World's Happiest People? You Gotta Be Kidding!

Thanks for your kind words, Buz. However, please don't misunderstand. I don't advocate isolationism in any way, shape or form. Historically that's one of the shortest roads to national ruin available, bar none. Sun Tzu noted around 510 BPE in the opening lines of his work that "The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected." Nothing in the history of humankind over the subsequent 2500 years has led to a refutation of this truism. Conventional force has quite important roles to play in national defense policy, especially for a superpower. These roles include power projection, SLOC control, etc, and the myriad other national interests in which direct application of force can be used. I merely pointed out that in guerrilla warfare - and especially in its modern global form - use of conventional force is generally inappropriate. "Peace through superior firepower" remains a valid military axiom when used in the proper context.Secondly, my post only discussed operational strategy and touched on tactical considerations. It didn't (nor was it intended) to describe grand strategy, wherein the use of force is secondary to a concerted effort to address the root causes, without which no resolution can be achieved. So I actually advocate something quite the opposite to the neo-isolationism preached by the New Right in the US.

Lets see, I agree that those verses are there in the Qur'an, although I can see that the OT also have similar verses (thx to Schrafinator who had pointed them out) so I guess we're on the same footing.While some of my misguided brothers may have taken their spirit of jihad too far (like the Bali bombers who had been sentenced to death or life imprisonment by the court), I can assure that the Qur'an teaches the Muslims to be always ready to fight:2:216 Warfare has been ordained for you, though it is hateful unto you; but it may happen that you hate a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that you love a thing which is bad for you. GOD knows, but you do not know....but not as aggressors,:2: 190 You may fight in the cause of GOD those who fight you, but do not aggress. GOD does not love the aggressors....and not against innocent people:5: 32 ...anyone who kills any person who had not committed murder or horrendous crimes, it shall be as if he killed all the people. And anyone who spares a life, it shall be as if he spared the lives of all the people...More here:
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Historically that's one of the shortest roads to national ruin available, bar none.

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Yes. This seems to be a big part of what turned the powerful and very advanced Islamic civilization of, say, Saladin's time, into the troubled nations we see in the mid-east today.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

Hmm, I would have put the cultural stagnation of the society further down the road - say around the time of Suleiman the Magnificent or maybe after Lepanto. Admittedly you could make the case that an expansionist culture like the early Arab/Islamic one started falling apart about the time they stopped expanding (Poitiers/Tours?), with the Great Schism. However, I submit that it wasn't until the Mongols sacked Baghdad and the collapse of the Abbasid Caliphate that the Islamic golden age ended - a hundred years after Saladin. Even then, there were several localized cultural revivals - the Moors in Spain until the reconquista, the Ubayyid renaissance in Egypt, etc.I think the modern problems with Islamic states are driven by more recent history and relicts of European colonialism - not to mention the Cold War.In any event, I was thinking more of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the fall of Byzantium, or the Shogunate period in Japan - probably the single most glaring example.

I wouldn't put the start of the fall at Saladin, either. I mentioned him as a reference to a good strong period of the civilization, not as the beginning of the end.I'd say it was during the rule of the Ottoman turks that things really went bad, weakening the empire and making it vulnerable to European colonialism. This is not much different than what you said.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

I haven't read the rest of this thread yet, I've just come across this reply. You're one scary freak, buz, based on the evidence presented in this post.I hope it isn't too obvious to point out, in the context of my post that you replied to, that were we to take your candidate city for the capital of Terrorism, that would not mean the end of terrorism. Surely you agree, right? In fact, it would almost certainly spawn more terrorism.Which is my point that the phrase "War on Terror" is, at best, misleading. War mentality, if we follow your example, would backfire and lead to more terrorism.This is OBVIOUS. I'm sure you understand the point. If you don't, God help you, you're dense. But I'm sure you do.In which case, why did you post this reply? Just because you take any chance at all to spout hateful, ethnocentric rhetoric against another faith? I don't get it.

Heck, I'm still curious as to how Israel's doing. I mean... they've been responding to terrorist attacks with swift, brutal vengeance for years now. They must have solved that whole Palestine imbroglio with those tactics, right?

