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goodog posted:Not only is this psychopathic but it's historically incorrect. Operation Gomorrah occurred almost 2 years before the German surrender, Dresden 6 months before. Hitler refused to evacuate Berlin despite the enormous civilian casualties. The Japanese High Command were more concerned with the Soviet advances then they were with the atom bombs, and there was an attempted coup to stop the Emperor from surrendering to the US. Preferring death over losing is a core value of any true militant, you'd think someone from the country that spawned "Live Free Or Die" would realise that. It's especially true in an ideology that considers martyrdom a virtue, and to a group who are no strangers to death, misery and air bombardments. No you don't understand, if only we kill more of them they'll stop eventually, just like they did in Vietnam
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Jun 18, 2014 09:15
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Tab8715 posted:Let's assume ISIS somehow comes out ahead - what would their Country look like? Probably something like Taliban Afghanistan except with a whole lot more ethnic cleansing and lingering civil war icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Jun 18, 2014 |
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Jun 18, 2014 17:38
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quote:May God avenge the deaths of Naftali, Eyal and Gilad. Wait a minute, I thought Israel was the secular, liberal, tolerant state, not the one screaming "
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Jul 1, 2014 00:29
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I have to say, I don't think American neocons have any competition in the entire history of the planet for loving up an entire part of the world so thoroughly and completely. Maybe the mongols were worse?
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Jul 28, 2014 17:26
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Bip Roberts posted:As far as outside powers working on ruining the middle east Neocons were late in the game. The Iraq war just re-enflamed conflict that was baked into place when lines were literally drawn in the sand with the dismantling of the Ottoman empire after WWI. I would say the neocon crusade against Islamism and unquestioning support of Israel did a lot to destabilize things over the last ~35 years. Iraq 2 was not the only mistake. I think it's a stretch to say things would be this bad or even nearly this bad without neocon policy over that time.
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Jul 28, 2014 17:44
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What were the circumstances behind Lebanese democracy imploding with the Civil War and all that? Was it ever stable, or was it provoked from outside? That seems to me it would be the best case study for what's wrong with the middle east
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Jul 28, 2014 17:55
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I think if ISIS sticks around the US is going to drastically reevaluate its position on Iran. We're already allies with a theocratic dictatorship in the form of Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis have proven about as useful as fart in the wind with regards to Iraq and ISIS.
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Aug 12, 2014 22:36
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Kaal posted:Even if the US could get past the part where Iran is a theocracy that has actively sabotaged American foreign policy for decades, Iran sure as poo poo can't easily get past the American backing of Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War. Iran regularly holds official anti-American rallies, and not long ago the American president referred to Iran as being part of an Axis of Evil. Iranians are a fairly progressive people with a considerate middle-class, and if it was just a matter of middle-class Americans and Iranians getting along then we'd probably be just fine. Americans are pretty good at forgiving and forgetting when it suits them. But then you have to factor in the Iranian theocratic elites that have based their power on selling Anti-American sentiment to the heavily Islamic lower-class, and it all falls apart. Any idea of the two countries working closely together to solve the problems of the Middle East is an idyllic fantasy. No, idyllic fantasy would be to think that there's a way out of this disaster such that nobody dies, nobody gets genoicded, and everyone gets a pony at the end. People are suggesting that working with Iran is the best possible option. I will say that Iran probably has a better human rights record than Assad or Hussein did. AFAIK Iran never committed any genocides. North Korea style diplomatic isolation is completely ridiculous, and is 100% because American neocons have a grudge. It's Cuba but worse. Heck, if the revolution had happened 20 years earlier I can easily see them having become an American ally against the Soviets icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Aug 13, 2014 |
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Aug 13, 2014 03:30
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I think some people are interpreting 'work with' as 'sociopathically manipulate to get bloody revenge on some other group' which is how our relations in the Middle East have worked for a while, excepting Israel. We should normalize relations with Iran because it will be the best for people in the Middle East and in the US
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Aug 13, 2014 08:26
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It is really amazing just how much and how badly Bush and his merry band of neocons hosed up in the world. Here we are, fifteen years out, and by the looks of it we'll be lucky if the repercussions are over in another fifteen
icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Aug 13, 2014 |
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Aug 13, 2014 17:22
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Accretionist posted:Are there even hypothetical Hail Marys on Syria? For Iraq, we can talk about, "gently caress it, parcel it up and bring in Iran," but what about Syria? It seems like somehow achieving containment alone would be just about tops. At this point the only real good endgame would be to invent a time machine, go back to 1914, and parcel up the place along reasonable ethnic/religious lines as opposed to whatever is most convenient for France and Britain's colonial administration
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Aug 15, 2014 03:52
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How accurate would it be to say that the Mongol invasions prevented China or the Middle East from industrializing vs Europe? I understand they hosed up China and India up pretty bad too. This is interesting at the very least.
