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Islamic Extremists Seem to in the news killing Westerners

Hatuey said:
So we're going to kill... the people willing to die for their beliefs... until those people no longer want to die for their beliefs? Is that how this works? We just keep killing people who find honor in dying at the hands of infidels? This stops... when they're no longer radicalized by what we're doing in the first place? Sounds like tilling the ocean but okay. :lol:
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Oh it would work if done right, because when you're done there wouldn't be anyone left inclined to fight.... but we'd wade through rivers of blood getting there, which is why, as I've said, it is far from an ideal solution. Probably not something that could be implemented anyway, we're far too squeamish these days to actually go that far.
 
Goshin said:
Oh it would work if done right, because when you're done there wouldn't be anyone left inclined to fight.... but we'd wade through rivers of blood getting there, which is why, as I've said, it is far from an ideal solution. Probably not something that could be implemented anyway, we're far too squeamish these days to actually go that far.
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I'm just trying to figure out how you arrive at the conclusion that there would be nobody inclined to fight at some point. The reason they fight is because dying is not really that big of an issue.
 
Hatuey said:
I'm just trying to figure out how you arrive at the conclusion that there would be nobody inclined to fight at some point. The reason they fight is because dying is not really that big of an issue.
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Eventually you would run out of people who felt that way. Eventually.

Again, I didn't say it was a good solution. There are no good solutions to that hot mess...
 
Goshin said:
Eventually you would run out of people who felt that way. Eventually.

Again, I didn't say it was a good solution. There are no good solutions to that hot mess...
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I'm just trying to figure out how you think it's a solution at all. I mean, the reason many Muslims decide to attack us is because they feel (rightly or wrongly) that the West is leading a crusade against them. Killing more terrorists would martyr the very people which inspire others to join the fight. So, how can the solution be to keep killing them until there is no one left that wants to do it? It just seems like your "solution" would perpetuate the cycle infinitely.
 
Hatuey said:
I'm just trying to figure out how you think it's a solution at all. I mean, the reason many Muslims decide to attack us is because they feel (rightly or wrongly) that the West is leading a crusade against them. Killing more terrorists would martyr the very people which inspire others to join the fight. So, how can the solution be to keep killing them until there is no one left that wants to do it? It just seems like your "solution" would perpetuate the cycle infinitely.
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You seriously think that if we adopted a strict "hands off the M.E." policy, that they would leave us alone?


We were not engaged in combat operations anywhere in the Mideast on 9-11.
 
code1211 said:
It's almost comical watching the Politically correct news casters trying to cover this string of events. In one story, a reporter characterized the Black member, one appears to be ethnically Black, two appear to be Arab and one female, of the Charlie Hebdo Quartet as an African American. Interesting.

I saw a retired general interviewed who noted that to beat an opponent in a war, we need to go where they are and kill them. The option is to stay where we are and wait for them to arrive here to kill us. There is no other option besides these two. This seems to be a pretty straight forward and unvarnished appraisal of what has happened and what is happening.

His prescribed method to deal with them is to acknowledge that there will be collateral damage and we just have to accept that as we did in WW2. In a pretty close to a quote repetition of his statement, he said that we need to kill as many as we can until we can't find any more, leave weeping widows and homeless children in the smoking rubble and come home. If the danger reconstitutes, go back and do it agin and again until the reconstitution stops.

No nation building. No Marshall plan. No exit strategy. Kill everyone who acts like an enemy and then leave. If they start acting like an enemy again, go back and do it again. Weeping widows and homeless children in the smoking rubble.

This is the other extreme to the current, weak kneed and ineffective policies of winning hearts and minds and trying to build nations.

Is there a middle ground or is it a choice between trying to make them Western-minded Islamists or just try to eliminate them as threats?

I used to be hopeful that Islamists exposed to freedom could be made into functioning members of a world community. I have abandoned that hope. I see them now as murdering the thugs that they have proven themselves to be who are trying to dominate through terror and intimidation and must be removed from our world society with swift, unblinking and effective measures.

