Innocence Riots

Yeah, but that's not the stuff they're mad about. They're mad about that the US staged 9/11 as an excuse to seize the mineral wealth of Afghanistan and Iraq. They're mad about that the US conspires with Israel to economically and intellectually impoverish the nations of the Muslim world. They're mad that the US kidnaps children off the street and tortures them just for fun. They're mad that it's the official policy of the United States to advance the forces of Satan against the one, true religion of Islam.In other words, most of what they're mad about are things we can't convince them we're not doing, even if we stopped dropping bombs from drones and started dropping flowers. The rage of the Muslim world against the United States is as much a product of conspiracy theory - theories promoted by local leaders who find it helpful to gin up anti-American rage to distract from their own corruption and mismanagement - as it is our actual actions."Since launching the war on terror", except, we didn't launch the war on terror. Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda did. Our embassies were under attack long before 9/11, long before drones, long before intervention in Libya and Pakistan. Long before sanctions. All of the above were a response to the destructive violence pouring out of the Muslim world directed at innocent Americans. It's probably the case that it was the wrong response, but you can't argue that we're responsible for what's going on over there.

And that justifies murder, how?I think you risk infantilizing the Muslims of the world when you say "oh, they can't help but storm our embassies and kill, after the shit we've done to them." No, they can help it. Sure. But it has a long and undignified record in Europe and Asia, as well. But it wasn't the Russians who killed thousands on 9/11. It's not the Germans now storming our embassies to kill in the name of their God. For whatever reason, the usual dirty-but-necessary statecraft that every nation, including those of the Muslim world, is engaged in only "blows back" from Muslims in the middle east.Because it isn't, in fact, blowback at all. It's the result of decades of Muslim-world leaders fomenting anti-Americanism.

So if we stopped, would they believe us? If it really goes back that far?If we retreated in every respect from involvement in the Middle East, wouldn't they just see that as the next level of deception? If they're already prepared to blame us for using our earthquake machine on Turkey and Pakistan, why would they believe us if we left?

How shall we deal with it? If you plot attacks against the people of the United States least able to defend themselves, and hide yourself among a civilian population so that they may serve as hostages and human shields to give us pause against reprisal, who is actually responsible for those deaths?Like I said before, I don't envy those that have to solve the moral calculus that puts the lives of potentially thousands of Americans against the lives of Yemeni children. But it's not by our choice that we're put in that position. That really sucks. But we've not gone into those countries spoiling for a fight. We're there because those nations are either unwilling or unable to meet their obligation to restrain their own worst citizens. Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Off-topic banner.

Um, quite to the contrary. Charlie Hebdo gets death threats every time they publish one of his Mohammed-depicting cartoons. Quite targeted against him, specifically, and everybody involved in publishing the newspaper.I mean it's not like Hebdo and his colleagues don't have reason to believe that they're "gettable." They murdered Theo van Gogh on the streets of Amsterdam, in broad daylight. I don't understand why you believe that Hebdo is "behind cover." Your own link details a Jihadist bombing right in downtown Paris. I don't think anyplace is "cover" from these guys, in the sense that you think it is.

You're right, we need mind-control and psy-ops to convince our enemies to love us. That will sure rehabilitate our image! I kid, but my point is that it's trivial to construe genuine efforts to win hearts and minds as pernicious propaganda and psychological manipulation if you're already inclined to view those efforts in bad faith.You've never been an asshole, so let me explain to you what it's like. Once everybody thinks you're an asshole, they interpret everything you do as assholish. Even when you're being nice, they assume you're doing it sarcastically or with some hidden agenda or ulterior asshole motive. There's just no way to convince someone you're not an asshole at that point because any effort you make to do so simply proves what an asshole you actually are.Look, if you've got a plan, I'd like to hear it. But you admit that you really don't. Well, here's another plan - exact such an incredible toll on those who would threaten us that nobody dares do so. It has it's obvious downsides, yes. I'd love to hear workable alternatives that don't rely on magic, aren't predicated on the very conditions they're meant to create (good faith attitudes towards the US in the Muslim world), and aren't just relying on someone smarter to solve all of our problems.

They're not putting anybody at risk, caffeine. They're publishing cartoons. Their offices weren't firebombed by an act of nature or by forces outside of human control. They were firebombed by barbarians who believe that all must live as though Islam is true, and because Islam is true, blasphemy against the Prophet is a crime to be punished by death.The people who are putting others at risk are the extremists who believe that cartoons justify murder. But I don't see any opprobrium in your post for the murderous extremists who enforce censorship by death and the threat of death. This is, frankly, incredibly offensive and pusillanimous. The publishers of Charlie Hebdo haven't put even a single person at risk. I think the publishers of Charlie Hebdo and the rest of the French citizenry have the right to expect - and demand - that the reaction to publication should be, at worst, "I find that offensive but it's your right to publish it." Sorry if that seems insensitive but French citizens absolutely have that right and Muslims who reside within France and elsewhere are obligated to have that response. That they instead chose violence is not the fault of Charlie Hebdo or anyone but themselves, and it's an act of the most extreme and offensive racism, on your part, to say "oh, what did they expect, everybody knows that Muslims respond to blasphemy with murder."