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Aug 15, 2014 07:56
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The thing about self-identification vs prescriptivism is that religious people don't define their religion based on identification. If you asked an Islamic scholar if ISIS is Islamic they're not going to answer based on what they identify as they'll answer based on their adherence to scripture. Same with a Catholic priest. The complete dismissal of theology is ridiculous, because that is how people self identify. The point is that the liberal habit of saying religious fundies aren't really adhering to their religion is bullshit. It's the same argument people use against anti-gay marriage churches. No, you can pretty clearly be a 'good Christian' and not want gay marriage, because the theology and scripture can be reasonably interpreted as saying it's bad. Likewise you can be a good Muslim and claim converting nonbelievers by force is good. This is inconvenient but true. Kafka Esq. posted:The reason to do that is thinly disguised racism. The reason people bring up Christianity and Judaism as a comparison point is that nobody immediately refers to the orthodox Jewish as from "another age". Nobody refers to evangelical Christians as medieval. This is textbook orientalism. Stop it. I don't know I'd say fundamentalist protestant churches actually are pretty close to being medieval, as are orthodox jews icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Aug 18, 2014 |
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Aug 18, 2014 20:16
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Randarkman posted:In what way? I'd say they are prety much nothing like Medieval Christianity at all, where for instance abortion was not viewed as some great sin and was even defended by the Church as necessary and defendable, though it was very risky. This whole thing about using "Medieval" like some kind of slur to mean horrible, backwards and oppressing really irks me to be honest. In that they're superstitious and bigoted.
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Aug 18, 2014 20:25
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Cippalippus posted:Homosexuals: Jesus said when the people were about to stone the woman who committed adultery "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her", meaning that only God can judge moral actions; so yeah, technically, a good Christian should be above all tolerant. The thing with that is that even though it prohibits people from judging, it still implies that homosex, or any sex not for procreation yadda yadda, is a sin before god and will be punished appropriately. Like you're basically saying the religion can't have any moral prescriptions in that case, technically not even the good ones like give to the poor, etc. The only good Christians in your view are the ones who focus 100% on personal repentance and salvation. There is something to that. This is one of the Protestant complaints about the Catholic doctrine of good works, that the only thing that matters is repentance and acceptance of Jesus Christ, and that actions don't count, not even the good ones. In that case it doesn't really matter what specific actions the Bible lays out as being sins. But the usual perception of religion among religious people, and with Christianity in particular, is that it is morally prescriptive, and in that case then yes, the Bible does in fact say (or could be reasonably interpreted to say) homosex is bad, like any sex outside of a heterosexual marriage. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Aug 18, 2014 |
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Aug 18, 2014 21:05
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Cippalippus posted:Did you quote the wrong post? It doesn't imply anything, the only thing it says is that you have no right to judge. You also aren't God, so you don't get to know the rules of the universe. In the end, only your faith will save you. So your point is that theology is completely irrelevant? I mean that's a perfectly valid opinion, but the fact is that according to the Catholic Church's official doctrine gay marriage is bad, and according to Islamic doctrine conversion by force can be interpreted as as good. There's a tendency among liberals, especially in America with Christianity, to claim that somehow hateful people aren't being good Christians, or that ISIS aren't being good Muslims, but that's wrong both as judged by self-identification and by theology. It's enough to just say they're awful people. The theology exists, and acting like it doesn't and getting mad at anyone who points out it does seems unhelpful to me. It's possible IMO that the theology/prescribed religion itself can be bad. I suspect the origin of this tendency is that people want to avoid saying a religion is bad, but if the scripture and doctrine says gays and adulterers should be executed I can't really see a way around that. Obviously most people don't actually follow the doctrine strictly, but it still exists. People self identify as adherents of an ideology. Belome posted:Why did Jesus let her go instead of stoning her? Because he's not god, and the punishment should be given by god icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Aug 18, 2014 |
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Aug 18, 2014 21:34
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Cat Mattress posted:Jesus is God according to pretty much all flavors of Christianity. That's not the whole story. God decided that the woman should not be stoned, and instead should be sent to hell on Judgement Day if she did not repent for the adultery among other things, and accept Jesus Christ as her savior. Look, this is the attitude I'm talking about. The reaction to simply stating what the actual theology/ideology is is pretty much to scream NUH UH and plug your fingers in your ears.