While your post was well put together Quetzal, I am in near total disagreement.I think "criminal" is the best term for any terrorist. "Combatant" has a totally different meaning and one which I don't think is useful to apply in this situation.From a pragmatic standpoint, there are wars and there are actions of violence. The first is fought for what one could call "honest" reasons. It is an action by a large and identifiable collective, against another for some specific gain. They follow certain rules and tempos.The latter (acts of violence) can be conducted by ANYONE. And I do mean any ONE.While Al-Queda may have sponsored 9-11 it could very well have been executed by 19 disgruntled employees of airline companies. It was 19 men with knives and boxcutters. That is it. There was no follow up actions to continue "gaining ground" toward a final victory of set conditions.In Oklahoma 2 men with no backing managed to bring down an entire federal building.One man could just as easily have done it. In fact individuals have commited acts of terrorism at abortion clinics using bombs and guns.Terrorism comes from within one's one country as well as without. It is simply the use of sudden/violent action to shock and terrify some other group.Since this falls clearly outside "rules of war" what is the point of elevating its legitimacy (or purpose) by calling it war? And how then does bringing the military into the picture solve anything?You say the agencies which go after criminals are not the appropriate agencies to respond to terrorism. How so?Generally with every terrorist act the lines of "who dunnit?" must be determined and mapped. The military does not have the best training and resources to handle this.In most cases those involved are not in forces too large for law enforcement agencies to handle. When it turns out that they are, or outside of an organization's jurisdiction, only at that time would it make sense to bring in military forces as an aid.I would like a clearer explanation of how considering every terrorist act an act of "war" would have helped any recent act of terrorism we had to deal with... particularly those where the terrorists were internal to the US.I believe labelling such acts as "criminal" also help define the concept of "war crimes". If terrorism is simply an act of war, then once war occurs anything is allowed? I would think not, and it would be convenient to be able to point to a commander or company and say their actions XY and Z made them criminal, while their comrades also killing in wartime was something different.As a final note, the Patriot Act is unnecessary, even if law enforcement is the correct force to be used against terrorists. It is based on the attractive, if false, idea that pre-emptive action against terrorism in all of its forms (or most of them) is possible. Law enforcement is best utilized as point defense or pursuit of criminals after a crime has been commited. Thus considering terrorists as criminals has no necessary link to the Patriot Act's existence.------------------
holmes

I think we're in total agreement here. I misread your reference to Saladin, since that was one of the real high-water marks of Arabic Islam.Good thing, too, 'cause now I've got to deal with what Holmes wrote, and that's gonna take a bit of effort.

Hi Holmes:Great response. Gimme some time (and a different thread) to come up with a reasonable answer?

Seems that the original theme had to do with happiness, and it's causes.Adminnemooseus------------------
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I haven't read the rest of this thread yet, I've just come across this reply. You're one scary freak, buz, based on the evidence presented in this post.

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"Scary freak?" Kind of an off the cuff insultive pot shot on the basis of one post, don't you think? Why don't you open your own "poster potshot" thread in the freeforall? In the meantime, I suggest you read up on some pretty "scary" stuff in the life history of the prophet Muhammed and "scary" statements he wrote in his book concerning his prescribed treatment for those who refuse to espouse his religion. If you then still consider buz to be this "scary freak," open a thread to refute my statements in post #55.

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In the meantime, I suggest you read up on some pretty "scary" stuff in the life history of the prophet Muhammed and "scary" statements he wrote in his book concerning his prescribed treatment for those who refuse to espouse his religion.

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Yeah, I agree. Damned scary.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

The scariest part is that you think post 55 contains statements worthy of refutation.My post was about how your statements were irrelevant to my point, and seemed to be born of a deep desire to trash another culture rather than having any bearing on the discussion at hand.Religious extremism occurs in the history of all great religions. (Maybe not Buddhism...any scary Buddhists I'm not remembering?). You're blind to the shortcomings of your own religion and blind to the achievments of Islam, no better than your Islamic counterparts who vilify Jews and Christians.This is my last post on this, as even my post was veering off-topic, and your post got off the wrong exit entirely.P.S. "Scary freak" is pretty indefensible WRT guidelines. I apologize, I was taken aback by your hate rhetoric.[This message has been edited by Zhimbo, 10-08-2003]

Not to continue an off topic thread, but just wanted to mention Aum Shinrikyo (the Tokya sarin gas group?) From: http://www.apologeticsindex.org/a06.htmlThey seem to be a fundamentalist conglomeration of Hinduism and Buddhism.------------------
Asgara
"An unexamined life is not worth living" Socrates via Plato