Is there evidence to prove that they are not hate filled killers who are bent on world domination?
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If GW Bush was not so inept we wouldn't have this trouble today and the French could still draw pictures of anybody they wanted.
 
Goshin said:
You seriously think that if we adopted a strict "hands off the M.E." policy, that they would leave us alone?
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Nope, that's not what I said at all.

We were not engaged in combat operations anywhere in the Mideast on 9-11.
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That's great, but terrorist attacks aren't planned on a What are they doing today? basis.
 
Hatuey said:
I'm just trying to figure out how you think it's a solution at all. I mean, the reason many Muslims decide to attack us is because they feel (rightly or wrongly) that the West is leading a crusade against them. Killing more terrorists would martyr the very people which inspire others to join the fight. So, how can the solution be to keep killing them until there is no one left that wants to do it? It just seems like your "solution" would perpetuate the cycle infinitely.
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It worked on Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. In the latter case, there was a long tradition of how glorious it was to die in service to the Emperor, Samurai culture of death before dishonor, and a religious belief that Japan would never fall to invasion. We managed to convince them otherwise with sufficient death and violence.
 
Goshin said:
It worked on Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
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Neither of those countries recruited based on personal affiliations with martyred individuals. You seem to not understand that dying for Allah really is a selling point for these people. Nazi Germany and Japan did not recruit people using death for one's God as a selling point. Nor did they have anywhere even close to the zealotry of Islam.

In the latter case, there was a long tradition of how glorious it was to die in service to the Emperor, Samurai culture of death before dishonor, and a religious belief that Japan would never fall to invasion. We managed to convince them otherwise with sufficient death and violence.
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Yes, by wiping out a city full of innocent civilians and making a structured military infrastructure surrender. I can't really begin to explain how different that is from islamic extremism.
 
Goshin said:
It worked on Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. In the latter case, there was a long tradition of how glorious it was to die in service to the Emperor, Samurai culture of death before dishonor, and a religious belief that Japan would never fall to invasion. We managed to convince them otherwise with sufficient death and violence.
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We are no longer willing to engage in the bloodshed and destruction that was necessary for that. We'd have to do the longer-route of Rule, a'la the Brits in India.
 
Hatuey said:
Neither of those countries recruited based on personal affiliations with martyred individuals. You seem to not understand that dying for Allah really is a selling point for these people. Nazi Germany and Japan did not recruit people using death for one's God as a selling point. Nor did they have anywhere even close to the zealotry of Islam.



Yes, by wiping out a city full of innocent civilians and making a structured military infrastructure surrender. I can't really begin to explain how different that is from islamic extremism.
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Well, with the general's approach you either eventually run out of people willing to die for Allah, or you just run out of people altogether....
 
cpwill said:
We are no longer willing to engage in the bloodshed and destruction that was necessary for that. We'd have to do the longer-route of Rule, a'la the Brits in India.
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Never going to work. Not unless part of the Rule was to suppress Islam entirely and forcibly educate all children in Westernized secular schools, and we clearly don't have the guts for that either.
 
Hatuey said:
Neither of those countries recruited based on personal affiliations with martyred individuals. You seem to not understand that dying for Allah really is a selling point for these people. Nazi Germany and Japan did not recruit people using death for one's God as a selling point. Nor did they have anywhere even close to the zealotry of Islam.
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No, it was death for the Emperor. In fact, the zealotry among the Japanese was quite similar.

One interesting note, for example, is that we found out in Iraq that suicide-bombers often change their mind. They'll break down, start crying, give themselves up. Knowing this, AQI started remote-detonating without telling them - so we started slapping up ECM. We captured quite a few would-be-suicide-bombers.

