Not sure anyone knows if AQ involve yet. If I was AQ I would claim it that we (AQ) killed two members of SEAL Team 6 by tracking them down. Be all sorts of positive AQ propaganda on this by word of mouth. Majority of their fighters really can't read, have a TV, internet, or a media new source besides what they hear from their commanders
On this note, how's everyone feel about that statement from the Cairo embassy apologizing for the freedom of speech?
I've already said my piece... (see my previous posts).
I've just talked to someone who've done embassy security detail in Europe before... he doesn't really know anything about the Libyan event and is treating it as another terrorist attack. But as to Egypt/Yemen... Jihaden is right that they would fall back to protect the people/asset... they're not "manning the walls" like at a military base and their SOP/RIO is very strict. Had they stormed the actual buildings, it'd be baaad for the protestors.
He doesn't quite believe that the Marines in Egypt were unarmed... he can't really fathom that. Has anyone seen any direct quotes/statement about this or is this still hearsay?
There were no active duty marines in Libya for embassy duty because an official embassy hasn't been declared yet. Well actually now there's like 50 marines there at the Consulate. With major fire power at their finger tips....Naval artillery....air strikes....groovy
Jihadin wrote: There were no active duty marines in Libya for embassy duty because an official embassy hasn't been declared yet. Well actually now there's like 50 marines there at the Consulate. With major fire power at their finger tips....Naval artillery....air strikes....groovy
Hell yeah, FAST Co on the deck. Those guys are about as lean and mean as it gets in the Corps without getting into Force Recon or MARSOC.
Frazzled wrote: I didn't particularly catch anything wrong with what the CA said (not including Tweets which I am not a party too).
Frazz... here's a partial timeline of the tweets in question:
Spoiler:
Here is a partial timeline of events. All times are Eastern Standard Time (EST), 6 hours earlier than Cairo time.
5:50AM - Cairo Embassy publishes a statement on its website which rejects those who "abuse" free speech. This is a reference to an anti-Islam film, portions of which have been broadcast on TV in Arabic. The entire speech is tweeted out line by line on the Embassy account.
1:42PM - T he Associated Press tweets word of an attack on the Cairo Embassy. The US flag is pulled down and replaced with a black Islamic flag.
5:28PM - Cairo Embassy tweets out three defensive comments, the last of which doubles down on the initial statement. It reads "3) Sorry, but neither breaches of our compound or angry messages will dissuade us from defending freedom of speech AND criticizing bigotry." To this point there has been no comment, tweet, or statement defending free speech, only the statement/tweet criticizing those who abuse it.
7:00-7:20PM - T he Embassy puts out another tweet tripling down on their initial statement. "This morning's condemnation (issued before the protests began) still stands. As does our condemnation of unjustified breach of the Embassy." This tweet is later deleted.
8:06PM - AP reports an attack on the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya has resulted in one death and one injury.
10:09PM - The Romney camp sends out a brief statement which reads, "I'm outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It's disgraceful that the Obama Administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks." The statement is embargoed until midnight.
10:10PM - Politico reports an unnamed Obama administration official is disavowing the statement posted on the US Embassy website, claiming it was unauthorized. No explanation is offered why the embassy was still pushing it as of 7PM.
~10:25PM - The Romney camp sends out another email ending the embargo on its statement.
10:38-10:56PM - O n the State Dept. Twitter feed, Hillary condemns the attack in Libya and confirms the death of an unnamed "officer" in Libya. One of the final tweets of the night reads "#SecClinton on the attack in #Libya: Let me be clear -- there is never any justification for violent acts of this kind." However, two other tweets mixed in with her reaction to Libya reaffirm a commitment to religious tolerance and denouncing "any intentional effort to denigrate the beliefs of others."
11:40PM-11:50PM - T he Cairo Embassy deletes six tweets, including the one about "abuse" of free speech, one about hurting Muslims feelings, and the one tripling down on the initial statement (7:00PM). They do not delete two unobjectionable tweets which were at the heart of the morning press release. The latter of these echoes Hillary's statement about religious tolerance. The Embassy has effectively scrubbed the offending statements while retaining a portion which the Secretary has embraced.
The assumption made almost universally this morning is that the official statements were the work of an undisciplined junior intern of some kind. Left-leaning author Jeffrey Goldberg claimed Romney was wrong to blame Obama because "[t]he 'sympathy' was expressed not by someone in the administration, but by a tweeter in the besieged embassy in Cairo." A tweeter? Is that the official title of the bilingual diplomat who handles press at one of our most important embassies? Goldberg fails to explain how this low-level "tweeter" was also able to post a press release on the embassy website without any approval from his superiors.
In any case, the media is demanding to know why Romney jumped on this so soon rather than wait. No one seems to be asking why, instead, it took the Obama administration 16 hours to disavow an obviously offensive and indeed stupid statement. Was no one at the State Dept. in contact with the Cairo Embassy in the 13 hours before they reaffirmed the initial statement at 7pm? Apparently word had not gotten back to the "tweeter" that the administration was not thrilled.
Maybe the administration was busy with other things, though of course not so busy that they didn't ultimately find time to correct this. But there are other equally plausible possibilities which haven't been explored at all. First, it's possible the administration recognized early on that the Embassy statement was problematic but decided to wait until most of the media was in bed before correcting it. This is done all the time with so-called Friday document dumps. The story might have developed very differently throughout the day if the statement had been disavowed at 10AM instead of 10PM.
Second, it is a bit far fetched that something as important as attempting to head off a mob was left to a junior associate with no oversight by his superiors. Even if you buy that, which I don't, did no one pick up on it during the day? Finally, is it really likely that after a long day of getting beat up on social media the junior "tweeter" doubled and tripled down on the statement without checking in with his/her superiors? I'm no diplomat, but I have the impression this is not how things are generally done, not even by tweeters.
The fact is we don't actually know what happened behind the scenes. We have the self-serving disavowal of an unnamed official that this was not approved. Has anyone yet gone on the record with this? Why not? It suggests the administration was embarrassed, as they should be. That is not incompatible with either of the two options above. There has to be some explanation why the administration let this flawed statement sit out there for 16 hours. It's a shame no one in the media seems interested is asking.
Jihadin wrote:Not sure anyone knows if AQ involve yet. If I was AQ I would claim it that we (AQ) killed two members of SEAL Team 6 by tracking them down. Be all sorts of positive AQ propaganda on this by word of mouth. Majority of their fighters really can't read, have a TV, internet, or a media new source besides what they hear from their commanders
Thanks for posting the article. Shame really, makes you reconsider private security gigs.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just announced that she finds the anti-Muslim movie trailer that sparked violent and even murderous attacks on American embassies across the Middle East to be “disgusting and reprehensible” and that the United States government had nothing to do with it. I’d add that the trailer is idiotic and hilariously amateurish, but film criticism isn’t part of our chief diplomat’s job description.
It is of course true that the United States government has nothing to do with the film, and that’s an important point to make. Most Middle Easterners have spent their entire lives in an environment where the state owns and controls most or all of the media. State-run TV and newspapers are normal for them. Some honestly may not understand that we do things differently here.
Clinton also should have explained the First Amendment. We don’t punish blasphemy in the United States. Our government isn’t allowed to punish citizens for disrespecting a religion, a political party, the president, or anything or anyone else. This is not going to change. It’s certainly not going to change because violent reactionaries on the other side of the planet don’t like it.
And I have to say it’s a little unseemly for our government to officially take a position on a YouTube video, even one that sparked an international crisis. It’s even more unseemly that our government is taking the same position on that film as the people who just killed our ambassador in Benghazi.
The Bin Ladenists of the Middle East have reasons to hate just about everything on YouTube and American television; not only “blasphemous” videos like the one that inspired the current rage of the week, but also everything from South Park and Breaking Bad to Shalom in the Home and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
I don’t mean to pick on the Democrats here. President George W. Bush did the same thing in 2006. When Danish embassies were attacked in Beirut and Damascus over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad, the Republican president condemned the cartoons.
Violent mobs and terrorist organizations are not going to calm down just because Bush and Clinton go on TV and tell them they have a point. All that does in encourage them. As Matt Welch pointed out in Tablet, “Mohammad al-Zawahiri, the brother of al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, reportedly explained: The U.S. government’s statement condemning the producers of the video that insults the Prophet was not enough. Neither prophylactic apologies nor self-censorship, it turns out, seem to mollify religious fanatics.”
This should have been obvious by now even if al-Zawahiri hadn't said anything. The U.S. Embassy in Cairo condemned the film before it was attacked and repeated the condemnation afterward. Violent protests spread across the region the very next day. The Obama administration distanced itself from the embassy’s hostage-like response while it was under siege, but Clinton just went on TV and did it again. The result won't be any better this time than it was last time.
The West will not, cannot, change its laws to accommodate anybody’s emotions, especially not people on the other side of the planet who replace our flag with the Al Qaeda flag and murder our diplomats.The Internet will always be offensive and our First Amendment will not be repealed. The longer it takes for Middle Easterners to understand this and adjust, the more people are going to die.
Violent mobs and terrorist organizations are not going to calm down just because Bush and Clinton go on TV and tell them they have a point. All that does in encourage them.
Stopped reading after this bit of logically backwards politically motivated trash. You have some sort of superpower for finding and agreeing with thing written by or for14 year olds.
Violent mobs and terrorist organizations are not going to calm down just because Bush and Clinton go on TV and tell them they have a point. All that does in encourage them.
Stopped reading after this bit of logically backwards politically motivated trash. You have some sort of superpower for finding and agreeing with thing written by or for14 year olds.
You need to read up on Michael Trotten... trust me, you'll be surprised.
And what exactly do you object to that quoted statement?
Violent mobs and terrorist organizations are not going to calm down just because Bush and Clinton go on TV and tell them they have a point. All that does in encourage them.
Stopped reading after this bit of logically backwards politically motivated trash. You have some sort of superpower for finding and agreeing with thing written by or for14 year olds.
You need to read up on Michael Trotten... trust me, you'll be surprised.
And what exactly do you object to that quoted statement?
EDIT: Kewl! Shuma thinks I gots supa powah!
Among many things in there the concept that an apologetic stance towards religious insults increases and emboldens terrorist activity. Every shred of evidence and simple logic dictates the exact opposite, and no, given the quality of this 'piece' I don't think I need to look much into Micheal Trotten.
It's a stupid argument. No one has apologized for free speech. It's completely legitimate to criticize an donkey-cave who misuses his right to free speech to foment violence and hatred. There was no need or call for Clinton to "explain the First Amendment"; lecturing other people on how we have more freedoms than they do isn't going to help the diplomatic situation.
Violent mobs and terrorist organizations are not going to calm down just because Bush and Clinton go on TV and tell them they have a point. All that does in encourage them.
Stopped reading after this bit of logically backwards politically motivated trash. You have some sort of superpower for finding and agreeing with thing written by or for14 year olds.
You need to read up on Michael Trotten... trust me, you'll be surprised.
And what exactly do you object to that quoted statement?
EDIT: Kewl! Shuma thinks I gots supa powah!
Among many things in there the concept that an apologetic stance towards religious insults increases and emboldens terrorist activity. Every shred of evidence and simple logic dictates the exact opposite, and no, given the quality of this 'piece' I don't think I need to look much into Micheal Trotten.
First: I'd really insist you to have an open mind on Michael Totten and Michael Yon... these two writers/photographers actually are on the ground in (Iraq, Afpak, Africa).
Secondly: You just refuted your own statments... there's still protest/riots/whatever even AFTER the us apologize... they DON'T CARE about our apology.
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Mannahnin wrote: It's a stupid argument. No one has apologized for free speech. It's completely legitimate to criticize an donkey-cave who misuses his right to free speech to foment violence and hatred. There was no need or call for Clinton to "explain the First Amendment"; lecturing other people on how we have more freedoms than they do isn't going to help the diplomatic situation.
I really disagree with this... appeasement won't be enough.
Seriously, the most basic level of diplomacy (the kind most of us use in our daily lives) involves offering at least a little bit of sympathy and understanding to someone who's upset, while still being clear about things that are unacceptable. People had legimate reason to be upset by the video. They had no justification for violence.
Seriously, the most basic level of diplomacy (the kind most of us use in our daily lives) involves offering at least a little bit of sympathy and understanding to someone who's upset, while still being clear about things that are unacceptable. People had legimate reason to be upset by the video. They had no justification for violence.
Agreed.
I was just fustrated at the missed opportunity the explain what our 1st Admendment means, as Michael Totten stated:
Clintonalsoshould have explained the First Amendment. We don’t punish blasphemy in the United States. Our government isn’t allowed to punish citizens for disrespecting a religion, a political party, the president, or anything or anyone else. This is not going to change. It’s certainly not going to change because violent reactionaries on the other side of the planet don’t like it.
Seaward wrote: Should you? Up to you. Certainly not up to the stranger.
Well, duh.
And then afterwards, when that stranger has got offended and nothing else has been achieved at all, everyone is going to say 'well that was a fething stupid thing to do'.
And I'll defend it by saying 'it was my right to say what I want'. Because that's what donkey-caves do.
I'm saying this isn't an issue of morality. You want to discuss it in terms of morality? Very well. It's not immoral to make a film that breaks no laws. End of discussion.
Of course it's an issue of morality. The idea that someone can say 'he shouldn't have done that' and that someone else can just declare 'this isn't an issue of morality' is beyond ridiculous. As soon as a person states 'he can do that but he shouldn't have' then morality is part of the issue.
And yeah, it can be immoral to do things, even when they break no laws. Making a film that causes offence and achieves nothing else, and never could have achieved anything else, is one such example.
Where have you picked up this strange notion that you're entitled to go through life without ever being offended?
There is, very fething obviously, a big space between 'never get offended' and 'there is nothing wrong with doing offensive gak for no reason but to be offensive'.
If you would stop and think about this issue for even just a half of a second you would have figured that out. Instead you're just blurting out whatever nonsense you can in response to me. It's boring.
So I take it, in the analogy I presented earlier, you're saying that the woman's at fault as well as the attacker? Interesting.
No, I'm not. I cut that argument because it was too stupid to bother with. But if I really, really have to...
The analogy is a complete fail because at no point did I suggest the people who attacked the embassy deserved anything but complete blame for their actions. The analogy is a complete fail because unlike the rape victim, who is taking on all risk associated with her behaviour, the victims of the attack at the embassy are not the douchebag who made the video.
What?
You continue to raise points that I have expliticitly stated are false. You continue to invent nonsense that I must believe. You are debating an imaginary person, and ignoring my actual debate.
I don't know why you are doing this, but I'd wish you'd stop. Because what I actually explained to you was very simple, I would honestly be disappointed with an eight year old if they didn't understand the concept of 'you are free to do this, but that doesn't mean you should'.
Your looking at two different religous culture here. On our side we're a bit educated and exposed to a wide assortment of other religions. On their side they grew up in a culture thats muslim all their lives with hardly no exposure to any other religion.
Ahtman wrote: It has been awhile, but wasn't Leviathan basically one big long explanation for why Christianity required a strong Monarchy? There was a time when many thought that Christianity and Democracy were incompatible, or at least not ideal at all.
That's a good point. Great example of how quickly things can change, yeah?
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AustonT wrote: How is it that this glorified home video is distributed more widely in the Islamic world? Is it offered in Arabic and Farsi? Somehow I doubt it.
It's the daily outrage.
It's the same as Rush Limbaugh's audience having more liberals than conservatives. Or how Richard Dawkins is so much of a bigger deal in creationist circles than he is in evolutionary biology.
Jihadin wrote: Your looking at two different religous culture here. On our side we're a bit educated and exposed to a wide assortment of other religions. On their side they grew up in a culture thats muslim all their lives with hardly no exposure to any other religion.
Thats kinda my point...
Most folks over there *thinks* the US government is okay/endorse anything that come out of "America", because that's their reality in their country.
Yeah, the 'them'. The 'them' are always the most horrible, despicable group of people. Until history moves on, we get to like those people and then we find some other 'them' to hate for all the ways they're different to 'us'.
The target of racism changes, but underneath it all it's basically the same thing, isn't it?
Doesn't this "make us look weak" now though? Now the world knows that they can scale the wall and drag down our flag... don't you think they'll try pushing it more?
I don't think this is the gangster planet from Star Trek. It really isn't about looking tough so people don't take you on.
First: I'd really insist you to have an open mind on Michael Totten and Michael Yon... these two writers/photographers actually are on the ground in (Iraq, Afpak, Africa).
Secondly: You just refuted your own statments... there's still protest/riots/whatever even AFTER the us apologize... they DON'T CARE about our apology.
whembly wrote: And what exactly do you object to that quoted statement?
The problem is that it's a false argument. No-one actually thinks everyone was running around the White House until Obama said 'nah, it's cool, I've got this. I'll apologise and then they'll stop being angry.'
Stating that the film is not what we're about isn't the complete solution, but it might be a small part of the eventual solution, and it certainly won't be part of the problem (whereas failing to acknowledge the movie, or going on some lecture about free speach could potentially exacerbate the problem).
First: I'd really insist you to have an open mind on Michael Totten and Michael Yon... these two writers/photographers actually are on the ground in (Iraq, Afpak, Africa).
Secondly: You just refuted your own statments... there's still protest/riots/whatever even AFTER the us apologize... they DON'T CARE about our apology.
Let's parse this nebulous concept of logic... shall we?
You said, and I quote "...concept that an apologetic stance towards religious insults increases and emboldens terrorist activity. Every shred of evidence and simple logic dictates the exact opposite..."
It certainly doesn't DECREASE and DEFLATE terrorist activities...
whembly wrote: And what exactly do you object to that quoted statement?
The problem is that it's a false argument. No-one actually thinks everyone was running around the White House until Obama said 'nah, it's cool, I've got this. I'll apologise and then they'll stop being angry.'
Stating that the film is not what we're about isn't the complete solution, but it might be a small part of the eventual solution, and it certainly won't be part of the problem (whereas failing to acknowledge the movie, or going on some lecture about free speach could potentially exacerbate the problem).
I disagree Seb... we're dealing with Extremist who doesn't understand this, or more likely they're using it as a pretext to exert influence in the region.
Mannahnin wrote: It's a stupid argument. No one has apologized for free speech. It's completely legitimate to criticize an donkey-cave who misuses his right to free speech to foment violence and hatred. There was no need or call for Clinton to "explain the First Amendment"; lecturing other people on how we have more freedoms than they do isn't going to help the diplomatic situation.
Jihadin wrote: Didn't see te Christians go nuts over the "Da Vinci Code"
There were quite a few people that were upset and vocal about the film. This isn't really a good comparison though as one was an piece of agit-prop pseudo-documentary designed to inflame whereas the other is Hollywood Blockbuster aimed at entertaining. I would compare it Triumph of the Will, but that would be unfair to Triumph of the Will, which while espousing truly horrendous ideology, was an incredibly well made film. No, it is more like The Eternal Jew: short, amateur, pseudo-documentary designed only to inflame and incite. And, really, Da Vinci Code when The Last Temptation of Christ is still an option?
And before we go giving Christians* a pat on the back let's not forget the people who made it are Christians.
*I hate to use Christian in such a broad way, but then it hasn't really stopped us from using Muslim in such a broad way either.
First: I'd really insist you to have an open mind on Michael Totten and Michael Yon... these two writers/photographers actually are on the ground in (Iraq, Afpak, Africa).
Secondly: You just refuted your own statments... there's still protest/riots/whatever even AFTER the us apologize... they DON'T CARE about our apology.
Let's parse this nebulous concept of logic... shall we?
