this guy looks like small fry. Many 'active' politicians are much worse
Oh, then, by all means, we should have left him alone. And if he had slit your mom's throat for the deep moral offense of being a literate woman, we should really let him slide on that too, since there are people out there that have done worse. Are you even listening to yourself?
you are in possession of all relevant facts
No. But enough relevent facts, not least the late Awlaki's own crowing about his involvement, which lines up nicely with piles of very public evidence. All of the additional stuff about him that we haven't yet seen doesn't make that go away.
we have problems so let's choose some bad guy
Really? You haven't been noticing the sustained program of chopping off this movement's many rising middle-tier people whenever the opportunity presents itself? It's been very effective, actually. He's just the most recent one, and a particularly good one to have shut down.
Why exactly do you think you have the moral superiority?
Because Awlaki's stated world view, and his willingness to kill innocent people to achieve it, is objectively inferior.
His moral framework includes support for those that think it's appropriate to kill a woman for having been raped. To drag a woman out into the town square and shoot her in the back of the head in front of an audience for the crime of working to feed her family since her husband will executed for selling music. His moral framework involves forbidding girls from learning to read, and burning down schools (and burning the resident teachers alive) for daring to make them literate.
The fact that you're even asking the question means that you're likewise in favor of these things. Please go and live in an environment run by people who share your thinking on the subject. You'll either love it, or perhaps you'll grow up and change your mind, if you aren't killed first for having the wrong length of beard.
They haven't done as much against AQ or AQ affiliates
Wrong. They did exactly that, in so many words, and with a large majority voting in favor. The 9/11 attack perpetrators, planners, and those providing material support to them are Al Queda (and many others).
you have to go pretty far to get Awalaki into that bunch
I don't have to go far at all! He himself loudly and regularly proclaimed his support for UBL and the entire gang. He has publicly embraced them and acted continually to recruit more people to that same cause in hopes of extending the efforts of 9/11 into more and bigger attacks in the same vein, for the same reasons, in the name of the same movement. It's no stretch, it was his entire point.
They were on an assassination list.
No, they were on a "kill these enemy combatants at the first opportunity in order to shut down their operations" list. The connotation is completely different, because the justification is different. Not the same thing.
From what we know of Awalaki's actions, a number of Americans could have been likewise targeted for their residence and actions in Vietnam
We didn't have too many of those people actively recruiting people who might be able to arrange for or make weapons of mass destruction explicitly for use against large numbers of civilians for political purposes. Alwaki, on the other hand, was all about that very thing.
There was a typical army and a congress authorised force in Vietnam
Not all combat in Vietnam was against "typical" army types. Insurgencies always have different characteristics. But things definitely have changed. Asymmetric warfare being launched by an organization/movement (rather than directly by a state like, say, North Korea) doesn't fit the WWII, or Vietnam type molds, but it's no less a conflict that requires direct action at the military level.
the question why only this evil guy was treated thusly and none of the many other ones you could have chosen raises its ugly head
His direct actions, his particular role in inciting more of them of a certain type, and his un-ending proclomations about his involvement, coupled with all sorts of evidence that he's involved and not simply pretending to be that person on YouTube... that's the sort of thing that warrants specific attention. That and his group's history of killing thousands of people and active, repeated attempts to do more of the same. The recent power vacuum in AQ had this guy moving up the ladder, and we have every reason to keep shutting down the people who climb that ladder.
No, it most certainly does not. If you had left the US a few decades ago and were known to have joined up with, say, German sailors crewing a submarine that was out hunting for US freighters, the need for due process would not (and should not) have stopped a US Navy commander from sinking your damn u-boat on sight. Do you really think said commander should have risked his own people to try to disable that boat, board it, and arrest that one guy in person? No.
Awlaki's u-boat was his attempt at unmolested operation from unpoliced outback of Yemen. Otherwise, not a bit different. You place yourself in those situations while shouting your violent plans from the rooftops, and demonstrate an ongoing pattern of killing, you sure do waive your right not to be stopped on sight by the handiest means available.
