Later
roosevelt dimes

(and why, pray tell, the scare quotes? Do you really think we don’t have an enemy today?)

No, it’s because I think there is some confusion among us about just who “the enemy” is. Muslims or islamic fundamentalists or islamic fundamentalist terrorists or all terrorists? So I wanted to be all-inclusive, as in ” ‘the enemy’, however he may be defined.”.

It is fairly clear from the best evidence we have that these practices occurred, but were not routine.

Ok, to you and Alex I ask, how are we ever going to agree on a definition this word routine?

I think we can all agree that context is important, so why not start with the report Hertzberg was describing. Let’s say you were one of the prisoners described in the military’s report. You are picked up driving a taxi, then locked in isolation with your hands chained above your head, and over the course of the next several days of interrogation you are repeatedly beaten on the legs.

(Note: A soldier in the report is quoted as saying the leg beatings were “kind of an accepted thing”.)

When you start coughing up phlegm and complaining of chest pains, your interrogators laugh at you. Eventually your dead body is discovered hanging from the ceiling.

Another prisoner was beaten on the legs so hard and so often that after he died his injuries were compared to someone who had been run over by a bus. If you were one of those prisoners, would you consider that “routine” torture? I would. If you wouldn’t I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that point.

If Hertzberg is going to use a word like “routine,” it is his responsibility to justify it very carefully…

Fair enough. I can assume he read the report to which he was referring. Have you? What about our responsibility as readers to read the report he was referring to before we start attacking it as unjustified?

The phrase [”We have to be respectful of Muslim sensibilities and Muslim beliefs…”] was a sloppy one (as was the phrase “routine”).”

I’m sorry, when taken in context I fail to see how either phrase is “sloppy”, or “intentionally misleading” (as you characterized the latter).

Rather what I see as obviously sloppy and misleading is your taking those phrases out of context.

There are all sorts of similar human rights abuses tied to that particular religion. No, they are not universal–and perhaps, to coin a phrase, they are not even routine. But they certainly cannot be considered okay merely because they are part of a religion.

It amazes me that a point so simple–and to which I’d imagine most people would subscribe–generates so much controversy.

Not only a simple point but banal as well - who ever said we have to consider human rights abuses ok simply because they are part of a religion? Certainly not Hertzberg (oh right, it’s not about him, I keep forgetting), and sure, you can dig up some paper by a sociologist arguing for multi-culturalism somewhere, but really, so what?

Who is listening to that sociologist? What kind of a threat is he? Is he sitting on some Senate sub-committe somewhere? Is he sitting in some sort of liberal think tank, planning to whip out that great big idea as some plan for the democrats to take back the white house in ‘08?

Sorry, it’s not the point itself that is generating the controversy here, it’s the way you are making it. It seems you are setting up this sort of army of straw everyliberals who are going all soft on the muslims stoning adulterous women while simultaneously blocking Christians from going to church on Sunday. I may be wrong, but I don’t see US apologists for Islam as being a really big problem at the moment…

There are presently stonings of women who have committed adultery in certain Moslem countries–Iran, for example.

I find it really curious that you used Iran in this example, when in my previous post I cited Saudi Arabia, our supposed ally in the War on Terror, as guilty of exactly this type of thing.

Can you explain that, please?

(You can go to the State Dept website for more info http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2001/nea/8296.htm)

Alex, you wrote:

I agree that people often take shortcuts in writing, but I also think that most people here consider it self-obvious that many Muslims do not support fundamentalism, and so don’t feel the need to declare it every second.

I’m not asking for it to be done “every second.” Re-read that post. It’s all like, “Oh, Islam this, Islam that. I can’t think of any other religion that is so inherently cruel.” That should be really irritating for any fair-minded person to read.

I’m new to this whole blog world though. I guess people just get on here and ramble. I probably shouldn’t take it so seriously…

abraços,
Barry

Thanks for your response. I’ll be brief too. As for “routine” I think that by definition one cannot make a case that torture is routine based on one or two accounts. “Routine” implies habitual. There ought to be many well-documented accounts that Hertzberg can point to, and if there aren’t then he shouldn’t be calling it routine.