You said, and I quote "...concept that an apologetic stance towards religious insults increases and emboldens terrorist activity. Every shred of evidence and simple logic dictates the exact opposite..."
It certainly doesn't DECREASE and DEFLATE terrorist activities...
There were numerous outcries/appeasment and all that...
Did the violence stop? And how does that square with your logic there.
Let me add... I was more disappointed that our 1st ammendment was defended... the apology itself didnt bother me.
It never ends. It really never ends. You use logical fallacy after fallacy and support none of it ever. Laying the blame, shifting sands, equivocation, appeals to authority, false sourcing. You support an article that says that apologizing increases terrorist activity, I say that it decreases it. You then say that it has no visible effect (contradicting your own source) and state that I'm wrong by providing links telling about an event where people intentionally fanned the flames by repeatedly reposting the original offensive material for over a year, as if that somehow counted as an apology that should have reduced the outrage. You know what that is? It's not an apology, it's continued offense. You know what burning a Koran does? It pisses people off. You know what burning a Koran on video does and then flexing military supremacy and the freedom to insult people that you have had an active hand in attacking or oppressing for half a century? It pisses people off. Pissed off people burn gak to the ground and shoot at things with guns. An apology doesn't cause people to burn things to the ground, saying we don't approve of something doesn't cause people to burn things to the ground.
Sticking to your headstrong small minded "nothing we do is ever wrong" mindset gets us shot at. It gets our gak blown up. It makes people with nothing in their lives, no where to turn to, and a clearly defined enemy insulting something they've dedicated their lives to want to make it stop happening. They make it stop happening in the only way they feasibly can, by attacking the closest representative of their new enemy. Obama is threading a needle between pissing off the conservative manchildren who can't have an active sitting president denounce intensely racist propaganda without it assaulting their dainty sensibilities and people with guns and missiles willing to kill themselves to strike back against perceived insults. One of the presidents political duties is to protect our assets abroad, he doesn't do that by embracing virulent anti muslim propaganda while our facilities are in the middle of muslim held territories in states that can't police themselves due to recent and total revolutions. That would be something an idiot would do.
Jihadin wrote: Whoa now. It doesn't get you shot at Shuma. It gets me shot at (if I deploy) or the US military shot at.
That ambassador wasn't in the military. Civilian foreign nationals and Christians in libya and the rest of the mideast/africa will be attacked before armed soldiers. But yeah, it does put soldiers in even further risk beyond what is required by their duty. It makes them targets in yet another way in the middle of a transition where America really needs to be ingratiating itself as a benevolent western power, rather than a murderous one that plays toy soliders with dictators and is trying to destroy Islam.
Mannahnin wrote: People had legimate reason to be upset by the video.
No, they didn't.
why
Because it's one stupid film. If your belief in your chosen superstition is so remarkably weak that anyone questioning or insulting it sends you into such paroxysms of self-doubt and rage that you're forced to lash out, violently or otherwise, at any even remotely linked to your detractors, maybe it's time to pick a new superstition, or just give them up entirely.
That goes for Muslims with this movie - or political cartoons - or any depiction of anything they don't like, anywhere. It goes for Christians with Dan Brown works - or The Last Temptation of Christ - or any depiction of anything they don't like, anywhere.
A) No one has defended people who lash out violently because they're offended. Everyone has said that's bad. So don't equate that to people getting offended and "lashing out" in a nonviolent way. There's a big difference between violent and nonviolent protests.
B) If someone makes a video whose whole purpose is to mock and degrade my religion, and to call the founder a pedophile, I have every reason and right to be offended by that video and mad at the jackass who made it.
Now, of course, he has every right to make it, but having that right doesn't make him immune from the consequences, nor does it entirely absolve him of moral responsibility for the consequences to other people. He incited violence, and he knew he was inciting violence, and he did it anyway. He's a scumbag. The people who perpetrated the violence committed greater evils, but OTOH at least most of what they did wasn't calculated or premeditated.
Because it's one stupid film. If your belief in your chosen superstition is so remarkably weak that anyone questioning or insulting it sends you into such paroxysms of self-doubt and rage that you're forced to lash out, violently or otherwise, at any even remotely linked to your detractors, maybe it's time to pick a new superstition, or just give them up entirely.
That goes for Muslims with this movie - or political cartoons - or any depiction of anything they don't like, anywhere. It goes for Christians with Dan Brown works - or The Last Temptation of Christ - or any depiction of anything they don't like, anywhere.
Why stop at superstition? Why not include other things? Perhaps political ideology, social philosophy, or Zoidberg?
Mannahnin wrote:A) No one has defended people who lash out violently because they're offended. Everyone has said that's bad. So don't equate that to people getting offended and "lashing out" in a nonviolent way. There's a big difference between violent and nonviolent protests.
I'm not equating them. I'm pointing out they're both equally ridiculous.
B) If someone makes a video whose whole purpose is to mock and degrade my religion, and to call the founder a pedophile, I have every reason and right to be offended by that video and mad at the jackass who made it.
You have a right to be offended, sure, but no reason to be.
dogma wrote:Why stop at superstition? Why not include other things? Perhaps political ideology, social philosophy, or Zoidberg?
We could, sure, though I'd prefer to leave the maxim at concepts with no grounding in reality whatsoever. I'm personally not offended when someone insults my political ideology, so however you want to modify it works for me.
Mannahnin wrote: People had legimate reason to be upset by the video.
No, they didn't.
You deliberately left out the sentence than followed the one you quoted. That video upsets me, not because I'm particularly fond of Muslims but because its blatantly false and intentionally offensive, you know like a Klan rally. I have a legitimate reason to be upset at Walmart on a regular basis, like Mannahin said its not a justification to violence.
They're not equally ridiculous by any stretch, unless you think that no one should be offended by having the things they love and hold dear insulted.
Is there nothing in your life which would anger you to have degraded and insulted? Your wife, your mother, your children, your home, your principles?
If something you are about is mocked and associated unjustly with horrible crimes like pedophilia, you have every right and reason to be offended by that.
We could, sure, though I'd prefer to leave the maxim at concepts with no grounding in reality whatsoever.
So my initial statement, bar Zoidberg, was basically on the spot.
I sort of wish I had a "rebut atheist rant" macro right now.
It would save time, you could pre-type a "rebut atheist rant", a "rebut religious rant," a "rebut liberal rant," a "rebut conservative rant." It would save you hours
Mannahnin wrote: They're not equally ridiculous by any stretch, unless you think that no one should be offended by having the things they love and hold dear insulted.
Is there nothing in your life which would anger you to have degraded and insulted? Your wife, your mother, your children, your home, your principles?
If something you are about is mocked and associated unjustly with horrible crimes like pedophilia, you have every right and reason to be offended by that.
Let's not pretend there's an equivalency between pejoratives slung at verifiable family members and (possibly true, for all we know) pejoratives slung at long-dead founders of systematic superstition.
What's particularly amusing about this line of defense is that I've never in my life met someone of another religion who's had any issues whatsoever mocking the hell out of L. Ron Hubbard, yet from an outsider's perspective? All of a piece. No less valid and defensible a system of belief than any of the others. Which is of course to say, not at all. I'd compare it to demanding that the Loch Ness Monster be considered inviolate, but being fine with calling Bigfoot a chump.
whembly wrote: I disagree Seb... we're dealing with Extremist who doesn't understand this, or more likely they're using it as a pretext to exert influence in the region.
But you aren't dealing just with extremists. You're dealing with people who aren't quite extremists willing to do stupid things in the name holy war. And you're dealing with a greater population, who depending on how you behave will be more or less willing to tolerate extremist groups living within their midst.
Seaward, I respect a lot of atheist thought, but I'm sorry to say that I can't feel the same about what you're putting forward here. :(
Your claim that they had no reason to be angry is based on you imposing your (lack of) beliefs on theirs. When of course, that's not how motivation works. If they love a thing and it is central to their lives, even if you don't believe it's real, obviously it's important to them.
You also dodged the point about whether you would feel angry if someone denigrated your values or principles.
Jihadin wrote: Didn't see te Christians go nuts over the "Da Vinci Code"
There were quite a few people that were upset and vocal about the film. This isn't really a good comparison though as one was an piece of agit-prop pseudo-documentary designed to inflame whereas the other is Hollywood Blockbuster aimed at entertaining. I would compare it Triumph of the Will, but that would be unfair to Triumph of the Will, which while espousing truly horrendous ideology, was an incredibly well made film. No, it is more like The Eternal Jew: short, amateur, pseudo-documentary designed only to inflame and incite. And, really, Da Vinci Code when The Last Temptation of Christ is still an option?
Yeah, Christians freaked out good and proper about The Last Temptation of Christ, and there was no shortage of outrage about The Life of Brian either. They were nothing like this, of course, but then that means what exactly - that parts of Islam are extremely volatile and prone considerable outrage?
Well, duh. But then you look at why that might be the case (poverty, poor education standards, weak political standing internationally) and it's really no surprise it is how it is.
But lots of people look past all of that because they for some reason or another desperately want their clash of cultures.
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Seaward wrote: Because it's one stupid film. If your belief in your chosen superstition is so remarkably weak that anyone questioning or insulting it sends you into such paroxysms of self-doubt and rage that you're forced to lash out, violently or otherwise, at any even remotely linked to your detractors, maybe it's time to pick a new superstition, or just give them up entirely.
Or maybe you could consider things are a lot more complicated than that. Being born into a position of relative power and privilege makes that sort of stuff a lot less important.
Ultimately, it is important to them. So it's the act of an obnoxious ass to attack that for no reason other than provoke a response.
Mannahnin wrote: Seaward, I respect a lot of atheist thought, but I'm sorry to say that I can't feel the same about what you're putting forward here. :(
Does that entitle me to throw a big, "My fee-fees, they're hurt!" tantrum?
Your claim that they had no reason to be angry is based on you imposing your (lack of) beliefs on theirs. When of course, that's not how motivation works. If they love a thing and it is central to their lives, even if you don't believe it's real, obviously it's important to them.
Why is their love of it conditional on how other people feel about it? The worth of the things that I care about is determined by me, not by someone half a world away with an entirely different culture, and I frankly could not possibly care less what they think about it.
You also dodged the point about whether you would feel angry if someone denigrated your values or principles.
I like to think I hold the values and principals that I do precisely because they're strong enough on their own to stand up to ridicule without me needing to get emotionally involved.
Okay, but if someone made an inflammatory video and translated it into your language specifically to insult you, isn't that grounds for feeling insulted?
I'll defend to the death your right to call me an donkey-cave, but most people don't feel as strongly about free speech as I do.
Mannahnin wrote: Okay, but if someone made an inflammatory video and translated it into your language specifically to insult you, isn't that grounds for feeling insulted?
Why would it be, especially if I believed the claims made to be ridiculous?
I think you'll find that the majority of humanity doesn't share your sense of detachment, sadly. Most people have more emotional involvement than that, in the things they care about.
Of course nothing justifies a violent response, but nonviolent protesting is responding to speech with speech.
Mannahnin wrote: I think you'll find that the majority of humanity doesn't share your sense of detachment, sadly. Most people have more emotional involvement than that, in the things they care about.
Of course nothing justifies a violent response, but nonviolent protesting is responding to speech with speech.
You misunderstand. I have an emotional involvement in the things I care about, certainly. But my caring about them is not influenced by the opinions of those who do not, as seems to be the case with religion, and a pretty blatant attempt to, for lack of a better word, troll the things I care about wouldn't elicit much of a response from me. Why take stupid bait?
If I say Jesus wasn't real, or was a tax cheat, or loved professional wrestling, does that change your opinion of him? If not, why bother going twelve rounds? It makes zero sense, and seems to be a uniquely religious instinct.
I don't think it's uniquely religious. More tribal, maybe. People freak out in similar ways when their country or political system is attacked/insulted.
But my caring about them is not influenced by the opinions of those who do not, as seems to be the case with religion, and a pretty blatant attempt to, for lack of a better word, troll the things I care about wouldn't elicit much of a response from me.
Bear in mind also that there's a religion vs. religion angle here, too, based on who created the video.
Seaward wrote: Does that entitle me to throw a big, "My fee-fees, they're hurt!" tantrum?
No. We've been through this. Recognising a likely course of action from another party doesn't excuse them if they undertake that action.
It's like arguing with a goldfish.
I like to think I hold the values and principals that I do precisely because they're strong enough on their own to stand up to ridicule without me needing to get emotionally involved.
Well, I'd like to congratulate you on evolving to a being of pure reason, and having assumed a new form as a gaseous cloud due to it being the most efficient form of existance.
The rest of us lowly humans are still going to have our emotions tied up in our values.
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Seaward wrote: If I say Jesus wasn't real, or was a tax cheat, or loved professional wrestling, does that change your opinion of him? If not, why bother going twelve rounds? It makes zero sense, and seems to be a uniquely religious instinct.
Uniquely religious?
Yeah, because no-one ever gets into a fight because someone called someone's mum fat, when both parties knew that person had never actually met their mum. Or got into a punch up over the result of a football match.
It's only ever over religion.
Ultimately, you're here saying how your views are so much more logical and enlightened... but you're still resorting to the same old religion bashing that so many of my fellow atheists fall for. Which kind of shows you have just as much of a crutch for your beliefs as anyone else.
Seaward wrote: Does that entitle me to throw a big, "My fee-fees, they're hurt!" tantrum?
No. We've been through this. Recognising a likely course of action from another party doesn't excuse them if they undertake that action.
Wait a tick. You've spent pages arguing that it's perfectly reasonable to get offended when someone disrespects your beliefs. You are now saying I cannot get offended when someone states they do not respect mine. I'd start actually reading posts before hitting the Reply button, friend.
It's like arguing with a goldfish.
That's it, I'm on my way to the Australian embassy.
Well, I'd like to congratulate you on evolving to a being of pure reason, and having assumed a new form as a gaseous cloud due to it being the most efficient form of existance.
The rest of us lowly humans are still going to have our emotions tied up in our values.
It has nothing to do with pure reason, and everything to do with, dare I say, the emotional maturity of not choosing to be offended every time someone says something I do not agree with. If you find value in frequently enraging yourself, by all means, continue to do so.
Ultimately, you're here saying how your views are so much more logical and enlightened... but you're still resorting to the same old religion bashing that so many of my fellow atheists fall for. Which kind of shows you have just as much of a crutch for your beliefs as anyone else.
Now there's a non sequitur if ever there was one.
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Mannahnin wrote: Bear in mind also that there's a religion vs. religion angle here, too, based on who created the video.
I'm sure you'll understand why I do not view that as remotely close to a better reason for anyone involved to take offense. Chupacabra versus the jackalope.
Muslims rise to the bait every time. From Salman Rushdie to the Danish cartoons and now the US ambassador killed in Libya. A Right-wing Islamophobe in the West publishes incendiary material, and as if on autopilot, a Muslim mob will turn angry and unleash violence. How to stop these repeat performances of medieval intolerance?
I write as a Muslim. I detest the negative, to me blasphemous, portrayal in such films of the Prophet Mohamed I venerate and love. But in a free society I am fully within my rights to rebut the anti-Muslim propaganda with facts, not force.
To resort to violence is to lose the argument. The freedom of religion that allows 30 million Muslims to thrive in the West today came about because religion was mocked in Europe after the Enlightenment period — no single religion could enforce its will as “The Truth”. The freedoms to proselytise, apostasise and blaspheme are all interlinked.
Without those liberties, we Muslims would not be practising religious freedom in the West, building mosques, creating cemeteries, prospering as faith communities. In other words, we cannot burn the very bridges that let us and other communities be here as free people.
To continue to value our freedoms in the West, and help project this model into newly free Arab societies, three things must happen.
First, in Libya, the terrorists who were behind killing consular staff in Benghazi must face the full force of the law. No moral equivocation such as “we must be more sensitive” should be advanced. Such excuse-making not only encourages this behaviour but risks undermining the foundational pillars of liberty and free societies in the West. And it sets a terrible example to Arab countries looking to advance democracy.
Second, there is a backstory to the news headlines. For every protest or killing, there is an underlying cause of Muslims not coming to terms with the modern world. We are easily offended. Our clerics in mosques have not updated their understanding of blasphemy or heresy. In short, we need thicker skins and must accept that just as we can be critical of other faiths and ideologies, others are free to do so about us.
Finally, al Qaeda and its followers have popularised a narrative in Muslim-majority countries that the West is at war with Muslims and Islam. From the crusades to empire to Guantánamo Bay to Iraq, this reading of history and collection of half-truths helps animate many Muslims.
This false mindset, a flawed belief, needs urgent discrediting. Who better to do this than the Muslims who live and prosper as Westerners in Europe and the United States?
Friday prayers tomorrow in Arab and Muslim countries may be used by clerics to fan the flames of anger. But the Prophet Mohamed they claim to defend stood by and watched a Bedouin urinate in the mosque. He forgave that blasphemy. Where is that spirit of compassion?
Muslims in free societies must not be divided by the radical Salafi Muslims of the Middle East, or the Right-wing Muslimphobes in the West. The clash of extremes cannot be allowed to reverse our freedoms.
Ed Husain is author of The Islamist and a senior fellow at the US Council on Foreign Relations.
It seems the German embassy in Khartum, Sudan, was attacked/stormed and the German flag replaced by a muslim banner of some kind. According to a German news website, the protesters are on their way to the US embassy/consulate now. Some protesters are staying and trying to breach the doors of the German embassy.
According to the article, the Sudanese government openly critisized the movie made in the US and islamistic groups called for violent protests after the Friday prayer.
Seaward wrote: Does that entitle me to throw a big, "My fee-fees, they're hurt!" tantrum?
No. We've been through this. Recognising a likely course of action from another party doesn't excuse them if they undertake that action.
Wait a tick. You've spent pages arguing that it's perfectly reasonable to get offended when someone disrespects your beliefs. You are now saying I cannot get offended when someone states they do not respect mine. I'd start actually reading posts before hitting the Reply button, friend.
It's like arguing with a goldfish.
That's it, I'm on my way to the Australian embassy.
Well, I'd like to congratulate you on evolving to a being of pure reason, and having assumed a new form as a gaseous cloud due to it being the most efficient form of existance.
The rest of us lowly humans are still going to have our emotions tied up in our values.
It has nothing to do with pure reason, and everything to do with, dare I say, the emotional maturity of not choosing to be offended every time someone says something I do not agree with. If you find value in frequently enraging yourself, by all means, continue to do so.
Ultimately, you're here saying how your views are so much more logical and enlightened... but you're still resorting to the same old religion bashing that so many of my fellow atheists fall for. Which kind of shows you have just as much of a crutch for your beliefs as anyone else.
Now there's a non sequitur if ever there was one.
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Mannahnin wrote: Bear in mind also that there's a religion vs. religion angle here, too, based on who created the video.
I'm sure you'll understand why I do not view that as remotely close to a better reason for anyone involved to take offense. Chupacabra versus the jackalope.
People do not choose what offends them.
Of course someone who really thinks Mo was a prophet to the Supreme Being will be angry
A peaceful Protest is fine - they can even burn a US FLAG if they buy one.
What is disgusting here is the killing of Americans, burning down a building, and even going after other embassies that do not represent the home of this Becile guy.
Jews and Christians simply do not resort to murder when they are made fun of by a guy no one had heard of.
And the old woman killed in the film may be based on a real person/account.
Jews and Christians simply do not resort to murder when they are made fun of by a guy no one had heard of.
They do in central Africa. Militant, poorly educated, poor, and jobless populations tend to turn violent for stupid reasons.
How many Jews are there in the Congo?
Examples of a riot over a US film, Shuma?
