World's Happiest People? You Gotta Be Kidding!

doctrbill to buzsaw - "WWJD??????"Brian to doctrbill -

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Let me think..... Oh I got it, what does he normally do in such situations? I think he would fall back on the old trick of selecting a leader from the community, inform that leader to slaughter the enemy's innocent women and children and keep the innocent female children to themselves?

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I suppose he would have done the same as his ancestors and his God (i.e. Father - Jehovah but thankfully, he never got the chance. "Nipped in the Bud," so to speak.

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The Capitol city of terrorism is Mecca where the prophet Mohammed declared war on the planet commanding his followers to take up the sword and go all the way to global conquest just as he himself did to impose his religion on the people of his land.

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Where in the world does this come from? Who says that the followers of Mohammed have to conquor the world? Are you taking verses from the Quran out of context? Are you reading literature by some extremist minority? If the latter, is this group Muslim or Christian?

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Where in the world does this come from? Who says that the followers of Mohammed have to conquor the world? Are you taking verses from the Quran out of context? Are you reading literature by some extremist minority? If the latter, is this group Muslim or Christian?

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To respond adequately to your question would require another new topic which I don't have time for, but the following verses from the Koran give you an idea of what I'm talking about. Please note especially, the words of the last verse here, where Mohammed declares that the killing war of violence will go on against infidels until all religion belongs to god, referring, of course to Allah.Herein lies the explanation for terrorism and Jihad, all the way from Jerusalem to Nigeria to the Twin Towers of our own nation. These terrorists are not madmen. They are the devoutest of the devout, close enough to the prophet and his book to sacrifice their very own precious lives for the stated ultimate goal of their beloved prophet and his/their god, Allah, as well as the reward promised to them in his book for that ultimate sacrifice!

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II.161: Surely those who disbelieve and die while they are disbelievers, these it is on whom is the curse of Allah and the angels and men all;

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IX. 5-6: Kill those who join other gods with God wherever you may find them.

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IV.76: Those who believe fight in the cause of God.

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IV.74: Let those who fight in the cause of God who barter the life of this world for that which is to come; for whoever fights on God's path, whether he is killed or triumphs, We will give him a handsome reward.

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VIII.39-42: Say to the Infidels: if they desist from their unbelief, what is now past shall be forgiven; but if they return to it, they have already before them the doom of the ancients! Fight then against them till strife be at an end, and the religion be all of it God's.

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I imagine the unmodernized Aborigines of Australia are probably the happiest people.I read once that with their simple life style and skills of liveing off the land that normally no more than 2 hours are used to find food for that day.The rest of the time can be used for following ones bliss.........I'll take a little Louisianna Hot Sauce on my Grubb.

