I read up to the point where the author lumped Hizbollah and Hamas together with global jihadists, and terrorists inside western nations. By then it was clear that the author had no clue, but was on an islamic crucifixion (sp?) trip.
I glimpsed the end of it where (surprise surprise) the "global left" (so as to make sure you get them all) is to blame for various nations' "complacency" and "unwillingness" to do what they must. Bullcrap. If anything has been shown through history it is that especially Israel doesnt give a fuck who it rubs the wrong way, and America hasn't actually been unwilling to boldly go forth under the current administration.
Partisan hot air. Gotta love it.
Perhaps there was something worthwhile inbetween the start and the end, in that case, both start and ending is unrelated to the main part of it.
Peace
Dan
Yeah, this is also a good point. If you see the typical partisan catch phrases, it's most likely not something you want to invest your time in reading.
I read up to the point where the author lumped Hizbollah and Hamas together with global jihadists, and terrorists inside western nations. By then it was clear that the author had no clue, but was on an islamic crucifixion (sp?) trip.
I glimpsed the end of it where (surprise surprise) the "global left" (so as to make sure you get them all) is to blame for various nations' "complacency" and "unwillingness" to do what they must. Bullcrap. If anything has been shown through history it is that especially Israel doesnt give a fuck who it rubs the wrong way, and America hasn't actually been unwilling to boldly go forth under the current administration.
Partisan hot air. Gotta love it.
Perhaps there was something worthwhile inbetween the start and the end, in that case, both start and ending is unrelated to the main part of it.
Peace
Dan
Fair enough.... I took out the part that was particularly interesting to me.
"Hatred and murder are self-realization because they impart grandeur to Islamic extremists--the sense of being God's chosen warrior in God's great cause. Hatred delivers the extremist to a greatness that compensates for his ineffectuality in the world. Jews and infidels are irrelevant except that they offer occasion to hate and, thus, to experience grandiosity. This is why Hezbollah--Party of God--can take no territory and still claim to have won. The grandiosity is in the hating and fighting, not the victory.
And death--both homicide and suicide--is the extremist's great obsession because its finality makes the grandiosity "real." If I am not afraid to kill and die, then I am larger than life. Certainly I am larger than the puny Westerners who are reduced to decadence by their love of life. So my hatred and my disregard of death, my knowledge that life is trivial, deliver me to a human grandeur beyond the reach of the West. After the Madrid bombings a spokesman for al Qaeda left a message: "You love life, and we love death." The horror is that greatness is tied to death rather than to achievement in life.
The West is stymied by this extremism because it is used to enemies that want to live. In Vietnam, America fought one whose communism was driven by an underlying nationalism, the desire to live free of the West. Whatever one may think of this, here was an enemy that truly wanted to live, that insisted on territory and sovereignty. But Osama bin Laden fights only to achieve a death that will enshrine him as a figure of awe. The gift he wants to leave his people is not freedom or even justice; it is consolation.
White guilt in the West--especially in Europe and on the American left--confuses all this by seeing Islamic extremism as a response to oppression. The West is so terrified of being charged with its old sins of racism, imperialism and colonialism that it makes oppression an automatic prism on the non-Western world, a politeness. But Islamic extremists don't hate the West because they are oppressed by it. They hate it precisely because the end of oppression and colonialism--not their continuance--forced the Muslim world to compete with the West. Less oppression, not more, opened this world to the sense of defeat that turned into extremism."
What do you think? It makes a lot of sense to me. I do not see how it is wrong, and I'm looking.
Fair enough.... I took out the part that was particularly interesting to me.
"Hatred and murder are self-realization because they impart grandeur to Islamic extremists--the sense of being God's chosen warrior in God's great cause. Hatred delivers the extremist to a greatness that compensates for his ineffectuality in the world. Jews and infidels are irrelevant except that they offer occasion to hate and, thus, to experience grandiosity. This is why Hezbollah--Party of God--can take no territory and still claim to have won. The grandiosity is in the hating and fighting, not the victory.