Careful, your odd notion of moral equivalence between North Korea and modern constitutional democracies is showing. You might want to tuck that back in.
I don't expect you to show any outrage when the other side are killing Americans using the same "logic" then.
Thanks for putting "logic" in quotes when referrring to Al Queda, so that didn't have to.
The other side, in this conflict, is basing its notion of self defense on flawed premises, support for retrograde medieval theocracy around the world, and the express, stated purpose to kill civilians for the sake of killing civilians in an attempt bring about the sweeping cultural regression they demand. They consider rational things (like representative government, allowing daughters to read and work, etc) to be evil, and justification to kill those that support them. They think that burning a school teacher alive, and shooting a woman who's taught her daughter to read, to be "logical." And that is what you're defending.
Their logic is built on a philosophical house of cards, and their actions are not self defense, but a cruel and twisted offense against which their more sensible countrymen and the rest of the world are very reasonably defending themselves and each other.
So, it's a good thing we didn't attack Yemen. Yemen would definitely know if we attacked Yemen.
Even the worst criminal has a right to a fair trial.
Not if he's in the middle of ranting about his demands and slowly shooting the people he's holding hostage in the bank he's trying to rob, or on the airplane he's trying to hijack, etc. We definitely don't give criminals in the middle of conducting a crime a trial before shooting them in the head if that's the appropriate way to stop the murder they're in the middle of conducting. And Awlaki has been in the middle of conducting murder for some time now, and promising to conduct more, at every single opportunity. He's the guy in the bank with the gun pointed at his next victim, and the special forces who just took him out are the SWAT team outside the bank window.
Whoever ordered this murder...
You need to re-think your notion of "murder." Murder was Awlaki's history, and stated purpose. Stopping him is not murder.
First, "Drones" don't kill anyone. Saying so is like saying that "Close Quarters Battle Rifle Kills Osama bin Laden." Special forces personnel, supported by the people who operate the drones and the Air Force pilot(s) who flew the fighter that was also involved, all under the command of the leadership running that show, and all under the direction of the C-in-C are what what killed "Mr." Awlaki. And all of that happened because he made it his full-time job to not only inspire and recruit for terror attacks, but to become directly involved in planning and operations.
Second: all of the handwringing over due process (really, Ron Paul?) is absurd. This clown explicitly removed himself fromthe protections of due process through his actions, his ongoing condemnation of the very system that provides that due process, and his physical removal to and operation within a region he and his movement selected specifically because it is unpoliced/unpoliceable and where any attempt to actually apprehend him would involve combat operations. That putting military people into harm's way would be required to lay hands on him - as he continued in his outspoken and unhidden efforts to kill westerners, including his avowed embrace of WMD to that end - is exactly the reason that this wasn't a "law enforcement" scenario. It's a fight, and the fight was taken to him and some of his buddies in a direct and effective way.
Killing him was self defense, and a reasonable approach to dealing with his ongoing attacks and prep for more of them. Ron Paul's assertion that Bin Laden's killing was "different" (enough so to make that assault OK, but this one not) is just embarassing. Please stop, Ron. This didn't happen in Cleveland, where the FBI could have cordoned off ten city blocks while agents moved in on him at their leisure, with an eye towards placing cuffs on him.
I'm sorry you are unable to read the words typed above. Perhaps I can spend some extra time working today to fund a program that will involve several federal employees and managers looking after a tutor for you on that front.
Why should the bottom dwellers who are hardly deriving any of the benefit of Apple's distribution network have to pay the same percentage as a wildly successful app that tops all the searches?