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Aug 18, 2014 21:45
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Cippalippus posted:This is mental masturbation at its finest. He sent her back home and told her to repent, and that's the end of the story. What you're doing is precisely what thousands of people have done before, adding words to a simple text to further your own agenda, and I think you're doing it with a malicious intent. Well, I guess you should go tell the Catholic Church and all Islamic scholars in the Middle East that what they're doing is mental masturbation, because that's what you're saying here. Literally the entirety of organized religion is adding words to texts to further an agenda, sometimes done with malicious intent. You realize the Muslim clerics and scholars who came up with Wahhabism are doing the same thing that the Catholic Church's theologians are, right? Like I've said a few times now, religious people identify with an ideology, not just a random bag of beliefs. Their actions might not live up to that ideology, but they still identify with it. I'm always fascinated by the utter refusal to engage with religious ideology, or even acknowledge that it exists and is influential. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Aug 18, 2014 |
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Aug 18, 2014 21:59
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Cippalippus posted:And why should I care? You're greatly overestimating their influence. So, a bunch of people of my religion waste time thinking about stuff with which I don't agree. I'll lose my sleep over it. Because that is in some part what's influencing people to side with ISIS? You're literally saying "why should I care why other people think what they do?" You're literally refusing to understand other peoples' motivations. I don't see how that does anything but harm you, as it leaves you with less understanding of the people you're trying to engage with. You can argue as to how big exactly an influence it is, but to say it's completely irrelevant is ridiculous and you're handicapping yourself for no good reason Like I said earlier I'm pretty sure this whole thing stems from a mortal fear by people who think self-identification is everything (critical theorists, SJWs, I know this is really not the best language but I'm not trained in philosophy, I apologize) of saying any kind of religion, or ideology at all, is bad, because that would necessarily imply people who identify with that ideology are wrong, and you can't do that because wrong is subjective and if some people identify that way well who am I to disagree icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Aug 18, 2014 |
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Aug 18, 2014 22:05
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My Imaginary GF posted:Its not in your position to decide what is right and wrong, thats what ISIS does. Actions speak louder than words and are more effective for making a point. So I'm not allowed to decide whether ISIS are right or wrong? What? Cippalippus posted:You're wrong again. Refusing to accept other people's motivation and thinking doesn't make me less able to understand it, if anything, Socrates and Plato would argue that your understanding of a matter is greater if you aren't directly involved in it. The Catholic Church unambiguously disagrees with gay marriage and abortion. If you're a good Catholic you agree with that. Are you saying otherwise? You're redefining words to mean whatever is most convenient for you at any time so you don't have to confront reality.
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Aug 18, 2014 22:32
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Cippalippus posted:I'm glad that my Priest, or my local Bishop or even the Pope can't say wether I'm a good Catholic but a dipshit over the internet claims this right. Go gently caress yourself, ignorant peon. Okay so you don't have an argument and are just poo poo slinging. Got it Your friendly neighborhood priest isn't going to tell you you're a heretical fucker who's going to hell, but for the tenth time the actual doctrine says- ahahahhaha who am I kidding you're not going to face the facts ever icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Aug 18, 2014 |
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Aug 18, 2014 22:39
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Grem posted:Wow that was like, a really tiny knife the executioner used. I kind of thought for how calm he was they'd at least be kinda quick about it, but no way was it quick with that tiny knife. He would probably be unconscious for most of the sawing because of massive blood loss, the jugular vein is close to the front of the neck. But yeah I think it's the general ISIS MO to use a tiny knife and spend forever sawing away at it like some kind of horrible loving cartoon
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Aug 20, 2014 03:21
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Just The Facts posted:Its just proof the US is getting to them. Suddenly their fleet of armored Humvees is no longer an asset but a huge target. As for this, 'getting to them' is meaningless as the US has figured out over the past 15 years. In order for peace to exist you need a stable government, bombing people doesn't do that, in fact is actively hinders it because some sociopath will inevitably pop up in the power vacuum. Just like Saddam is now looking pretty good compared to ISIS it's possible that in 5 or 10 years people even worse than ISIS will crop up, even after you've killed enough people that they finally stop using the ISIS name. The most realistic way out of this really is to just split Iraq into three countries and be done with it.