And death--both homicide and suicide--is the extremist's great obsession because its finality makes the grandiosity "real." If I am not afraid to kill and die, then I am larger than life. Certainly I am larger than the puny Westerners who are reduced to decadence by their love of life. So my hatred and my disregard of death, my knowledge that life is trivial, deliver me to a human grandeur beyond the reach of the West. After the Madrid bombings a spokesman for al Qaeda left a message: "You love life, and we love death." The horror is that greatness is tied to death rather than to achievement in life.
Nothing new here. Honour through death is as old as war itself. One can wonder whay people choose to be soldiers in the first place, assuming they're all not just doing it for the great pay. To kill, and also to die for what you believe in, isn't that radical, new, nor divergent. The motivation perhaps is.
The West is stymied by this extremism because it is used to enemies that want to live. In Vietnam, America fought one whose communism was driven by an underlying nationalism, the desire to live free of the West. Whatever one may think of this, here was an enemy that truly wanted to live, that insisted on territory and sovereignty. But Osama bin Laden fights only to achieve a death that will enshrine him as a figure of awe. The gift he wants to leave his people is not freedom or even justice; it is consolation.
Speculation. But of course there is differences as to Vietnam, which was a conventional territorial war for the most part, and an enemy that has no base, no center, no territory to strike at.
White guilt in the West--especially in Europe and on the American left--confuses all this by seeing Islamic extremism as a response to oppression. The West is so terrified of being charged with its old sins of racism, imperialism and colonialism that it makes oppression an automatic prism on the non-Western world, a politeness. But Islamic extremists don't hate the West because they are oppressed by it. They hate it precisely because the end of oppression and colonialism--not their continuance--forced the Muslim world to compete with the West. Less oppression, not more, opened this world to the sense of defeat that turned into extremism."
Highly speculative the end there. The extremism isn't merely the response towards oppression, and several of the backmen has very questionable motives, for sure. But a climate of oppression in the region fuels extremism. It's too simplistic to blame it all on the west, as it also is blind to disregard it. That this comes from less oppression I wouldn't agree with. In that case it's more like "they could only put a lid on it for so long".
I think it's wrong to view this as a global something or other, when the reasoning behind most of the groups and jihadists are almost exclusively local, and very often directed towards oppressive regimes and perceived occupants.
In conclusion, I dont buy it. Too simplistic, and too keen on directing perceived guilt onto anyone else. And an underlying tone that if we would just whoop all their asses but good militarily and squelch the pinko-commies that would oppose that, it would all go away. That's the tone I'm picking up here.
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
Radical Islamic extremeists have the goal of being left alone by the West and Israel. There's no ideology involved here. If you want to understand why there are Islamic terrorists attacking us, you should listen to them, and not some college professor. It's not rocket science.
the only problem is that the wests encroachment into Islam will happen...its inevitable....so this fight is in vain. ..course all religions are under attack....and the more radical from the "western norm" the faster it will change. Fundementalist Muslims know this and see this as the fight to the death.....
let me know if you agree with this......you may have a better vantage point than I. I'm not being sarcastic mind you.
the only problem is that the wests encroachment into Islam will happen...its inevitable....so this fight is in vain. ..course all religions are under attack....and the more radical from the "western norm" the faster it will change. Fundementalist Muslims know this and see this as the fight to the death.....
let me know if you agree with this......you may have a better vantage point than I. I'm not being sarcastic mind you.
Well I guess I just don't agree that Muslims are attacking us because they're concerned about western integration with the Middle East. We've done business with them for a long time and saw no attacks. That may be a background issue, but I think the reasons we're being attacked NOW are different. And those are the reasons to focus on and see how we can eliminate them.
Nothing new here. Honour through death is as old as war itself. One can wonder whay people choose to be soldiers in the first place, assuming they're all not just doing it for the great pay. To kill, and also to die for what you believe in, isn't that radical, new, nor divergent. The motivation perhaps is.