It should be fairly clear to you that I was speaking about Christians, the only largescale jewish population outside of the U.S. is in Israel and they bulldoze peoples homes and keep countries hostage when they get insulted. You're also now asking for specificity in one region for one act, which isn't what you were doing before. Previously you just wanted examples of violence spurred by insultation. Sectarian violence is common in central Africa and there are numerous violent rebel groups based on radical christian beliefs, the Lords Resistance Army for example.
You let the embassy Marines standing around with you go weapons free. The embassy's sovereign US territory. You don't get to storm it, tear down the flag, and replace it with your own. You definitely do not get to kill an ambassador.
Someone remind me again why we haven't just glassed that whole region? We always need more off-site parking.
Revoke all visa application of the date it was perpatrated. Stop all foreign Aid Remove the embassy personnel. Implement the "Benchmark" plan to that country. Majority of the ME people think we're stupid for continuing on given aid to government s that severely dislike us. Notice the DoS already stated the Aid to the Egyptian military military will not be touched?
By Kirsten Powers ( she's very distracting... wait, what she say? yes, I'm a Neanderthal )
"Disgusting and reprehensible." said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. "Truly abhorrent," an outraged White House official told an international conference. Were they talking about the murder of four Americans in Libya? Or perhaps the hoisting of an Islamist flag over the U.S. Embassy in Cairo?
No. For that they stuck to diplomatic speak. For the president, the harshest language was: "I strongly condemn the outrageous attack." For Clinton it was that the US is heartbroken and she condemned "this senseless act of violence." But "disgusting and reprehensible" and "truly abhorrent " were reserved for an amateurish and silly film by someone nobody has ever heard of.
In fact, what is "disgusting and reprehensible" is that there are people in the world who think they are justified in attacking and killing people because someone hurt their feelings or offended their sensibilities. The US government should not act as a validator or enabler of this upside down worldview, which is exactly what the Obama administration has done repeatedly as they have responded to these abhorrent attacks against the United States.
I have defended the Obama administration against the complaints from the right that they have run an "apology tour" in the Middle East because I believe the US should admit when we make mistakes, such as the accidental burning of Korans. But what we shouldn't do is affirm the wrongheaded view that people should be protected from the free speech of others.
Worse, our leaders shouldn't let our enemies know that when they kill our people and attack our embassies that the US Government will act like a battered wife making excuses for her psychotic husband. Wake up: we weren't attacked because of a movie made by an American. We were attacked because there are crazy religious fanatics who hate the United States. We didn't ask for it.
Egypt's President Morsi reportedly asked Obama "to put an end to such behavior"—presumably freedom, constitutional rights and the like -- as it led to the making of, in his eyes, the offensive movie.
Obama has no legal recourse but our president seems to be acquiescing to Morsi’s request by trying to silence the movie-maker through verbal intimidation, including a call from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Dempsey who asked Pastor Terry Jones to withdraw his support for the film. Additionally, The Hollywood Reporter reveals that the FBI was dispatched to Hollywood to uncover the identity of the filmmaker. (Don't they have real terrorists to catch? I'll be looking for the administration's condemnations next for the selling of the DVD of “The Da Vinci Code,” the blockbuster American movie that claims Jesus had sex with Mary Magdalene.)
Team Obama’s unseemly groveling to violent extremists has been cloaked in a newfound concern on the left for respecting religious sensibilities. Tuesday, a liberal professor argued in USA Today that the maker of the Mohammed film should be arrested.
President Obama said in the Rose Garden: "We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others" and Clinton asserted that, "The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others." Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough endorsed efforts to create "a world where the dignity of all people—and all faiths—is respected."
Apparently our foreign policy is now being run by Dr. Phil. Someone needs to explain to the White House that our Constitution protects freedom of religion from government interference, not the protection from people who say mean, critical or offensive things about one's religion.
But if this is truly their new position, then they have a lot to be outraged about right here at home. Remember Amanda Marcotte, one of the left's top bloggers and a columnist for the left-wing Guardian who chose last Easter -- the holiest day of the Christian calendar -- to chime "Happy Jeebus Day"? She once asked: "What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit? [Answer]: You’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology."
Then there was the tweet last year by Bill Maher about Tim Tebow during a particularly bad game: "Wow, Jesus just f----- #TimTebow bad! And on Xmas Eve! Somewhere in hell Satan is Tebowing, saying to Hitler "Hey, Buffalo's killing them." This was so offensive that President Obama's PAC still managed to take a million dollars from this man to help finance his reelection.
If Christians had burned down Maher's house in response, would the administration put out a statement condemning the violence but pointing out that he should have respected the religious beliefs of others?
Of course not. Nor would anyone want that.
But that is what the administration keeps doing with their responses to the attacks in the Middle East. The condemnations are paired in with claims about respecting religious beliefs, which is implicit sympathy for the claims of some of the attackers and rioters.
It’s time for the Obama administration to stop blaming the victim.
Muslims rise to the bait every time. From Salman Rushdie to the Danish cartoons and now the US ambassador killed in Libya. A Right-wing Islamophobe in the West publishes incendiary material, and as if on autopilot, a Muslim mob will turn angry and unleash violence. How to stop these repeat performances of medieval intolerance?
I write as a Muslim. I detest the negative, to me blasphemous, portrayal in such films of the Prophet Mohamed I venerate and love. But in a free society I am fully within my rights to rebut the anti-Muslim propaganda with facts, not force.
To resort to violence is to lose the argument. The freedom of religion that allows 30 million Muslims to thrive in the West today came about because religion was mocked in Europe after the Enlightenment period — no single religion could enforce its will as “The Truth”. The freedoms to proselytise, apostasise and blaspheme are all interlinked.
Without those liberties, we Muslims would not be practising religious freedom in the West, building mosques, creating cemeteries, prospering as faith communities. In other words, we cannot burn the very bridges that let us and other communities be here as free people.
To continue to value our freedoms in the West, and help project this model into newly free Arab societies, three things must happen.
First, in Libya, the terrorists who were behind killing consular staff in Benghazi must face the full force of the law. No moral equivocation such as “we must be more sensitive” should be advanced. Such excuse-making not only encourages this behaviour but risks undermining the foundational pillars of liberty and free societies in the West. And it sets a terrible example to Arab countries looking to advance democracy.
Second, there is a backstory to the news headlines. For every protest or killing, there is an underlying cause of Muslims not coming to terms with the modern world. We are easily offended. Our clerics in mosques have not updated their understanding of blasphemy or heresy. In short, we need thicker skins and must accept that just as we can be critical of other faiths and ideologies, others are free to do so about us.
Finally, al Qaeda and its followers have popularised a narrative in Muslim-majority countries that the West is at war with Muslims and Islam. From the crusades to empire to Guantánamo Bay to Iraq, this reading of history and collection of half-truths helps animate many Muslims.
This false mindset, a flawed belief, needs urgent discrediting. Who better to do this than the Muslims who live and prosper as Westerners in Europe and the United States?
Friday prayers tomorrow in Arab and Muslim countries may be used by clerics to fan the flames of anger. But the Prophet Mohamed they claim to defend stood by and watched a Bedouin urinate in the mosque. He forgave that blasphemy. Where is that spirit of compassion?
Muslims in free societies must not be divided by the radical Salafi Muslims of the Middle East, or the Right-wing Muslimphobes in the West. The clash of extremes cannot be allowed to reverse our freedoms.
Ed Husain is author of The Islamist and a senior fellow at the US Council on Foreign Relations.
Are they taking criminal actions against the maker of the film? - No.
Are they preventing his freedom of speech? - No.
Anybody who claims that this is a freedom of speech issue is missing the point.
You can allow somebody to make this movie and still call him out for making it. The people that made this video knew exactly what would happen, and that is the reason they made it. And you can call them out for being jackasses who were perfectly okay with giving fuel to people who would use it.
None of that diminishes that:
1) The idiots are still free to make idiotic movies that are the artistic equivalent of throwing a molotov cocktail into a region of the world that they knew would ignite riots.
2) That people who protest peacefully have a right to do so.
3) That people who cross that line are worthless.
When the men who killed our ambassador to Libya were in the final stages of their preparation, Hillary Clinton was in the Cook Islands, being regaled by locals in traditional dress. Her seemingly endless world tour has prioritized symbolism and pageantry over substance. So too has the administration of her boss, Barack Obama, and the costs are now becoming clear.
This explains why Obama’s chief diplomat said of the Libya attack: “I asked myself—how could this happen? How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction?”
Madam secretary, it is time for you and your boss to wake up and smell the global jihad.
There are people in this world—and not a small number of them—who share the vision bin Laden had and have the will and means to act. No amount of apologizing for America, embracing our adversaries or mistreating our allies will change that.
It is worth recalling that Cairo, the city where a mob entered the US embassy compound and burned an American flag, was the epicenter of what critics call Obama’s “apology tour.” It was there that he apologized for critical steps American officials took in the Middle East to defend against the Soviets eight years before Obama was born. It was there that he criticized his own nation’s response to 9/11.
That was the reason US diplomats in Cairo instinctively put out an apologetic condemnation of those who “hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.” They were simply channeling the Obama view of the world.
Hillary also said that the attack was the result of a “small and savage group.”
Wrong again.
Viewed correctly, the attack was perpetrated by a very large group. Terrorism as we have known it since 9/11 is but the violent vanguard of the Islamist political ideology. This ideology unifies diverse terrorists from Jemmah Islamiyah in Indonesia to Al-Shabaab in Somalia to Boko Haram in Nigeria to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to the Haqqani network in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
While the groups are diverse and at times antagonistic toward each other, their hatred of America unites them, and they work toward a generally common goal. Behind them is a large body of people who cheer on and support Islamists—a minority of Muslims, but hardly a body of people we should ignore.
The American people have instinctively understood this threat since Islamists took over Iran and took our diplomats hostage there in 1979. Our political class never has never understood this.
Instead, our foreign policy establishment, led by presidents of both parties, has spoken of “violent extremists” as if they had no common thread or clear ideological motivation. More recently, President Obama has thumped his chest about killing Al Qaeda’s founder and implied that Al Qaeda is our only real enemy. This is convenient and politically correct—but it is wrong.
If we killed everyone in Al Qaeda tomorrow, we would still have a problem that Obama, Hillary and the Washington foreign policy establishment refuse to recognize. There is a tyrannical political force in the world that is waging war on us wherever it can—both politically and militarily.
On Obama’s watch, the Islamists have done very well. They have taken over Egypt and are set to take over Syria and its chemical weapons arsenal without a change in US policy. They look ahead to the day U.S. forces leave Afghanistan—which Obama has conveniently announced to them. And in the country where modern Islamism first came to life at the nation-state level, Iran, the government is set to gain a nuclear weapons capability—another Obama legacy.
Hillary ought to park the plane and understand that diplomacy—or more accurately statecraft—ought to be about recognizing and fighting these problems. Pageantry, apologies and photo ops are obviously not getting it done.
Christian Whiton was a State Department senior adviser from 2003-2009. He is principal at DC International Advisory. Follow him on Twitter @ChristianWhiton.
Anybody who claims that this is a freedom of speech issue is missing the point.
You can allow somebody to make this movie and still call him out for making it. The people that made this video knew exactly what would happen, and that is the reason they made it. And you can call them out for being jackasses who were perfectly okay with giving fuel to people who would use it.
None of that diminishes that:
Yup.
1) The idiots are still free to make idiotic movies that are the artistic equivalent of throwing a molotov cocktail into a region of the world that they knew would ignite riots.
Right... 'cuz he "dared" speak out.
2) That people who protest peacefully have a right to do so.
Agreed... but, in some parts of the world (looking at ME), not necessarily true.
I disagree. An old adage about sticks and stones comes to mind.
Which is a fundamentally false adage, especially in this age where we are seeif more and more young people hurt or kill themselves over words.
You might not be able to control what offends you (I think this is arguable though), but you do choose how you react to that offense.
I would also add that the vast majority of people who hurt or kill themselves suffer from some kind of mental illness. I'm not saying that to lessen any of the blame on bullies who have been extremely cruel to other people, but rather to point out it often isn't just words that make people hurt themselves. In most cases there is already a serious underlying issue or issues present.
Anybody who claims that this is a freedom of speech issue is missing the point.
You can allow somebody to make this movie and still call him out for making it. The people that made this video knew exactly what would happen, and that is the reason they made it. And you can call them out for being jackasses who were perfectly okay with giving fuel to people who would use it.
None of that diminishes that:
Yup.
1) The idiots are still free to make idiotic movies that are the artistic equivalent of throwing a molotov cocktail into a region of the world that they knew would ignite riots.
Right... 'cuz he "dared" speak out.
2) That people who protest peacefully have a right to do so.
Agreed... but, in some parts of the world (looking at ME), not necessarily true.
3) That people who cross that line are worthless.
What line is that? Speech that inflames violence?
1) If the video violates the terms, then YouTube should be allowed to take it down. If it doesn't it should stay up. Freedom of Speech doesn't mean you get to violate TOS of a company that is hosting your speech, just as freedom of speech doesn't protect you from getting fired for calling your boss a jackass.
2) It has nothing to do with "he dared to speak out". If anybody even pretends that he didn't know that this would happen then they are seriously idiotic.
3) We still shouldn't prevent people from protesting peacefully, and if they want to protest peacefully in front of our embassy, they should be allowed to.
4) The people who crossed that line are people burning diplomatic buildings and engaging in violence. Don't even pretend that there was any ambiguity in that statement. The "crossing the line" statement comes directly after an affirmation of peaceful protest and a full affirmation of freedom of speech. If you want to play a game of "put words in my mouth" you can play by yourself and just be a copypasta to the conservative talking heads.
I disagree. An old adage about sticks and stones comes to mind.
Which is a fundamentally false adage, especially in this age where we are seeif more and more young people hurt or kill themselves over words.
You might not be able to control what offends you (I think this is arguable though), but you do choose how you react to that offense.
I would also add that the vast majority of people who hurt or kill themselves suffer from some kind of mental illness. I'm not saying that to lessen any of the blame on bullies who have been extremely cruel to other people, but rather to point out it often isn't just words that make people hurt themselves. In most cases there is already a serious underlying issue or issues present.
And very rarely in any of those cases is it "a mental illness".
When you look at the majority of young people who are hurting or killing themselves, it ties in to issues in their home life or social acceptance of things such as homosexuality or transgender individuals.
I understand that you're making a point, but I think you're looking at it from the wrong perspective. "Mental illness" alone is not enough to make someone decide to kill themselves.
Anybody who claims that this is a freedom of speech issue is missing the point.
You can allow somebody to make this movie and still call him out for making it. The people that made this video knew exactly what would happen, and that is the reason they made it. And you can call them out for being jackasses who were perfectly okay with giving fuel to people who would use it.
None of that diminishes that:
Yup.
1) The idiots are still free to make idiotic movies that are the artistic equivalent of throwing a molotov cocktail into a region of the world that they knew would ignite riots.
Right... 'cuz he "dared" speak out.
2) That people who protest peacefully have a right to do so.
Agreed... but, in some parts of the world (looking at ME), not necessarily true.
3) That people who cross that line are worthless.
What line is that? Speech that inflames violence?
1) If the video violates the terms, then YouTube should be allowed to take it down. If it doesn't it should stay up. Freedom of Speech doesn't mean you get to violate TOS of a company that is hosting your speech, just as freedom of speech doesn't protect you from getting fired for calling your boss a jackass.
So you don't see a problem that a Federal Government asking a company to review something *they know is protected speech* to see if it violates that said company's ToS?
2) It has nothing to do with "he dared to speak out". If anybody even pretends that he didn't know that this would happen then they are seriously idiotic.
Oh... he knew what would happen.
3) We still shouldn't prevent people from protesting peacefully, and if they want to protest peacefully in front of our embassy, they should be allowed to.
Absolutely. They can protest all they want, burn their own version of the American Flag... post up Bush/Hitler signs... I have no problem with that.
4) The people who crossed that line are people burning diplomatic buildings and engaging in violence.
Good!
Don't even pretend that there was any ambiguity in that statement. The "crossing the line" statement comes directly after an affirmation of peaceful protest and a full affirmation of freedom of speech. If you want to play a game of "put words in my mouth" you can play by yourself and just be a copypasta to the conservative talking heads.
We'll... if got sites galore claiming that what the video creator did was "crossing the line"... that he should be prosecuted/sued.
And you play that copypasta from Liberal talkings heads very good as well...(that face palm pic is golden )
*psst: Shuma said I haz supa powah... looks like you to!
The fighting words doctrine, in United States constitutional law, is a limitation to freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
In 1942, the U.S. Supreme Court established the doctrine by a 9-0 decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire. It held that "insulting or 'fighting words,' those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace" are among the "well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech the prevention and punishment of [which] ... have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem."
Here's the hard part...
Is there evidence that he did that on purpose, knowingly that people will die? That's very hard to prove.
Jihadin wrote: Thinking its time to implement "benchmarks" to the ME countries if they want US Foreign Aid.
Yeah... heres a simple response.
If the embassies are breached... immediately revoke all Visas in USA and suspend all Aids to that country.
Which will result in every U.S. embassy on earth being attacked by isolationist, extremist, or foreign elements in those countries. The U.S. will then automatically expel itself from that country. It's like a "go away" button. And here I didn't think you liked supplicating extremists.
You need to do your own research, because you come across as an ill-informed individual who does nothing but parrot Fox News and other pro-Republican talking heads whenever you engage in "discussions" here about politics.
And if "all you could find" is the Fighting Words doctrine--you're not looking hard enough.
"Disgusting and reprehensible." said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. "Truly abhorrent," an outraged White House official told an international conference. Were they talking about the murder of four Americans in Libya? Or perhaps the hoisting of an Islamist flag over the U.S. Embassy in Cairo?
No. For that they stuck to diplomatic speak. For the president, the harshest language was: "I strongly condemn the outrageous attack." For Clinton it was that the US is heartbroken and she condemned "this senseless act of violence." But "disgusting and reprehensible" and "truly abhorrent " were reserved for an amateurish and silly film by someone nobody has ever heard of.
In fact, what is "disgusting and reprehensible" is that there are people in the world who think they are justified in attacking and killing people because someone hurt their feelings or offended their sensibilities. The US government should not act as a validator or enabler of this upside down worldview, which is exactly what the Obama administration has done repeatedly as they have responded to these abhorrent attacks against the United States.
bs. She's an idiot, making up her own reality. Nothing the Obama administration has done has been to validate or enable violence over hurt feelings. That's a straight-up falsehood invented to further a political agenda, painting the President as something other than what he is.
The problem is that your suggestion would allow the violent and hateful few to use us to punish the good guys. The folks coming over here to study or work are the bedrock of establishing good relations and tolerance of our cultural differences.
Jihadin wrote: Well in your mind I'm a blood thisty killer for the US Army Shuma. Don't defend that. I point out the Federation Gov't thread
By implementing a benchmark for US foriegn Aid you make those country cleanup their act
No, you just give the criminal elements in a country de-facto control of American policy in the region. That would be one of the most idiotic policies ever implemented by America. Also, I don't think you're a bloodthirsty killer for the U.S. army, I think you're truly and woefully deluded concerning geopolitics and economics, but I don't really consider very many people bloodthirsty killers. It helps to have an accurate and useful worldview when you don't jump to hysterical and personal labeling of people after reading something they said on the internet.
Jihadin wrote: So your saying Shuma that we need to be a major influence in the ME?
No, he's saying that your idea is not very well thought out.
