Jec wrote:Spare me from the diluted philosophical strain of moral relativism...
Not only does our government commit its own violence internationally, but it is also complicit in the violence of others.
jec wrote:Raif was condemed for insulting Islam. Massive international outrage saved him, at least for now, from punishment. The actions of one man, that decided to speak out liberal reforms put the kingdom in the spotlight. Imagine if the conversations were far more widespread... Saudi Arabia can't behead a fifth of their citizens, I'm certain even conservative muslims would protest.
While the outcry has been good to see he is still imprisoned. Hopefully it will lead to his release. However, the Wahhabists there are more conservative than their government is so its doubtful that it will bring about anything other than cosmetic change. The US and other countries would not tolerate the toppling of the Saudi royal family either. This cannot be overstated.
Jet wrote:That would never happen because that would make the public aware of our involvement in the ME and our relationship with the gulf states, which are upholding the petrodollar. To begin to discuss these things would also paint us in a very negative light. Not much of a chance the mainstream media is going to undermine its nations own interests either.
jec wrote:True, but some of the things keeping it from happening comes from people too. Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Hirsi Ali (Victim of FGM) tries to make this a conversation, but audience is limited, and it's discouraged from speaking about it due to a frenzy of liberals attacking , painting them in negative light, calling them bigots, racists... the only publicity it gets is that Bill and company are islamophobes, bigots, etc.
Its also partly their own fault. One of the reasons they get called that is because they say things like "We must crush Islam under the heel of the west" or... "If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion." That is needlessly sensational and like we've already established counterproductive if your goal really is ideological reform. The reason for that is because you drive away the very reformers that are necessary for it to happen.
Jet wrote:
Look Jec......the point of me pointing towards the Vice documentary was not to say this can easily be summed up as Western countries, by themselves, are entirely responsible for radicalizing generations. Rather, what I am saying is if you are going to have such a simplistic reaction to the recruitment videos you see on the mainstream news and reply "Look they are saying they are doing this because of religion, believe them!" Then by the same standard apply that to the documentary, where instead a journalist actually went to a region of turmoil and asked of the motivation for terrorist attacks, directly from the people affected by it. Not only from the head of an extremist group, but also a broad spectrum of people who deal with the fallout. If I apply the same reductionist metric that you are then I can easily say "Look its all western imperialism they are saying it, believe them!". So if you are going to be so one dimensional at least be consistent.
jec wrote:It's not reductionist Jet, you just still don't get control and treatment groups.
It is exceptionally reductionist. Your obsession over religion and refusal to see other outside factors blinds you to this. Apply the same standard or stop with the "if they say its X then the motivation is always X". Any further attempt to deny this will be just like when you said you did not expect sanity from a soldier yet go on expecting rationality from a civilian whos experienced loss in an occupied country. A double and unequal standard.
jec wrote:If terrorists were not convinced they were going to be rewarded after death for their brutal actions, they simply wouldn't do it.
If there was no religion there would be no terrorism? Ridiculous... You act as if people wouldn't kill each other for another cause, only religion.
jec wrote:They are the only group in human history that has reacted in such a way despite there being many other groups of people historically that have received brutal treatment. This is conclusion based on observation and analysis.
A conclusion is not a reduction of the problem....
It is reductionist and not to mention incredibly hypocritical. If you are gonna take them at their word when they say their motivation is religion then also take them at their word when they mention their motivations come from true grievances brought from losing their families. Otherwise you are only hearing what you want to hear.
Jet wrote:
...What?....I was refuting the statement you made, that we stopped intervening. Giving weapons to these groups enable them to kill the people we want dead. Oh, and also innocents. These are proxy wars. We are just as responsible for the deaths there. Its not like we dont know what they are going to use those weapons for.
jec wrote:Yes, but not all intervention should logically lead to the rise of religious extremist sentiment.
I didn't say that specific type of intervention does. There are other factors obviously. People aren't robots they dont only process one emotion....nor are they limited to a singular motivation.
jec wrote:If Al Asaad's forces were the ones beheading and burning pilots alive your point would make sense.
....This is what I am talking about. Because you associate beheadings and burning pilots alive with Islam it is a worse thing. EVEN though US drone strikes essentially burn their targets as well. So by this twisted bias chemical weapon use (that is against international law) is somehow better.....spare me from your skewed moral barometer
http://m.hrw.org/news/2015/04/13/syria-chemicals-used-idlib-attacks
Bad actors all around wrote:The UN commissioner's statement, reported from Geneva, coincided with the publication of a new death toll of 125,835 for the last 33 months. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), based in the UK, said the dead included 44,381 civilians, including 6,627 children and 4,454 women. The SOHR said at least 27,746 opposition fighters had been killed, among them just over 19,000 civilians who took up arms to fight the Assad regime. The opposition toll also included 2,221 army defectors and 6,261 non-Syrians who joined the rebels.