Speculation. But of course there is differences as to Vietnam, which was a conventional territorial war for the most part, and an enemy that has no base, no center, no territory to strike at.
Highly speculative the end there. The extremism isn't merely the response towards oppression, and several of the backmen has very questionable motives, for sure. But a climate of oppression in the region fuels extremism. It's too simplistic to blame it all on the west, as it also is blind to disregard it. That this comes from less oppression I wouldn't agree with. In that case it's more like "they could only put a lid on it for so long".
I think it's wrong to view this as a global something or other, when the reasoning behind most of the groups and jihadists are almost exclusively local, and very often directed towards oppressive regimes and perceived occupants.
In conclusion, I dont buy it. Too simplistic, and too keen on directing perceived guilt onto anyone else. And an underlying tone that if we would just whoop all their asses but good militarily and squelch the pinko-commies that would oppose that, it would all go away. That's the tone I'm picking up here.
Peace
Dan
I think you may have overlooked the point. The U.S. does not fight because of its ineffectuality in the world. That is what the author is trying to assert, that these groups fight to vindicate themselves - to vindicate their failure. And that by fighting and dying they are proving something. This is quite different from the U.S.
Colonialism ended decades ago, yet this region of the world still cannot function properly. It is not becuase of the U.S. or Israel either. Sure, they have contributed to the dysfunction, but the buck stops with the people who live there. Well, with mass communication technology - it is very easy for the people who live there to be reminded daily of their failures to feed, house, cloth and educate their populations.
Sure, they could probably lay down their arms and find a peace with the U.S., but they don't want to do that. They need to defeat the U.S. (namely get us to leave the region) in order to feel vindicated.
if we would leave, their societies will begin to liberalize on their own. Allbeit that not all nations will liberalize at the same rate due to oppressive regines like Iran. We might have to wait another 50 years for some coutries....
It's very similar to groups of blacks in the U.S. that blame all of their problems on white's or the government. Sure they were oppressed, but that doesn't mean they are going to blow themselves up over it. It doesn't mean they want to destroy the system and build a new one, more to their liking.
Millions of blacks have gotten over the past and learned how to succeed in the present and the future. But these radical Muslims do not want to do this.
This idea is no more speculative than anything else. Saying that it is wrong because it is "too simplistic" isn't a valid reason.
Arab media is 10x worse than american media. AL Jazzera is a propaganda station yet the people of the islamic world eat it up. The reality of the middle east is that the jews are right and the muslims are wrong...its pretty simple
...
It is a simplistic point of view, as given by the above statement, that gets America in the shit she finds herself in. The opinion that everything is black and white and can be defined as good versus evil. Let's posse up and ride out and do good from the barrel of a gun and MAKE them towel-headed, camel jockeys be good or die.
Have fun sending your kids off to the fucking 126 degree desert heat in order to fulfill your narrow view of the world.
Allen Fieldhouse, home of the 2008 NCAA men's Basketball Champions! Go Jayhawks!
Hail, Hail!!!
I think you may have overlooked the point. The U.S. does not fight because of its ineffectuality in the world. That is what the author is trying to assert, that these groups fight to vindicate themselves - to vindicate their failure. And that by fighting and dying they are proving something. This is quite different from the U.S.
Colonialism ended decades ago, yet this region of the world still cannot function properly. It is not becuase of the U.S. or Israel either. Sure, they have contributed to the dysfunction, but the buck stops with the people who live there. Well, with mass communication technology - it is very easy for the people who live there to be reminded daily of their failures to feed, house, cloth and educate their populations.
Sure, they could probably lay down their arms and find a peace with the U.S., but they don't want to do that. They need to defeat the U.S. (namely get us to leave the region) in order to feel vindicated.
if we would leave, their societies will begin to liberalize on their own. Allbeit that not all nations will liberalize at the same rate due to oppressive regines like Iran. We might have to wait another 50 years for some coutries....
