Baalthazaq said:
Therumancer said:
Unless your use of "plenty" is less than your usage of "some", you have no clue what you're talking about, and the previous posts already refute you. Similarly with your analysis of the UK. Similarly with the analysis of the mid east.
You have an opinion in the face of the facts. Not because of them. I have provided facts based on what is pertinent to the discussion. You have not. You have cowardly , and dishonestly retreated from them and then restated unbacked hypothesis as the truth.
The evidence is in. I think I can happily leave you to your ignorance. Anyone interested in learning about the middle east can read the previous posts. I'm not going to repeat myself a third time for the benefit of someone so unlikely to change their opinion in the face of the information.
Obviously if there wasn't two sides to this kind of thing we wouldn't be dealing with such major problems.
1) That's not true on any level.
"If there weren't two sides to X we wouldn't be having this problem"
So... the reason there are pedophiles is because there's credible debate on both sides?
No. It is perfectly reasonable that this could all be a colossal failure, not just because "there are two sides", but because one of those sides of the debate is horrifically in the wrong, and has been pushing the wrong policies (like invasions which increase terrorism by over a thousand percent, and kills tens of thousands).
Major problems? Read the post you're responding to. If Muslim terrorism (6% of the problem) is a "major problem" in the US, please address the other 94% or you won't have a country an hour from now.
Read the quote from the expert at the bottom, who in turn is quoting the raw data.
2) That one of those sides tried to restructure a country after being shown where the country was on a map on the flight over there, suggests that one of these sides is not based on fact.
One is quite frankly, a lie. If the people on that side knew what they were talking about or doing, this quagmire would have been avoided. As I said almost a decade ago [http://baalthazaq.blogspot.com/2009/02/iraq-war.html] without all this pesky "hindsight" certain politicians took to saying was necessary in recent years.
That part where you talk of how you're heroes trying to "play ball" with dictators but got tricked is bull. You sold Iraq everything they wanted. Looked the other way. Published false reports stating it was the Iranians gassing the kurds. Told people you'd support them if they rose up then left them to die. Even crippled democracies in favour of dictators you've supported. There is no truth to any of it other than to say you profited from the dictators, and fought them when you stopped profiting, and you continue to support those regimes *most* oppressive of its people (Saudi, there is no one more oppressive, you have no greater ally), because you profit.
If you're going to respond, at least make a post that isn't already refuted by my previous posts like you've done thus far. Re-imagining "many"s, "some"s and "plenty"s to mean anything from all to none does nothing but point to a dearth of information backing those statements.
They're called weasel words [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word] for a reason.
Actually you didn't refute anything. Your case mostly relies on "your wrong because I studied this for four years".
Generally speaking, the only real piece of evidence I'd have to present to back up my case would be to again put up links to things like Muslim television programming, which I have already done on this site. I didn't bother because you seemed to acknowlege the existance of such information, but are instead trying to argue the point that despite this we're dealing with a tiny, radical fringe of people.
In the end we're going to have to agree to disagre, people with strong opinions on big issues like this are not going to have their minds changed due to internet discussion.
What's more, again, your arguement is also nonsense. Your basic logic is that we should be leaving The Middle East alone, because there are other problems to be dealt with. The thing is that when you get down to it any problem on it's own is going to represent a relatively insignifigant amount of a large nation's total problems. Since you mentioned pedophillia (albiet in a differant context), that's an issue that also affects a small number of people, and is difficult to deal with because it gets into core societal values and civil liberties which would need to be violated in order to effectively address those people. In a society with strong citizen protection and a reactive policy on law enforcement, few people want to flat out say that crimes that that should represent an exception, especially given how it could snowball to other things. Discussions about chasing down pedophilles oftentimes comes down to questions about civil liberties, not in their right to abuse children, but in what can be done to hunt these people down, with a reactive system we pretty much rely on them making a mistake more than anything. Being a touchy subject people look at the issue and figure "well, let's leave this alone, and go work on something else that is less contreversial, it's a small percentage of the overall problems affecting our nation". That's what the gist of your defense here comes down to.
What's more you seem to be trying to make a case based entirely on the last 10 or so years when it comes to terrorism. This problem did not start with 9/11, it's been going on for decades before that. We also *DID* more or less ignore the problem, and try and find solutions that were far less extreme than taking down the entire culture in the region. While it back fired, that was the whole point of trying to back guys like Saddam.
On top of this saying things like "well it's only 6% of your problem" or something like that overlooks the entire fact that they tried to destroy the US goverment, and came pretty close. Had all the planes on 9/11 hit, the USA would not be anything like what it is now. An attempted decapitation strike means quite a bit, at least to some of us.
None of that is opinion, all of it happened, you might not like that, but it happens to be true.
See, the thing your not getting is that in this world there really isn't much that comes down to "good" and "evil". It's all about "us" or "them". In the end it doesn't much matter if you go back decades upon decades and find that maybe the USA started this, or that in absolute terms they are right. No more than it would matter if the people in The Middle East realized they were wrong. In the end it comes down to what we want being opposed to what they want, and as we've seen dialogue and measured response isn't going to deal with the problem. In the end one of us is going to be here, and the other one isn't. Right or wrong, I of course back my own side.
Now don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE for there to be a massive cultural reform throughout the region and for this to become a situation where we are dealing with a radical fringe. Sadly that's not the case. While there might be a very small percentage of actual fighters and terrorists, the problem isn't with them so much as the culture and set of ideals that creates those people.
If the cultures in The Middle East wanted to convince me that there was any validity to what your saying, the first thing they need to do is put a seperation of church and state into their constitution. At least plant the seeds. The second would be for them to institute women's sufferage, and at least get it to the point where women in positions of authority coming in from outside don't have to wear body tents (at all, not even occasionally) and can speak for themselves and be respected as the leaders they are.
It's not an opinion, but a rather clear fact, that the people of the region aren't remotely interested in seeing cultural reform. This is why it was a big deal when both the Afghanistan and Iraqi consitutions which were drafted fairly recently specified both nations to be "Islamic Nations". A lot was also said about how nothing radical was done to promote women's sufferage despite promises being made when we first entered the region.
As I said, we'll have to agree to disagree, but don't act like your spouting some kind of body of facts where I'm merely stating opinions. You might not like what I have to say, but that doesn't mean it's not right for that reason.
Most of what I've said can incidently be verified with some quick internet searches, and if you dig through my messages you'll probably find plenty of links on the subject.
