to Indonesia, and of the three nations you passed through which had any trace of freedom or democracy, only one (Turkey) would be Islamic. I'd love to believe that what's practiced in the entire Muslim world is not true Islam, really I would, but it would be a lot easier to do if there were some counter-examples...
Re:the real terrorists are governments and media
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Cyber-Attacks?
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Slow down. You think we started this war? What was it that I saw in downtown Manhattan on September 11, then?
So your argument is that instead of doing what we believe to be right, we should base our foreign policy decisions on what we think will appease a madman like Osama Bin Laden? Really?
Slashdot Mirror
Shall we take it from your need to resort to insults and unbacked claims that you don't actually have a rational point of disagreement to raise? Sure seems that way...
If that were so, it would be the height of arrogance to ever try to convince anyone of anything, as by definition your view is no more right than theirs -- yet here you are, typing away on slashdot. Explain?
The problem is, if morality is not external to us, how can we ever judge one action to be better than another? We believe that death camps are wrong. The Nazis believed that they were right. If these two moral ideals are not two attempts (both imperfect, but one much better) to model an external, objective moral ideal, how can we speak of one being better than the other at all?
But none of this has anything to do with the discussion at hand. The point here is that it is possible to object to something reasonably and proportionately. Trying to convince people that if something is undesirable then it is `just like the holocaust, man' is absurd.
Well, as they say on the tv, `we report, you decide'. If you can say with a straight face that legal action against cable-theft `is as horible' as the murder of 18 million people in death camps, and then go on to say with a straight face that these actions (which are of course, perfectly legal -- you haven't presented any argument that they are not) are ` worse than the Nazi concentration of Jews', I think the readers of this thread have all the information they need to decide which one of us is a raving loony.
The problem is that what the US thinks is right (for themselves) isn't alway what is right. And the us should start listening a little to the opinions of other countries that they share this planet with
We spend a great deal of time listening to what other countries say, but we decide for ourselves. Who are you arguing that we should be listening to anyway? Europe (continental pastime: burning synagogues and appeasing dictators)? The Arab World (not a democracy in sight, from Morocco to Indonesia)?
There are lots of other countries that do what they believe is right without beeing the target of terrorists
Indeed, there are a lot of countries where being terrorists is what they believe is right, and more which believe in appeasement. We believe (rightly, I would argue) that appeasement is much more dangerous in the long run.
USA have a foreign policy where they've interfered in just about every conflict. Standard practice is: choose one side help them as long as it fits US policy, then when it don't you cut all support and let them rot. End result: both sides hate the US. (afaik this is how Osama bin Laden became the monster he is)
It sure sounds like you've now arguing that we don't interfere enough, doesn't it? Which is it? At any rate, the idea that Bin Laden was created or trained by the US is a myth -- check out this article, from The New Republic (hardly a mainstream or conservative publication).
US foreign policy has been based on the bully in class principle: "We're big, noone can touch us, we do whatever we feel like, it doesn't matter if they hate us because they can't do anything".
Ours is the policy not of bullies, but of the heroes who actually change anything in the world: ``I am going to do what is right to the best of my ability. If the world loves me for it, great. If they hate me for it, at least I've done what was right.''
I don't know how it's portrayed in the US news, but here in the current conflict Israel is definitively portrayed as the bad guy, and in the background is the US supplying with everything they need to keep opressing the palestinians
This is a false portrayal, plain and simple. Far from `oppressing' the Palestinians, Israel has been trying to reach peace with them for decades, and in fact has left them completely to their own devices since Oslo. In peace offering after peace offering, Israel has offered the Palestinians land, independence, and everything else they claim they want, and asked only for an end to the murder-suicide bombings in return. They never got that end.
So yes, this illustrates what I am talking about perfectly. While the Arab world calls for genocide against Israel, and the Europeans rush to wash their hands of the Jews for the second time in three generations, the US sees a free, liberal democracy under assault by neighboring dictatorships, and says `this will not stand'.
I do not sympathize with the methods of any terrorists, but there are times I can sympathize with their cause
Which cause? The murder of civilians? Genocide against those whose religion is different? The destruction of those whose culture is not yours? These are the causes of the terrorists attacking us and attacking Israel. Do you really sympathize with these?