It's very similar to groups of blacks in the U.S. that blame all of their problems on white's or the government. Sure they were oppressed, but that doesn't mean they are going to blow themselves up over it. It doesn't mean they want to destroy the system and build a new one, more to their liking.
Millions of blacks have gotten over the past and learned how to succeed in the present and the future. But these radical Muslims do not want to do this.
This idea is no more speculative than anything else. Saying that it is wrong because it is "too simplistic" isn't a valid reason.
Well, jammed in between the let's-lump-anything-remotely-muslim-and-counter-to-our-interests-together start, and the ending of "if only those damn lefties would get a grip, and let us do our thing"(with clear adress I imagine against vicious democrats and their ilk), it kind of loses a lot of credibility.
What you say here sounds much more reasonable, even if I dont think I wholly support that view. It sitll paints with a way too broad brush the islamic parts of the world, and it's population. The accentuation still is not muslim extremists but rather muslim extremists.
But what you say here, which is reasonable mostly, is not what I got from the piece skimming over it.
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
Well I guess I just don't agree that Muslims are attacking us because they're concerned about western integration with the Middle East. We've done business with them for a long time and saw no attacks. That may be a background issue, but I think the reasons we're being attacked NOW are different. And those are the reasons to focus on and see how we can eliminate them.
Just curious as to what you think are the reasons for this new violence...by the fundementalists. In 200 years we'll be a little more vanilla than we are now....globalism is a good thing in my book and the sooner we're all one happy family the better....and yes I feel this world is changing because of gobalization.
Just curious as to what you think are the reasons for this new violence...by the fundementalists. In 200 years we'll be a little more vanilla than we are now....globalism is a good thing in my book and the sooner we're all one happy family the better....and yes I feel this world is changing because of gobalization.
I think the reasons are what I mentioned before...our recent and more direct interferences with Middle East affairs: increased support for Israel, and direct military invasions.
Comments
Yeah, this is also a good point. If you see the typical partisan catch phrases, it's most likely not something you want to invest your time in reading.
Fair enough.... I took out the part that was particularly interesting to me.
"Hatred and murder are self-realization because they impart grandeur to Islamic extremists--the sense of being God's chosen warrior in God's great cause. Hatred delivers the extremist to a greatness that compensates for his ineffectuality in the world. Jews and infidels are irrelevant except that they offer occasion to hate and, thus, to experience grandiosity. This is why Hezbollah--Party of God--can take no territory and still claim to have won. The grandiosity is in the hating and fighting, not the victory.
And death--both homicide and suicide--is the extremist's great obsession because its finality makes the grandiosity "real." If I am not afraid to kill and die, then I am larger than life. Certainly I am larger than the puny Westerners who are reduced to decadence by their love of life. So my hatred and my disregard of death, my knowledge that life is trivial, deliver me to a human grandeur beyond the reach of the West. After the Madrid bombings a spokesman for al Qaeda left a message: "You love life, and we love death." The horror is that greatness is tied to death rather than to achievement in life.
The West is stymied by this extremism because it is used to enemies that want to live. In Vietnam, America fought one whose communism was driven by an underlying nationalism, the desire to live free of the West. Whatever one may think of this, here was an enemy that truly wanted to live, that insisted on territory and sovereignty. But Osama bin Laden fights only to achieve a death that will enshrine him as a figure of awe. The gift he wants to leave his people is not freedom or even justice; it is consolation.
White guilt in the West--especially in Europe and on the American left--confuses all this by seeing Islamic extremism as a response to oppression. The West is so terrified of being charged with its old sins of racism, imperialism and colonialism that it makes oppression an automatic prism on the non-Western world, a politeness. But Islamic extremists don't hate the West because they are oppressed by it. They hate it precisely because the end of oppression and colonialism--not their continuance--forced the Muslim world to compete with the West. Less oppression, not more, opened this world to the sense of defeat that turned into extremism."
What do you think? It makes a lot of sense to me. I do not see how it is wrong, and I'm looking.