The idea that the United States will immediately vacate an area because of an attack on an embassy will result in nothing but an open season being declared on embassies or other diplomatic stations by elements which want the United States out anyways.
Jihadin wrote: So your saying Shuma that we need to be a major influence in the ME?
It doesn't cost us much to keep embassies and aid programs running and it gives us disproportionate sway in a region where we have significant security and energy interests. We don't need to be a major influence, but you want to throw all influence away.
Jihadin wrote: By establishing benchmarks to recieve US Aid is a bad thing? First benchmark. Total protection of the Embassy from the mobs.
"Hi, I am Mr. Warlord/Local Terrorist Leader. I sure wish I would control all the resources in my area and be the only source of food for the people so they will do my biting. But I have a hard time making the people do what I want as long as they get their food aid from the US. Hungry people are so much easier to control. Let me just send some mobs to the embassy to make sure the people in this country go hungry again so I get my power back."
Alright, I'm one of those people who thinks religion ain't that smart. That being said, the guy who made the video wasn't that smart either. And the people who rioted over it, weren't smart at all. Romney especially wasn't smart with his comment about it.
Overall, it seems like this whole incident involved a lot of stupidity and some pointless bloodshed.
LoneLictor wrote: Alright, I'm one of those people who thinks religion ain't that smart. That being said, the guy who made the video wasn't that smart either. And the people who rioted over it, weren't smart at all. Romney especially wasn't smart with his comment about it.
Overall, it seems like this whole incident involved a lot of stupidity and some pointless bloodshed.
Jihadin wrote: Is it a legit gov't? Welcome to a bench mark
Edit
We had a tast of the warlord thing. Forget about Somalia?
Governments are legitimized by the presence of diplomatic relations, so it is hard to use it as a benchmark.
And letting people go hungry and punishing them for the actions of a small group of people is usually a good way to make new enemies. OBL was our "friend" until we decided to cut off aid to him
Jihadin wrote: Is it a legit gov't? Welcome to a bench mark
Edit
We had a taste of the warlord thing. Forget about Somalia?
What about Somalia?
The Republicans howling for us to pull out when things went south on one series of operations, then turning around and using it as an example of Bill Clinton "having no backbone"?
Government is legitimize by the people not by diplomacy to other nations.
People going hungry got the US involve in Somalia. Look how that turn out for us.
Edit
The Republicans howling for us to pull out when things went south on one series of operations, then turning around and using it as an example of Bill Clinton "having no backbone"?
Even though I spent like 10 days in Somalia swapping out C&C birds with 10th Mountain. I do not remember hearing the republicans slamming Clinton on having no back bone. Link pls on this. I do know Aspin caught all heck though for being quick for denying armored tracks to US Ground Forces.
Sure, he was not a country but that did not mean that we did not engage in diplomatic overtures toward him and his organization when they were fighting the Soviets.
Government is legitimize by the people not by diplomacy to other nations.
There is no one single bit which "legitimizes" a government.
People going hungry got the US involve in Somalia. Look how that turn out for us.
People going hungry because of clan wars and a campaign of genocidal shenanigans got us involved in Somalia.
"How it turned out for us" is that we learned from the outcome of a botched snatch and grab on Adid.
Even though I spent like 10 days in Somalia swapping out C&C birds with 10th Mountain. I do not remember hearing the republicans slamming Clinton on having no back bone. Link pls on this. I do know Aspin caught all heck though for being quick for denying armored tracks to US Ground Forces.
It was not until Clinton was going for reelection that it happened, at the same time that Republicans were accusing Clinton of playing "wag the dog" with the attempts to kill or capture Osama bin Laden.
Sure, he was not a country but that did not mean that we did not engage in diplomatic overtures toward him and his organization when they were fighting the Soviets.
OBL and a embassy are not the same thing. We're talking country here
There is no one single bit which "legitimizes" a government.
So the US government is not legit?
People going hungry because of clan wars and a campaign of genocidal shenanigans got us involved in Somalia.
"How it turned out for us" is that we learned from the outcome of a botched snatch and grab on Adid
The operation wasn't botched. The target was not there but they did snatch his LT's. What botched it was Blackburn missing the rope on the air assualt.
It was not until Clinton was going for reelection that it happened, at the same time that Republicans were accusing Clinton of playing "wag the dog" with the attempts to kill or capture Osama bin Laden.
Still Clinton won. Somalia was not a major issue point. People during that time viewed the military operationas a failure of the military to complete the mission. Hence Aspin was at fault for denying armor vehicles for the rangers. It was mention before on another thread with Manny. Clinton did not know about the request for armored vehicles.
Since some people here keep mentioning starving people in the ME. Notice we're not really making a effort in Sudan?
Jihadin wrote: By establishing benchmarks to recieve US Aid is a bad thing? First benchmark. Total protection of the Embassy from the mobs.
So, you want to benchmark countries on their security. If it's not good enough you'll cut aid to them, that aid going heavily into providing for their security and significantly diminishing it once removed. Do you have any idea how backwards that sounds? I can't even describe that accurately without being banned from this forum.
I don't want to sound too "European" but to me, a foreign embassy being attacked is just unacceptable. The people responsable should be severely punished.
Nope. Your cherry picking out all kinds of things but I play. Military Aid. Well its not state of the art we're giving them. I give an example. I mention this before on the hospital in Afghanistan thread. There's a couple thousands up uparmored humvees. Frag Five and Sevens for those who been over. That are not being turned over to the Afghan government because of a benchmark they haven't met. Military Aid is low tech to us.
edit
Also rumor is Israel looking to purchas a couple hundred of them but they mostly want our MRAPS and MATV.
Testify wrote: I don't want to sound too "European" but to me, a foreign embassy being attacked is just unacceptable. The people responsable should be severely punished.
In the case of Libya, the acting government has started rounding people up already. Insofar as the other countries are concerned, it's harder to justify detaining and jailing hundreds of your own citizens and countries like Egypt and Yemen don't really have the mechanisms to do this at all. It's likely that after the fact instigators will be rounded up in some of these countries, but probably not all.
I do think it's important to note that the donkey cave who did this tricked a bunch of other people into performing in his "movie" and then dubbed Mohhamed over their words.
What was shot wasn't and isn't the problem. What was done by the manipulative bugger who then left his actors to twist in the wind is.
Jihadin wrote: Is it a legit gov't? Welcome to a bench mark
Edit
We had a taste of the warlord thing. Forget about Somalia?
What about Somalia?
The Republicans howling for us to pull out when things went south on one series of operations, then turning around and using it as an example of Bill Clinton "having no backbone"?
I'm pretty sure that last part was actually bin Laden and then parroted by the GOP.
Somalia is one of the key reasons that I view Clinton in such a positive light. A guy with slim military and foreign policy creditionals(at the time) did what he thought was right and put troops on the ground, but. It so much to have us embroiled in a full scales war. It was a tough call to make and he did with aplomb. In the end it bit him, and us, but he did the best he could with the information he had at the time. He also didn't embroil us in a decade long Somali war that could have easily been our Vietnam II.
Does that entitle me to throw a big, "My fee-fees, they're hurt!" tantrum?
No offense but contemporary, popular atheism very often delves into "My fee-fees, they're hurt!" tantrums. Mann already talked about the distinction between a violent protest and a speech based response, but throwing tantrums is perfectly fine from a standpoint of "righteousness"; even if it doesn't necessarily reflect positively on your cause.
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Mannahnin wrote: I don't think it's uniquely religious. More tribal, maybe. People freak out in similar ways when their country or political system is attacked/insulted.
Or families, sports teams, pets, preferred video games, preferred table-top games, and pretty much anything that is oriented around a community.
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Jihadin wrote: Notice the DoS already stated the Aid to the Egyptian military military will not be touched?
That's because the Egyptian military actually likes us, and we want them to have political power and continue to like us.
If you can't win over the population at least make sure the guys with guns are on your side.
despite a White House request that the company review it under its own policies, the company said Friday."
“We work hard to create a community everyone can enjoy and which also enables people to express different opinions,” a YouTube spokeswoman said in a statement. “This can be a challenge because what's OK in one country can be offensive elsewhere. This video — which is widely available on the Web — is clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube.”
Thanks to Google, a corporation, with stronger free-speech values than the United States government is willing to support.
In fact, what is "disgusting and reprehensible" is that there are people in the world who think they are justified in attacking and killing people because someone hurt their feelings or offended their sensibilities.
That's pretty much the only justifiable reason for killing people, the only question is which particular feelings and sensibilities should be considered motivation for killing.
I have defended the Obama administration against the complaints from the right that they have run an "apology tour" in the Middle East because I believe the US should admit when we make mistakes, such as the accidental burning of Korans. But what we shouldn't do is affirm the wrongheaded view that people should be protected from the free speech of others.
The US is advocating protecting other people from certain forms of speech in the exact same sense that Powers is advocating protecting people from another kind of speech.
Someone needs to explain to the White House that our Constitution protects freedom of religion from government interference, not the protection from people who say mean, critical or offensive things about one's religion.
The Constitution also only protects the freedom of speech from government interference. It doesn't mandate that the government protect speech from anyone else, or even that it cannot call certain forms of speech objectionable without making any move to restrict it.
If Christians had burned down Maher's house in response, would the administration put out a statement condemning the violence but pointing out that he should have respected the religious beliefs of others?
Of course not. Nor would anyone want that.
Actually, I imagine that is they took any kind of position, it wouldn't have been far from that.
So, on a highly symbolic date, mobs storm American diplomatic facilities and drag the corpse of a U.S. ambassador through the streets. Then the president flies to Vegas for a fundraiser. No, no, a novelist would say; that's too pat, too neat in its symbolic contrast. Make it Cleveland, or Des Moines.
The president is surrounded by delirious fanbois and fangurls screaming "We love you," too drunk on his celebrity to understand that this is the first photo-op in the aftermath of a national humiliation. No, no, a filmmaker would say; too crass, too blunt. Make them sober, middle-aged Midwesterners, shocked at first, but then quiet and respectful.
President Barack Obama greets supporters after speaking at a campaign rally in Golden, Colo., Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012.
The president is too lazy and cocksure to have learned any prepared remarks or mastered the appropriate tone, notwithstanding that a government that spends more money than any government in the history of the planet has ever spent can surely provide him with both a speechwriting team and a quiet corner on his private wide-bodied jet to consider what might be fitting for the occasion. So instead he sloughs off the words, bloodless and unfelt: "And obviously our hearts are broken..." Yeah, it's totally obvious.
POLITICAL CARTOONS:
50 cartoons on Arab extremists hatred, blaming Romney, Chicago teacher's strike and more
And he's even more drunk on his celebrity than the fanbois, so in his slapdashery he winds up comparing the sacrifice of a diplomat lynched by a pack of savages with the enthusiasm of his own campaign bobbysoxers. No, no, says the Broadway director; that's too crude, too ham-fisted. How about the crowd is cheering and distracted, but he's the president, he understands the gravity of the hour, and he's the greatest orator of his generation, so he's thought about what he's going to say, and it takes a few moment but his words are so moving that they still the cheers of the fanbois, and at the end there's complete silence and a few muffled sobs, and even in party-town they understand the sacrifice and loss of their compatriots on the other side of the world.
But no, that would be an utterly fantastical America. In the real America, the president is too busy to attend the security briefing on the morning after a national debacle, but he does have time to do Letterman and appear on a hip-hop radio show hosted by "The Pimp With A Limp." In the real State Department, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo is guarded by Marines with no ammunition, but they do enjoy the soft-power muscle of a Foreign Service officer, one Lloyd Schwartz, tweeting frenziedly into cyberspace (including a whole chain directed at my own Twitter handle, for some reason) about how America deplores insensitive people who are so insensitively insensitive that they don't respectfully respect all religions equally respectfully and sensitively, even as the raging mob is pouring through the gates.
When it comes to a flailing, blundering superpower, I am generally wary of ascribing to malevolence what is more often sheer stupidity and incompetence. For example, we're told that, because the consulate in Benghazi was designated as an "interim facility," it did not warrant the level of security and protection that, say, an embassy in Scandinavia would have. This seems all too plausible – that security decisions are made not by individual human judgment but according to whichever rule-book sub-clause at the Federal Agency of Bureaucratic Facilities Regulation it happens to fall under. However, the very next day the embassy in Yemen, which is a permanent facility, was also overrun, as was the embassy in Tunisia the day after. Look, these are tough crowds, as the president might say at Caesar's Palace. But we spend more money on these joints than anybody else, and they're as easy to overrun as the Belgian Consulate.
As I say, I'm inclined to be generous, and put some of this down to the natural torpor and ineptitude of government. But Hillary Clinton and Gen. Martin Dempsey are guilty of something worse, in the Secretary of State's weirdly obsessive remarks about an obscure film supposedly disrespectful of Mohammed and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs' telephone call to a private citizen, asking him if he could please ease up on the old Islamophobia.
Forget the free-speech arguments. In this case, as Secretary Clinton and Gen. Dempsey well know, the film has even less to do with anything than did the Danish cartoons or the schoolteacher's teddy bear or any of the other innumerable grievances of Islam. The 400-strong assault force in Benghazi showed up with RPGs and mortars: that's not a spontaneous movie protest; that's an act of war, and better planned and executed than the dying superpower's response to it. Secretary Clinton and Gen. Dempsey are, to put it mildly, misleading the American people when they suggest otherwise.
One can understand why they might do this, given the fiasco in Libya. The men who organized this attack knew the ambassador would be at the consulate in Benghazi rather than at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli. How did that happen? They knew when he had been moved from the consulate to a "safe house," and switched their attentions accordingly. How did that happen? The United States government lost track of its ambassador for 10 hours. How did that happen? Perhaps, when they've investigated Mitt Romney's press release for another three or four weeks, the court eunuchs of the American media might like to look into some of these fascinating questions, instead of leaving the only interesting reporting on an American story to the foreign press.
For whatever reason, Secretary Clinton chose to double down on misleading the American people. "Libyans carried Chris' body to the hospital," said Mrs. Clinton. That's one way of putting it. The photographs at the Arab TV network al-Mayadeen show Chris Stevens' body being dragged through the streets, while the locals take souvenir photographs on their cellphones. A man in a red striped shirt photographs the dead-eyed ambassador from above; another immediately behind his head moves the splayed arm and holds his cellphone camera an inch from the ambassador's nose. Some years ago, I had occasion to assist in moving the body of a dead man: We did not stop to take photographs en route. Even allowing for cultural differences, this looks less like "carrying Chris' body to the hospital" and more like barbarians gleefully feasting on the spoils of savagery.
In a rare appearance on a non-showbiz outlet, President Obama, winging it on Telemundo, told his host that Egypt was neither an ally nor an enemy. I can understand why it can be difficult to figure out, but here's an easy way to tell: Bernard Lewis, the great scholar of Islam, said some years ago that America risked being seen as harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend. At the Benghazi consulate, the looters stole "sensitive" papers revealing the names of Libyans who've cooperated with the United States. Oh, well. As the president would say, obviously our hearts are with you.
Meanwhile, in Pakistan, the local doctor who fingered bin Laden to the Americans sits in jail. In other words, while America's clod vice-president staggers around, pimping limply that only Obama had the guts to take the toughest decision anyone's ever had to take, the poor schlub who actually did have the guts, who actually took the tough decision in a part of the world where taking tough decisions can get you killed, languishes in a cell because Washington would not lift a finger to help him.
AustonT wrote: Which is a fundamentally false adage, especially in this age where we are seeif more and more young people hurt or kill themselves over words.
So you're saying they did not choose to kill themselves? There are very, very few words that prompt an intrinsic response in humans, if any. We always have a choice on how to handle what's said to us, no matter how insultingly it may be intended.
AustonT wrote: Which is a fundamentally false adage, especially in this age where we are seeif more and more young people hurt or kill themselves over words.
So you're saying they did not choose to kill themselves? There are very, very few words that prompt an intrinsic response in humans, if any. We always have a choice on how to handle what's said to us, no matter how insultingly it may be intended.
No words cause an intrinsic response in humans, language is learned. That doesn't mean humans control what they will be offended by, that presupposes a gated system of emotional response. Humans don't really have that.
ShumaGorath wrote: No words cause an intrinsic response in humans, language is learned. That doesn't mean humans control what they will be offended by, that presupposes a gated system of emotional response. Humans don't really have that.
Again, I disagree. I've often had time to consider whether something actually offends me or not. Direct personal insults, obviously, are examples of things that likely do provoke an immediate 'offended/not offended' response, but this was not one of those cases, so the point's rather moot.
As the article Melissia posted earlier points out, this was exceedingly obvious bait, and you'd have to be pretty stupid to take it.
Seaward wrote: So you're saying they did not choose to kill themselves? There are very, very few words that prompt an intrinsic response in humans, if any. We always have a choice on how to handle what's said to us, no matter how insultingly it may be intended.
No, I believe he's saying that words can hurt people too.
After all, you really only take offense to being hurt because you believe that you shouldn't have been hurt. You essentially choose to take offense, buy the definition of "choice" you're using.
AustonT wrote: Which is a fundamentally false adage, especially in this age where we are seeif more and more young people hurt or kill themselves over words.
So you're saying they did not choose to kill themselves? There are very, very few words that prompt an intrinsic response in humans, if any. We always have a choice on how to handle what's said to us, no matter how insultingly it may be intended.
No words cause an intrinsic response in humans, language is learned. That doesn't mean humans control what they will be offended by, that presupposes a gated system of emotional response. Humans don't really have that.
Shuma... I'm struggling to understand this. Are you saying that being "offended" is really derived from our upbringings? (culturely, religiously, etc)? As in, we don't have a choice?
Seaward wrote: So you're saying they did not choose to kill themselves? There are very, very few words that prompt an intrinsic response in humans, if any. We always have a choice on how to handle what's said to us, no matter how insultingly it may be intended.
No, I believe he's saying that words can hurt people too.
After all, you really only take offense to being hurt because you believe that you shouldn't have been hurt. You essentially choose to take offense, buy the definition of "choice" you're using.
The president is surrounded by delirious fanbois and fangurls screaming "We love you," too drunk on his celebrity to understand that this is the first photo-op in the aftermath of a national humiliation.
Does anyone actually find this humiliating?
So instead he sloughs off the words, bloodless and unfelt: "And obviously our hearts are broken..." Yeah, it's totally obvious.
Whose hearts were actually broken? The relevant families?
I suspect outside that set the people claiming such are fething liars.
...sacrifice of a diplomat lynched by a pack of savages...
Unconfirmed.
Regardless, Mark Steyn wants hits, and that's all. That he laments ignorance while exploiting it is more than a bit comical.
AustonT wrote: Which is a fundamentally false adage, especially in this age where we are seeif more and more young people hurt or kill themselves over words.
So you're saying they did not choose to kill themselves? There are very, very few words that prompt an intrinsic response in humans, if any. We always have a choice on how to handle what's said to us, no matter how insultingly it may be intended.
No words cause an intrinsic response in humans, language is learned. That doesn't mean humans control what they will be offended by, that presupposes a gated system of emotional response. Humans don't really have that.
Shuma... I'm struggling to understand this. Are you saying that being "offended" is really derived from our upbringings? (culturely, religiously, etc)? As in, we don't have a choice?
Yes. That's a pretty basic and well agreed upon principal or neuroscience. Taboos are a learned social construct that we likely evolved to better facilitate cohesion in small scale tribal groups. There are things that humans will instinctively react to negatively (pain, darkness, disorientation, hunger, etc), but they're usually pretty basic and even those are often overcome by experiential development. When something offends you you don't decide whether you're offended or not, offense is an automatic emotional response to stimuli, not a cognitively derived course of reaction.
