Religion is Evil!

In a way, absolutely, given that they're in our position. Think about it for a moment. You're posing the question while ignoring the situation surrounding the issue. I don't think the Iranian government can make it clearer that they want Israel to disappear off the face of the Earth.What you are doing is you're making an argument in a vacuum. I've seen plenty of creationists try to do this. Make an argument ignoring everything else surrounding the issue.We don't really know if it was the US or Israeli that arranged the assassinations. But if it was the ISraelis, then they are justified for self preservation.

Sure, but who cares? Like, in addition to sounding like something racist - in the same way that it's at least a little anti-Semitic to say that someone is a Jew, and therefore "loves a good deal" or "is thrifty" - its completely banal. And it's much more accurate to say "East Asian cuisine features rice as a staple." Or even "rice is a staple of East Asian cultures."Conservatives go on and on about "political correctness", which basically means "hey, don't be such a fucking dick", but it's so tiresome to complain about the fact that there's a polite way and an impolite way (as well as an accurate way and an inaccurate way) to express a thought. So, sorry, but I just can't be bothered to join your conservative anti-PC pity party. If the worst thing that ever happens to you as a result of being a white person is that you have to watch your mouth about how you characterize minorities, you should could your blessings.

I don't think they had the best intentions. I think Israel killed Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan because they thought it was in the best interest of Israeli power to do so. That doesn't mean that I can't agree with the outcome.Largely, the reason I'm objectively pro-assassination is that it's an equalizer of coercive state power; a pauper can murder just as well as a President (and indeed, Presidents have proven just as vulnerable to assassination as paupers.) I would go so far to say that it's difficult to assassinate a great many people at once, simply because when its more than a plane-full of people or so, it's no longer an "assassination", it's a battle. So assassination as a power is somewhat self-limiting; assassins who become famous for killing people stop being effective assassins.So I don't see it as inconsistent. Some people, even with the best intentions, are on a path that will lead to the destruction of thousands or even millions. And they cannot be dissuaded except by the assassin's bullet. Certainly I'm suspicious whenever anyone claims the power of life and death for themselves. But the only plausible reason this man could have been a target of Mossad was that he was viewed to be instrumental in the Iranian nuclear weapons project. It's not like Israel seized on the opportunity to eliminate a vocal political opponent, because he wasn't one.Maybe you just have to have played through Assassin's Creed to know what I'm talking about, I dunno. Certainly playing the game was a watershed moment for my thoughts on assassination.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Oh, I see. You actually didn't understand what I meant by "suspicion."You've taken it to mean that I believe that when people in power do something and justify it for being for Reason X, we should immediately conclude that they're liars and that it's for Reason Y. What I meant was that when someone in power takes an action and claims that it's for the greater good, we should immediately suspect that it's for their own personal good, particularly if the only tangible benefit seems to be theirs. (For instance, to apply this reasoning to EvC, when moderators claim to take actions for the sake of the board, I frequently suspect that they're taking actions for the sake of insulating their own viewpoints from contradiction.)In this case, I'm more than suspicious about the motives of Mossad in the assassination, I'm actually quite convinced that they acted purely out of selfish interests. But, like I said, that doesn't mean that the greater good wasn't also served. And, most importantly, Mossad doesn't claim to act in the greater good.Your suspicion seems to be taking the form of suspecting that Israel of the CIA killed a nuclear scientist for no particular reason, and are now inventing his ties to Iranian weapons after the fact to justify it. But that leaves the question as to why this guy was targeted in the first place. Given the risks of failure (or even of success!), I'm forced to conclude, provisionally, that the CIA, or more likely Mossad, targeted this guy specifically because they did have some evidence that he was involved in Iranian weapons. But, hey, I could be wrong. I have been in the past. (I didn't think that the US would have rushed to war in Iraq without evidence of weapons, because what other reason would there be, but it turned out that there were a lot of other reasons.)

Maybe not ALL. But anyone who denies the holocaust in this day and age can not be all too bright.Edited by 1.61803, : No reason given.

Probably true. I think the more realistic possibility is that fundamentalist Islam takes further hold of Iran as it has in other countries, some such faiths already believe that it will take the nuclear annihilation of Israel to bring on Qiyamah, and Iran will develop a nuclear weapon and then give it to jihadists who will then deploy it against Israel. They will either believe that Allah will shield them from reprisal or that the can start the war by proxy and avoid culpability, or that it doesn't matter and bringing on the age of the 12th Imam is worth the sacrifice of their entire nation, a kind of society-wide suicide bomb.Outlandish? Maybe, but how much of the US's support for Israel is directly the result of evangelical belief that Israel has to exist so that the end of the world can happen? Just ask Buz.The notion that you can just expect religious fundamentalists to respond to the threat of mutually assured destruction is naive. If that were the case they wouldn't strap on dynamite vests. If al-Qaeda gets a nuclear weapon they will absolutely use it, and if Iran becomes able to produce nuclear weapons, why wouldn't they give them one, when doing so could only be to their benefit?