Right! Punish the successful people, and reward those who are less creative, less innovative, and who didn't have as compelling an idea and see it through to completion. That is a terrific model, and we should use it nation-wide. You'll definitely get more innovation and creativity and economic activity if you punish it - works every time!
more than can be said about our federal tax laws which are more like a record of bribery and scams
It's true. The left has used bribery (in the form of letting half of the people in the country PAY NO INCOME TAXES) to buy votes, requiring instead only a small minority to do all of that, instead. That is indeed irrational. The half of the population that is exempt from income taxes still get to vote and tax other people, but they don't have to materially participate in providing the funds they're telling other people how to raise (from someone else!) and spend. Well, other than recieving it in the form of "rebates" on incomes taxes they don't even pay. Half of the country. Half.
Why should 80% of the people pay no income taxes on their income? Isn't it bad enough that half the people in the country currently pay no income taxes on their income, but still get to vote on how much to tax the small minority of people who actually pay the bill? What kind of civil society is that? It's one thing to have a really bad year and end up paying no income taxes. It's another thing to make a permanent structural system in which one half of the country gets to place a tax on the other half (mostly on a small percentage of the other half) while skipping out on it themselves.
By the way: if you taxed everyone that makes $1 million a year at a rate of 100% (confiscating ALL of their income) it wouldn't even close the federal budget deficit through April of a given year. In other words, your conjecture about the top 1% and 34.33% tax rate is wildly, wildly off base. And yet it's notions like that that are used to fuel "raise the taxes on those Eeeeevil rich people" nonsense. If you really think that you can make the budget work without debt, and send some number of people in the country home without paying any taxes, then you need to include people making $37k in your list of Eeeeevil people that need to be more heavily taxed. You know, those rich people making $37k a year an up.
See? When you say that someone else should pay the taxes, not you, be careful what you wish for. Do the math, and find that you're likely on that list yourself.
the steam engine still might not be able to turn the shaft and cycle the machine though its various states
They could build steam engines big enough to push icebreaking freighters through feet of ice, or to pull multi-ton harvestors through nearly frozen clay. I don't think that lack of torque would be the issue, if you wanted to park a typical steam locomotive engine next to the apparatus. The question would be whether or not the various shafts and gears would sheer, twist, snap etc once all of that torque bumped into all of that friction.
I think a court, just like a normal, rational person, would make a perfectly sensible distinction between buying an automobile and licensing a piece of entertainment software in a way that calls for formal arbitration, rather than class action, as a way to handle possible disagreements.
Buying a highly regulated, life-and-death product like a car is not like licensing a few hours' entertainment or paying for access to an online gaming platform.
I suppose a sensible middle ground is completely out of the question?
Why are you asking me? I think that the government's ability to shut down domains used by criminals is perfectly reasonable, and fits precisely in that middle ground. The paranoids are the ones you need to scold.
Surely they couldn't ever do anything wrong, right?
I see. So because not everything is done right, the government should have no power to shut down conterfeit operations, smugglers, scam outfits, etc.
Your local police have probably mis-handled at least one 911 call, too. I would recommend that you disband your local PD, since they can't be trusted. Better to have no police to take care of armed robbers, rapists, burglars, con artists and the rest than run the risk that they might make a judgement call you don't like somewhere along the way.
I'm sorry you're so rhetorically impaired that you can't understand that an honest question wasn't asked, any my question in return served to point that out. Excellent discourse on your part, though.
If by "anything," you mean "domains used by web sites that are set up explicitly to rip off other people's works, conduct fraudulent transactions involving counterfeit designer goods, fake drugs, and identity theft... then, sure. Because that's all that's been involved in such actions. Thousands of web sites ranting about the government and spewing every sort of ugliness are left unmolested because - odious as they are, it's free speech. Committing actual crimes isn't protected by the first amendment. So, what sort of crime were you planning to conduct using free and open communication?