I personally believe that President Obama is defending our national security by campaigning. By doing so, he is protecting us against a potential Romney presidency. At least Obama believes in something; all Romney believes is that he wants to be President because power is fun. Oh, and that he should cut taxes on himself and his friends who are helping him in his campaign.
Again, I disagree. I've often had time to consider whether something actually offends me or not.
No, you've often had time to decide whether or not new stimuli is something to which you should have been offended by. You then reach a conclusion and change your actions according to your decision. If you were offended you would have been offended. The human brains most basic tool is experiential development, you deciding to become offended or not to is a part of that development. Once it is something you've decide to be offended by (in an actual responsive way, not just a logical and directed one) you will be offended by it. You don't just block that gak out and say to yourself "I don't feel like being offended today". That'd be the same as walking outside and saying "I don't feel like being cold, so I just won't feel the cold".
personally believe that President Obama is defending our national security by campaigning. By doing so, he is protecting us against a potential Romney presidency. At least Obama believes in something; all Romney believes is that he wants to be President because power is fun. Oh, and that he should cut taxes on himself and his friends who are helping him in his campaign.
Again, I disagree. I've often had time to consider whether something actually offends me or not.
No, you've often had time to decide whether or not new stimuli is something to which you should have been offended by. You then reach a conclusion and change your actions according to your decision. If you were offended you would have been offended. The human brains most basic tool is experiential development, you deciding to become offended or not to is a part of that development. Once it is something you've decide to be offended by (in an actual responsive way, not just a logical and directed one) you will be offended by it. You don't just block that gak out and say to yourself "I don't feel like being offended today". That'd be the same as walking outside and saying "I don't feel like being cold, so I just won't feel the cold".
I'd love to see any evidence whatsoever to prove those assertions. I'm fairly certain you just ginned up a neuroscience degree at Kinko's in order to try and win a debate not ultimately all that germane to the original discussion.
You think they had a reason to be offended, I do not.
personally believe that President Obama is defending our national security by campaigning. By doing so, he is protecting us against a potential Romney presidency. At least Obama believes in something; all Romney believes is that he wants to be President because power is fun. Oh, and that he should cut taxes on himself and his friends who are helping him in his campaign.
I'm voting for Romney because I'm his friend
I'm voting for him just because HuffPo liberals annoy me more than Hotair conservatives at the moment. It was the other way around last election.
You think they had a reason to be offended, I do not.
Of course they had a reason to be offended. They were offended after all. This isn't a matter of reason, its a matter of what you thin is legitimate reason, and from my perspective a highly selective understanding on what is legitimate.
After all, you seem quite offended that they were offended because your abstract concept of offense was called into question.
Of course they had a reason to be offended. They were offended after all. This isn't a matter of reason, its a matter of what you thin is legitimate reason, and from my perspective a highly selective understanding on what is legitimate.
Clearly I must be some sort of cyborg from the future, then, as I manage to make it through life without having my perspective on the actions of others dictated by an emotional hair trigger.
After all, you seem quite offended that they were offended because your abstract concept of offense was called into question.
Clearly I must be some sort of cyborg from the future, then, as I manage to make it through life without having my perspective on the actions of others dictated by an emotional hair trigger.
That has nothing to do with my comment, which further indicates that you're quite engaged on an emotional level, so much so that you're making irrational comments.
Clearly I must be some sort of cyborg from the future, then, as I manage to make it through life without having my perspective on the actions of others dictated by an emotional hair trigger.
That has nothing to do with my comment, which further indicates that you're quite engaged on an emotional level, so much so that you're making irrational comments.
Are you not the one who's been pretending to be a neuroscientist now? Sorry, you guys have blended together a bit after fifteen pages.
Anyway, as to your comment, no, the mere fact that they were offended does not indicate they had a valid reason to be.
Are you not the one who's been pretending to be a neuroscientist now? Sorry, you guys have blended together a bit after fifteen pages.
No, but I have a pretty solid background in neuroscience, which has really has little to do with what the two of you were talking about. You're talking about psychology (with a bit of philosophy of mind), not neuroscience, and you brought it up first.
Alright, since you have no choice in the matter at all, what words are your particular self-destruct code? What could be said that would force you to end your own life, without question?
You're making a strange argument, man.
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dogma wrote: No, but I have a pretty solid background in neuroscience, which has really has little to do with what the two of you were talking about. You're talking about psychology (with a bit of philosophy of mind), not neuroscience, and you brought it up first.
Interesting, looks like the maker of the movie has a criminal past and may have violated a court order prohibiting him from Internet usage without prior authorization. His previous convictions don't really have anything to do with this whole video thing. Looks like a lot of old financial fraud things.
Could be authorities clasping at straws though as well.
If nothing else it shows that the guy has a history of having bad judgement.
d-usa wrote: Interesting, looks like the maker of the movie has a criminal past and may have violated a court order prohibiting him from Internet usage without prior authorization. His previous convictions don't really have anything to do with this whole video thing. Looks like a lot of old financial fraud things.
Could be authorities clasping at straws though as well.
If nothing else it shows that the guy has a history of having bad judgement.
I don't think there's any question the flick was intended to see how much provocation you could possibly pack into a $20 budget. I'm just with the op-ed Melissia posted earlier in the thread: it's such obvious bait. Why would you fall for it? What does that accomplish?
If we have learned anything about stupid movies, the best thing to do is ignore them. Then they go away.
Case in point..The Last Temptation of Christ" was very controversial and offensive to Christians when it came out in 1988. When I tried to watch it 15 years later, on rental, I found out why.
Then you had reactionary preachers protesting the movie outside of movie theaters, that only increased peoples desire to go and see "what all the controversy was about".
Anyway you didn't have mobs of Christians going around burning down Hollywood studios. I also don't remember people in the administration (republicans at the time) coming out and condemning the movie.
Republican politicians certainly came out and condemned The Last Temptation of Christ as a way to score political points. Censorship was discussed as a possible legitimate response to it.
Heck, Republicans were happy when the Dixie Chicks were kicked off the radio stations in the south for daring to criticize Bush Jr. Free Speech my butt...
Mannahnin wrote: Republican politicians certainly came out and condemned The Last Temptation of Christ as a way to score political points. Censorship was discussed as a possible legitimate response to it.
If your point is that both sides are full of hypocrites who will play the, "I am offended on behalf of America!" card whenever they find it politically expedient to do so, I do not think you will get much argument.
I think you're drawing a false equivalence, there. For the past thirty-two years, at least, creating and maintaining the image of a "culture war" has been a recognized and key part of the Republican party's strategy to seize and hold the conservative Christian vote.
generalgrog wrote: Case in point..The Last Temptation of Christ" was very controversial and offensive to Christians when it came out in 1988. When I tried to watch it 15 years later, on rental, I found out why.
It was offensive to some Christians. You might recall that it was made by a Catholic, after all. It was a meditation on the sacrifice of Jesus. If he had written it as a paper reflecting those themes and ideas no one would have have cared, and might have even lauded him for the consideration and thoughtfulness. A man thought about what his faith meant and reaffirmed it, and a select group of people went flying rodent gak insane, most of which never watched it or didn't watch the entirety of it. Jesus isn't portrayed as gay or as a pedophile or a necrophiliac or some tasteless bit of sensationalism. He is portrayed as a human being (oh get the tar and feathers!), and as being tempted one last time by Satan by giving him a life with a wife and children (the horror! the horror!) and in the end he still chooses to do what is needed of him. He is shown grappling with decisions and showing doubt, which, it seems, is to much for some, but seems pretty reasonable and considerate to others. The movie isn't a attack on faith, or on Christians, it is a celebration of faith and empathy for the difficulties Jesus must have endured.
d-usa wrote: Interesting, looks like the maker of the movie has a criminal past and may have violated a court order prohibiting him from Internet usage without prior authorization. His previous convictions don't really have anything to do with this whole video thing. Looks like a lot of old financial fraud things.
Could be authorities clasping at straws though as well.
If nothing else it shows that the guy has a history of having bad judgement.
I don't think there's any question the flick was intended to see how much provocation you could possibly pack into a $20 budget. I'm just with the op-ed Melissia posted earlier in the thread: it's such obvious bait. Why would you fall for it? What does that accomplish?
It is obvious to us, not to them. In the ME not everyone has 3 computers and internet access. This video was actually seen by the leaders of the mobs and spread around through word of mouth. It was used by anti-American elements in the countries because there was an actual change of mindset going on and they wanted it stopped. They don't understand how our society works, they probably think this is a state-sanctioned movie that's playing in theaters across the country. Not some laughably idiotic half-ass production people see on YouTube (the scourge of humanity). The people in these countries are puppets of the Clerics. With little education or any political savvy. All you have to do is draw a fething picture of Mo and they are ready for blood. I don't understand how we think we're going to change anything in that part of the world.
It is obvious to us, not to them. In the ME not everyone has 3 computers and internet access.
I'd potentially buy that for Libya, but my understanding that a huge portion of the coordinating for the Egyptian revolution was done via social networking sites.
Mannahnin wrote: Republican politicians certainly came out and condemned The Last Temptation of Christ as a way to score political points. Censorship was discussed as a possible legitimate response to it.
I don't recall anyone shooting rocket launchers at anyone else over The Last Temptation of Christ.
I believe that was the point being made. If someone were discussing some sort of censorship of youtube and not killing US officials I don't think we'd be having this conversation.
Social networking devices...twitter on cell phones...not much of the interenet. Slice of the world is here on Dakka. Besides americans and europeans living in the ME have you seen anyone else post here that was actually from/in the ME?
Jihadin wrote: Social networking devices...twitter on cell phones...not much of the interenet. Slice of the world is here on Dakka. Besides americans and europeans living in the ME have you seen anyone else post here that was actually from/in the ME?
I'd assume Space Marines don't play all that well in Gaza. Tabletop wargaming is largely the pursuit of pasty white gentlemen.
I dunno. I didn't get the impression that 'net access was all that hard to come by when I was in that neck of the woods.
SYDNEY – Riot police clashed with about 200 protesters at the U.S. Consulate in Sydney on Saturday as demonstrations against an anti-Islam film produced in the United States spread to Australia.
Ten Network television news showed a policeman knocked unconscious as the mostly male crowd hurled bottles and other missiles. Many of the protesters were wearing Muslim dress.
Police used pepper spray against the protesters, who chanted "Obama, Obama, we love Osama" and waved placards saying "Behead all those who insult the Prophet."
A total of six police officers were injured, including two who were taken to a hospital. Two protesters were treated for police dog bites and 17 others for the effects of pepper spray, police said in a statement. There were no details of their condition.
Eight people were arrested on charges including assaulting police and resisting arrest.
Police said they were unsure who organized the protest.
"There was little or no organization or control of what they were doing, and their actions were disgraceful," police Superintendent Mark Walton said in a statement.
Prime Minister Julian Gillard said the protest was unacceptable.
"Violent protest is never acceptable — not today, not ever," she said in a statement.
U.S. diplomatic posts around the world have been targeted in recent days by protests against the film "Innocence of Muslims," which ridicules the Prophet Muhammad.
Mannahnin wrote: Republican politicians certainly came out and condemned The Last Temptation of Christ as a way to score political points. Censorship was discussed as a possible legitimate response to it.
I don't recall anyone shooting rocket launchers at anyone else over The Last Temptation of Christ.
Google will not remove the YouTube video that has been cited as the spark for demonstrations raging across the Middle East and North Africa, the company announced Friday.
The decision comes following a White House request for the trailer for ‘Innocence of Muslims’ to be reviewed under the company’s policies.
The Obama administration was not explicitly asking YouTube to remove the film, but to check if it meets their standards.
"The White House asked YouTube to review the video to see if it was in compliance with their terms of use," Press Secretary Jay Carney said.
The company determined that the video was within guidelines.
"We work hard to create a community everyone can enjoy and which also enables people to express different opinions," a Google spokeswoman said. "This can be a challenge because what's OK in one country can be offensive elsewhere. This video -- which is widely available on the Web -- is clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube. However, we've restricted access to it in countries where it is illegal such as India and Indonesia as well as in Libya and Egypt given the very sensitive situations in these two countries."
The trailer for "Innocence of Muslims" has been used as a rallying cry by those attacking U.S. embassies and consulates around the world. Several top lawmakers, though, have questioned whether the film -- in the case of the deadly attack on the consulate in Libya -- was used as a cover to execute a pre-planned attack on American officials.
Critics have accused the Obama administration of putting too much focus on the film itself, and faulted the administration for continuing to condemn it.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a ceremony Friday marking the return of the remains of the four Americans killed, again described that video as "senseless" and "unacceptable." But she also called on leaders in those countries to stop the violence.
"The people of Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia did not trade the tyranny of a dictator for the tyranny of a mob. Reasonable people and responsible leaders in these countries need to do everything they can to restore security and hold accountable those behind these violent acts," she said.
Meanwhile, The Associated Press reports that federal probation officials are investigating the California filmmaker linked to the video. He had previously been convicted of financial crimes.
I agree. To much effort by the Obama Admin on this video keep bringing the video to the forefront.
Mannahnin wrote: Republican politicians certainly came out and condemned The Last Temptation of Christ as a way to score political points. Censorship was discussed as a possible legitimate response to it.
I don't recall anyone shooting rocket launchers at anyone else over The Last Temptation of Christ.
So it' is only violence, injury, and property damage related to a film release if it is in Egypt or Libya, isn't in the US, and involves Rocket Launchers?
Coming in the middle of the American campaign season and timed to coincide with eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the violence now shaking the Middle East has inevitably turned into a US domestic issue. I’ll write about that as the situation unfolds, but at the moment it seems most important to think about what is happening over there — and then to think about what this might mean for US policy or politics.
This is not a subject I can write about dispassionately. Many of the places now appearing in the headlines are places I’ve been: from the consulate in Chennai, where I attended an iftar event with a group of American diplomats and some leaders from the Islamic community in that storied and beautiful city last month to embassies in Cairo, Khartoum, Tunis and elsewhere that I’ve visited over the years. Many of the diplomats there are people I know, and in all these places I’ve gotten to know religious, intellectual and cultural figures and had the chance to talk to students and others about their concerns. Violence that takes place somewhere when you know people on both sides of the barricades is always painful to think about.
With images on TV of smoke billowing from US embassies and angry crowds assembled outside, more than ever, I am grateful all the time for the service of the brave people who voluntarily represent the United States in places where at any moment their lives can come under grave threat.
If Americans are going to understand what’s going on and process it effectively, the first thing we’ve got to realize is that this isn’t all about us. The riots in Cairo are basically part of a local power struggle. Radical Salafists are in a power struggle with the Muslim Brotherhood; attacking the US embassy forces President Morsi (as the radical strategists presumably expected) to side with the US, however slowly or reluctantly. That’s a win for the radicals, who want to tar the Muslim Brotherhood as soft appeasers who side with the Americans against their own outraged people.
Striking at the embassy pushes Egyptian politics in a more radical direction short term, and over the medium term it weakens the Muslim Brotherhood and strengthens the more radical groups. After these last attacks, you are not going to see many tourists or foreign investors traipsing to Egypt anytime soon. The already struggling Egyptian economy has taken a hit that will cut employment. That’s going to hurt, and it’s going to reduce the popularity of the government, much to the benefit of the radicals who hope to replace it.
In many other places, from the West Bank and Gaza to Yemen and Tunisia, the protest movements are also more important for what they mean in local politics than about global policy. Radical movements and imams who work with them seized eagerly on the Youtube film to generate popular outrage and use mob anger to make a public statement. Moderates who speak against violence or try to cool matters look like American puppets; this is the kind of issue the radicals love, and we can expect them to milk it for all it is worth.
It’s hard at this point to assess how much of this was at least quasi-spontaneous public reaction and how much reactions were stimulated and even shaped by organized radical groups. In Cairo, there seems to have been a mix of angry street protesters demonstrating more or less at random and organized activists with a much more definite agenda, but we will not really know the answers for some time — if ever. However, not all that many Middle Eastern Muslims are in the habit of trolling Youtube for blasphemous videos. That the protests came when they did and that in at least two cases (Egypt and Libya) well organized cadres used those protests to make more dramatic actions strongly suggests that something more than simple spontaneous outrage was at work.
Libya looks even more like a planned operation. There, radicals apparently allied to Al-Qaeda in some vague way and possibly cooperating with Qaddafi loyalists made what appears at this point to be a well planned, coordinated military strike against the consulate in Benghazi. Here the timing seemed clearly less about the film than about the 9/11 anniversary, and it looks more like a message from hard core radicals rather than explosion of popular rage.
Again, we will know more as the smoke clears and at this point we are talking about possibilities rather than conclusions, but ruling out some kind of planning in at least some of the incidents on the basis of what we now see is naive.
In any case, the biggest worry now may not be further attacks on US embassies and consulates in the region; security is very tight at those facilities now and unless something very unusual happens, crowds may gather outside the walls, but perimeters will not be breached. There are no guarantees, but the US has been thinking hard about these issues since well before 9/11.
The biggest bomb in the region right now, and let us hope and pray that it doesn’t go off, involves the relations between Coptic Christians and Islamic radicals (and the mobs they can command) in Egypt. The news is only slowly getting to Egypt that the film — one of the stupidest pieces of hack work I myself have seen — was made by a Coptic Christian in the US. When and if the film is actually viewed in its 14 minutes of amateurism and low production values, its intention to vent the rage and frustration some Copts feel about their treatment in Egypt will be clear. It is an angry, embittered and perhaps not very spiritual Copt’s view of the way Islam treats his community — and a cry of anger and frustration.
This is the kind of provocation — even though by a marginal member of the community and disavowed by the leaders — that can light firestorms of communal violence and cleansing. That is what Egypt must watch out for right now, and if you don’t like watching crowds marching against the US embassy, imagine what could happen if angry mobs with clubs, axes and guns head into the Christian neighborhoods of Cairo.
Episodes of mass violence and killing of religious minorities throughout the former territories of the Ottoman Empire — from the Danube to the Euphrates and the Nile — have been all too common in the last 150 years. Sometimes the victims have been Muslims (most recently in Srebenica but between 1850 and the aftermath of World War One there were plenty of expulsions and massacres of Muslims as Ottoman power retreated from Europe); on an even larger scale in the modern Middle East they have been Christians and, sometimes, Jews and adherents to variant forms of Islam. If anybody wants to think about worst case scenarios in Egypt, this is the one to look at. Armenians, Chaldean Christians, most recently the Christians in Iraq: it has happened before and though one very much wants to discount the possibility, things like this could well happen again.
The person who comes out of all this looking smartest is Samuel Huntington. His book on the “clash of civilizations” was widely and unfairly trashed as predicting an inevitable conflict between Islam and the west, and he was also accused of ‘demonizing’ Islam. That’s not what I get from his book. As I understand it, Huntington’s core thesis was that while good relations between countries and people with roots in different civilizations are possible and ought to be promoted, civilizational fault lines often lead to misunderstandings and tensions that can (not must, but can) lead to violence and when conflicts do occur, civilizational differences can make those conflicts worse.
The last few days are a textbook example of the forces he warned about.
The Islamic value — and it a worthy one on its own terms and would certainly have been understandable to our western predecessors who punished blasphemy very severely — of prohibiting insults to the Prophet of Islam clashes directly with the modern western value of free expression. To the western eye (and it’s a perspective I share), a murderous riot in the name of a religion is a worse sin and deeper, uglier form of blasphemy than any film could ever hope to be. To kill someone created in the image of God because you don’t like the way God or one of his servants has been depicted in an artistic performance strikes westerners as an obscene perversion of religion — something that only a hate-filled fanatic or an ignorant fool could do.
