Lets close Gitmo Hooray!Follow

Yeah, the market for okra farming seminars really dried up in the '90s.

From thinking about stuff? Obvisouly I listen to opinions, and try to get data before making a judgement, and I follow the news, but fundamentally, I get my ideas from thinking them through.



That's good, I love Dostoievsky. Dostoievsky and German sheperds, two things we now have in common.



Well, that makes things even worse.



That's ok, insulting myself and other posters here is one of the things I do best.



In some ways it would be tempting.

I see what you mean, though. It's nice to see different points of view. It's nice to see things from another angle. I just think yours is on the verge of being retarded. But, having said that, I do appreciate that you take the time and effort to create new nicknames to continue posting here. I do admire your perseverance, even if it seems to verge on masochism sometimes. I've never called for you to be banned, or re-banned. Except the Bob marley thing, but that was a joke. I think freedom of speech is great. You excerice yours by saying stupid stuff, and me mine by insulting you. I'm not gonna lie, I do think you're a bit of a racist close-minded intolerant ****, but if I was forced to choose between having a drink with you or gbaji, I'd probably pick you. Mostly because I don't like people who talk too much, but also because I'm sure it'd be fun in a car-crash sort of way.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was specifically recalling the time where you told us some ******** on this very forum, and it turned out to be some copy and paste from some right-wing blog. That was it, a little nostalgic reminiscing.

The 'you people' generalizations aside, it sounds as if you and your family are living a comfortable middle-class life. So, why all the complaints?

See varus,

I guess I just don't understand how anyone who read dostoyevsky, hume, locke and others (and apparently liked them?) could have such political views. That's really my fault I guess, and perhaps the reason I didn't turn out the same way was because I read different people before reading those authors. I can easily see how locke might lend an interpretation to a highly decentralized and modern republican ideology...

But damn, just thinking about stuff like the underground man and his (extremely dense) rants against ethics and value, and hume's outright atheism and ethical glorification of nature, I just can't see how you form some of the opinions that you do.

So varus, just how did these guys inform your apparent hmm.. well I guess I'm more interested in your apparent xenophobia and narrow view of islam in particular.

Remember boys and girls, Islam is all about peace, not head lopping, ok? Muzzies are very peaceful, even the violent ones-- they just do their work with peace and harmony in their heart, all the while blaming their troubles-- err, correction: loving the evil Zionists and The Great Satan for their troubles.

/hug

We should all <3 us some Muzzie extremist idealogy cuz it'll make us peaceful too, see? Learn by example, children!

Totem

I thought you were in africa and didn't have internet. How is it there anyway?

The ****?



I'll clarify.

You aren't -worse- than terrorists, but it sounded nice with the sentence structure to say that. What I thought you would see from that tirade of mine is that I believe that governments are as bad as terrorists in terms of brutality. There is something to be said for the alternatives, however. If I am right that terrorism is a final resort among the people otherwise inept at fighting a war, then if someone is to fight at all, then terrorism is necessary. Such tactics are not necessary for an established nation state that has an army.

Now, we might be able to make an argument for governments being worse than terrorists in the outcome of conflicts as well. If someone is so disenfranchised as to need to resort to terrorism, then they are probably so disillusioned and so absolutely um... warped in their perception of their own state that their very livelihood is threatened by the oppressor. In such a case, extreme means are (arguably) justified to preserve one's way of life.

Before you respond to any of this, notice the premise please. If terrorism is not the tool of the oppressed, then the conclusions do not follow. I am of course presenting a highly Romantic ideal of terrorism as a weapon of necessity; it might not be the case that this is true.

So you feel you shouldn't be taxed at all?


Where do you expect the government to get any money from at all?

Where do you think they recruit from? I'm talking about a cycle of violence going on in some nations. A small group of people decide that they don't like "the rules", and fight against them using tactics of violence and fear. This creates backlash both domestically and internationally, adding to the poverty and oppression of those living in proximity. This in turn makes recruitment of the next generation of fighters that much easier.

Are those potential recruits poor and oppressed because of the actions of the very people they are joining, or because of those who fight to maintain "the rules"? Would they be better off if the latter group stopped?

It's a bit of a chicken and egg question, isn't it? The problem is what will make that small angry group stop doing violence? Will they stop if they are allowed to live free of rules? Will they stop only if they gain control of their own country? Will they only stop when the entire world acts and believes as they do? An historical look at countries like Afghanistan, Iran, and the Palestinian territories gives us a pretty decent guess. Historically, groups like that *don't* stop when allowed to "win". They keep doing what they did to gain power. Leaving them alone just increases the scale of their violence. It generally doesn't stop it.



Let's make a distinction between "terrorists" and "unlawful combatants". While there's certainly a lot of overlap (especially in recent context), and unfortunately, the term "terrorists" gets over-applied, they really are different things.

Unlawful combatants are using tactics that would qualify as a method of desperation. They know they can't win against a larger and more powerful force by following the rules of war (ie: Geneva Conventions), so they don't. They hide among civilians to conduct attacks. Obviously, a group of terrorists will tend to use these tactics if they are in a situation to do so, but that's not actually the same as "terrorism". It's hard to say whether that's "romantic" or not though. If they're fighting said oppression with a goal of freeing "the people" from it, maybe. Unfortunately, it seems as though more often than not, their methods derive from their own sense of the value of "the people" (ie: expendable).