Idiotic government rhetoric aside (is that redundant?), I'm not sure I agree with this: I understand your point, and why you addressed Buz in this context. However, I disagree with the contention that combating terrorism is not "war", and that terrorists generically are "criminals" rather than combatants. Admittedly, I'm coming at the question from a security policy and military history standpoint, which may lend a different perspective. I would also like to eliminate the semantically laden word "terrorist" from the lexicon. The definition of terrorism, as a friend of mine once put it, all depends on whose ox is being gored.It is certainly not war in the classical, Clauswitzian sense. There are no battle lines, no national boundaries, no fixed objectives; no flags, no uniforms, and the distinction between combatant and noncombatant blurs to meaninglessness. Tanks, infantry, and aircraft carriers - all the great panoply and pride of a modern superpower - are useless. The ability to deploy massive, overwhelming conventional force is actually a handicap - a lesson that the US didn't learn in Vietnam, and that the Israelis seem incapable of learning. The US is still apparently unable to take the lesson to heart, as Afghanistan and Iraq both eloquently demonstrate. You can't bomb a cloud.It remains, nonetheless, a war. It is a form of war that can effectively be waged, although arguably never definitively "won". In the modern world, waging this type of war requires computers, high-speed communications, comprehensive and highly sophisticated intelligence (both technical and the much-maligned and oft-neglected humint), and also well-trained, specialized military units capable of rapid deployment and precision, deadly surgical strikes. It isn't a war of pistols at thirty paces. It's a war of the knife in the dark. For one example, as the "terrorists" are not respectors of national sovreignty, and in fact have no fixed national address as it were, those nations seeking to oppose them must also - at least at times, and after very careful risk-vs-gain analysis - ignore national boundaries, territories and sovreignty. (Please note: surgical strike does not equate to carpet bombing some neighborhood in someone else's country - like the Israeli's did at Hammam Lif, Tunisia, in the late '80s.) All of which, btw, are anathema to Western and especially US mindsets. The US particularly, if I may be permitted a gross overgeneralization, has a national self-image that is ill-equipped to deal with this. We simply don't accept that kind of thing. We even have an executive order, EO 12333, that has been re-signed annually by every president since at least Richard Nixon that specifically prohibits the US from engaging in this type of activity. Which, unfortunately, means that we engage in utterly inappropriate and ultimately counterproductive actions like Afghanistan, the bombing of Libya and Sudan, and (ostensibly, at least) the invasion of Iraq."Terrorism" is merely guerrilla war writ large in a transnational or even global context. The practitioners, tactics and ideological motivations are different, but the premise is the same: a small group waging unconventional war against a larger - in this case a nation. It isn't even a new phenomenon, even though we arrogantly think so. Military historian Caleb Carr's most recent book, "The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians" (as an aside: a book given to me on my birthday last year by my wife - whose masters degree in International Security Policy lends at least SOME authority to her choices) makes a convincing albeit somewhat lacking in detail case tracing the use of this tactic back almost to the first people who picked up rocks to throw at each other. However, for a truly comprehensive look, try Robert Asprey's monumental "War in the Shadows: The Guerrilla in History". The parallels between both classic and "unconventional" guerrilla warfare and so-called terrorism are striking and blindingly obvious with a little study.So to wrap up my point: "terrorists" are not criminals. They are combatants, and in some cases quite sophisticated combatants, in an unconventional war. Law enforcement agencies are totally unequal to dealing with them - they have neither the training, equipment or ability. Nor, thank the powers that be, do they in most cases have the mandate to do so. The Patriot Act is scary not only for the severe erosion of civil liberties it entails, but also in that it is probably doomed to failure because it empowers the wrong organizations - law enforcement - to deal with an issue they are not organized to handle. It shows that the US has STILL not learned, in spite of government rhetoric, that we are in fact in a war in every sense of the word. Treating these guerrillas as criminals will perpetuate the error.

Maybe, maybe not. Some wounds go too deep to heal.But hey, I'll still get into debates with you Buz. Just don't expect me to convert This is the Rock Hound, signing off now...

I can connect the dots just fine, Buz. The thing is, I'm connecting a lot more dots than you are. I'm connecting the dot of modern Islamic extremism with the Christian-led free-market idolization of the past century. I'm connecting American casualties in this country with American actions in other countries.History doesn't happen in a vacuum. You have to connect all the dots. When you do you see that there's enough blame to go around, enough culpability on the shoulders of both Christian consumerists and Islamic extremeists. Because one ridiculous fairy-tale religion is the same as another, to me.

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Er, & when did the evilutionists threaten to dominate thought, activity, & free speech? As far as I was aware you are perfectly free to think & speak any way you like? What attempt have evolutionists made to assaut the constitution in this way?

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I think you misread what Buz wrote, Mark.He is comparing Evolutionists with Muslims, and saying that it's the Muslims who are striving to dominate the planet.The Evolutionists strive only to dominate the American educational system.I suppose we Evolutionists are striving for such domination, just like the Germ Theory of Diseaseists, the Atomic Theory of Matterists, and the Heliocentric Solar Systemists are, wouldn't you agree?

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The Capitol city of terrorism is Mecca

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Oh?Timothy McVeigh was Islamic?I didn't realise that the Ku Klux Klan was an Islamic organization, either.[This message has been edited by schrafinator, 10-06-2003]

I will also mention here, with regards to terrorism, that the US refuses to stop using cluster bombs and also refuses to sign an anti-land mine treaty.

...and Ariel Sharon must be a Muslim too. How else do we explain his holding office despite a record of well-documented war crimes? Surely the Muslim-controlled U.N. would condemn him unless he were a member of the conspiracy.