You are confusing individual idiocy with a regime that explicitly calls for the establishment of a newly entrenched, wider culture where brutality (against women, etc.) is celebrated, and is the norm. Denying girls the ability to read isn't the symptom of frustrated (and well financed!) men out of Pakistan, it's their stated purpse.. Whatever moorish leftovers in Span are finally shaking loose at the individual level, is it really your contention that SUVs full of AK-47-carrying beard police - acting as paid agents of the regime - who shoot people for playing music... that's the same sort of thing? Are you that morally rudderless, that you can't see one thing waning, and another waxing?
Why do you suppose there are so many frustrated young men in the middle east? Are they frustrated because troops are there to prevent people from being killed at polling places, or frustrated because their own countrymen send drugged suicide bombers to the polls to kill them, rather than have their voices heard? Are they frustrated over their lack of economic prosperity? Sure. Do they understand that the medieval mind-set and culture of death in groups like the Taliban are exactly why it's impossible for a moden economy to take hold where they live?
This isn't about "being listened to," no matter how many times you say that. The entire world is there listening to the middle east all day, every day. This is about education and the stabilizing effect of a rational rule of law administered by a representative government. Without those two things, the theocratic murderers are the only ones running the show.
And... nothing to do with religion? Really? Religion provides the entire premise - the complete supporting world view - for the actions of these groups, and it is the grip that primitive mysticism and religious ferver have on the uneducated minds in the region that give the religious leaders of these groups their only claims to the authority they invoke when they direct one Muslim to go and kill another one in the name of fending off modernity.
You think that a bunch of Saudi extremists in 2001 made a bunch of Northern Irish extremists think again about what they had been doing?
No, I think that incredibly intense world-wide scrutiny and broadly re-invigorated condemnation of organizations that embraced blowing up civilian targets for the sake of blowing them up in order to shock people into liking and supporting their cause... had an immediate impact on their tone, and solidified a lot of otherwise not-fully-baked political agreements.
Just to be clear, then: you think that it's one or more US policies in the middle east that actually causes the Taliban to choose their specific cultural objectives, espcially as it relates to killing those who support frivalities like literate children? Let's skip the whole Christian sectarian violence thing in your neck of the woods for the moment, since you seem to think that both sides were right and just needed a sympathetic ear to stop killing each other.
Let's just focus on which US foreign policity element, specifically, drives large numbers of retrograde Islamist-types to slaughter fellow Muslims because they want to vote for the mayor of their own little town in Afghanistan. Are you sure they're not just still really mad about the remaining traces of the atmosphere of smug condescension they recall from previous rule by the British?
Regardless, your point is that a guy running the local Taliban franchise will - after you've given him a kind ear - decide that perhaps, after all, girls should be allowed to read and write after all? Is the issue that he just needs to hear you say that their problem is they're not looking at things in a "balanced manner?" That guy thinks that there can be no balance with someone who defies his holy marching orders, and he's willing to shoot women in the back of the head on the town's soccer field in order to make his point about... what? The evils of US-inspired devilry like reading? What words would you have for him, that would uncloud his mind - fogged as it is by "US policy" about... what? Literacy? Democracy? And out of curiosity, when did the UK become so "balanced" that it decided those things were no more important than the local thugocracy's ideas of medieval bliss? When did odious moral relativism become the adult position to strive for?
Old enough to recall watching lots of BBC news coverage of exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. Obviously there was more going on than just the sudden change in tone in the IRA's communications and actions immediately after 9/11, but if you're trying to pretend that didn't happen, you're being incredibly disengenuous.
I realize you'd prefer periodic random killings than preventing them, since you haven't been personally inconvenienced by having your own family blow up for believing in the wrong flavor omnipotent imaginary friend. But the stuff they do in London to try to prevent another couple of trains from being giant Allah-powered meat grinders isn't about the IRA.