When acts like this take place all over the Islamic world, the message to many non-Muslims is that the Islamophobes are right: Islam as a religion promotes hatred, bigotry and ignorance. This will be held by many people to be a revelation of the “true” face of a violent religion. Or, alternatively, some will say that while Islam might be a good enough religion taken alone, Middle Easterners are savage and ignorant haters who cannot be trusted and whose culture (rather than their religion) is one that blends intemperance and stupidity into an ugly stew of hate.
At Via Meadia we don’t think either Islam or Middle Eastern culture can be so simply categorized; that’s not my point. My point is that the gap between Muslims and non-Muslims has grown wider; the reaction of the western world and the Islamic world to these recent events drives us farther apart. The gulf of suspicion between the worlds has grown deeper. Europeans will worry more and be less welcoming to Muslim immigrants. Many Americans will draw closer to Israel, be more concerned about any signs of increase in the US Islamic population and have a harder time trusting the Muslims in our midst.
Those reactions in turn will make Muslims in Europe, North America and the Islamic-majority parts of the world feel more suspicious, more threatened and more alienated.
These are some of the chains of causation Huntington was thinking of when he warned that the world faced the possibility for this kind of clash. The Obama administration has worked very hard to reduce the chance of this kind of division, but it seems clear at this point that a few hours can undermine the efforts of many years.
Unfortunately, Islamic radicals are deliberately hoping to promote a clash of civilizations in the belief that a climate of polarization will strengthen their political power in the world of Islam. Attacking the embassy in Cairo is an effort to push Egyptian opinion in a more radical direction, but the radicals hope that this is part of a larger push that will bring them to power across the Islamic world. Like Boko Haram in Nigeria, which hopes to provoke a religious war with the Christians partly in order to achieve power in the Muslim North, radicals use the prospect of a clash of civilizations to further their own cause throughout the troubled Islamic world.
The US and more generally the west (including Russia, so perhaps I should say the “Christian world” instead) has tried several approaches to this situation and so far we haven’t been happy with the results. Confrontation, reconciliation, cooperation: there are good arguments to be made for them all, but in practice none of them seem to make the problem go away.
I’ll return to this topic in the next few days, but one thing should be absolutely clear to Americans. Since 9/11, we’ve had two presidents who attempted to deal with our problems in the Middle East. Both presidents notched up some achievements — but neither president got the job done.
The gap between American opinion and opinion in much of the Islamic world is as wide now as it was when President Obama flew to Cairo; things are not getting better.
Interesting article. Has anybody noticed that over the years, the middle east has shifted from Arab nationalism to radical islam? The cold war obviously changed a lot, but anybody on this site with an informed view on this (or anybody else for that matter) care to comment? From a political studies point of view it's quite a fascinating subject.
A German newspaper later reported that the protesters were agitated about "pictures of Mohammed being ridiculed and defiled in Germany". One of our sixteen states has a small fringe right-wing party that had some posters for a short period of time featuring something that could be seen like that, I guess. Sooo - a bit like the US case. Small group of dumb xenophobic idiots doing their thing and the whole country gets blamed.
Wonder if anyone in congress is toying with the idea to benchmark those countries
edit
I think some are close to that idea
Washington Democrats and Republicans are questioning U.S. taxpayer aid to the Middle East amid anti-American riots in the region and the fatal attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
One of the first attacks occurred Wednesday at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, a country that has received $1.6 billion in each of the past four years. Egypt has since 1979 been the second-largest recipient of U.S. aid, following Israel. Roughly $1.3 billion of that annual aid goes to Egypt’s military, according to Congressional Research Service.
Four Americans were killed Wednesday in the Benghazi attack, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
Like Egypt, Libya was part of the political uprising that started in late 2010 known as Arab Spring in which residents in the Middle East brought down long-standing dictatorships. However, residents have struggled in the aftermath to bring democracy and political stability to the region.
The U.S. has since the start of the uprisings in Libya in early 2011 given that country more than $200 million -- including $89 million in humanitarian assistance and $25 million from the Defense Department, according to Congressional Research Service.
Several Capitol Hill Republicans have since the recent anti-American attacks started calling for either a stop to such aid or at least tighter restrictions, despite the Obama administration saying that cutting off support would not resolve the “complicated” Middle East situation.
“The American people are tired of this,” Sen. Rand Paul said Thursday on the Senate floor. “Our Treasury is bare. There is a multitude of reasons why we should not continue to send good money after bad.”
Paul, R-Ky., said such action should be taken in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Pakistan. And he has proposed an amendment that would require those countries to help in the investigations of the attacks on U.S. embassies in Yemen and Egypt and the consulate in Benghazi.
Yemen received $64 million this year, compared to $134 million last year, according to Congressional Research Service.
“Not one penny more for Libya or Egypt or Pakistan until they act as our allies,” Paul continued. "Some say we have to keep sending it. Fine, let’s send it when they act as our allies. Let’s send it when they start behaving as civilized nations and come to their senses.”
Paul’s remarks follow Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying the attack was the work of “a small and savage group – not the people or government of Libya.”
She also acknowledged that Americans were likely asking: “How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction? This question reflects just how complicated and, at times, how confounding the world can be.”
Still, some House Republicans had a point of view earlier this week similar to Ryan’s, suggesting that they would vote Thursday against the continuing resolution to keep the government running, in an attempt to cut off aid to Egypt and Libya.
“It would show a tremendous amount of leadership from this administration, in light of the recent developments, if the president were to come back and demand that the amount of money that is in the [continuing resolution] for Libya and Egypt be stripped,” said Louisiana GOP Rep. Jeff Landry, according to The Hill Newspaper. “That would be tremendous leadership.”
Jihadin wrote: Wonder if anyone in congress is toying with the idea to benchmark those countries
edit
I think some are close to that idea
Spoiler:
Washington Democrats and Republicans are questioning U.S. taxpayer aid to the Middle East amid anti-American riots in the region and the fatal attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
One of the first attacks occurred Wednesday at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, a country that has received $1.6 billion in each of the past four years. Egypt has since 1979 been the second-largest recipient of U.S. aid, following Israel. Roughly $1.3 billion of that annual aid goes to Egypt’s military, according to Congressional Research Service.
Four Americans were killed Wednesday in the Benghazi attack, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
Like Egypt, Libya was part of the political uprising that started in late 2010 known as Arab Spring in which residents in the Middle East brought down long-standing dictatorships. However, residents have struggled in the aftermath to bring democracy and political stability to the region.
The U.S. has since the start of the uprisings in Libya in early 2011 given that country more than $200 million -- including $89 million in humanitarian assistance and $25 million from the Defense Department, according to Congressional Research Service.
Several Capitol Hill Republicans have since the recent anti-American attacks started calling for either a stop to such aid or at least tighter restrictions, despite the Obama administration saying that cutting off support would not resolve the “complicated” Middle East situation.
“The American people are tired of this,” Sen. Rand Paul said Thursday on the Senate floor. “Our Treasury is bare. There is a multitude of reasons why we should not continue to send good money after bad.”
Paul, R-Ky., said such action should be taken in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Pakistan. And he has proposed an amendment that would require those countries to help in the investigations of the attacks on U.S. embassies in Yemen and Egypt and the consulate in Benghazi.
Yemen received $64 million this year, compared to $134 million last year, according to Congressional Research Service.
“Not one penny more for Libya or Egypt or Pakistan until they act as our allies,” Paul continued. "Some say we have to keep sending it. Fine, let’s send it when they act as our allies. Let’s send it when they start behaving as civilized nations and come to their senses.”
Paul’s remarks follow Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying the attack was the work of “a small and savage group – not the people or government of Libya.”
She also acknowledged that Americans were likely asking: “How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction? This question reflects just how complicated and, at times, how confounding the world can be.”
Still, some House Republicans had a point of view earlier this week similar to Ryan’s, suggesting that they would vote Thursday against the continuing resolution to keep the government running, in an attempt to cut off aid to Egypt and Libya.
“It would show a tremendous amount of leadership from this administration, in light of the recent developments, if the president were to come back and demand that the amount of money that is in the [continuing resolution] for Libya and Egypt be stripped,” said Louisiana GOP Rep. Jeff Landry, according to The Hill Newspaper. “That would be tremendous leadership.”
So it' is only violence, injury, and property damage related to a film release if it is in Egypt or Libya, isn't in the US, and involves Rocket Launchers?
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Just sayin', what happens when one of those emitters get hit by an RPG? I'd assume they stop working, yes?
Sure, that's what was the initial concerns... but they're built to withstand an RPJ tho (if that's even possible?)
The big advantage of these things are the range... so, it may not be practical you emplace these things at the embassy. But, on a military installation? Yeah, it'll work.
Working as an analyst in 81-83, helped to prepare more than few PDBs for Reagan. I’ve been writing about this on my site and other places saying that there was no way they didn’t know something, I just found it hard to believe that “no credible threat” existed for this anniversary of 9/11. There’s been threats on every other anniversary. First when they say “credible” it doesn’t mean, nothing is out there. The term is archaic. First intel is gathered and then analyzed, (what we did), the product is then prepared for the consumers, – the President, VP, etc. Of course the PDB is a specialized document, a summary. But when intel is “credible” in the day it meant you could source it to a specific person, group, eyes on, etc. Today that woudn’t be the case. Threats are delivered via social media and not always traceable to a hard source. Yet they cannot be simply ignored. Now we learn via Fox that there were indeed relatable incidents leading up to the attack.
I call tell you that Intel types are pissed right now, they warned and it wasn’t heeded. I fully expect some leaks to come forward in the coming weeks.
Amb. Stevens was much loved and people are not going to let administration spin sweep his unnecessary death under the rug.
There is only one thing wrong with that idea.
It´s non lethal!
Or at least it needs a big red button where it says "lethal setting" on in case those apes go ahead and murder embassy personel again in the future and considering the incredible IQ levels of those scum it´s hardly a matter of if but when.
Kanluwen wrote: Please stop reposting blogs as if they're some sort of reputable source.
The fact that the blogger suggests the term "credible" is an archaic term shows that there is no value, whatsoever, in reading his opinions.
You didn't even read all of it... so... cheers.
Uhhuh.
The individual whose blog you reposted uses his supposed credibility as an analyst under the Reagan administration to suggest that there is "no way" that the current administration was lax on their intelligence gathering and analysis.
The man even then says that "we learned via Fox that there were indeed relatable incidents leading up to the attack".
So where did we learn that? When did we learn it? I haven't seen anything on any major reputable media outlets, of which I most certainly do not consider Fox fitting that criteria.
The individual whose blog you reposted uses his supposed credibility as an analyst under the Reagan administration to suggest that there is "no way" that the current administration was lax on their intelligence gathering and analysis.
The man even then says that "we learned via Fox that there were indeed relatable incidents leading up to the attack".
So where did we learn that? When did we learn it? I haven't seen anything on any major reputable media outlets, of which I most certainly do not consider Fox fitting that criteria.
Reaally... you don't think it's strange that they're retroactively remove the original statement?
First of all, the tagline of the blog in question?
It's worrying that you would choose a site which uses this as the tagline:
Dad always said, "Speak with authority - people will assume you know what you're talking about, even if you don't." I assume he knew what he was talking about.
Secondly, it's very likely that the piece in question was removed because of the fact that they're trying to depoliticize what happened.
Its going to be a party on 6 Nov here for me with everyone screaming the doom the US from either Obama or Romney. Just going to kick back and read the posts and laugh.
Jihadin wrote: Its going to be a party on 6 Nov here for me with everyone screaming the doom the US from either Obama or Romney. Just going to kick back and read the posts and laugh.
Jihadin wrote: Social networking devices...twitter on cell phones...not much of the interenet. Slice of the world is here on Dakka. Besides americans and europeans living in the ME have you seen anyone else post here that was actually from/in the ME?
There is barely a market for 40k or GWs other wargames. It wouldn't make any sense if they were popularly represented on an english language forum. You don't see very many people here from Japan or the rest of asia and I'm pretty sure they have the internet.
Jihadin wrote: I do believe its against Islam to have an "addiction" SHuma
edit
Spelling.
It's not. You're thinking of islams prohibitions, which are fairly specific though broadly interpreted. "Addictions" and "warhammer" aren't among them.
Jihadin wrote: Thats your perception. The perception in the ME is not the same as your perception.
A: Have you even been to the middle east?
B: Have you been outside of one country?
C: Do you speak any language other than english?
I know you style yourself as some sort of expert of human interaction in muslim countries, but you don't seem like you know very much outside of who to consider a "threat".
Egypt for Bright Star and yes we've been down town
Kuwait City, Kuwait
Afghanistan, Kabal and Kandahar, Jabad, Asbad pretty much down town
Israel, Jerusalem
Karachi, Pakistan
Qatar
UAE
Saudie
What about you Shuma?
Edit
Heck might as well throw the others in
Somalia to swap out C&C birds with 10th Mountain. Two days boots on ground for the inventory. Most the work was conducted on the Iwo Jima
Iraq BIAP to transport back busted helicopters
Germany (station there)
England 7 days leave
Poland to train with their troops
Romania for fun and then for training their troops (movement control for their side)
France for Fun...lots of fun
Italy for fun....lots of fun
Romania for FUN...its a fun country to visit
Kosovo for peacekeeping duty
Bosnia for Peace Keeping duty
Canada for canadian jump wings. Montreal was a blast
Panama for fun and JOTC
South Korea
Japan/Okinawa
Thailand
Taiwan
Woops forgot Manas, Kygykistan but can't go off post. There's a 100m "kill zone" around the post. Former Russian air base
pretty much all the countries I visit for fun or mission oriented.
Egypt for Bright Star and yes we've been down town Kuwait City, Kuwait Afghanistan, Kabal and Kandahar, Jabad, Asbad pretty much down town Israel, Jerusalem Karachi, Pakistan Qatar UAE Saudie
What about you Shuma?
Afghanistan and Pakistan aren't even in the middle east. So you stayed in a base in Saudi Arabia, trained with the egyptian military, did.. what? In Kuwait? and had your plane stop over in the UAE? Was your role in the military to interact with any of these people?
And you didn't answer my question, do you speak a language other than english? I don't, but I'm not making broadly racist statements about a dozen countries based on my "personal interactions with their people".
I'm a Movmenet Coordinator so I deal with my counter parts of both the military and their civilian side thats equivalent to me.
Kuwait I can't get into that and no I didn't just pass through.
Qatar I can't talk about
UAE is similiar
I speak Thai besides english. As for this broad racist statement your accusing me hit the "button" and let the MOD decide.
Jihadin wrote: I'm a Movmenet Coordinator so I deal with my counter parts of both the military and their civilian side thats equivalent to me.
Kuwait I can't get into that and no I didn't just pass through.
Qatar I can't talk about
UAE is similiar
I speak Thai besides english. As for this broad racist statement your accusing me hit the "button" and let the MOD decide.
No, I did that when Pyriel called them monkies. I can't hit that thing too often. They don't intervene much anyway. Also, Thai? Why Thai? Do you have familial ties that speak it?
Half Thai Shuma. I'm half Thai. Mom who's full blooded Thai made sure I keep with my heritage. I will out eat anyone thats non asian with chopstick on peas. My mom kept no silverware in the house. Just chopstick. She also does not like harsh language. Ever been hit on the side of the head with a wok?
I missed that part then on Pyriel calling them "monkies" or I would have hit the button myself to. You already know I'm racist towards a certain grp at first but afterwards when all said and over even their wounded I make sure is treated quickly as possible.
Jihadin wrote: Its going to be a party on 6 Nov here for me with everyone screaming the doom the US from either Obama or Romney. Just going to kick back and read the posts and laugh.
It is a good idea to keep perspective and the ability to laugh. The South Park 2008 election episode was on the other night; all the Obama supporters are being drunken celebratory idiots, all the McCain supporters are freaking out and fleeing town to hide in a bomb shelter, and the whole time Obama and McCain are actually working together, Ocean's 11-style, to steal a diamond.
Jihadin wrote: Its going to be a party on 6 Nov here for me with everyone screaming the doom the US from either Obama or Romney. Just going to kick back and read the posts and laugh.
It is a good idea to keep perspective and the ability to laugh. The South Park 2008 election episode was on the other night; all the Obama supporters are being drunken celebratory idiots, all the McCain supporters are freaking out and fleeing town to hide in a bomb shelter, and the whole time Obama and McCain are actually working together, Ocean's 11-style, to steal a diamond.
I remember when that came out... THAT.WAS. AWESOME!
A Florida man preparing for the end of the world is under investigation for stealing vehicles and building a “doomsday bunker” in his backyard.
Cops discovered the man’s bizarre plan to survive the apocalypse while investigating a stolen trailer in Kissimmee, Fla. on Tuesday.
“He was building a doomsday-type bunker,” Kissimmee Police spokesman Stacie Miller told ABC’s WFTS-TV.
They found the trailer at the man’s home, where he had apparently been stockpiling stolen vehicles and burying them in the backyard to create an underground shelter.
“We had a tip that the trailer might be in front of his house,” Miller said. “And there it was.”
Police found two trailers buried on top of each other as well as a stolen food truck, and the man reportedly told them he had planned to drill so that he could travel between both pieces.
The man had already sparked concern among his neighbors for digging a hole behind his home with a backhoe, prompting them to call the authorities.
“He had this crane, and he worked there for about three weeks,” a neighbor told WFTS “Pulling, and just digging and digging. You could see him over the fence, and the next thing I know, I couldn’t see him at all.”
“I called the city because I was afraid he would flood my yard,” his neighbor Betty Ryan told local CBS affiliate WTSP. “I thought he was digging a pool. And he goes, ‘I’m digging a fish pond, just a little fish pond.’”
"It's scary. I'm seven months pregnant we have little kids that live with us I don't know what could happen," neighbor Anna Demoss told WKMG-TV.
Orlando Sentinel
The man had already sparked concern among his neighbors for digging a hole behind his home with a backhoe, prompting them to call the authorities.
The man’s identity has not yet been released, as he potentially faces charges in connection with the thefts.
Not only was he trying to build the bunker out of stolen materials, but he was apparently also in violation of local building codes, which require permits and prohibit burying trailers.
Though the man reportedly told police he did not have a prediction for when the world would end, chances are he wouldn’t have survived the end times in his makeshift shelter even if he had gotten away with building it.
“A trailer is not structurally sound,” Craig Holland, the city’s development-services director, told the Orlando Sentinel. “I don’t think it would have protected him from much.”
Some people are already executing their plans already...
edit
I see Sudan turned down the additional marine security platoon. Do believe the additional security platoons to the embassies need to go on hold status or not deployed at all. Putting them in is just adding "fuel to the fire". Everyone needs to get on the same sheet of music including Romney to put the embers out. We do not need additional flame up or next summer fighting season in Afghanistan going to be literally force on force.
We're removing excess staffers and their families from Sudan and tunisia because of that too. I agree with you, it's better to remove ourselves from the less stable states than put up difficult to defend civilian targets who won't be able to do their jobs in this environment anyway. We can reestablish normalized diplomatic ties once they stop turning into failed states.
ShumaGorath wrote: We're removing excess staffers and their families from Sudan and tunisia because of that too. I agree with you, it's better to remove ourselves from the less stable states than put up difficult to defend civilian targets who won't be able to do their jobs in this environment anyway. We can reestablish normalized diplomatic ties once they stop turning into failed states.
With respect to Sudan and Tunisia I'd agree...
But, I've read somewhere that the Omanning and Egyptian government has asked us to stay...