I’m glad that you answered yes to my last question. I agree that people often take shortcuts in writing, but I also think that most people here consider it self-obvious that many Muslims do not support fundamentalism, and so don’t feel the need to declare it every second.

And do send me an email when you get the chance. I’m curious to hear about your connection to Brazil (are you, in fact, Brazilian?).

abraço do seu amigão,
Alex

Did you see and read my earlier comment (it’s around number 16 or so)? Please take a look. But to repeat a point I tried to make there–if this post was about Hertzberg, believe me, I’d be writing about Hertzberg. I didn’t write this post to take a subtle swipe at him for sympathizing with “the enemy” (and why, pray tell, the scare quotes? Do you really think we don’t have an enemy today?). If I wanted to take a swipe, it wouldn’t be subtle or hidden. I was reading his piece, and that particular phrase leapt out at me. The phrase was a sloppy one (as was the phrase “routine”). That’s what I intended to write about, not Hertzberg’s politics–which someday I may take a swipe at, by the way. But not in this post.

I based my criticism of the word “routine” on an entire series of articles I’ve read that go into the subject in great depth. It is fairly clear from the best evidence we have that these practices occurred, but were not routine. If Hertzberg is going to use a word like “routine,” it is his responsibility to justify it very carefully, rather that to just toss it out there, because it is a very inflammatory charge.

Obviously I was indeed talking about religious intolerance in this post. It’s a pun of sorts–I’m referring both to the idea (seemingly expressed by Hertzberg in that phrase) that we need to tolerate all religious beliefs (an idea with which I’m taking issue), and I’m also introducing the idea that certain religions–Islam prominent among them–are themselves fairly intolerant. Sutee, quite obviously, is not the point–it was put in there as an extreme example of a religious practice that most people would agree is wrong, but that at a certain point was commonplace in India among a certain group, and against which the Brits took a stand and ended up eradicating (and which, by the way, was not an Islamic but rather a Hindu practice–equal opportunity criticism!)

There are presently stonings of women who have committed adultery in certain Moslem countries–Iran, for example. There are all sorts of similar human rights abuses tied to that particular religion. No, they are not universal–and perhaps, to coin a phrase, they are not even routine. But they certainly cannot be considered okay merely because they are part of a religion.

It amazes me that a point so simple–and to which I’d imagine most people would subscribe–generates so much controversy.

Have fun at the park!

On “routine use of torture”:

You’ve said that for me to challenge neo-neocon’s attack on H’s use of this phrase I need to “produce something better than a NYT article, based on an internal military investigation, about events that happened two years ago.”

But can we agree that it doesn’t make any sense for me to defend his use of the word “routine” in any other context? The man never said “The US Military is ROUTINELY torturing ALL prisoners at 2:30 and 7:30 pm Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays.”

Neo-neocon just implies by taking his statement on that specific case out of context, and then calling it “purposely misleading“. Does that seem fair to you? To determine if his use of “routine” was justified, we can really only read the article he was referring to and then make up our own minds.

What we are doing is the following: identifying a pernicious belief that a certain very active subset of Muslims adhere to, and condemning it.

Oh, is THAT what we” are doing? ( I notice neo-neocon has moved on to tsunamis and eye-exams and movie stars already.) So why then do we have to drag Hertzberg into it? If we want to condemn Shariah law, we could start by asking President Bush to talk to his friends in Saudia Arabia, where people are, in fact, routinely punished by flogging, caning, and amputation, and executed by beheading, stoning, or firing squad, all justified by Sharia law.

In my opinion, I think neo-neocon wasn’t really talking about religious intolerance so much (it’s really a banal point - defending suttee? Oh, please.) She was taking a swipe at Hertzberg (and, by extension, “The Press”) to try to show them as being overly sympathetic to “the enemy.”

So I’m curious, what exactly are you arguing for ? …suppose, hypothetically, that everyone had prefaced their comments with a “though there are many peace-loving Muslims…” and “though many religions have, at times, incited violence…” Then would you be satisfied?

Um, yes, actually I would be satisfied. There is nothing wrong with prefacing your comments with a few words to make your point more clearly, is there? There’s nothing wrong with accurately quoting other people in context, is there? Sure, it might take a bit longer to write and the prose might not be as snappy, but still…

um abraço,
_banon

; )

Anyway, I’d be happy to respond to your comment if you are still interested, but it seems like things have cooled off around here a bit. Which is probably not a bad thing.