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this guy looks like small fry. Many 'active' politicians are much worse
Oh, then, by all means, we should have left him alone. And if he had slit your mom's throat for the deep moral offense of being a literate woman, we should really let him slide on that too, since there are people out there that have done worse. Are you even listening to yourself?
you are in possession of all relevant facts
No. But enough relevent facts, not least the late Awlaki's own crowing about his involvement, which lines up nicely with piles of very public evidence. All of the additional stuff about him that we haven't yet seen doesn't make that go away.
we have problems so let's choose some bad guy
Really? You haven't been noticing the sustained program of chopping off this movement's many rising middle-tier people whenever the opportunity presents itself? It's been very effective, actually. He's just the most recent one, and a particularly good one to have shut down.
Why exactly do you think you have the moral superiority?
Because Awlaki's stated world view, and his willingness to kill innocent people to achieve it, is objectively inferior.
His moral framework includes support for those that think it's appropriate to kill a woman for having been raped. To drag a woman out into the town square and shoot her in the back of the head in front of an audience for the crime of working to feed her family since her husband will executed for selling music. His moral framework involves forbidding girls from learning to read, and burning down schools (and burning the resident teachers alive) for daring to make them literate.
The fact that you're even asking the question means that you're likewise in favor of these things. Please go and live in an environment run by people who share your thinking on the subject. You'll either love it, or perhaps you'll grow up and change your mind, if you aren't killed first for having the wrong length of beard.
They haven't done as much against AQ or AQ affiliates
Wrong. They did exactly that, in so many words, and with a large majority voting in favor. The 9/11 attack perpetrators, planners, and those providing material support to them are Al Queda (and many others).
you have to go pretty far to get Awalaki into that bunch
I don't have to go far at all! He himself loudly and regularly proclaimed his support for UBL and the entire gang. He has publicly embraced them and acted continually to recruit more people to that same cause in hopes of extending the efforts of 9/11 into more and bigger attacks in the same vein, for the same reasons, in the name of the same movement. It's no stretch, it was his entire point.
They were on an assassination list.
No, they were on a "kill these enemy combatants at the first opportunity in order to shut down their operations" list. The connotation is completely different, because the justification is different. Not the same thing.
From what we know of Awalaki's actions, a number of Americans could have been likewise targeted for their residence and actions in Vietnam
We didn't have too many of those people actively recruiting people who might be able to arrange for or make weapons of mass destruction explicitly for use against large numbers of civilians for political purposes. Alwaki, on the other hand, was all about that very thing.
There was a typical army and a congress authorised force in Vietnam
Not all combat in Vietnam was against "typical" army types. Insurgencies always have different characteristics. But things definitely have changed. Asymmetric warfare being launched by an organization/movement (rather than directly by a state like, say, North Korea) doesn't fit the WWII, or Vietnam type molds, but it's no less a conflict that requires direct action at the military level.
the question why only this evil guy was treated thusly and none of the many other ones you could have chosen raises its ugly head
His direct actions, his particular role in inciting more of them of a certain type, and his un-ending proclomations about his involvement, coupled with all sorts of evidence that he's involved and not simply pretending to be that person on YouTube ... that's the sort of thing that warrants specific attention. That and his group's history of killing thousands of people and active, repeated attempts to do more of the same. The recent power vacuum in AQ had this guy moving up the ladder, and we have every reason to keep shutting down the people who climb that ladder.
violating the laws of our Constitutional Democracy
Which would be a good point if it weren't actually incorrect in every sense.
Due process applies irrespective of your actions
No, it most certainly does not. If you had left the US a few decades ago and were known to have joined up with, say, German sailors crewing a submarine that was out hunting for US freighters, the need for due process would not (and should not) have stopped a US Navy commander from sinking your damn u-boat on sight. Do you really think said commander should have risked his own people to try to disable that boat, board it, and arrest that one guy in person? No.
Awlaki's u-boat was his attempt at unmolested operation from unpoliced outback of Yemen. Otherwise, not a bit different. You place yourself in those situations while shouting your violent plans from the rooftops, and demonstrate an ongoing pattern of killing, you sure do waive your right not to be stopped on sight by the handiest means available.