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Aug 20, 2014 03:27
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Alereon posted:That video is fake as poo poo and I don't even think it's from ISIS. I think that's a fake knife, there should have been blood visible when he started cutting, and they've never not shown any of the cutting. It doesn't look in any way like any of ISIS's previous beheading videos, and the production value is weirdly high but for no benefit. They had multiple simultaneous camera angles or multiple takes, and they've never done that before, and I don't get why they'd do it now for this. I have no reasonable alternate explanation for who would have made this video or attributed it to ISIS though. Or I could just be an idiot, but I don't say this kind of thing often or lightly. I've unfortunately seen one beheading video with the same pattern and the blood didn't start spurting everywhere immediately. The tiny knife they use doesn't get to the jugular that fast I don't think
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Aug 20, 2014 03:48
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FAGGY CLAUSE posted:You think a bunch of poor people randomly getting shot or shooting others into hamburger with guns takes any sort of honor? lol maybe honor was a real thing in some societies back when people practiced the sword of their entire lives. Shaocaholica posted:That's loving awful. There's no loving honor amongst the modern warrior? I guess the question would be if there was ever any honor on the battlefield, not just on paper. nope, even back in the days before conscription armies consisted of poorly trained, usually drunk, psychopathic mercenaries. the standard infantry weapon in Europe in the middle ages before guns was the pike, not the sword; all you had to do was stab. the well educated people who learned swordsmanship were the ones paying the mercenaries.  just executing some civilians for looking at us funny / possibly being insurgents, nothing to see here icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 07:26 on Aug 21, 2014 |
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Aug 21, 2014 07:23
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Volkerball posted:Yeah, some of them on no evidence (although the torture and ill-treatment was probably universal), and that's obviously reprehensible. But 38 of the people held there have no physical evidence against them, and we're just supposed to take the US' word that they totally know those guys were terrorists and they aren't letting them go. 100-some are held there now, and 800 have passed through its gates since 2002. This includes guys like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who even throwing out their coerced confessions, have a mountain of evidence against them in multiple attacks against innocents all over the world. When the doors on that place finally do close, it will be a sad chapter in US history based around 9/11 paranoia, islamophobia, and McCarthyism, but it's not exactly the crime of the century. I really don't mean to whitewash it, as objectively I think it was completely loving stupid and disgusting, and a lot of the people who were involved with it have even regretted later how it accomplished nothing. It just really bothers me when people with an insanely skewed US-centric view of the world come in and try to diminish the atrocities committed by the regime or ISIS by pointing out the "real" criminals. They can pretend that "No really, there were totally people in this, the Middle East thread in DnD on the somethingawful forums, that didn't know the US did bad things," but all they are doing is legitimizing these crimes because they portray it like the only thing we need to learn from these things that matters is that the US was worse. And it's a really stupid, simplistic, and even disrespectful way to view news coming out of the Middle East. It's definitely the American crime of the century and definitely the worst thing we've done since Vietnam. Even accounting for differing standard of shittiness between the first world and the third, operating a genuine secret torture prison is a real step up into the ranks of people like Assad, Hussein, and the terrorists. They're still worse, of course, but at that point it's a question of difference in degree vs difference in kind.
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Aug 21, 2014 09:08
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IAMKOREA posted:Let's not forget the Native Americans existed. The US Military weren't the ones who killed most of the Native Americans? 
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Aug 22, 2014 04:26
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Captain_Maclaine posted:...after the genocide and ethnic cleansing. Which is somehow worse than the genocide and ethnic cleansing that's going on right now? icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Aug 23, 2014 |
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Aug 23, 2014 00:55
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cebrail posted:No, but a solution to a problem should solve or at least lessen that problem. Not being worse is not enough. The ethnic cleansing is going to happen period. However, nation states would at least in theory be more stable than Iraq, which is pretty much guaranteed to never be stable in its current state ever. It seems clearly better than a unitary state to me.
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Aug 23, 2014 00:58
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PleasingFungus posted:
The crosshatched areas are mostly desert though? What proportion of the Iraqi population actually lives in a mixed area?