Or can be terribly racist. Or can be a politician pandering to a politically relevant group of poorly educated and/or extremely racist people.Again...do you (or Taz) believe that the leadership of Iran is suicidally stupid? I'm well aware of their stated opinions on Israel and Jews and the Holocaust, and I find those to be frankly irrelevant to the real consideration of whether a nuclear Iran is actually likely to initiate a nuclear holocaust. Does being stupid enough to fall for holocaust-denial suddenly translate to suicide?If North Korea isn't stupid/crazy enough to use nuclear weapons, why do you think that Iran would?It would also be fair to mention now that, even if a state simply supplied nuclear weapons to independent terrorist groups, the specific isotope profile from the resulting weapons is very easily traceable to its point of origination. If North Korea gave a nuke to a terrorist organization to use against the US, for example, we would very easily be able to tell that the weapon came from North Korea, which would then cease to exist as a habitable region of the Earth for some decades due to the massive US retaliatory strike. So too with Iran.

Ok, I will be the first to say i never want to find out.There is an old Arab proverb:There was a scorpion and a frog sitting on the bank of a river.
the scorpion saw that the frog wanted to cross the river and asked if he could get a ride. The frog said "No you will sting me." To which the scorpion replied, " No I won't if I do we will both drown.So the frog said ok. The scorpion climbed on the frog's back and just when they were in the exact middle of the river the scorpion stings the frog. Frog says, "Ouch, you stung me, why did you sting me? The scorpion says, " I am a scorpion dumb ass."

So the US is justified in assassinating Iranian scientists who they feel might be involved in weapons development and the Iranians are justified in assasinating US scientists who they think might be doing the same. Both sides think they are equally righteous and the whole thing escalates out of all proportion.......Isn't this how wars start? And the Israelis don't want the same of Iran? I think you are ignoring that the entire situation isn't as simple as good vs bad. You cannot reduce this to US/Israel = good and Iran = bad and then justify all sorts of activities on that simplistic basis. And any Iranian assassins that start kiling Israeli or US scientists will no doubt feel equally that they are the "goodies" fighting for self preservation and the others are the oppressor "baddies". Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Exactly how does "sacrifice yourself" equate to "sacrifice your entire society?" Because that's what we're talking about here, and I think there's a rather large disconnect. I think a young, zealous jihadist may be willing to sacrifice himself in a strike against an enemy he cannot hope to significantly harm otherwise, but that he would be unwilling to sacrifice his mother, his sister, his uncle, and all of his friends for the same cause.And again, we aren't dealing with some religious nutjob from off the street. We're talking about the leadership of Iran. Sure, they may be religious nutjobs themselves to varying degrees, but how many of them want to take an action that will result in the total destruction of Iran?After all, they could do that now. They could just invade Israel with everything they have, right now, and likely do an awful lot of damage at the cost of Iran's existence as an independent nation. If they're not crazy enough to assure their own destruction through normal means, why would they suddenly become crazy enough to do the same thing with nuclear weapons?And again: they cannot do "nuke by proxy." We can very easily tell where the nuclear material from a bomb originates, the best they could do would be to delay the annihilation of their nation be a few days. Right, and how many of those people have political power? Your paranoia aside, most people support Israel because Israel was set up after the Holocaust, and because Israel continues to play the antisemitism card for every single act of violence in Israel whether it fits or not, not because they feel the need to support Israel to make sure Jesus can come back. Most people agree that Buz and his buddies are insane.The notion that you can expect national leaders to treat their entire nation the same way a suicide bomber treats his own life is a total non-sequitur. It's frankly stupid. Did it ever occur to you that perhaps politicians might play up their opposition to an external enemy in order to unify support for their own power? Youre being an idiot. Sacrificing yourself isn't the same as sacrificing your entire nation. Al-Qaeda wants to set up a global Taliban-esque government, not get one of the most severe Islamist states that currently exist wiped off the map! Because within days we would know the nuke was provided by Iran, and then Iran would burn. All it takes are some fallout samples and a lab.

I prefer to argue via reason and logic, not old proverb.People used that same argument during the Cold War, you know. Somehow we seem to have avoided nuclear annihilation, because neither side wanted to be nuked. Seems in real life people can be smarter than freaking arachnids.

Hello Rahvin, I am glad this is the case. During the cold war in 1981 Israel bombed Iraq's nuclear facility.I would not be to surprised if they decided to do it to Iran.Despite logic and rhetoric, who is right and who is wrong.Again, I am thankful when cooler heads prevail. But can not help being a archaic cold war propagandized relic.Edmund Burke once said the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.Now again there we are again with those two words, Evil and good. I am glad the Good side came out on top during WWII. Arent you?