So you say, but what's the evidence that this is actually true or significant? Who was the terrorist who was just a regular guy until he was radicalized by the collateral damage of a US attack? No, you can't be upset about it. But neither can you afford to hold the delusion that anyone is ever going to see you differently. Once they start interpreting your actions as being those of an asshole, it's impossible to get them to stop. US disengagement from the Muslim world would just be assumed to be a ruse. US aid would be assumed to be a trick (as it currently is.) And we'd continue to be blamed for every misfortune in the Muslim world, due to our obvious and readily-apparent alliance with Satan.What would convince militant Muslims that the US was no longer a threat would be the armed overthrow of the US government and the installation of sharia law. I'm not one who fears that's even possible (that's absurd.) But that's the only "win condition" for our enemies. Could Hitler have ever done anything that would have made you love him, and forget about the Holocaust? That's who we are to those people. The very forces of evil.

I'm sorry, but this is victim-blaming. People in the West have free speech - full stop. People in the West have a right to blaspheme a religion - full stop. It's not wrong to publish a cartoon with Mohammed's naked butthole, or with a turban shaped like a bomb. It's wrong to kill and threaten to kill to intimidate people from doing those things. And it's wrong, as you and caffeine do, to build a false equivalency between blasphemy and murder.There's absolutely no difference between what you're saying, and the people who excuse rape because of what the woman chose to wear to the club. Women get raped, and embassies bombed, because of the actions of rapists and bombers. Not because of the actions of clubbers and cartoonists.

There's no such thing as "speech that you know will incite others to violence." People aren't puppets, they're understood to be able to make choices, and we obligate people to make the choice not to respond violently to provocation. Even religious provocation. If people decide to make a different choice, that's entirely on them."Don't be a dick" (aka "Wheaton's Law") is my watchword. But it's being more of a dick - much more - to kill innocents because of religious offense than it is to cause religious offense in the first place. Neither the "Innocence of Muslims" filmmaker nor the publishers of Charlie Hebdo were under any moral obligation not to offend Muslims. Sure, sure. The IoM film was meant to inflame Muslims to murderous intent. But maybe we should be more concerned about what it means for them to have been able to predict that so accurately, and why so few people's first impulse is to say "you know, maybe the problem here is with extremist Islam, not with people who make stupid YouTube videos."

I don't think I, or anybody, was arguing that Charlie Hebdo isn't responsible for publishing an offensive cartoon about the Prophet Mohammed or that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula isn't responsible for producing a offensive movie about the life of Mohammed.Beyond that, could you clarify what they're supposed to be responsible for?

You say that it's wrong, but your post contains no indication that you expect people not to do it. Oh, obviously. On a similar principle, women who dress provocatively in public should expect to get raped, because when crimes are predictable, the responsibility lies with the victims.

I certainly believe blasphemy is an unalterable right. I believe that people have a right to exercise their rights without physical intimidation, because that's a necessary condition for a civilized society. Because it's reasonable to expect that people will respond to a fire alarm by charging for the exits, a situation where people can get hurt. (Of course it's more reasonable to expect a theater to provide for safe egress in an emergency situation, but I digress.) Because it's right for people, in a crowded theater on fire, to try to escape.It's not reasonable to expect that people will respond to blasphemy with murder, because it's not right for them to do so. We actually can expect, and demand, that people will respond to insults to their religion by saying "I find that incredibly offensive, but it's nothing to kill about." Same as a woman provocatively dressed in a night club can expect, and demand, that she not be subject to sexual assault.But what you're saying is that, because Muslims time and time again respond to the slightest provocation with murder, we can no longer expect them to do anything but murder in response to provocation. I fundamentally reject that. That's the logic of the abuser. We're not required to act like Muslims are barbarians. We're required to act like Muslims are subject to the same laws and obligations as the rest of civilized people, not just say "well, they're not gonna," and throw up our hands in defeat. It's a deeply offensive "soft bigotry of low expectations" to say "well, of course they're going to kill some Jews because of a cartoon, they're Muslims, stupid!"

I can only respond to the views you put forward in your post. If you believe I'm responding to views that you don't hold, then I would wonder why you're communicating what appears to be those views, and why you've chosen to ignore questions that I asked in order to clarify your views, for instance:

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I don't think I, or anybody, was arguing that Charlie Hebdo isn't responsible for publishing an offensive cartoon about the Prophet Mohammed or that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula isn't responsible for producing a offensive movie about the life of Mohammed.

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Beyond that, could you clarify what they're supposed to be responsible for?

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People have a right to free speech - full stop. That's what I believe. If that's true, why is it that the only thing they're asking for are laws in the US to prevent this kind of blasphemy? If this is all a pretext, where's the payoff? They're not asking for an end to drone strikes. They're not asking for an end to exploitation. They're asking for an end to religious offense.

Quite to the contrary. We certainly can expect, and demand, that people not respond to religious blasphemy with murder. And if they won't respond that way the solution is not for us to curtail our own rights and tiptoe around their anger - that's abuser's logic. The solution is to refuse to accept their violence response. To refuse to excuse it. To refuse to say "well, they're Muslims, what did you expect." We must continue to expect better, to demand better, and if they won't, then they must be made to. There's nothing "inexplicable" about it. It makes perfect sense - they can get what they want, via murder and the threat of murder, and apologists like yourself will be sure to put all the blame on their victims. The only inexplicable reaction here is yours, Percy's, and Caffeine's.