Oh by the way, I took a look at your website and PUTAQUEPARIU!!!!! Você mora no Rio????!!! Beleza puuura rapaz!!!!! O apartamento ficou ótimo, cual o bairro? Olha, você tá alí na cidade mais linda do mundo, com 25 anos, bonito, um bom trabalho, é melhor mesmo deixar este papo furado, e vai curtir uma boa praia e vê se não pode arranjar uma gatinha gostosa pra você! A vida é muito curto pra ficar em casa discutindo bobagens com esse grupo de chatos!

Um abraço forte do
_banon

Change has to come to the Middle-east and about time too.

Keep up the fine work,

from a European from across the Pond

IBC, by the way, is also tracking deaths in Afghanistan, but at least for now most people even on the left side of the spectrum are indicating they supported intervening in the case of Afghanistan, so perhaps they could explain how they support, therefore, the inevitability of at least some civilian deaths in Afghanistan. (I do recall demonstrations even against intervening in Afghanistan, but those ended after there was a widespread perception of some success such as installing Karzai.) Regardless, most on the left side of the spectrum are supporting Afghanistan now, so perhaps some could explain how they are willing to rationalize the inevitable outcomes in that situaion.

I meant to note that as a good Libertarian, I believe those who manage to get themselves that hosed got what was coming to them. (You were convinced you were and adult when you got that paper, right?)

The only thing “higher education” has to account for is why it gives degrees to people like you.

In other words, at about a third of what the (midpoint, quoted number) Lancet had it at.

Or, at about 3 times the low end of the Lancet number.

By the way, I’m not critising higher education per se. I’m criticizing people with degrees who don’t understand that a statistical study that has a 95% CI over a range of 8000 - 194000 tells you exactly bubkus. These are people who got shafted when they got their sheepskin.

Is any of this sinking in?

As to reshaping the worlds’ culture through violence, isn’t that what the jihadis are trying to do? What makes them more justified to use this approach than us? And doesn’t history show that it bloody well works?

Shouldn’t that bother you? Unless you like the thought of Sharia replacing what those awful Europeans wrought with the Enlightenment.

I know, this all makes your brain hurt.

Go back to your certitudes, anonymous twit. Its obvious you’ve already been fucked, and not in the good way.

“It does not, however, mean, as some commentators have argued in response to this study, that figures of 8,000 or 194,000 are as likely as one of 98,000. Quite the contrary. The farther one goes from 98,000, the less likely the figure is.”

As I pointed out earlier, the low end of the scale is IraqBodyCount. Hence, TENS OF THOUSANDS of preventable deaths.

omg, not another republican criticizing higher education. i can’t take it. what is it with you guys? fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off.

On that note, BEST OF LUCK in reshaping the world’s cultures through violence.

And fuck off.

I am not saying you are stupid; I am saying there is a passivity on the Left that I find appalling, and you hit a nerve, entirely by accident.

Earlier in this thread someone quoted the Lancet article estimating civilian casualties at 100,000. That number has been roundly debunked; turns out the authors based their estimates on data taken from a limited number of neighborhoods in Iraqi munincipalities, used a highly suspect method of counting the dead (I seem to recall that at the time the US was paying reparations to relatives of slain civilians, for that matter), and even then had a frickin’ HUGE estimated range of casualties.

See Slate for a good takedown, although googling “iraq lancet methodological errors” returns a wealth of resources.

Can you see where sample bias may have crept into the finding here?

Do you think all the folks — including the editors of Lancet, but of course everyone else who has quoted that number — might have been wise to approach it with some skepticism, especially right before the election?

If I’m a neocon, I certainly don’t think of myself as a victim; instead I think of myself as someone who fights the good fight against passivity, cultural self-loathing, and all-around creeping anti-intellectualism (ironically enough). I believe the Appeal to Authority is the most dangerous logical fallicy around, and I see it running rampant within the hyper-educated Left. (I’m a college dropout who married a Ph.D. neuroscientist; one of the things that ticks me off about the Lancet study was that it was conducted by a team from the University I dropped out of. I’ve worked on five continents within the Trade Finance industry. I’ve gotten around some, so I think I’m qualified to make that statement.)