In the way that "willing to commit mass murder for your faith" equates to "willing to commit mass murder for your faith." I feel like you asked this already, and that I already answered it. Was there some part of the answer you didn't understand? Particularly note that I described at least three alternatives and you appear to have read only one of them. Maybe they say it was stolen. Maybe they say it was rogue elements in their own government. Maybe it is rogue elements in their own government who believe that the majority are too timid and afraid of a reprisal by Israel.I just don't understand your certainty that Iran, having produced a nuclear weapons program, won't ever ever supply al-Qaeda with a nuclear weapon. Why wouldn't they, when we know they supply al-Qaeda with weapons already? In the United States, we call those people "the Republican party." They do occasionally win elections, even the Presidency. Have you forgotten about the last president already? That's simply not accurate. Support for Israel in the United States is overwhelmingly a phenomenon of Christian religious conservatives, not concern about the plight of Jews:

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At a dinner addressed by the Israeli ambassador, a handful of Republican senators and the chairman of the Republican Party, Mr. Hagee read greetings from President Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and dispatched the crowd with a message for their representatives in Congress. Tell them to let Israel do their job of destroying the Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, Mr. Hagee said.

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He called the conflict a battle between good and evil and said support for Israel was God’s foreign policy.

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The next day he took the same message to the White House.

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Many conservative Christians say they believe that the president’s support for Israel fulfills a biblical injunction to protect the Jewish state, which some of them think will play a pivotal role in the second coming...Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, the founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and the Israeli government’s official goodwill ambassador to evangelicals, said the statements turned out to be superfluous because there was a groundswell of grass roots evangelical support.

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Mr. Eckstein said he had discovered the depth of that support when he ran television commercials on the Fox News Channel seeking donations. The response, mainly from evangelicals, burned out the call centers, Mr. Eckstein said. During the five-week war, his group added 30,000 new donors. Thanks to the influx of money, he said his organization has exceeded its income from the first 10 months of last year by 60 percent, putting it on track to pull in $80 million this year.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/washington/14israel.htmlUS support for Israel is primarily a result of Christian doomsday theology. And, what? I never occurred to you that both sides playing up their opposition to an external enemy to secure domestic power might result in an unwanted nuclear exchange anyway? It nearly happened to us, once; it's not unreasonable to suspect that it might happen in the Middle East. Indeed, the absence of any Middle Eastern John F. Kennedy would seem to make it a likelihood given two opposing nuclear powers in that region.Recall that everybody was sure that World War I was an impossibility, since the conflict would be so disastrous to all sides that it was completely irrational that the European powers would rush to war. Yet that's exactly what happened, in part because every side believed that it would never happen because the other side would back down. Incredibly irrational, mutually destructive conflicts do happen. Cooler heads do not always prevail.

And people tend to forget that thousands of nuclear weapons were deployed and detonated during the so-called "Cold War." You must be so truly ignorant of history not to know how close we came to oblivion. Naive, indeed.

Fair enough then. But we shouldn't just assume that the greater good was served, just because we'd like to think so. I'd like to think the world is better now, the threat of Iranian nuclear madness has been severely curtailed etc., but we'll probably never know if that is the case. Not quite, I assume whoever did it had reasons, but I see no reason to suppose they are necessarily reasons I'd agree with. I'm sure there are reasons to imprison innocent people in Guantanamo Bay without trial. It certainly sends a powerful message that American can almost act with impunity. And that might even turn out to be for the greater good, but on the other hand - I can't find myself exactly condoning the action and suspect it is more likely to just to help keep the power balance in favour of powerful American interests rather than being a deciding factor in fighting terrorism.I'm sure intimidating scientists from studying nuclear physics - or at least working officially as a nuclear physicist/engineer may hamper Iran in any number of ways, and that might be for the greater good of keeping them without nuclear weapons.And it certainly reminds Iran of where their 'rightful' place in the pecking order of international affairs is concerned. Of course, there is another series of questions that raises its head here.Who is making sure that this evidence is kosher, and not manufactured or otherwise erroneous? What's more, if the evidence is good - should there not be less bloody ways for dealing with someone who is illegally involved in nuclear weapon building? Unless we anticipate imminent completion of a deployable weapon, of course.I'm not trying to a bleeding heart here, just suggesting that assassination shouldn't just be assumed to have been the best decision, and the people making these decisions are necessarily above public scrutiny.I guess this, if it was evil at all, would be construed as a secular evil. I don't think we killed the guy because he was Shia. Ahh, who am I kidding, Phat's necromancy at least made for an interesting discussion even if it was doomed to spin wildly off topic.