The UN commission has repeatedly accused the Syrian government, which is supported by Russia and Iran, of crimes against humanity and war crimes. It has said the rebels, who are backed by both western and Arab countries, are also guilty of committing war crimes.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/02/syrian-officials-involved-war-crimes-bashar-al-assad-un-investigators
This cannot simply be attributed to religion wrote:
In May 2007, a presidential finding revealed that Bush had authorised CIA operations against Iran. Anti-Syria operations were also in full swing around this time as part of this covert programme, according to Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker. A range of US government and intelligence sources told him that the Bush administration had "cooperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations" intended to weaken the Shi'ite Hezbollah in Lebanon. "The US has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria," wrote Hersh, "a byproduct" of which is "the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups" hostile to the United States and "sympathetic to al-Qaeda." He noted that "the Saudi government, with Washington's approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria," with a view to pressure him to be "more conciliatory and open to negotiations" with Israel. One faction receiving covert US "political and financial support" through the Saudis was the exiled Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.
According to former French foreign minister Roland Dumas, Britain had planned covert action in Syria as early as 2009: "I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business", he told French television:
"I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria."
The 2011 uprisings, it would seem - triggered by a confluence of domestic energy shortages and climate-induced droughts which led to massive food price hikes - came at an opportune moment that was quickly exploited. Leaked emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor including notes from a meeting with Pentagon officials confirmed US-UK training of Syrian opposition forces since 2011 aimed at eliciting "collapse" of Assad's regime "from within."
So what was this unfolding strategy to undermine Syria and Iran all about? According to retired NATO Secretary General Wesley Clark, a memo from the Office of the US Secretary of Defense just a few weeks after 9/11 revealed plans to "attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years", starting with Iraq and moving on to "Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran." In a subsequent interview, Clark argues that this strategy is fundamentally about control of the region's vast oil and gas resources.
Much of the strategy currently at play was candidly described in a 2008 US Army-funded RAND report, Unfolding the Future of the Long War (pdf). The report noted that "the economies of the industrialized states will continue to rely heavily on oil, thus making it a strategically important resource." As most oil will be produced in the Middle East, the US has "motive for maintaining stability in and good relations with Middle Eastern states":
"The geographic area of proven oil reserves coincides with the power base of much of the Salafi-jihadist network. This creates a linkage between oil supplies and the long war that is not easily broken or simply characterized... For the foreseeable future, world oil production growth and total output will be dominated by Persian Gulf resources... The region will therefore remain a strategic priority, and this priority will interact strongly with that of prosecuting the long war."
In this context, the report identified several potential trajectories for regional policy focused on protecting access to Gulf oil supplies, among which the following are most salient:
"Divide and Rule focuses on exploiting fault lines between the various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts. This strategy relies heavily on covert action, information operations (IO), unconventional warfare, and support to indigenous security forces... the United States and its local allies could use the nationalist jihadists to launch proxy IO campaigns to discredit the transnational jihadists in the eyes of the local populace... US leaders could also choose to capitalize on the 'Sustained Shia-Sunni Conflict' trajectory by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes against Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world.... possibly supporting authoritative Sunni governments against a continuingly hostile Iran."
Exploring different scenarios for this trajectory, the report speculated that the US may concentrate "on shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan as a way of containing Iranian power and influence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf." Noting that this could actually empower al-Qaeda jihadists, the report concluded that doing so might work in western interests by bogging down jihadi activity with internal sectarian rivalry rather than targeting the US:
"One of the oddities of this long war trajectory is that it may actually reduce the al-Qaeda threat to US interests in the short term. The upsurge in Shia identity and confidence seen here would certainly cause serious concern in the Salafi-jihadist community in the Muslim world, including the senior leadership of al-Qaeda. As a result, it is very likely that al-Qaeda might focus its efforts on targeting Iranian interests throughout the Middle East and Persian Gulf while simultaneously cutting back on anti-American and anti-Western operations."
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/aug/30/syria-chemical-attack-war-intervention-oil-gas-energy-pipelines
As I keep saying...there are interests here that obviously involve religion....but its deeper than that.
jec wrote:It doesn't make sense to blame that intervention of selling arms for igniting extremism on the forces that would become ISIS. The more logical source of the radicalization, in this cases is clearly the sectarian government hypothesis rather than the intervention one.
.....Like I said above and previously the distribution of arms point was me refuting your notion that we have stopped intervening in the region. That was false and you were wrong to raise it.
Jet wrote:
Thats one part of it. But you're forgetting the US and the gulf states created ISIS too. SA uses them, and other groups like them to diminish shia influence as well.
jec wrote:Just like Iran uses the Houthi to diminish Sunni influence. It's all religious...
Its not ALL religious. You're ignoring the role of both western and eastern countries in creating these groups, the motivations behind them....and in continuing to fund and arm them so they maintain regional dominance. There's more than just religion driving whats happening now in the world. By continuing to ignore this you are only furthering the narrative that ensures the cyclical nature of this conflict remains so.