In other words, why the hell should we believe everything we read? Back before I dropped out, Carl Sagan (remember him?) was warning everyone about the “Snowball Earth” problem. Now it goes the other way. Unless it’s switched around again.

And of course Bjorn Lomborg became a pariah because he has the gall to question conventional wisdom. Because the questions themselves might cause the rubes to wonder about the validity of the entire field of Environmental Science.

That ain’t the Enlightenment as I understand it.

So bottom line, friend, I find the Attack on the Neocons (I assume that was you) to be ungrounded in some pretty fundamental ways. My take on the group described as neocon is that most of them got there not by abandoning critical thought, but my finally turning it onto the house that was the conventional wisdom shared by their peergroup, and finding the place had turned into a crack den.

Or, shorter version: call us fools, but don’t dare call us sheep.

Ideally, to send the right message to the world, while the new wars are going on you should all TUNE IN to the evening news and warm to the DIGITAL FLAGS behind your OBJECTIVE journalists. It’s comforting to the rest of the world. Really.

USA! USA! USA!

It’s hard to demonstrate HTML tags because if I use them in the text of the comment they will be read and converted automatically. So I’ll try this: whenever I write “[” you need to write “< ", and same for "]" and ">“. Got it? To italicize the word “every” you write:

caps lock makes [i]every[/i] argument more convincing

To hyperlink the word “answered” you write:

all your questions will be [a href=”http://www.dailykos.com”]answered[/a] here!

But enough with the lesson. I actually have things to say. And since I think I caught your ear with my last round of comments, I hope you’ll listen to these as well.

On “routine” - again, just a question of semantics.

Saying something is a “question of semantics” is another way to say that we’re just arguing about words, we’re actually in agreement. But no, we’re not in agreement at all. Torture is far from routine. If you want to argue otherwise, please produce something better than a NYT article, based on an internal military investigation, about events that happened two years ago.

Let’s remember there are muslims living everyday in London and Madrid and Detroit and throughout the world who aren’t clamoring for someone to be beheaded if they drop a Koran in a Barnes and Noble… let’s be careful not to throw all Muslims into that fundamentalist basket. But neo-neocon and others commenting here are doing just that.

Sure, let’s remember this. I remember this. I think most people here remember this. But it’s your last line that threw me off. Are we lumping them together? Who here has lumped them together? I just read neo-neocon’s original post, and there is no reference to the idea that all Muslims, or even most Muslims, believe infidels should die. I don’t have the time to read this thread and verify that no one suggested such a thing, but it certainly seems like it is not the prevailing belief here. We are not doing this “lumping” that you suggest, so please stop accusing us of it (and if you want to accuse, please quote). What we are doing is the following: identifying a pernicious belief that a certain very active subset of Muslims adhere to, and condemning it. What, pray tell, is the problem with this?

We can then qualify it by saying “Oh, but no Christian country actually DOES that (anymore), it’s what’s in PRACTICE that counts,” but that is a different point altogether.

It’s a different point, yes, and it is also a more important point. And what about it? You don’t address it. Many people are murdered every day in the name of Islam, many more than in the name of any other religion (or belief system of any kind, perhaps). Again, let’s condemn the acts, and the religious ideologies in whose name they are committed. Do you have a problem with this?

I’m picking on you, Banon, because in contrast to Caps Lock Anonymous you seem to have the capacity for complex thought, a decent idea of what constitutes supporting evidence, and a tentative willingness to hear the viewpoints of people who disagree with you. And frankly, I’m sick of blog threads that feature one or two trolls making incendiary comments and the rest of everyone pig-piling on them, and nothing getting accomplished but grandstanding and riled emotions. So I’m doing my best to do better.

So I’m curious, what exactly are you arguing for? You pick apart each point as they come (you’re “lumping”, Christianity has bad rules too, etc.) but suppose, hypothetically, that everyone had prefaced their comments with a “though there are many peace-loving Muslims…” and “though many religions have, at times, incited violence…” Then would you be satisfied? The answer, I’d guess, is no. Well, what then are your substantive problems with the idea of this post, namely that aspects of Islamic belief are indeed horrible and wrong, most especially because they are carried out in practice every day, and that we shouldn’t be shy about saying so?