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There is a capitol city on terrorism and Israel is the only nation in the world who reslly realizes this.

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Out of curiosity... that whole "responding to acts of terror with brutal, indiscriminate violence" thing... how's that working out for Israel?

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II.161: Surely those who disbelieve and die while they are disbelievers, these it is on whom is the curse of Allah and the angels and men all;

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IX. 5-6: Kill those who join other gods with God wherever you may find them.

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IV.76: Those who believe fight in the cause of God.

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IV.74: Let those who fight in the cause of God who barter the life of this world for that which is to come; for whoever fights on God's path, whether he is killed or triumphs, We will give him a handsome reward.

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VIII.39-42: Say to the Infidels: if they desist from their unbelief, what is now past shall be forgiven; but if they return to it, they have already before them the doom of the ancients! Fight then against them till strife be at an end, and the religion be all of it God's.

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Oh, good heavens! I can find verses like this in the Christian Bible! But you'll accuse me of misinterpreting or taking the verses out of context. Which is what I'm accusing you of doing. Besides just digging up random verses, or taking the statements of extremist organizations, what evidence do you have that it is part of generally accepted Islamic teaching to wage violent war on the West for world domination?

Exodus 22:20
He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed.And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? ... Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.-- Numbers 31:15-19Note: It's worth reading this entire chapter of Numbers. It goes into great detail about what terrible things Moses and the Israelites did to the Midianites, all of which was commanded by the LORD.And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain.-- Deut 2:34And we utterly destroyed them, ... utterly destroying the men, women, and children, of every city.--Deut 3:6I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.--eut 5:9And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them.--Deut 7:2And thou shalt consume all the people which the LORD thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them.--Deut 7:16Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword.--Deut 13:15And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: But the women ... shalt thou take unto thyself.--Deut 20:13-14But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth.--Deut 20:16-17If I whet my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward them that hate me. I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh.--Deut 32:41-42He smote all the house of Jeroboam; he left not to Jeroboam any that breathed, until he had destroyed him, according unto the saying of the LORD.--I Kings 15:29Elisha prayed unto the LORD, and said, Smite this people, I pray thee, with blindness. And he smote them with blindness according to the word of Elisha.--II Kings 6:18And when he came to Samaria, he slew all that remained unto Ahab in Samaria, till he had destroyed him, according to the saying of the LORD-- II Kings 10:17The angel of the LORD went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.--II Kings 19:35And he brought out the people that were in it, and cut them with saws, and with harrows of iron, and with axes. Even so dealt David with all the cities of the children of Ammon.--I Chronicles 20:3So the LORD sent pestilence upon Israel: and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men.--I Chronicles 21:14Whosoever would not seek the LORD God of Israel should be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman.--II Chronicles 15:13The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.--Psalms 58:10That thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and the tongue of thy dogs in the same.--Pslams 68:23Wherefore hath the LORD pronounced all this great evil against us? or what is our iniquity? or what is our sin that we have committed against the LORD our God? Then shalt thou say unto them, Because your fathers have forsaken me, saith the LORD.-- Jeremiah 16:10-11Cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.-- Jeremiah 48:10When a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumbling-block before him, he shall die: because thou hast not given him warning, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he hath done shall not be remembered.--Ezekiel
3:20And it shall come to pass, that when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the LORD: and his father and his mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he prophesieth.--Zechariah 13:3Almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.--Hebrews 9:22

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It remains, nonetheless, a war. It is a form of war that can effectively be waged, although arguably never definitively "won". In the modern world, waging this type of war requires computers, high-speed communications, comprehensive and highly sophisticated intelligence (both technical and the much-maligned and oft-neglected humint), and also well-trained, specialized military units capable of rapid deployment and precision, deadly surgical strikes. It isn't a war of pistols at thirty paces. It's a war of the knife in the dark. For one example, as the "terrorists" are not respectors of national sovreignty, and in fact have no fixed national address as it were, those nations seeking to oppose them must also - at least at times, and after very careful risk-vs-gain analysis - ignore national boundaries, territories and sovreignty.

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Profoundly and masterfully thought out, Quetzal. Had we learned these lessons we could've kept 99% of our military hardware and people home from foreign soil all these decades.