ShumaGorath wrote: We're removing excess staffers and their families from Sudan and tunisia because of that too. I agree with you, it's better to remove ourselves from the less stable states than put up difficult to defend civilian targets who won't be able to do their jobs in this environment anyway. We can reestablish normalized diplomatic ties once they stop turning into failed states.
With respect to Sudan and Tunisia I'd agree...
But, I've read somewhere that the Omanning and Egyptian government has asked us to stay...
The egyptian government (realistically the military which is a titanic political force) relies on us for security funding. As much as we don't like the Muslim Brotherhood the brotherhood doesn't much like Al-Queda right now. Egypt is attempting to rebuild an economy in tatters and you can't do that without a largescale influx of business capitol investment. They're targeting western markets and things like this really, really hurt those efforts. Nothing causes a failed state and extremism more than a lack of an economy. The brotherhood recognizes this. Oman just wants to keep expanding it's economy without risking internal strife.
I personally don't think that Tunisia is a failed state or is nearing it. It's actually somewhat cosmopolitan when compared to the rest of the region. If it can get it's administrative issues in order it'll be all set. It's islamist majority government is more powerful than is likely to be maintained through democracy (they had some issues with how they put parties on ballots in the first go 'round). We don't really need to be there.
Lets not forget also that Egypt military is in the Sinai to take out some extremist groups there. Israel has raise no official protest of armored combat vehicles (its a armored division) in the Sinai. Sinai is like a non militarize zone going back to the 6 day War.
Jihadin wrote: Lets not forget also that Egypt military is in the Sinai to take out some extremist groups there. Israel has raise no official protest of armored combat vehicles (its a armored division) in the Sinai. Sinai is like a non militarize zone going back to the 6 day War.
In support of the administration’s attempt to deflect attention from the defects of its policy, our Department of Justice, which is by now little more than an arm of the President’s re-election campaign, has responded by having its subordinates track down and identify the film-maker, release his name and that of at least one of his associates to the press, and haul him in after midnight to check whether he has violated the terms of probation imposed on him two years ago in a bank fraud case. And, of course, the mainstream press – which constitutes this year, as it did four years ago, what one Journolist member in 2008 accurately termed Barack Obama’s “unofficial campaign” – has loyally fallen in line, reporting that the video “sparked” the disturbance in Benghazi and intimating thereby that the attack was a spontaneous outburst.
All of this is meant to obscure the obvious – that the attack was planned well in advance. To begin with, it is not fortuitous that it took place – months after the video was posted – on 11 September. Nor can it have been the case that the perpetrators simply picked up in a fit of righteous anger the rocket launchers in their closets. Equipment of this sort is rarely ready to hand. Moreover, if the attackers bagged an American ambassador, it was surely because they had advance warning of his visit, and this means in turn that they had excellent intelligence of the sort that presupposes the cooperation of someone inside the consulate or the inside the embassy in Tripoli. . . . For the most part, the press’s contribution to the administration’s disinformation campaign is deliberate and calculated. But one must not underestimate the role played by stupidity.
One thing that one can say about the Obama administration is that it has no shame. In Libya, on this year’s anniversary of 9/11, a makeshift American consulate in Benghazi was successfully attacked by a large mob armed with rocket launchers, and an energetic, dedicated young American ambassador was assassinated. In response, our President, his Secretary of State, and their minions have assiduously sought to deflect attention from the fact that, as Der Spiegel so aptly puts it, “Obama’s Middle East Policy Is in Ruins,” and they have done so by attempting to pin the blame on a hapless Coptic Christian, resident in California, who put up on YouTube some time ago a video highly critical of Islam. I wonder what they would be doing had the perpetrators of this crime used as a pretext the no less anti-Islamic film Religulous made by big-time Obama donor Bill Maher.
In support of the administration’s attempt to deflect attention from the defects of its policy, our Department of Justice, which is by now little more than an arm of the President’s re-election campaign, has responded by having its subordinates track down and identify the film-maker, release his name and that of at least one of his associates to the press, and haul him in after midnight to check whether he has violated the terms of probation imposed on him two years ago in a bank fraud case. And, of course, the mainstream press – which constitutes this year, as it did four years ago, what one Journolist member in 2008 accurately termed Barack Obama’s “unofficial campaign” – has loyally fallen in line, reporting that the video “sparked” the disturbance in Benghazi and intimating thereby that the attack was a spontaneous outburst.
All of this is meant to obscure the obvious – that the attack was planned well in advance. To begin with, it is not fortuitous that it took place – months after the video was posted – on 11 September. Nor can it have been the case that the perpetrators simply picked up in a fit of righteous anger the rocket launchers in their closets. Equipment of this sort is rarely ready to hand. Moreover, if the attackers bagged an American ambassador, it was surely because they had advance warning of his visit, and this means in turn that they had excellent intelligence of the sort that presupposes the cooperation of someone inside the consulate or the inside the embassy in Tripoli.
To get an inkling of the truth, one must turn from the intrepid investigative reporters associated with Pravda-on-the-Hudson, Pravda-on-the-Potomac, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and, alas, The Wall Street Journal, who have done little more than to reprint administration handouts, to the foreign press – where one learns that “The killings of the US ambassador to Libya and three of his staff were likely to have been the result of a serious and continuing security breach” and that “the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and ‘lockdown,’ under which movement is severely restricted.” Moreover, one must turn to a blogpost to discover that our State Department is in the grip of panic: “The working assumption is that several American embassies may have been penetrated, or are vulnerable to attack, because so many of them rely on local residents for staff needs at the embassy, and as such may be in a position to breach security if they have been recruited by Al Qaida.”
The American people cannot be allowed to discover that Barack Obama’s policy of appeasement has persuaded our enemies that we are weak and feckless and has elicited aggression on their part. Nor can they be allowed to learn that Hillary Clinton and our minions have been grossly negligent with regard to the security of our embassies, consulates, and other installations in the larger Muslim world. Instead, we must ignore the spirit of the First Amendment and vent our wrath on an inept Coptic Christian immigrant from Egypt.
For the most part, the press’s contribution to the administration’s disinformation campaign is deliberate and calculated. But one must not underestimate the role played by stupidity. Consider Peggy Noonan. She fell hook, line, and sinker for the administration’s disinformation campaign, and in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal she wrote the following:
Whatever the exact impact of the anti-Muhammad hate film that went viral, we have entered an age of would-be Princips.
Gavrilo Princip of course was the assassin who killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife on June 28, 1914. He was 20, largely friendless and small in stature. He pulled the trigger that killed the archduke which led to the ultimatums that brought the war that misshaped the 20th century. From his act sprang nine million dead, Lenin at the Finland Station, the fall of Russia, the rise of communism, World War II, the Cold War . . .
Maybe all those things would have happened anyway, one way or another. We'll never know. All we know is how it did begin, with one young man and a gun.
Now in the age of technology, with everything disseminated everywhere instantly, it isn't one man with a gun but one man with a camera, or a laptop, or a phone.
To be a Princip is to feel power, whatever the cost to others. It is to need to get your point out there, whatever the price others pay. A Princip has a high sense of authority—he is in possession of urgent truths—and no sense of responsibility.
The maker of the videotape that contributed to the rioting in Egypt is a would-be Princip, as is the American pastor, Terry Jones, who burned the Quran.
We are going to have to think about antidotes to and answers for the new Principism. Because it's not going to go away.
Notice what Noonan did and what she failed to do. She did not compare the murderers of our ambassador with the assassin who killed the Archduke Ferdinand, and she did not suggest that they be hunted down and killed. Instead, she singled out a resident of the United States who exercised in a provocative and obnoxious manner his right under the First Amendment to vigorously criticize a religion he did not like, and she intimated that something comparable to the retribution due Gavrilo Princip should be visited upon the film-maker and anyone who imitates his example.
You do not have to agree with the outlook permeating the video produced by this Coptic Christian to think that we as Americans should honor and protect his right to freedom of speech; and, for the record, I think his contribution to public discourse even more reprehensible than Bill Maher’s Religulous – for Maher did not attempt to pass off his own disgraceful work as something sponsored by an ethnic group to which he did not belong – and I regret that the Copt produced the video. But what Peggy Noonan appears to be advocating – and what the Department of Justice is evidently attempting – is nothing short censorship.
I read that Google has been asked by the administration to remove the video from YouTube and has refused to do so. Good for them.
Whatever we do, we should not let anyone – whether foreigners in the Muslim world or the spinmeisters in our own government – dictate what we can think and say.
Whembly, please stop putting such stupid junk in the threads. It's annoying and disrespectful. No one's going to respond to it in terms respectful to you, as it makes you look terrible just to even relay that crap.
Mannahnin wrote: Whembly, please stop putting such stupid junk in the threads. It's annoying and disrespectful. No one's going to respond to it in terms respectful to you, as it makes you look terrible just to even relay that crap.
What? That picture of the kid holding that placard?
Mannahnin wrote: Whembly, please stop putting such stupid junk in the threads. It's annoying and disrespectful. No one's going to respond to it in terms respectful to you, as it makes you look terrible just to even relay that crap.
What? That picture of the kid holding that placard?
It was mostly a response to the latest piece of crap article you posted. If I wasn't a moderator I'd just put you on ignore at this point. For now I'm just going to stop responding to you. When I try to honestly discuss politics with you, and you respond by posting one of those absurd and offensive articles, it's like I'm talking earnestly into a sewer, and hearing the sound of splashing and gurgling filth when I try to listen for a response.
Mannahnin wrote: Whembly, please stop putting such stupid junk in the threads. It's annoying and disrespectful. No one's going to respond to it in terms respectful to you, as it makes you look terrible just to even relay that crap.
What? That picture of the kid holding that placard?
It was mostly a response to the latest piece of crap article you posted. If I wasn't a moderator I'd just put you on ignore at this point. For now I'm just going to stop responding to you. When I try to honestly discuss politics with you, and you respond by posting one of those absurd and offensive articles, it's like I'm talking earnestly into a sewer, and hearing the sound of splashing and gurgling filth when I try to listen for a response.
We're having a discussion dude... you don't like my stance. That's okay...
My point is this..
When will we ask the same sort of tough questions of the current administration that the Bush Administration and now Romney campaign face?
I've been watching CNN and MSNBC (bleh) all day, and it's like they're all circling the wagon. It's bizzare.
I'll try not posted article ad nauseum and just discuss things one at a time.
It's not that I dislike your stance. I disagree with AustonT and Jihadin regularly, but they don't threadcrap like you do.
When you say you think that the State Dept or the Administration should have said more about the First Amendment in the initial statements, I can understand how you might feel that way, and while I disagree with it, I can basically see where you're coming from, and am happy to discuss it with you and express why I disagree.
But half (or more) of the articles you post are seriously garbage. Full of twisted facts, failed logic, smears and misrepresentations. If you can't critically evaluate your sources at all, and just dump these piles of stink in the thread, it's an insulting waste of my time.
I apologize if my metaphor was harsh. I'm done, thanks.
Mannahnin wrote: It's not that I dislike your stance. I disagree with AustonT and Jihadin regularly, but they don't threadcrap like you do.
When you say you think that the State Dept or the Administration should have said more about the First Amendment in the initial statements, I can understand how you might feel that way, and while I disagree with it, I can basically see where you're coming from, and am happy to discuss it with you and express why I disagree.
But half (or more) of the articles you post are seriously garbage. Full of twisted facts, failed logic, smears and misrepresentations. If you can't critically evaluate your sources at all, and just dump these piles of stink in the thread, it's an insulting waste of my time.
I apologize if my metaphor was harsh. I'm done, thanks.
No apologies needed dude... I'm not looking to hurt anyone nor do I take criticism personally...
Is this the post's article is what prompted you to say it's "full of twisted facts, failed logic, smears and misrepresentations", I'm willing to discuss it paragraph-by-paragraph, blow-by-blow if you'd like? Here's your opportunity to smack me upside my head...
I gotta stay up late to do some work stuff... so, if you don't wanna do this, 'tis cool.
Mannahnin wrote: Whembly, please stop putting such stupid junk in the threads. It's annoying and disrespectful. No one's going to respond to it in terms respectful to you, as it makes you look terrible just to even relay that crap.
What? That picture of the kid holding that placard?
It was mostly a response to the latest piece of crap article you posted. If I wasn't a moderator I'd just put you on ignore at this point. For now I'm just going to stop responding to you. When I try to honestly discuss politics with you, and you respond by posting one of those absurd and offensive articles, it's like I'm talking earnestly into a sewer, and hearing the sound of splashing and gurgling filth when I try to listen for a response.
Another interesting point to add is something from a conversation with a friend from last night. She works as a teacher in an English Language school and was saying how all the Libyan students were totally distraught about the death of the US Ambassodor, the was a lot of respect for him as he would go out and walk amongst the people and had supported the rebellion. In talking to the students something emerged that I doubt any of us would of given a second thought to and it's this. In all these troubled countries what is seem by the population is controlled by the government and as the Libyans pointed out, they have had forty years of control. This means if it's broadcasted then the government must of ok'd it and agree with it. She said it took alot for them to understand that in the West and especially the US, you can say what you want and government can't do anything about it.
So basically in the eyes of these Arab countries this film has been sanctioned by the US government, which combined with the general illiteracy of the population, ain't a good mix.
Do I need to repost the pictures of Muslims in Libya putting their lives on the line having a protest to say they are sorry for the attack?
Once certain people post actual events and news, instead of posting what people think you should think, then there might be a point to this thread again.
d-usa wrote: Do I need to repost the pictures of Muslims in Libya putting their lives on the line having a protest to say they are sorry for the attack?
Once certain people post actual events and news, instead of posting what people think you should think, then there might be a point to this thread again.
I saw that post and commented on it. Those people are the ones with the true courage and knowing what they are risking by being that open about their feelings misted me.
Great pictures and one of the most worthwhile posts on this thread.
My feelings upon the general attacks upon the consulate, is that like most of the bombings etc, it takes just the one or the few people in the crowd to do something stupid, and you brand most of that minority stupid or anti-american based on just a few people's actions. What if the muslim world viewed American politics by the Westboro Bapist church picketing a muslim burial.
I think that's a good point Doctadeth and worth repeating a couple times in the thread.
Which is why I really don't understand the cries for cutting aid to Libya. Isn't Libya a success story by any reasonable expectation? They toss Gaddafi, hold democratic elections--and vote in one of the more secular, moderate governments in the Middle East? In a country that has a tremendous generation gap--and will only become more progressive as the older generation passes on? I would think Libya would be the last place we would cut aid to if we would like a Middle East presence.
Melissia wrote: Yes, cutting aid would really send them the wrong message, anyway.
Let's make it conditional aid. We keep the money coming, they allow a Task Force 6-26-style unit of ours to run around eating snakes and speeding fast and dragging low.
True but imagine how far along a muslim country has progress if a church is openly built. Imagine the support from the US. Why I advocate the benchmark approach to aid in the ME
Jihadin wrote: True but imagine how far along a muslim country has progress if a church is openly built. Imagine the support from the US. Why I advocate the benchmark approach to aid in the ME
You mean like the examples of the people in Egypt last year?
When terrorists were attacking churches we got some of the most powerful images of the region.
During Christian services huge crowds of Muslims were gathering outside of the churches to act as a human shield in case terrorists tried to attack them.
During Friday prayers on the open squares the Christians formed human shields around them so the military could not attack them.
But of course that doesn't fit the narrative of religions hating each other.
Wolfstan wrote: Another interesting point to add is something from a conversation with a friend from last night. She works as a teacher in an English Language school and was saying how all the Libyan students were totally distraught about the death of the US Ambassodor, the was a lot of respect for him as he would go out and walk amongst the people and had supported the rebellion. In talking to the students something emerged that I doubt any of us would of given a second thought to and it's this. In all these troubled countries what is seem by the population is controlled by the government and as the Libyans pointed out, they have had forty years of control. This means if it's broadcasted then the government must of ok'd it and agree with it. She said it took alot for them to understand that in the West and especially the US, you can say what you want and government can't do anything about it.
So basically in the eyes of these Arab countries this film has been sanctioned by the US government, which combined with the general illiteracy of the population, ain't a good mix.
Exalted, an EXCELLENT point that we have a hard time wrapping out heads around in the west.
As to cutting aid... I think we should in general, we're a could trillion in the hole, time to stop handing cash out to people.
Christians are in a unique situation in Israel, where they are 2.5% of a Jewish majority population (82.7%) that also has a significant number of Muslims (12%). Religious freedom is guaranteed and all discrimination is forbidden. The Israeli government does intervene in the affairs of other religions, and marriages between Jews and non-Jews are frowned upon.
In Palestine, Palestinian Muslims have attacked and killed Christians and churches have been burned. Local Christians report that attacks against them increased as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The situation of Christians in general continues to degrade, and many continue to leave, causing the population to dwindle more and more.
Muslim Countries
Algeria, which borders Morocco, Tunisia, and the Mediterranean Sea, is a 99% Sunni Muslim country, which a small number (1%) of Christians and Jews. Islam is the religion of the state, and while the government allows freedom of worship for Jews and Christians, religious minorities are seriously threatened by Islamists who would like to eliminate all non-Muslims from Algerian soil. In 2006, Parliament adopted a law to give prison sentences and fines to anyone attempting to convert a Muslim to another religion. As a result, all proselytism is forbidden, as is the distribution of Christian literature or audio-visual material, the publication of the Bible, or any expressions of Christian faith outside of officially approved churches. Arrests have multiplied recently, as have tendencies towards radicalization, and there is a fear that Algeria will return to the violence and civil war of the 1990s. There are an estimated 2000 to 3000 Catholics in Algeria.
In the countries that make up the Arabian Peninsula, aside from Saudi Arabia, Christians have a certain amount of religious freedom, but it is increasingly in danger due to the rise of radical Islamists, who could bring instability and civil war to the region. Church-building projects in Kuwait and Qatar have been accused of being contrary to Sharia law. In countries such as Yemen, Christian converts from Islam have been arrested and beaten. Also included in the Arabian Peninsula are Bahrain, Jordan, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.
Muslims are 90% of the population in Egypt, in which Coptic Christians make up another 9% and other Christian denominations account for the last 1%. Islam is the state religion, and while in theory freedom of religion is guaranteed by the Constitution, in practice the rights of non-Muslims are not respected. Christians are discriminated against at administrative levels and in schools and conversions to Christianity can be met with punishment and imprisonment. Christians are denied equal access to jobs and education and rarely obtain government positions. Incidents of violence against Christians also occur.
Living in a country which borders Syria, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia, Christians in Iraq have faced particularly severe persecution, and their numbers have dwindled as a result of the war. Many Christians have fled the country and those staying have endured the destruction of churches and convents, torture, bombings, death threats, assassinations, kidnappings, murders, and extortion. Islam is the state religion of Iraq, which has a Muslim majority of 97% (60-65% Shiite, 32-37% Sunni). While the rights of religious minorities are guaranteed by law, the government does, in fact, discriminate against Christians.
Christians are only 0.2% of the population of Iran, a 99% Muslim, mostly Shiite (89%) country between Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan in which Islam is the state religion. No non-Muslim may suggest that a Muslim change his or her religion, and conversion from Islam is punishable by death. Certain non-Muslim religions are allowed by the government (Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Armenian and Assyrian and certain Protestant Churches) but are strictly controlled. Religions not recognized by the government are forbidden and persecuted. There are about 10,000 to 13,000 Catholics in Iran who follow Chaldean, Armenian, and Latin Rites. About half of the Christians in Iran fled the country after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Christians are allowed in the government and the army but cannot reach high positions. Since the 2005 elections, religious liberties have deteriorated and Christians have been systematically harassed, some being arrested and beaten. Christian churches are not allowed to accept Muslim converts as members, forcing Muslim converts to Christianity to practice their religion in secret.