Dirty pool goes both ways, folks.
Careful, your odd notion of moral equivalence between North Korea and modern constitutional democracies is showing. You might want to tuck that back in.
I don't expect you to show any outrage when the other side are killing Americans using the same "logic" then.
Thanks for putting "logic" in quotes when referrring to Al Queda, so that didn't have to.
The other side, in this conflict, is basing its notion of self defense on flawed premises, support for retrograde medieval theocracy around the world, and the express, stated purpose to kill civilians for the sake of killing civilians in an attempt bring about the sweeping cultural regression they demand. They consider rational things (like representative government, allowing daughters to read and work, etc) to be evil, and justification to kill those that support them. They think that burning a school teacher alive, and shooting a woman who's taught her daughter to read, to be "logical." And that is what you're defending.
Their logic is built on a philosophical house of cards, and their actions are not self defense, but a cruel and twisted offense against which their more sensible countrymen and the rest of the world are very reasonably defending themselves and each other.
There's no war between the US and Yemen.
So, it's a good thing we didn't attack Yemen. Yemen would definitely know if we attacked Yemen.
Even the worst criminal has a right to a fair trial.
Not if he's in the middle of ranting about his demands and slowly shooting the people he's holding hostage in the bank he's trying to rob, or on the airplane he's trying to hijack, etc. We definitely don't give criminals in the middle of conducting a crime a trial before shooting them in the head if that's the appropriate way to stop the murder they're in the middle of conducting. And Awlaki has been in the middle of conducting murder for some time now, and promising to conduct more, at every single opportunity. He's the guy in the bank with the gun pointed at his next victim, and the special forces who just took him out are the SWAT team outside the bank window.
Whoever ordered this murder ...
You need to re-think your notion of "murder." Murder was Awlaki's history, and stated purpose. Stopping him is not murder.
First, "Drones" don't kill anyone. Saying so is like saying that "Close Quarters Battle Rifle Kills Osama bin Laden." Special forces personnel, supported by the people who operate the drones and the Air Force pilot(s) who flew the fighter that was also involved, all under the command of the leadership running that show, and all under the direction of the C-in-C are what what killed "Mr." Awlaki. And all of that happened because he made it his full-time job to not only inspire and recruit for terror attacks, but to become directly involved in planning and operations.
Second: all of the handwringing over due process (really, Ron Paul?) is absurd. This clown explicitly removed himself fromthe protections of due process through his actions, his ongoing condemnation of the very system that provides that due process, and his physical removal to and operation within a region he and his movement selected specifically because it is unpoliced/unpoliceable and where any attempt to actually apprehend him would involve combat operations. That putting military people into harm's way would be required to lay hands on him - as he continued in his outspoken and unhidden efforts to kill westerners, including his avowed embrace of WMD to that end - is exactly the reason that this wasn't a "law enforcement" scenario. It's a fight, and the fight was taken to him and some of his buddies in a direct and effective way.
Killing him was self defense, and a reasonable approach to dealing with his ongoing attacks and prep for more of them. Ron Paul's assertion that Bin Laden's killing was "different" (enough so to make that assault OK, but this one not) is just embarassing. Please stop, Ron. This didn't happen in Cleveland, where the FBI could have cordoned off ten city blocks while agents moved in on him at their leisure, with an eye towards placing cuffs on him.
I'm sorry you are unable to read the words typed above. Perhaps I can spend some extra time working today to fund a program that will involve several federal employees and managers looking after a tutor for you on that front.
The world view he's expressing applies in both arenas, hence my comment.
Why should the bottom dwellers who are hardly deriving any of the benefit of Apple's distribution network have to pay the same percentage as a wildly successful app that tops all the searches?
Right! Punish the successful people, and reward those who are less creative, less innovative, and who didn't have as compelling an idea and see it through to completion. That is a terrific model, and we should use it nation-wide. You'll definitely get more innovation and creativity and economic activity if you punish it - works every time!