I don’t ask this rhetorically; I want to know.

And one last point. Please stop with the accusations of “snipe snipe, blah blah, ad-hominem attacks and straw-man logic”. First of all, I don’t think it’s true. Second, the surest way of avoiding the issues is to accuse others of avoiding the issues, start an argument about who’s avoiding what, etc. If you want to have a reasonable debate just go ahead and do it, and ignore the people who don’t want to be reasonable. This goes for both sides.

In a nutshell, they want to outlaw kitchen knives.

I suppose, in twenty years or so, the answer to street hooliganism will be to outlaw plastic spoons.

Of course you don’t favor going to war over the issues of slavery, oppression and genocide. No surprises there.

There are plenty of Moslem’s who don’t like religious intolerance either - is that so hard to understand?

I believe I already said that many Muslims oppose fundamentalism and Shariah. Who are you arguing with, anyway?

You said: “YOU YANKS COULD BE A LITTLE MORE TACTFUL. END OF FUCKING STORY.”

You know, I’m trying. But you make it extremely difficult. It’s probably in our genes though… after all, most of us are the offspring of the dregs of European society. We ain’t got no manners and such.

You said: “Religious intolerance is bad, period. We have plenty of it in the USA, and I actively oppose it.”

Which religions aren’t tolerated today in the USA? And by whom? The general public is extremely tolerant of virtually every religion. Certain groups don’t like certain other groups but our nation as a while is one of the most tolerant on the planet. You find Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Buddists, Wicca, Native American, and just plain old weird all living side by side and with virtually no inter-religious violence. Now a case could be made that Christians are not welcome in the Democratic Party… but at least they are not violent about it.

You said: “POPE JOHN PAUL used not just his bully pulpit but the full political machinery of the Vatican to try to stop what he saw as an act that did not meet the Christian definition of “just war”"

The Pope’s job is to try to find peaceful solutions. The President’s job is to act in the best interest of the United States. I’m a Catholic. In this matter I agreed more with President Bush than I did with the Pope.

With regard to the Downing Street Memo; I would hope that every President considering war would first consult with their closest allies. How would it have looked if President Bush, upon going before Congress to ask for an authorization for the use of force, is asked what our closest allies, the British, think of it, and Bush responds “I don’t know. I haven’t talked to them yet.”

You said: “UN resolutions aren’t terribly convincing, given that the UN Security Council wasn’t on board.”

UN resolutions weren’t terribly convincing to Saddam either given that any time he violated the conditions of one of the resolutions the UN just passed another resolution.

You said: “According to a study released in fall 2004 by the British medical journal The Lancet, about 100,000 civilians are likely dead because of the coalition military action.”

The Lancet study’s headline figure of “100,000″ excess deaths is a probabilistic projection from a small number of reported deaths - most of them from aerial weaponry - in a sample of 988 households to the entire Iraqi population. Also, the authors clearly state that “many” of the dead in their sample may have been combatants.

If you want to blame somebody for the war, blame Diplomats in general and the UN specifically. Every war is the failure of Diplomacy. Saddam Hussein could have been dealt with 8 years ago if the UN had had any balls. How many lives would have been saved? You want to assign blame for civilian deaths? What about blaming the foreign “insurgants” who are blowing them up?

I don’t know if you are American, British or some other nationality. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But terrorism has been a problem in this world for a long time and very few people have ever tried to do anything about it. My first experience with it was in 1982 when I was in London for the first time. The IRA decided to blow up a parade. The next time I was in Britain they blew up the financial district. The time after that it was a mall in Manchester. Until 9/11/01 I was of the opinion “I don’t know how they live like that, but hey it’s their country.” Well now it’s here. And I don’t want to live like that. Europe can do whatever the hell it wants with itself but don’t ask Americans to join you as your society crumbles around you. And don’t bring it here.

:: flag waving ::

USA USA USA

Religious intolerance is bad, period. We have plenty of it in the USA, and I actively oppose it. I deplore it in other countries. I can’t do too much about it because I don’t live there, and I don’t think the USA should make that the basis of foreign policy.