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Aug 23, 2014 01:00
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New Division posted:But the new lines on the map cannot be imposed by the west And as for this, it seems like the western attitude towards the ME is schizophrenic. The problems were caused by the west way back when, but they can't seem to decide if intervening is good and they should kill all the ISIS barbarians or if intervening is worse than the holocaust and depriving the poor third worlders of agency. Just pick one and stick with it for gods sake
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Aug 23, 2014 01:03
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farraday posted:And for nothing to ever change ever so that national identities built around restrictive demands of blood or religion don't come into conflict with changing demographics. Everyone is familiar with Lebanon right? Lebanon's problems were caused by the French engineering Christian control of the country A Buttery Pastry posted:Just need some aliens to descend from on high and occupy the whole country to a massive degree, then start holding plebiscites to decide future borders, and finally pay everyone on the wrong side of the border to move to reduce the risk of future tensions. Well, yes pretty much. The thing is that the people living in the ME didn't actually make the current borders, and I suspect if given an actual choice they would choose new ones, western intervention or no. In that sense ISIS actually represents Middle Easterners (well, more like Sunni Arabs, but still) taking control of their own geopolitical destiny
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Aug 23, 2014 01:37
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farraday posted:Keep trying. So what you're saying is that it's impossible for stable countries to exist and the best thing to do is hope sectarian terrorists kill you before things get too depressing to keep on living?
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Aug 23, 2014 02:30
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Kaal posted:Yeah that whole non-interventionist stance is working really well over in Syria right now. I mean sure the place is going to hell in a handbasket and tens of thousands are dying while the global oil economy is threatened by the rise of ISIS, but at least no one can accuse us of being colonialists! and the real motives shine through
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Aug 31, 2014 01:18
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A Fancy 400 lbs posted:Veils in the Middle East predate Islam by a long time. A couple examples a lot of Westerners would be familiar with is the nun's habit and pre-Islamic paintings of Mary. The ancient Greeks also used the veil. Women in Athens weren't allowed to leave home without a full body covering
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Aug 31, 2014 01:42
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Mans posted:So we leave Egypt and the Arabian extremist dictatorships untouched and hope for the best? Our policy has been to actively support Arabian extremist dictatorships, so that would be a marked improvement.
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Aug 31, 2014 09:45
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Mustang posted:As opposed to what? A world lead by China or Russia? If Vietnam didn't cause the slow decline of the US then I really doubt Iraq or anything else the US does in the Middle East will. Led by noone? The world doesn't necessitate the existence of a superpower world police force, it ran for many many years without one. I do agree that whatever sentiment existed that the US had the ability to be world police pretty much vanished in the last 15 years. To the extent that anyone besides the US actually wanted the US to lead, they don't anymore, and rightly so IMO.
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Sep 1, 2014 01:37
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Friendly Factory posted:That is almost entirely the point of the UN, though. It is bad at doing the one thing it's supposed to do. No, that's not the point of the UN at all, and saying it is makes me think you don't know what you're talking about. The purpose of the UN is (was?) to stop WW3. It was to provide a negotiating table between the USA and the USSR. Not to gently caress around in third world shitholes and prevent tinpot dictators for massacring people.
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Sep 2, 2014 21:54
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radical meme posted:I don't think this has been posted here but I wanted to get some thoughts on the premise of this article in the HuffingtonPost; Middle East Time Bomb: The Real Aim of ISIS Is to Replace the Saud Family as the New Emirs of Arabia. This is the second part of a series that is excerpted from a book. The premise being that this rise of ISIS is just the inevitable rise, actually resurrection, of the Wahhabi movement that's been around for centuries and has been put down before by both the Ottomans and then the Saudis when they seized the Grand Mosque in 1979. The author relates it all to one long train wreck of a marriage between the Saudis and Wahhabism. The end goal of ISIS actually being the seizure of Mecca and Medina and of course setting themselves as the ultimate arbiters of what constitutes being a true believer in Islam. But they didn't abandon Wahabbism after seizing the Grand Mosque? They did literally the exact opposite, they Wahabbized society to appease the Islamists? I mean of course the Saudi regime might not be puritan enough for ISIS but when articles state things that are the opposite of what actually happened I get suspicious
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Sep 3, 2014 16:56
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Ur Getting Fatter posted:In the end, is there any realistic hope for ISIS or any other extremist movement to actually become a functioning state that could plausibly threaten Western democracies? Not even Iran with nukes could theoretically become much more than a medium-sized annoyance to western democracies. The excuse of 'we have to continue intervening in the ME because terrorists' has always been bullshit, if only for the fact that intervening has only ever made more terrorists. This is a big reason for why America has failed to fix the ME even a little bit IMO, because we don't actually care about fixing the ME and are motivated only by our pathological terror of another 9/11. "We have to kill more Islamists because what about another 9/11" is the extent of a very big chunk of American geopolitical reasoning. Even if it is true that Middle Eastern instability can create terrorists who threaten the US, and I'm not entirely prepared to believe that 100%, quite literally nothing we have done or have proposed doing, short of killing every man, woman and child in the Middle East, will do anything but make the situation worse. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Sep 3, 2014 |
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Sep 3, 2014 23:42
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