Ugh. Are you listening to yourself?
more than can be said about our federal tax laws which are more like a record of bribery and scams
It's true. The left has used bribery (in the form of letting half of the people in the country PAY NO INCOME TAXES) to buy votes, requiring instead only a small minority to do all of that, instead. That is indeed irrational. The half of the population that is exempt from income taxes still get to vote and tax other people, but they don't have to materially participate in providing the funds they're telling other people how to raise (from someone else!) and spend. Well, other than recieving it in the form of "rebates" on incomes taxes they don't even pay. Half of the country. Half.
Why should 80% of the people pay no income taxes on their income? Isn't it bad enough that half the people in the country currently pay no income taxes on their income, but still get to vote on how much to tax the small minority of people who actually pay the bill? What kind of civil society is that? It's one thing to have a really bad year and end up paying no income taxes. It's another thing to make a permanent structural system in which one half of the country gets to place a tax on the other half (mostly on a small percentage of the other half) while skipping out on it themselves.
By the way: if you taxed everyone that makes $1 million a year at a rate of 100% (confiscating ALL of their income) it wouldn't even close the federal budget deficit through April of a given year. In other words, your conjecture about the top 1% and 34.33% tax rate is wildly, wildly off base. And yet it's notions like that that are used to fuel "raise the taxes on those Eeeeevil rich people" nonsense. If you really think that you can make the budget work without debt, and send some number of people in the country home without paying any taxes, then you need to include people making $37k in your list of Eeeeevil people that need to be more heavily taxed. You know, those rich people making $37k a year an up.
See? When you say that someone else should pay the taxes, not you, be careful what you wish for. Do the math, and find that you're likely on that list yourself.
the steam engine still might not be able to turn the shaft and cycle the machine though its various states
They could build steam engines big enough to push icebreaking freighters through feet of ice, or to pull multi-ton harvestors through nearly frozen clay. I don't think that lack of torque would be the issue, if you wanted to park a typical steam locomotive engine next to the apparatus. The question would be whether or not the various shafts and gears would sheer, twist, snap etc once all of that torque bumped into all of that friction.
You think that will stand up in court?
I think a court, just like a normal, rational person, would make a perfectly sensible distinction between buying an automobile and licensing a piece of entertainment software in a way that calls for formal arbitration, rather than class action, as a way to handle possible disagreements.
Buying a highly regulated, life-and-death product like a car is not like licensing a few hours' entertainment or paying for access to an online gaming platform.
I suppose a sensible middle ground is completely out of the question?
Why are you asking me? I think that the government's ability to shut down domains used by criminals is perfectly reasonable, and fits precisely in that middle ground. The paranoids are the ones you need to scold.
Surely they couldn't ever do anything wrong, right?
I see. So because not everything is done right, the government should have no power to shut down conterfeit operations, smugglers, scam outfits, etc.
Your local police have probably mis-handled at least one 911 call, too. I would recommend that you disband your local PD, since they can't be trusted. Better to have no police to take care of armed robbers, rapists, burglars, con artists and the rest than run the risk that they might make a judgement call you don't like somewhere along the way.
answer the damn question or keep your mouth shut
I'm sorry you're so rhetorically impaired that you can't understand that an honest question wasn't asked, any my question in return served to point that out. Excellent discourse on your part, though.
ANYTHING can be viewed as a take-down 'reason'
If by "anything," you mean "domains used by web sites that are set up explicitly to rip off other people's works, conduct fraudulent transactions involving counterfeit designer goods, fake drugs, and identity theft... then, sure. Because that's all that's been involved in such actions. Thousands of web sites ranting about the government and spewing every sort of ugliness are left unmolested because - odious as they are, it's free speech. Committing actual crimes isn't protected by the first amendment. So, what sort of crime were you planning to conduct using free and open communication?