You ask:

“Can anyone tell us why we should tolerate apartheid Shariah laws? ”

Well, we shouldn’t. Not here in the USA. Just as we shouldn’t tolerate female genital mutilation. And we can do a lot to oppose it in other countries, but we rarely do, unless it matches our geopolitical interests. And as I think the means should be proportionate to the ends, I don’t favor going to war over it, in general.

Regarding the comment:

“There are some commenters like Banon who are offering criticism, but none who address the issue of the post, religious intolerance.”

The point Banon was making is that Neo-neocon and many of her fans don’t care to examine their own notions of intolerance. They favor it at home, as long as it’s not directed at them, they see it everywhere else where they see people who are different than they are; they lack any curiosity about the facts of other cultures, so they feel free to assume that the worst aspects of, say, modern Islam, are therefore the essence of it.

There are plenty of Moslem’s who don’t like religious intolerance either - is that so hard to understand? It just so happens that at this time in history, some who favor it, when they’re in power, are our enemies. Of course, 15 years ago, in Afghanistan, they were our friends…oh well, a minor detail.

Intolerance is not just encouraged by apartheid Shariah laws, it’s required.

Can anyone tell us why we should tolerate apartheid Shariah laws?

Millions of people have recently died as a result of those laws. Can anyone tell us why we should tolerate more years of Islamist-imposed slaughter and slavery?

You said: “(I presume) we are talking about people living those unfortunate countries where Sharia law has been implemented (Iraq was not one of them - I believe Sharia courts were allowed in some areas, but they were not the “official courts” of the state), so let’s be careful not to throw all Muslims into that fundamentalist basket.”

I would differ with you. While not ALL Muslims have a great desire to live under Sharia law, there are movements to make it so. Just yesterday, the legislature in Quebec passed a motion against allowing the sharia to be used in the legal system.

“The application of sharia in Canada is part of a strategy to isolate the Muslim community, so it will submit to an archaic vision of Islam,” Fatima Houda-Pepin, a Liberal member of the legislature, said as she introduced the motion against use of the Islamic law.

See New Sisyphus for more information.

Nice to read your comments. I swore I wouldn’t waste anymore time on the Yahoos at this site, but I had some downtime and got curious.

Your summary of the rhetorical devices of most commenters here:

“…besides a culture of victimhood, ad-hominem attacks and straw-man logic, it seems the neocon movement has also adopted the dreaded post-modern “deconstructionism”…”

is exactly correct. I advise you to visit here and comment only in the spirit of idle entertainment or cultural anthropology. Neo-neocon and her fans have no interest in discussing facts in order to move closer to truth. They wish only to vent their spleen. Your citation of Bible mandates for death sentences is a perfect example: After reading neo-necon’s fatuous remark I was wondering if anyone would pick up on it.

Carry on, Banon, but don’t let the @&%#$ get you down!

“War cannot be decided upon, even when it is a matter of ensuring the common good, except as the very last option and in accordance with very strict conditions, without ignoring the consequences for the civilian population both during and after the military operations,” POPE JOHN PAUL proclaimed on Jan. 13, 2003, even as he was sending his emissaries to Iraq, the U.S. and the United Nations to lobby for peaceful negotiations. “War is never just another means that one can choose to employ for settling differences between nations.”
- from LA Times

So, hmm, “rushed to war” is probably the wrong phrase. It’s more like, “eager for war”: downing street memo. The memo is July 2002, the invasion began in March 2003.

UN resolutions aren’t terribly convincing, given that the UN Security Council wasn’t on board.

According to a study released in fall 2004 by the British medical journal The Lancet, about 100,000 civilians are likely dead because of the coalition military action. It’s ballpark. IraqBodyCount.net uses media-verifiable stats, so is low. The truth is somewhere inbetween.

Time to wave a flag! USA! USA! USA!

If you’re talking about countries where Sharia law has been implemented, you’d be talking about the Sudan, where more than one million people died after a civil war that was prompted by the establishment of Shariah law.