Jet wrote:
No it isn't. Ideology by itself is nothing but bad ideas until they are acted upon. We act for our economic benefit all the time which contributes to the instability in the region. This goes on to set off a chain of events that subsequently result in the furthering of extreme ideologies - and actions. The scope of this is greater than a few, the impact matters.
jec wrote:An ideology can also lead to inaction, which is just as bad or worse. The Arab countries can't seem to fully unite against ISIS because in the end, they kinda (almost fully who are we kidding) agree with their core beliefs. The ideology of the many legitimize the actions of the few, making the incentives to intervene almost non existent. The middle east has the military prowess to crush Isis militarily in a couple of weeks, yet they refuse to put boots on the ground. The only reason the Saudis are pushing is because they threaten the rule of the monarchy.
Ugh...no, it isnt merely religious. There are other financial, regional, and fear based reasons for them not intervening
Al Abadi says: "The only contribution the American forces or the international coalition is going to help us with is from the sky," al-Abadi said. "We are not giving any blank check to the international coalition to hit any target in Iraq."
Regional Tensions
Finally, the potential for domestic blowback concerns regional leaders. Most ISIS fighters appear to be Iraqi or Syrian, yet the top three states of origin for foreign fighters joining ISIS are Tunisia and Saudi Arabia, followed closely by Jordan. ISIS’s continued advance threatens neighboring states, and returning fighters could destabilize regional governments, but with many citizens distrustful of U.S. policy in the region further participation in the coalition could spark domestic protest as well.
Theres also the factor of "why do it yourself when the US will do it for free"
jec wrote:I know that part, it's called Christian Zionism.
Good.
jec wrote:I meant the role of Christianity on this conflict. I've been debating religion and seen its poison from early on and I know you'll see that Islam is in fact the most poisonous of them all, at least currently (Honor killings, apostaty, FGM, suicide bombings, repression of knowledge, gender inequality, medieval punishments, beheading, stoning, theocracies, etc). What's dumbing down the debate is the failed premise of moral relativism. There are some religions that clearly harm more than others and this is a fact. Morality has biological and socio-psychological objectivity and there's loads of literature to back this up.
I can only reiterate how you're still missing the bigger picture when your focus is on which religion is "more poisonous" than another. The debate will just keep being dumbed down as you pursue a simplistic conclusion to justify your inherent bias. That's what the people who are actually profiting from these wars want.
Jet wrote:
No, not quite a contradiction. Yes "western violence" is partly religious, just like it is for "islamic violence". Western intervention, and the rise of fundamentalists both stem from the same belief in unbridled capitalism. From this ideal is derived the worst aspects of human nature that were mentioned earlier - greed and willful ignorance. This is what creates the conditions necessary for the continuation of violence and misery. Whether it be invasions, funding of terrorism, the spreading of arms, or the millions spent to influence and corrupt governments. All of these and many other actions work in conjunction to uphold this belief, which only ever seeks more money, power and control, a representation of our most basic primal instincts.
jec wrote:Greed and willful ignorance has been part of human society long before the rise of capitalism (around 300 years ago).
I agree. Those attributes are part of human nature, ideology only justifies it but conflict would happen regardless. Unbridled capitalism has just incentivized the continuation of violence for power and resources. The advent of technology has only made it easier for leaders to wage war on this reason. By making the rewards for that greater than ever before it allows the elites on all sides to manipulate their populations in any way they see fit, as they act on their worst impulses.
jec wrote:If there's anything to blame the rise of loving willful ignorance is the Abrahamic religions.
Religion can be used to promote willful ignorance yes but its not exclusive to it. Many ppl continue to do things that are proven to be detrimental yet ignore this and continue to do so. Drone killings create more terrorists than they stop yet the identities of the targets are witheld and still they continue. The mass incarceration of the US population continue despite how flawed and racist the sentencing and pardoning can be. We hold 5% of the population yet 25% of the worlds prisoners, people in power remain willfully ignorant of this because of how profitable this system is. Mass surveillance has proven to be ineffective in stopping terrorist attacks yet civil liberties are ever increasingly diminished. In fact counterterrorism bills have begun to be proposed in other countries as well, despite the proven ineffectiveness in the US. The war on drugs itself is a failure based on the premise that addiction is itself a moral failing. Theres evidence supporting otherwise, as well as communities that have proven legalization can work. Republican states have begun to adopt voter ID laws to restrict the power of minority communities, yet they allow voting with an NRA card. There's also video of a politician campaigning for Mitt Romney saying this tactic will allow him to win the state. Campaign finance deregulation which favors the speech rights of the rich...I could go on. Religion can be a problem, but so can the over the top focus on it to the excusion of all nuance and context of the broader and more systemic issues that it goes to support.
These are all examples employed by political leaders and their constitutients. Despite having been proven either at best impractical examples of willful ignorance or at worst(and increasingly blatant) examples of greed they continue. Whether it be for more power or more money the problems in the world extend farther than religion.