Quote:
Originally posted by bilmore
Cool. I show you a list of twenty years of Islamicist terrorism directed at infidels. You give me one bombing by a nutcase backed by no organization. I suggest in past posts that we are confronted with a movement - a virulent Islamicist movement (note the distinction between that and Islamic) - bent on returning world power to their gawd. I also suggest that, given the scope and horror of their thinking and actions, I would be proud to participate in their end. I make it clear that I include, as I said, participants, supporters, and the quiet sort of suppporters who won't say anything against butchering little kids, agree that Allah should rule the whole earth, and don't mind this path to that end.
And I'm a racist.
Ran out of arguments, huh?
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Let's for a moment set aside the fact that the "lone nutcase" didn't act alone and was part of an extensive network. You are choosing to ignore the point I was making, so let['s just focus on the Islamicists...
"...and the quiet sort of supporters who won't say anything against butchering little kids, agree that Allah should rule the whole Earth, and don't mind this path to that end."
And you would identify these people how, Bilmore? More importantly, the nukes you would agree we ought to drop are going to distinguish other Arabs from these people how?
We agree that there is a war going on. We even agree that this war needs to be fought. However, we part company on methods and targets.
If we choose to make innocents, and if they aren't combatants they are innocents*, combatants then the terrorists have won. We will have abandoned the principals that set us above the terrorists and you will succeed in making all Arabs combatants. See, if we try to kill them all, we force them all to fight. If this is the strategy then we should look to Vietnam and Algeria for our lessons. Terrorism works when it succeeds in making its victims become so oppressive, so totalitarian in "preserving order" that the whole populace becomes alienated and turns to violence as its only means of protection.
You have left yourself in a hole where your only means of identifying those who you have labeled the enemy is the color of their skin, their language, and their home. That is racism, pure and simple. If you can't see that, you have lost sight of your message. If you can see that and you don't care you aren't thinking
like a racist; you are a racist.
*You can't define an enemy by the thoughts in his head. We have an inalienable right to be free in our thoughts and in our speech. If this war is worth fighting, it has to be about bringing these rights to all people.