We (correctly, of course) look at the firemen who ran into the World Trade Center on September 11 as heroes, and salute their attempt to save as many as they could at the cost of their own life -- but if morality is pain avoidance, then we would be forced to consider their actions as deeply immoral.
Nor does falling back on instinct get us out of this mess -- we humans are a mess of conflicting instincts, and often the action we feel an instinctive urge to do is not the most moral action, or even the action which is most in our interest. We spend a lot of time choosing between conflicting instincts, so there must be something outside of instinct which guides our choice.
To do otherwise is to suggest that there are no moral values which transcend individual cultures. If we do that, we sacrifice the ability to ever consider something another culture does as wrong, whether it be totalitarianism, genocide of minorities, slavery, or what have you.
It is a cop-out to say that `if their culture doesn't value human rights, individuals who want to be free don't deserve to be, as it assumes that people born into those cultures are some how less worthy as human beings than people born into cultures which do value these ideals.
The next poster makes the same point (and rather more civilly). The point is that arguments over what is or is not objectively right do not in any way detract from the idea that their is an objective right. On the other hand, if you argue that there is no objective right, then you lose the grounds to object to anything at all.
With due respect, I'm not the one arguing that there are not objective moral criteria for action. I happen to believe that there are, and that our best understanding of it suggests that systems based on forcing people to labor are wrong, while systems based on selling labor voluntarily are not. I'd certainly welcome (as I said!) a rational argument that there is an objective moral theory which does not approve of selling labor, but you can't hold that this (or anything else!) is wrong if you don't accept that there is an objective moral criteria of some sort.
There are plenty of valid arguments to be made here, though some of your complaints (such as wanting to know how the warrants were acquired -- this is presumably a matter of public record, if you want to check for yourself) are a little odd. None of these arguments are served well by trotting out the Niemoller quote or making vague insinuations that if theft of service is considered to fall under the cable-theft laws (which it seems to, by at least a plain reading of those laws) then we're `just like' the Nazis.
first off TNC is a conservative publication.
I'm not sure what this `TNC' you refer to is, but if you are arguing that The New Republic (TNR) is a `conservative' publication, you don't even pass the laugh test. They hang way to the left of mainstream on any issue you could care to name.
we have trained and/or armed EVERY enemy we have faught since WW2.
I hope you don't expect readers of this thread to take this on assertion. Perhaps you can back this claim up with something resembling a credible cite?
al qaida would not exist if not for the cia.
Again, this is simply false, as many people, including the author of the piece I link to above, have pointed out. If you want to convince us otherwise, you'd better have a cite...
of course, repeat the party line, they attacked us because we're free, they attacked us because we're free.
What you call the `party line' here is what they themselves are saying. We are facing an enemy who talks about the `tragedy of Andalusia' (the reconquest of spain in 1492) as a motive for his attacks, and you think some minor foreign policy changes we make 600 years later are going to change his mind? Really?
and yes they are planning further attacks. you want to know how to stop them, it easy. stop giving military aid to isreal, pull out of saudi arabia(we've already started this), and now pull out of afghanistan.
First off, we seem to be on a very good track as far as preventing future attacks is concerned. Second, are you really suggesting that we should be making foreign policy decisions based not on what we believe is right but on what will appease madmen like bin Laden? Really?
boo fucking hoo 3000 people died
Ah, so now your true feelings on the matter come out. OK.
how many palestinians died in the occupation this year?
Not very many, in fact, at least according to Arafat's own numbers, which also confirm that almost all those who have died have been combatants. In the Egyptian weekly al-Ahram, a spokesman for Hamas confirms that almost all those killed were combatants. This doesn't count, of course the several dozen lynched by Arafat's own security services.
how many columbians died because of the american puppet govt.?
First off, it's Colombians, unless you are suggesting that there have been deaths at Columbia University. Second, do you have any credible cite to back up this claim? Sure seems to me like the violence in Colombia has much more to do with the vicious marxist rebels, but perhaps you can argue otherwise?
how many venezuelans almost died because of a CIA instigated coup.
Poppycock. Provide one shred of credible evidence linking the CIA to the abortive coup (or even suggesting that any significant number of people died!)
how many vietnamese nationalist died defending thier country?