Terrorism is the use of violence (or fear of violence) by a person or group to impose political changes they cannot affect by legal means. The act itself does not make something terrorism. The objective of the act does. If the act is the objective, it's generally not terrorism. It may still be "unlawful", however. If I blow up a federal building because I like to blow up buildings, that's not terrorism. If I blow up a federal building because I want the federal government to change some policy, then it is terrorism.

When Hamas launches rockets into Israel, that's *not* terrorism. Not because they aren't attempting to affect political change, but because they are the "legal" authority in Gaza, and are technically in a state of war (they ripped up a cease fire agreement and began firing). However, hiding those rockets in civilian apartment buildings and transporting them by using ambulances falls under the heading of "unlawful combat" (violation of the Geneva Conventions).


So. To address your assumption, I'd say that terrorism is not strictly a tool of the oppressed. I'd suggest that the victims of oppression are often used as tools of terrorism, but those directing their actions are usually not oppressed themselves. They have political objectives and know that using angry/oppressed people as weapons is an effective way of obtaining them. OBL could not under any circumstances be identified as "oppressed", and I think you'll find a surprisingly high number of people who form the core leadership of terrorist groups tend to come from wealthy and educated backgrounds. Bankers, former politicians, wealthy businessmen, etc tend to form and lead these groups. The guys strapping the bombs to themselves tend to be the poor folk (funny how the same dynamic seems to apply on either side of "the rules").



IMO, the larger question isn't about the methods (although that's certainly relevant when considering whether someone can or should be detained at a place like Gitmo), but about goals. Regardless of how romantic the notion of a small band fighting for their cause may be, if their cause is to create a brutal regime in which they get to rule over everyone around them, then it's worth fighting against. And even more sadly, it seems as though the sort of tactics we're discussing tend to become institutionalized over time. The leaders of the moment realize that they hold relative power as a result of the fight itself and often don't want to "win". There's a whole lot of power when you can get someone to strap a bomb to themselves and set it off. The process of trying to get a movement like that to take a more responsible role is daunting at best. We've seen this in Palestine over and over. Whenever a group of leaders comes close to making a deal with Israel, another more radical group splinters off and continues the fight and the whole thing starts over.


I do think that it's dangerous to romanticize these sorts of acts. The problem is that it's exactly because we tend to have a soft spot for "revolutionaries" that many groups with far less admirable goals have adopted the techniques. They've figured out that if they fight using the methods of the revolutionary, they're far more likely to be viewed positively. Certainly, it increases their odds of people judging them by a double standard that gives them the edge. And so far, they've been right...

Expected this

Nope, it goes deeper than this. Let's clarify the premise it is not merely a tool of the oppressed, it is a tool of it but not just that

Now, we might be able to make an argument for governments being worse than terrorists in the outcome of conflicts as well. If someone is so disenfranchised as to need to resort to terrorism, then they are probably so disillusioned and so absolutely um... warped in their perception of their own state that their very livelihood is threatened by the oppressor. In such a case, extreme means are (arguably) justified to preserve one's way of life.

This is the premise. Let us read it a bit closer. The idea comes from what I know of Michal Waltzers just war theory concerning a "supreme emergency" A supreme emergency occurs when two countries or nations are at war (in the just war theory context (note, this categorization might make the entire argument irrelevant I will check it later) and one of them has an extreme advantage, so extreme that were the war to be won by the advantor, the loser's lives would be the best things taken from them, rather the loser loses his livelyhood: the very way of life of the culture.

this "supreme emergency was used as a justification for the bombing of residential german cities in ww2 btw, which was fine. But lets examine another caveat of the supreme emergency. You have to STOP the extreme tactics once yyour chance for defeat is over. Churchill didn't do this; he continued the bombing runs and should probably have been tried for war crimes. (Not like death.... but maybe a ton of reparations towards tthe new german country, instead of chopping it up into pieces.

****... if anyone was in a supreme emergency at that point, it would have been the germans. And that is a consequence of what shows when you ignore supreme emergencies. You get subjugated, your culture is torn in half between egotistical superpowers who want to use you as a proxy war, and the germans themselves harbor deep grudges against those on the other side. That's pretty ****** up man.

You can't justify torture like that. One person can not threaten your entire livelihood, only a LOT of people can do that, and you can't torture plurals of individuals. I suppose you could justify torturing the president of the country against which you were fighting to stop the war, if there was a supreme emergency there, but you couldn't kill him either. You can never go too far with that ****. It's a fine line to travel.

A lot of that was very meandering, so I'll go easy on you. I think your central premise (that suitably dire conditions allow for correspondingly vicious military methods, and gives them moral justification) is flawed, and contradicts your earlier statement on why Western governments should refrain from political brutality.

If the Western governments believe themselves to be in suitably dire conditions, by your logic, they are justified in illegally detaining and yes, torturing, potential terrorists. Your argument against this is that as the West is the stronger opponent, it cannot be threatened, and thus the torture is unjustified. Or that the theory can't be extended to torture to begin with. Except, it's the heads of state who decide if their nation is under threat or not, and if there's even a slight chance that a nuclear weapon could be detonated on their home ground, that's dire enough circumstances.

I'm not actually disagreeing with you on the torture section. I just think gbaji's right that you're holding double standards. You're excusing the violent and underhanded tactics of terrorists in the mid-East as the natural reaction to government oppression, while condemning the Western powers for reacting to the threat of terrorism in a violent and underhanded fashion. Not that America was being "oppressed" by terrorists to any extent, but they had definitely been given reason to believe they were under threat.

You either condemn both for engaging in underhanded tactics, or you excuse both for doing what is necessary. Anything else is just bias.

Edited, Feb 11th 2009 6:51am by zepoodle