..and you’d be talking about Darfur where:

“A preventable humanitarian crisis, affecting more than two million people, is raging… Not since the Rwanda genocide of 1994 has the world seen such a calculated campaign of slaughter, rape, starvation and displacement. Government-backed militias, known collectively as the Janjaweed, are systematically eliminating entire communities of African tribal farmers. Villages are being razed, women and girls raped and branded, men and boys murdered, and food and water supplies targeted and destroyed. Victims report that government air strikes frequently precede militia raids.”

The janjaweed were trained by Saudi-financed al Qaeda. Al Qaeda’s goal, like most Saudi sponsored terrorist groups, is to establish a Caliphate based on apartheid pro-slavery Shariah laws.

Saudi Arabia is another Shariah state, with apartheid laws that are more severe than those of the Deobandi Taliban.

Sharia laws also rule Iran, where more than 80% of the population would be happy to get out the hammer and saw and hang the ruling billionaire Mullahs, if they could.

There’s a lot of Muslims in that fundamentalist basket. Most probably don’t want to be there, and millions have died or been enslaved by Shariah laws, and millions more who would be happy to hang the terrorists and mullahs who impose Shariah, but enough about that. Guantanamo is the real atrocity, isn’t it? It’s a gulag!

And what about that plastic turkey.
Where’s the outrage?

One of the Anon:

(Note there are several of us posting here as anonymous - sorry but i can’t be bothered to come up with a login and all that)

Click other. Type Name. Click Publish.

Dumb as rocks…

Banon says:

Thanks for the tip. You’re right, that was easy! Sorry but I guess I was too focused on *THE ISSUES* to trouble with that. You could’ve been nicer about it though. Anybody care to tell me how to use html tags?

(Note there are several of us posting here as anonymous - sorry but i can’t be bothered to come up with a login and all that)

Click other. Type Name. Click Publish.

Dumb as rocks…

“I really like the phrase…”

“They must be from some country that didn’t get enough Foreign Aid…”

“I really had to laugh over all the Christians that are killing people these days…”

“Definition of sovereign is self-governing…”

“…general assumption that the Crusades were some kind of dreadful European crime.”

Blah, blah blah.

Besides a culture of victimhood, ad-hominem attacks and straw-man logic, it seems the neocon movement has also adopted the dreaded post-modern “deconstructionism.” (That’s where the exact meaning of words rests exclusively in the mind of the reader.)

Stick to the point(s) people. Remember, you guys are in power now, no need to get so worked up. Relax, take a walk, enjoy the reality you are creating. Then come back and respond to the issues.

To “Alex”: Thanks for your reasonable reply. (It came while I was writing the above.)

But please, when someone writes something like “Oh, Islam is so barbaric! I can’t think of another religion that would give the death penalty for blasphemy!” how is one supposed to respond to that? That was an assertion. I corrected her misperception. Sure, I had to sift through the “rule books” - but where else am I going to look when arguing theology? Isn’t that fair discourse?

We can then qualify it by saying “Oh, but no Christian country actually DOES that (anymore), it’s what’s in PRACTICE that counts,” but that is a different point altogether.

Let’s remember there are muslims living everyday in London and Madrid and Detroit and throughout the world who aren’t clamoring for someone to be beheaded if they drop a Koran in a Barnes and Noble.

(I presume) we are talking about people living those unfortunate countries where Sharia law has been implemented (Iraq was not one of them - I believe Sharia courts were allowed in some areas, but they were not the “official courts” of the state), so let’s be careful not to throw all Muslims into that fundamentalist basket. But neo-neocon and others commenting here are doing just that. And I think we can all agree, no matter what one thinks of the administrations prosecution of the war on terror, that this only undermines the US cause.

On “routine” - again, just a question of semantics. But anyway, read the NY Times article to which Hertzberg was referring (it was to a specific report on 2 specific cases - not about US military prisons overall) and tell me if the abuse described matches any common definition of “routine”.

And let’s change my name. As you can imagine I don’t much like “Christian website anonymous” ; )

—Banon

You said: “America RUSHED to murder TENS OF THOUSANDS of INNOCENT PEOPLE in an UNJUST WAR.”

I will assume that you are speaking of Iraq here. If instead you mean Afghanistan then you are even more of an idiot than I thought you were.