Actually let's look at who was `defending' the country and who it needed defense against, shall we? You are, I hope, aware that more Vietnamese were murdered by Ho Chi Minh's government in the first three years of `peace' following the war than had died in the entire twenty-five years of fighting leading up to that point? No, the tragedy of Vietnam is not that we helped the South Vietnamese defend themselves against a brutal invader. The tragedy is that the arrogance of JFK and LBJ led them to not make a strong case for why the war was just, leading to our abandoning our allies to their fate.
how many hondurans, salvadoreans, afghans, serbs, guatamalans, grenadans, panamanians, and americans have died from the actions of the US govt?
How many? Are you arguing that the US was wrong in these conflicts? On what grounds?
What's troubling is that this line of reasoning suggests that we should wait until things get "bad enough" before being angered enough to fight back. Then, of course, it is to late.
I don't think I've suggested anything of the sort. I have suggested two things:
I'm willing to chalk it up to cultural differences and let it go at that.
Are you really? Are you arguing that because these people have a different history from ours basic ideals like free speech and the free exchange of ideas shouldn't be important to them? Really?
I would argue that, in fact, Marx's basic ideals, with their talk of reshaping humanity, and of use of force in affecting this change until some future date when this force would magically `wither away' is in fact directly responsible for the tyrannies committed in his name.
The point is that by drawing an analogy between a crackdown on cable-theft and the victims of whom Reverend Niemoller writes, the poster leaves us with only two possible conclusions: that he considers the current crackdown to be serious enough to discuss in the same breath with the torture and murder of millions of people, or that he considers the torture and murder of millions of people to be as unserious as a crackdown on cable-theft. Either stance would be absurd on its face, and thus the poster has accomplished nothing but to make his own concern in the matter seem ridiculous.
Trotting out the Niemoller quote is nothing but an insult to those the Nazis (and similar systems like the Communists) actually did `come for', without adding anything to the current debate.
Slave labour so your levi's and t-shirts are cheap started this war.
Where do you get this? Care to provide any credible cite for anything even resembling `slave labor'? Even if we accept your representation of events, are you really suggesting that al-Qaeda's beef with us is the working conditions in Levi's factories? Really?
Putting 3/4 of the human race in 3rd-world lifestyles to support our's started this war.
Sorry to disappoint you, but if much of the rest of the world is not as rich as the US, it's not because we made them poor, it's because they insist on clinging to corrupt and backwards economic systems which produce poverty wherever they are tried. We've provided a shining example to the world of how free markets lead to improved standards of living at all levels of society. If they won't follow our example, it's up to them to come up with something as good, not up to us to keep paying them off...
And the CIA school of the america's training, among many other's, some middle-eastern prince named Osama Bin Laden to help take down the soviets DEFINETLY started this war.
This absurd claim has been thoroughly discredited in, among many other places, this article in The New Republic (which is hardly a mainstream or conservative publication). Sorry to disappoint you, but your claim here is pure fiction.
Who the bloody hell did you think started it?
Oh gee, I don't know, maybe the band of madmen who declared war on us, our culture, and our way of life? Who killed 3,000 people in downtown Manhattan, Pennsylvania, and Washington on September 11, while trying to kill ten times that many? Who are even now planning further attacks which, if not stopped, could be much deadlier than the attacks of September 11? Ya think they might have something to do with it?
Or are you too caught up with trying to find ways to blame us for September 11? I thought you lefties were against blaming the victim?
Oh fer chrissakes, do you really think you're doing anything but cheapening the losses of people who were tortured and murdered by trotting this quotation out over a case of theft-of-service? Really?
How do you sleep with all those black helicopters overhead?
What utter nonsense. Can you provide any credible cite of the claim you're making here? Of course not.
Tar an entire religion like that? You could travel from Morrocco to Indonesia, and of the three nations you passed through which had any trace of freedom or democracy, only one (Turkey) would be Islamic. I'd love to believe that what's practiced in the entire Muslim world is not true Islam, really I would, but it would be a lot easier to do if there were some counter-examples...
Slow down. You think we started this war? What was it that I saw in downtown Manhattan on September 11, then?
So your argument is that instead of doing what we believe to be right, we should base our foreign policy decisions on what we think will appease a madman like Osama Bin Laden? Really?