Speculation. But of course there is differences as to Vietnam, which was a conventional territorial war for the most part, and an enemy that has no base, no center, no territory to strike at.
Highly speculative the end there. The extremism isn't merely the response towards oppression, and several of the backmen has very questionable motives, for sure. But a climate of oppression in the region fuels extremism. It's too simplistic to blame it all on the west, as it also is blind to disregard it. That this comes from less oppression I wouldn't agree with. In that case it's more like "they could only put a lid on it for so long".
I think it's wrong to view this as a global something or other, when the reasoning behind most of the groups and jihadists are almost exclusively local, and very often directed towards oppressive regimes and perceived occupants.
In conclusion, I dont buy it. Too simplistic, and too keen on directing perceived guilt onto anyone else. And an underlying tone that if we would just whoop all their asses but good militarily and squelch the pinko-commies that would oppose that, it would all go away. That's the tone I'm picking up here.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
the only problem is that the wests encroachment into Islam will happen...its inevitable....so this fight is in vain. ..course all religions are under attack....and the more radical from the "western norm" the faster it will change. Fundementalist Muslims know this and see this as the fight to the death.....
let me know if you agree with this......you may have a better vantage point than I. I'm not being sarcastic mind you.
Well I guess I just don't agree that Muslims are attacking us because they're concerned about western integration with the Middle East. We've done business with them for a long time and saw no attacks. That may be a background issue, but I think the reasons we're being attacked NOW are different. And those are the reasons to focus on and see how we can eliminate them.
I think you may have overlooked the point. The U.S. does not fight because of its ineffectuality in the world. That is what the author is trying to assert, that these groups fight to vindicate themselves - to vindicate their failure. And that by fighting and dying they are proving something. This is quite different from the U.S.
Colonialism ended decades ago, yet this region of the world still cannot function properly. It is not becuase of the U.S. or Israel either. Sure, they have contributed to the dysfunction, but the buck stops with the people who live there. Well, with mass communication technology - it is very easy for the people who live there to be reminded daily of their failures to feed, house, cloth and educate their populations.
Sure, they could probably lay down their arms and find a peace with the U.S., but they don't want to do that. They need to defeat the U.S. (namely get us to leave the region) in order to feel vindicated.
if we would leave, their societies will begin to liberalize on their own. Allbeit that not all nations will liberalize at the same rate due to oppressive regines like Iran. We might have to wait another 50 years for some coutries....
It's very similar to groups of blacks in the U.S. that blame all of their problems on white's or the government. Sure they were oppressed, but that doesn't mean they are going to blow themselves up over it. It doesn't mean they want to destroy the system and build a new one, more to their liking.
Millions of blacks have gotten over the past and learned how to succeed in the present and the future. But these radical Muslims do not want to do this.
This idea is no more speculative than anything else. Saying that it is wrong because it is "too simplistic" isn't a valid reason.
It is a simplistic point of view, as given by the above statement, that gets America in the shit she finds herself in. The opinion that everything is black and white and can be defined as good versus evil. Let's posse up and ride out and do good from the barrel of a gun and MAKE them towel-headed, camel jockeys be good or die.
Have fun sending your kids off to the fucking 126 degree desert heat in order to fulfill your narrow view of the world.
Hail, Hail!!!
Well, jammed in between the let's-lump-anything-remotely-muslim-and-counter-to-our-interests-together start, and the ending of "if only those damn lefties would get a grip, and let us do our thing"(with clear adress I imagine against vicious democrats and their ilk), it kind of loses a lot of credibility.
What you say here sounds much more reasonable, even if I dont think I wholly support that view. It sitll paints with a way too broad brush the islamic parts of the world, and it's population. The accentuation still is not muslim extremists but rather muslim extremists.
But what you say here, which is reasonable mostly, is not what I got from the piece skimming over it.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
I think the reasons are what I mentioned before...our recent and more direct interferences with Middle East affairs: increased support for Israel, and direct military invasions.