In fact, I would bet that the percentage of suicide bombers captured would fare well next to the percentage of Japanese soldiers captured in the Pacific. On Iwo Jima, for example, out of 20,000 Japanese soldiers, only 216 (1.08%) were captured - and I would bet that of those plenty were wounded/knocked unconscious and unable to fight, rather than soldiers who had surrendered.
 
Goshin said:
Never going to work. Not unless part of the Rule was to suppress Islam entirely and forcibly educate all children in Westernized secular schools, and we clearly don't have the guts for that either.
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Oh it could work. We just (as you say) don't have the guts for it.

So because we are not willing to put in the cost upfront, we will pay a greater cost over time.
 
Goshin said:
Well, with the general's approach you either eventually run out of people willing to die for Allah, or you just run out of people altogether....
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So then what you're saying is that your "solution" isn't anywhere near realistic. Okay, let's try mine: Trace the money funding terrorism and target attacks on those sources. Find radical islamic clerics and hide them away in any of our 3rd world prisons. Fund local outreach programs for young people (as they are most likely to become involved in terrorism). There are options which haven't been used and are far more realistic than kill them until there's none left.
 
Goshin said:
I was gravely disappointed when the Palastinians had a shot at free elections and CHOSE to be ruled by a terrorist organization.
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The vast majority of Palestinians did not vote for Hamas because of its political goals but because of their desire to rid the Palestinian Authority of corruption, a theme Hamas campaigned on.

I'm not going to comment on that point and risk the conversation degenerating into I/P specific discussions here but if you are genuinely interested in discussing it further i did speak about it here just a few days ago. Feel free to join the conversation there which has the exit polls statistics that suport my views.

http://www.debatepolitics.com/israe...national-criminal-court-7.html#post1064166222
 
Glen Contrarian said:
Problem is, y'all seem to think that since there is some terrorism going on around the world, that the only solution is to bomb them back to the stone age. It's the same old thing - when your only tool is a hammer, then that's all you know how to use.

Y'all need to realize that as long as there are weapons and cell phones and the internet, there will be terrorists, people using whatever excuse they can think of to do terrible things. Think about it - the terrorists that just hit Paris killed fewer people than were killed at either Columbine or Sandy Hook. By that metric, our nation's teenagers are more of a threat than terrorists! Are we going to attack our teenagers? Of course not. But we need to have some real perspective on how bad the problem really is...or is not.

This isn't to say we should sit back and do nothing about terrorism - because you will NEVER rid the world of terrorism - but we need to remember that weapons aren't the only solution. Sometimes the best solution, the best way to minimize terrorism is to make the people more prosperous - because people who are happy, healthy, fed, and safe are a whole heck of a lot less likely to be radicalized.
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There seems to be plenty of money in the Middle east based on the harvest of the natural resources there.

How do you propose making the have nots in those areas more prosperous in this very controlled society?
 
Dittohead not! said:
That's what I thought. The problem with that is that killing off everyone is simply genocide. While it might work, it is not something that any civilized society would support.

Killing off everyone in front of the guns would be like fencing off all of West LA and simply shooting everyone inside. It would clean up a lot of gang activity and drug dealing, to be sure, but the cure would be worse than the disease.
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The general was not talking about West LA.

That said, though, in France there are several neighborhoods that are so dangerous that they are no longer governed by France. See the links below. Word on the street in the US is that there are several gang neighborhoods that are not policed to the same level as as the more peaceful suburbs due to the dangers of having a cop exposed there.

The General was talking about groups that do not bend to the accepted conduct of the world community and you are talking about groups within local communities that do not bend to the accepted conduct of the local community. Yours is a less nuanced question.

In your question, the folks have deliberately removed themselves from the community to be separated from it. In the General's question, the folks have deliberately inserted themselves into the community to dominate it.