Let’s take a look at what has happened with regard to Iraq. On August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait in order to get control of the northern oil fields and greater access to the Persian Gulf. By August 6, he had 11 divisions in Kuwait and poised to move on Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis appealed for help and the world responded. On January 16, 1991, the coalition began the air campaign against Iraq and on February 24, the ground war began.

On February 28, 1991 President Bush (the elder) called a ceasefire. In addition to the terms of the ceasefire, the UN passed United Nations Security Council Resolutions 660, 661, 662, 664 ,665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 674, 677, 678, 687, 688, and 949. Over the course of 11 years, Saddam repeatedly violated the terms of the cease fire and took agressive actions against his own people and coalition forces. He had demonstrated the will to use WMDs and the desire to reacquire them. He forced the weapons inspectors to abandon their mission in 1998.

With this information, how can you contend that the United States RUSHED to war, or that the war was UNJUST.

As to your claim that the United States has murdered TENS OF THOUSANDS of INNOCENT PEOPLE, where is the evidence of that? Is it evidenced in our reluctance to bomb a mosque even when it is being used as a firebase? Are all of these carbombs being detonated by Americans? Where are your figures?

According to IraqBodyCount.com, between 21,795 and 24,735 Iraqi civilians have been killed since hostilites resumed… from all causes. The vast majority of those deaths were caused by the so-called insurgents. So we are not responsible for TENS OF THOUSANDS of deaths.

Finally, those civilians who did die at the hands of the United States were not MURDERED. They were unfortunate deaths but the United States is more conciencious than any other nation on the planet with regard to its attempts to limit civilian causualties.

Do you have any other worthless claims with which to cast the United States in a bad light?

“No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, and thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more, never, never, never, never, never!”

There were many funerals in Iraq, maryatexitzero. It was a preventable war, and unprovoked. Your country committed a terrible crime and the history will be written by many cultures.

Full caps indicate OUTRAGE.

First, I’d suggest that, despite neo-neocon’s emphasis on it, comparing official doctrines is not very relevant here. Much more relevant is comparing common practices. It’s like how all those states have ridiculous brothel laws still on the books: fun factoids to dig up, but essentially irrelevant. The fact that one has to sift through the rule books to find a Christian anti-apostasy law is telling. No one needs to do that with Islam, since evidence of its grisly practice is in the headlines every single day. And in the end, it’s practice that matters.

(Related note: abortion bombings generally aren’t a response to perceived apostasy, but perceived murder.)

OK so then we start talking about how Webster’s defines “routine”, or getting referred to articles about people defending female genital mutilation, etc. Everything except addressing the problem, which as Hertzberg wearily pointed out, “is torture and abuse, not dubiously sourced reports of torture and abuse…”

Actually, I think that a word like “routine” is in fact extremely important here. It’s a sad fact, but no one, American or not, is ever going to be able to run a large-scale military operation involving tens of thousands of people and maintain zero abuse. Human beings can be cruel, and the US gov’t does not have complete control over the actions of all of the people working under its name. In this context, the relevant question is indeed whether abuses are routine, systematic, and condoned by authority (which would be extremely bad) or if they are rare, the initiative of individuals, and punished whenever discovered (the best we can hope for, in my opinion).

Right now the evidence points strongly to the latter. Writers like Hertzberg are getting their information, after all, from internal military reports on these abuses, presumably conducted with an eye to stopping them and punishing those responsible (which is already happening). Yet by using “routine,” Hertzberg writes as if we’re clearly in the former world. This seems very wrong.

Confidential to Other Anonymous: caps lock isn’t helping your case.

So, 9/11 was a coordinated attack against SYMBOLS

My uncle, retired FDNY, spent a month attending the funerals of those symbols. For a long time, the streets of Manhattan were clouded with the smoke from thousands of symbols’ burning bodies.

You say “America RUSHED to murder TENS OF THOUSANDS of INNOCENT PEOPLE in an UNJUST WAR”

I hate to be a critic, but you really haven’t used enough Chomsky/Guardian inspired lies and cliches here. Couldn’t you have thrown in a Bush=Hitler and a few accusations of racism and imperialism?

If you choose to do this standard troll dance for us, you could at least put some effort into it.

Death? Are you kidding? America RUSHED to murder TENS OF THOUSANDS of INNOCENT PEOPLE in an UNJUST WAR.