You are confusing individual idiocy with a regime that explicitly calls for the establishment of a newly entrenched, wider culture where brutality (against women, etc.) is celebrated, and is the norm. Denying girls the ability to read isn't the symptom of frustrated (and well financed!) men out of Pakistan, it's their stated purpse.. Whatever moorish leftovers in Span are finally shaking loose at the individual level, is it really your contention that SUVs full of AK-47-carrying beard police - acting as paid agents of the regime - who shoot people for playing music ... that's the same sort of thing? Are you that morally rudderless, that you can't see one thing waning, and another waxing?
... nothing to do with religion? Really? Religion provides the entire premise - the complete supporting world view - for the actions of these groups, and it is the grip that primitive mysticism and religious ferver have on the uneducated minds in the region that give the religious leaders of these groups their only claims to the authority they invoke when they direct one Muslim to go and kill another one in the name of fending off modernity.
Why do you suppose there are so many frustrated young men in the middle east? Are they frustrated because troops are there to prevent people from being killed at polling places, or frustrated because their own countrymen send drugged suicide bombers to the polls to kill them, rather than have their voices heard? Are they frustrated over their lack of economic prosperity? Sure. Do they understand that the medieval mind-set and culture of death in groups like the Taliban are exactly why it's impossible for a moden economy to take hold where they live?
This isn't about "being listened to," no matter how many times you say that. The entire world is there listening to the middle east all day, every day. This is about education and the stabilizing effect of a rational rule of law administered by a representative government. Without those two things, the theocratic murderers are the only ones running the show.
And
You think that a bunch of Saudi extremists in 2001 made a bunch of Northern Irish extremists think again about what they had been doing?
No, I think that incredibly intense world-wide scrutiny and broadly re-invigorated condemnation of organizations that embraced blowing up civilian targets for the sake of blowing them up in order to shock people into liking and supporting their cause ... had an immediate impact on their tone, and solidified a lot of otherwise not-fully-baked political agreements.
Just to be clear, then: you think that it's one or more US policies in the middle east that actually causes the Taliban to choose their specific cultural objectives, espcially as it relates to killing those who support frivalities like literate children? Let's skip the whole Christian sectarian violence thing in your neck of the woods for the moment, since you seem to think that both sides were right and just needed a sympathetic ear to stop killing each other.
... what? The evils of US-inspired devilry like reading? What words would you have for him, that would uncloud his mind - fogged as it is by "US policy" about ... what? Literacy? Democracy? And out of curiosity, when did the UK become so "balanced" that it decided those things were no more important than the local thugocracy's ideas of medieval bliss? When did odious moral relativism become the adult position to strive for?
Let's just focus on which US foreign policity element, specifically, drives large numbers of retrograde Islamist-types to slaughter fellow Muslims because they want to vote for the mayor of their own little town in Afghanistan. Are you sure they're not just still really mad about the remaining traces of the atmosphere of smug condescension they recall from previous rule by the British?
Regardless, your point is that a guy running the local Taliban franchise will - after you've given him a kind ear - decide that perhaps, after all, girls should be allowed to read and write after all? Is the issue that he just needs to hear you say that their problem is they're not looking at things in a "balanced manner?" That guy thinks that there can be no balance with someone who defies his holy marching orders, and he's willing to shoot women in the back of the head on the town's soccer field in order to make his point about
How old are you?
Old enough to recall watching lots of BBC news coverage of exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. Obviously there was more going on than just the sudden change in tone in the IRA's communications and actions immediately after 9/11, but if you're trying to pretend that didn't happen, you're being incredibly disengenuous.
I realize you'd prefer periodic random killings than preventing them, since you haven't been personally inconvenienced by having your own family blow up for believing in the wrong flavor omnipotent imaginary friend. But the stuff they do in London to try to prevent another couple of trains from being giant Allah-powered meat grinders isn't about the IRA.