Hundreds of 'No-Go Zones' Across France Are Off-Limits to Non-Muslims

French Islamist mini-states grow into problem out of government control - Washington Times
 
jet57 said:
If GW Bush was not so inept we wouldn't have this trouble today and the French could still draw pictures of anybody they wanted.
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Of course you are removed from reality, but to consider your point, should GW Bush have acted more or less in accord with the prescription offered by the General?

According to the General, he should have decimated the perpetrators and left the weeping widow and homeless children in the smoking rubble.

I happen to think that this would have been the wiser move than the one he made, but he did not. Would it have been a better move to go to Afghanistan, kill anyone who looked, acted, smelled or felt like a Taliban Member and left the weeping widows and homeless children in the smoking rubble?

Was it a wiser move to invade a country not associated with the attack on 9/11 and then try to nation build?

Would it have been an even better move to ignore the 9/11 attack and all of the previous ones entirely? You tell me.

Just to re-cast the situation that you seem to be unaware of, the war in Iraq was won when Bush left office. Obama's disastrous mishandling of the SOFA was what led to the current warfare that is ongoing there now.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
So your solution is to kill a billion or so Muslims?

Dude, you need help.
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What is your better, more effective solution?

Please couch this in terms of the current events.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
Dude - you obviously seemed to be supporting Code1211's 'solution' to go down the road of Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Leningrad. I'm simply pointing out how stupid - and futile - that solution is.
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Just to clarify, the General was talking about the resolve and commitment shown in WW2. It is a well know fact the the Americans who fought savagely and waged brutal war around the world came home to raise families, coach Little League and build thriving communities. These folks were not monsters, but they were committed to the preservation of values and safety for their families and their own personal place in the world.

As has been famously noted, the land we conquered and kept during that war was only big enough to bury our dead.

He is saying that we do not have that level of commitment now and wonders if that level of commitment is what is needed to win the current war against the monstrous, inhuman barbarians that seek to destroy our way of life in today's world.

What level of commitment do you think is required to defeat those who are trying to kill and dominate us today?
 
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Glen Contrarian said:
So we agree that there will never be a perfect solution - we are all human, after all. That's good. We will never, ever end all terrorism - that's a fool's errand - but we can do what can be done to minimize terrorism.

Looking at your example of Kuwait, then, it seems that a more effective way of dealing with terrorism would be to use diplomacy (which isn't always in the genteel form of kind words, but is often hard-nosed and even extortionist) to convince other nations in the region to follow the Kuwaiti model.

Of course we have to stay as vigilant as humanly possible, and we have to maintain the ability to respond to violence with greater violence. But those are reactionary measures. A truly proactive measure is the Kuwaiti model.
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Can you list the instances in which diplomacy has created lasting solutions to international terrorism?
 
Hatuey said:
So we're going to kill... the people willing to die for their beliefs... until those people no longer want to die for their beliefs? Is that how this works? We just keep killing people who find honor in dying at the hands of infidels? This stops... when they're no longer radicalized by what we're doing in the first place? Sounds like tilling the ocean but okay. :lol:
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You seem to have described the process employed by the radical Muslims.
 
Hatuey said:
Nope, that's not what I said at all.



That's great, but terrorist attacks aren't planned on a What are they doing today? basis.
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What exactly is the basis of the terrorists' planning in formulating the place and the targets of attacks?
 
Hatuey said:
Neither of those countries recruited based on personal affiliations with martyred individuals. You seem to not understand that dying for Allah really is a selling point for these people. Nazi Germany and Japan did not recruit people using death for one's God as a selling point. Nor did they have anywhere even close to the zealotry of Islam.



Yes, by wiping out a city full of innocent civilians and making a structured military infrastructure surrender. I can't really begin to explain how different that is from islamic extremism.
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Actually, in both cases, the soldiers took oaths of allegiance directly to their leaders. Hitler and the emperor.

In Japan, the emperor was a de facto deity as the leader of the Shinto religion in addition to the state. The propaganda of Nazi Germany set up Hitler as the Father Figure of the whole country.
 
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