The situation is easier for Christians in Jordan, where they are 4% of the population in a 96% Sunni Muslim country that lies next to Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel. While Islam is the official religion of the state, Christians enjoy equal civic rights and Christian churches are allowed to develop their pastoral, education, and humanitarian activities. Jordan is a peaceful oasis for Christians in the Middle East in many ways, but as a result many refugees, mainly from Iraq, have fled here to escape persecution.
In Kuwait, Muslims account for 85% of the population (of which 70% are Sunni and 30% are Shiite) while Christians, Hindus and Parsis make up the remaining 15%. Similar to other Muslim countries, Islam is the religion of the state and legislation is based on Sharia law. Religious freedom is guaranteed, but religious instruction for non-Muslim confessions forbidden, as is attempting to convert Muslims. Conversion from Islam is considered a crime punishable by death, and in 1993-94 a convert to Christianity was condemned to be executed and fled the country, while his wife was kidnapped, raped, and forced to divorce him.
On the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and bordering Israel and Syria, Lebanon has one of the highest concentrations of Christians in a majority Muslim country. Christians make up 40% of the population, while the remaining 60% are Muslim and are divided among a variety of sects. A small number of people are from other faiths. The government formally recognizes 17 religious confessions. Discrimination against Christians still does occur in certain situations, and attacks against Christians, including bombings, have also occurred.
Bordering Tunisia, Algeria, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea, Libya is 97% Muslim and 3% other, and has a population of just over 6.17 million people. The rights of religious minorities are guaranteed by law and Christians are allowed to practice their religion.
In between Jordan, Iraq, Oman, Yemen, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia is an almost entirely Sunni Muslim country, except for a tiny number of Christian immigrants. Politically it is an absolute monarchy, and it is the last country in the world where religious liberty is neither recognized nor protected. Islam is not merely the official religion, it is the only religion allowed. The entire territory of Saudi Arabia is considered to be a ‘grand mosque’ and all other religions are prohibited and cannot be practice publically or privately. Religious police make sure the practice of other religions is not visible. Christian immigrants (mainly from Pakistan and the Philippines) or secret converts to Christianity found practicing their religion can be subject to imprisonment, torture and execution, although authorities are more careful with visiting military personal and expatriates.
Syria is 74% Sunni Muslim, 16% Muslims of other denominations, and 10% Christian, with tiny communities of Jews in Damascus, Al Qamishli, and Aleppo. Religious freedom is guaranteed by the Constitution, but the Head of State must be Muslim. Discrimination against Christians does occur in certain situations, and the emigration of Christians from the country due to rising Islamic fundamentalism and lack of economic opportunity continues to cause the already small population of faithful to shrink further, threatening the Christian community with extinction. At the same time, many Christian refugees have fled to Syria from Iraq.
Turkey is an almost entirely Muslim country (98-99%) with a small Christian population (some 500,000 out of almost 72 million) that borders Syria, Iraq and Iran, as well as Armenia, Georgia, Greece and Bulgaria. The 1982 Constitution reaffirmed Turkey’s status as a secular state in which religious freedom is guaranteed but in which certain religious activities are restricted. In practice, religious minorities are the victims of administrative discrimination and government control. Missionary activity is theoretically allowed but is, in fact, limited. Priests have been attacked and stabbed and Christians have been murdered. Muslim converts to Catholicism hide their conversion and religious activities out of fear of reprisals.
On the coast of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Arabian Sea, Yemen has a population of just over 23 million which is 98% Muslim and 2% Jewish, Christian, and Hindus, even though Yemen reports that all its citizens are Muslim. Islam is the state religion and no Christian denominations are allowed, but the small numbers of Jews and Christians (many from India or Pakistan) are not persecuted and are allowed to practice their religions privately. Serious incidents against Christians have occurred in the past decade, including 1995 attack against a hospital and the 1998 assassination of nuns from Mother Teresa’s order.
Considering that Jews, Christians and Muslims all believe in the same God, whether they call him JHVH, God or Allah, it's kinda silly that there's so much hate between the groups.
So basically in the eyes of these Arab countries this film has been sanctioned by the US government, which combined with the general illiteracy of the population, ain't a good mix.
Not at an embassy. These are a lot more realistic and Im suprised they arent already being used at all the embassies. Its hard to create an international incident for being dazzled.
Its only high...not tight. I think its a reaction to civilian hairstyles kind of favoring a high and tight as of late been noticing more more and more fur on the dome.
For those optical dazzling devices, what keeps you from being blinded momentarily if you hit something reflective? I'm not familiar with that device.
edit: nevermind, I found the wiki page. Previous to this thread, I had only read of them in fiction - a Tom Clancy book specifically, Debt of Honor I think.
dogma wrote: Further proof that the DoD is full of nerds:
The PHaSR or Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response rifle was developed by the U.S. Department of Defense.
DARPA is the nerd equivalent of Valhalla. The defense industry in general really. Look at Raytheon, they've got working anti-tank laser cannons, a laser CIWS and are working on the exo-skeleton for proper power armor.
Hhmmmm we used laser lights to dazzle afghani in a POV that would like come up on a convoy doing about a hundred. Hit the windsheild and watch it go opaque and watch him hit the breaks (no "her" sense they're not allowed to drive). It was deemed to hazardous. Now we shoot flares at them. Throw water bottles. Drop a block of rock.
All those photos supposently dragging our dead ambassador through the street and desecrating his body:
Looks like it may have been a case of Lybians pulling him from the house, celebrating that he was still alive, and trying to carry him to the hospital to save his life.
The chaos is palpable, as a throng of Libyans frantically scramble outside a damaged building. Suddenly, a man's body is carried from inside toward an open window -- and the frenzy and sounds become even more urgent, more emotional.
"Get him out!" some yell.
After joyfully discovering the man -- a foreigner, apparently, a voice in the crowd says -- is alive after he's dragged out, fresh screams ring out.
"Allahu Akbar," which translates from Arabic to "God is great," men in the crowd shout. Others raise fists to the sky, seemingly rejoicing that this man has somehow survived.
According to the man who shot the video, the wounded man shown is Chris Stevens, the late U.S. ambassador to Libya.
.........
Yet the video shows lots of activity, especially near an open window. People clambered in and out of it, aided by small flashlights and each other.
Eventually, the wounded man was carried out. Afterward, he's pictured on the ground in what appears to be a shirt and dark pants.
"He had a pulse and his eyes were moving," al-Bakush said of the man he said is Stevens. "His mouth was black from all the smoke."
With the man now outside, some yelled out," Carry him," and others said, "We need to take him ... to the hospital." A later photo, also seen online, showed the wounded man being put on another man's shoulder and whisked away.
By the time he arrived at a Benghazi hospital, it was too late.
.....
But if this video indeed shows the ambassador being taken from the consulate, as people thank God that he was breathing and tried to rush him to get medical help, it indicates that not everyone in Benghazi was bent on violence that night.
This guy is happy about that Mohammed movie clip and urges all muslims to watch it. Why, he was asked?
"So that their blood will boil." he answered, grinning.
This...fething idiot...is one of the guys behind all the pain and suffering related to islamic extremism. His clearly stated goal is to whip up more muslims to rise in violent, revolutionary protest to create his fantasy of a world where Islam is the sole religion.
And, unfortunately, there will be people listening to him during the Friday prayers. And the Pakistani government probably won't stop him, even though it banned accsess to youtube, so that the video can't be viewed that easily...at least...
Aargh. Sadistic, sociopathic, delusional feth-heads like this. Really, without them, so much violence and strife and grief could've been avoided.
d-usa wrote: All those photos supposently dragging our dead ambassador through the street and desecrating his body:
Looks like it may have been a case of Lybians pulling him from the house, celebrating that he was still alive, and trying to carry him to the hospital to save his life.
I had no idea this was in doubt. I mean when they reported he was missing or several hours and found in a hospital I thought that was obvious. Never underestimate the war hawks I suppose.
d-usa wrote: All those photos supposently dragging our dead ambassador through the street and desecrating his body:
Looks like it may have been a case of Lybians pulling him from the house, celebrating that he was still alive, and trying to carry him to the hospital to save his life.
I had no idea this was in doubt. I mean when they reported he was missing or several hours and found in a hospital I thought that was obvious. Never underestimate the war hawks I suppose.
The usual crowd on my facebook timeline has posted pictures from the video and claim that it shows Muslims "parading and celebrating with the dead body of an American".
But maybe their outrage is just the result of somebody showing something that was filmed halfway around the world, distorting what it means, and then hoping they can use it to fire up an angry mob to further their own agenda. (somehow this sounds familiar...)
Lots of places riot for stupid reasons over this video, and folks are showing the pictures of the dead ambassador to proof that Muslims are evil and can't be reasoned with. It just ticks me off considering that out of all the places it was Libya that was pre-planned and didn't have much to do with the video at all, it was Libya where locals risked their lives trying to save the ambassador, it was Libya where people risked their lives protesting in support of us after the attack, and Libya is one of the few (if not only) places where people have been arrested for this.
But using a photo of Libyans with a (possibly not so) dead body is just to tempting for some, even though they are just falling into the same trap that is used to fire up protests in the middle east.
It's a good rant to have. From my understanding the Libyans loved that guy, it's probably more symbolic BECAUSE he was well liked. You can't have like able American dignitaries making our country seem like able and friendly abroad.
Monster Rain wrote: I was the under the impression that fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.
If true, it would also lead to hate allowing you to shoot lightening out of your fingers at people you didn't like.
...
And, worse, it brings a smile to my face to think of certain acts the mods will probably ban me for spelling out again on this thread. But I can still smile.
Intelligence sources tell Fox News they are convinced the deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was directly tied to Al Qaeda -- with a former Guantanamo detainee involved.
That revelation comes on the same day a top Obama administration official called last week's deadly assault a "terrorist attack" -- the first time the attack has been described that way by the administration after claims it had been a "spontaneous" act.
"Yes, they were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy," Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said during a Senate hearing Wednesday.
Olsen echoed administration colleagues in saying U.S. officials have no specific intelligence about "significant advanced planning or coordination" for the attack.
However, his statement goes beyond White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, saying the Sept. 11 attack on the consulate was spontaneous. He is the first top administration official to call the strike an act of terrorism.
Sufyan Ben Qumu is thought to have been involved and even may have led the attack, Fox News' intelligence sources said. Qumu, a Libyan, was released from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2007 and transferred into Libyan custody on the condition he be kept in jail. His Guantanamo files also show he has ties to the financiers behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Olson, repeating Wednesday that the FBI is handling the Benghazi investigation, also acknowledged the attack could lead back to Al Qaeda and its affiliates.
"We are looking at indications that individuals involved in the attack may have had connections to Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda's affiliates, in particular Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb," he said at the Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing.
Still, Olsen said "the facts that we have now indicate that this was an opportunistic attack on our embassy, the attack began and evolved and escalated over several hours," Olson said.
Carney said hours earlier that there still is "no evidence of a preplanned or pre-meditated attack," which occurred on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.
"I made that clear last week, Ambassador Rice made that clear Sunday," Carney said at the daily White House press briefing.
Rice appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and four other morning talk shows to say the attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans was "spontaneous" and sparked by an early protest that day outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, over an anti-Islamic video.
"It was a reaction to a video that had nothing to do with the United States," Rice told Fox News. "The best information and the best assessment we have today is that this was not a pre-planned, pre-meditated attack. What happened initially was that it was a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired in Cairo."
However, that account clashed with claims by the Libyan president that the attack was in fact premeditated. Other sources, including an intelligence source in Libya who spoke to Fox News, have echoed those claims. The intelligence source even said that, contrary to the suggestion by the Obama administration, there was no major protest in Benghazi before the deadly attack which killed four Americans. A U.S. official did not dispute the claim.
In the face of these conflicting accounts, Carney on Tuesday deferred to the ongoing investigation and opened the door to the possibility of other explanations.
I'm not sure if muslim protesters demand all the film crews to be handed over to them (so those 'criminal' will be punished for sagriellieges. burned at stake as every 'heretics' should meet their ends)? the only demans i've heard is that the sagrielliege film to be banned worldwide.
The protesters took to the street Friday, loudly declaring that they -- and not those behind last week's deadly attack -- represent the real sentiments of the Libyan people.
There's a possible AQ connection with a former Gitmo guest that lead the attack.
I'm not sure if muslim protesters demand all the film crews to be handed over to them (so those 'criminal' will be punished for sagriellieges. burned at stake as every 'heretics' should meet their ends)? the only demans i've heard is that the sagrielliege film to be banned worldwide.
I'm going to play it 24/7 in my front yard, I think.
d-usa wrote: All those photos supposently dragging our dead ambassador through the street and desecrating his body:
Looks like it may have been a case of Lybians pulling him from the house, celebrating that he was still alive, and trying to carry him to the hospital to save his life.
The chaos is palpable, as a throng of Libyans frantically scramble outside a damaged building. Suddenly, a man's body is carried from inside toward an open window -- and the frenzy and sounds become even more urgent, more emotional.
"Get him out!" some yell.
After joyfully discovering the man -- a foreigner, apparently, a voice in the crowd says -- is alive after he's dragged out, fresh screams ring out.
"Allahu Akbar," which translates from Arabic to "God is great," men in the crowd shout. Others raise fists to the sky, seemingly rejoicing that this man has somehow survived.
According to the man who shot the video, the wounded man shown is Chris Stevens, the late U.S. ambassador to Libya.
.........
Yet the video shows lots of activity, especially near an open window. People clambered in and out of it, aided by small flashlights and each other.
Eventually, the wounded man was carried out. Afterward, he's pictured on the ground in what appears to be a shirt and dark pants.
"He had a pulse and his eyes were moving," al-Bakush said of the man he said is Stevens. "His mouth was black from all the smoke."
With the man now outside, some yelled out," Carry him," and others said, "We need to take him ... to the hospital." A later photo, also seen online, showed the wounded man being put on another man's shoulder and whisked away.
By the time he arrived at a Benghazi hospital, it was too late.
.....
But if this video indeed shows the ambassador being taken from the consulate, as people thank God that he was breathing and tried to rush him to get medical help, it indicates that not everyone in Benghazi was bent on violence that night.
The 'crowd' looks to have been about five people...
Haven't watched it, but I'm just gonna go ahead an assume that there is no apology for Americans having free speech, but rather an apology because a few specific Americans chose to be d-bags.
I'm not sure if muslim protesters demand all the film crews to be handed over to them (so those 'criminal' will be punished for sagriellieges. burned at stake as every 'heretics' should meet their ends)? the only demans i've heard is that the sagrielliege film to be banned worldwide.
I'm going to play it 24/7 in my front yard, I think.
Perfect provocation
but think twice before doing this.
or who do you think will come to your aid should that happen?
Haven't watched it, but I'm just gonna go ahead an assume that there is no apology for Americans having free speech, but rather an apology because a few specific Americans chose to be d-bags.
Haven't watched it, but I'm just gonna go ahead an assume that there is no apology for Americans having free speech, but rather an apology because a few specific Americans chose to be d-bags.
What message does the ad actually send the Mohammed Tariq Khans? On the one hand, a message of weakness: Assemble a big enough mob, kill enough people, burn enough flags and churches, and you too can grab the attention of the most powerful man and woman in the world. On the other hand, a taunt. If Obama and Mrs. Clinton really mean it, the Khans must think, why haven’t they presented the video makers for public mincing? The State Department’s ad contains no answer to that crucial question.
If our government is going to run an ad to educate Pakistanis (or whoever) about American attitudes, wouldn’t it make sense to include an explanation as to why America’s leaders cannot and will not enforce the mob’s standards of blasphemy? To an American, what’s objectionable about this ad isn’t so much the apology for the video’s offense as the abject failure to defend basic American principles of freedom. That same failure makes the ad less than worthless as an educational tool.
Okay, I was bored and actually went to your link, Whembly.
And in doing so, I immediately found the article to be bankrupt of any intelligent debate or even reasonable talking points. That article is the sort of thing that Breitbart would spew during a white power orgy. Here's my favourite excerpt:
"It’s bad enough that they said this garbage in the first place. Now they’re using it in ads.
And yet those poor victims in Pock-ee-stohn are still rioting. Guess we’re not appeasing them abjectly enough. Grovel, Barry. Kowtow, Hillary. Submit.
Bow."
Now, I'll put that video clip into context for you, since that borderline-hate-speech blog isn't going to: the people rioting do not have the same freedoms of speech & expression that you do. They live in an area of the world where there is very little freedom of speech, and in their world you cannot make and post videos unless the state approves it and endorses the video. As such, they think that if something is posted on YouTube, it must have the consent of the US government, because that is how it works in their country. So the rioters might naturally think that the Terry Jones video is supported by the US government, which is obviously not the case. The US government seems to understand this differentiation of cultures and rights, and is thereby trying to educate the rioters that their anger towards the US government, and by that extension its embassies, is misdirected.
I think the US should be taking the current stance that it is, in trying to explain that there is a separation between what the US government, and what random US d-bags say.
Hey if you're board, let's talk about Hockey! How's dem Leafs doing?
Are you familiar with the "Roman Polak Door"?
And in doing so, I immediately found the article to be bankrupt of any intelligent debate or even reasonable talking points. That article is the sort of thing that Breitbart would spew during a white power orgy. Here's my favourite excerpt:
"It’s bad enough that they said this garbage in the first place. Now they’re using it in ads.
And yet those poor victims in Pock-ee-stohn are still rioting. Guess we’re not appeasing them abjectly enough. Grovel, Barry. Kowtow, Hillary. Submit.
Bow."
Okay... I'll admit, that was waaaay over the top.
Now, I'll put that video clip into context for you, since that borderline-hate-speech blog isn't going to: the people rioting do not have the same freedoms of speech & expression that you do. They live in an area of the world where there is very little freedom of speech, and in their world you cannot make and post videos unless the state approves it and endorses the video. As such, they think that if something is posted on YouTube, it must have the consent of the US government, because that is how it works in their country. So the rioters might naturally think that the Terry Jones video is supported by the US government, which is obviously not the case. The US government seems to understand this differentiation of cultures and rights, and is thereby trying to educate the rioters that their anger towards the US government, and by that extension its embassies, is misdirected.
I think the US should be taking the current stance that it is, in trying to explain that there is a separation between what the US government, and what random US d-bags say.
They need to do a better job in explaining their position...
But, let's back up here...
I'm friends with a few Iranians/Jordanians who moved here to go to school in the 70's before the fall of the Shah. They still talk/visit their families at home...
They tell me that most folksKNOWS about our freedoms and what they mean.
So, I guess I'm jaded about this whole ordeal...
What the need to do is explain/defend better... Saying "sorry that movie was disgusting" is okay, but leave it at that. That "ad" was more of an appeasement and to me sends mixed signals (see that WSJ post above)
Yes, Whembly. I'm sure many of the folks who came from Iran & Jordan, etc. and have lived in the US for the last 40 years know exactly what your freedoms are.
However, I doubt the families who are still in contact with those folks are the ones doing the rioting.
The ad doesn't include any apology. It says the US supports religious freedom, and that we condemn people who denigrate any religion. Usually the conservatives want religious freedom protected, not the freedom to bash religion. The fact that they're up in arms defending an donkey-cave's right to bash Islam just speaks to the fact that they don't care about protecting religion in general, just about protecting their own religion, and feth anyone else's.
personally believe that President Obama is defending our national security by campaigning. By doing so, he is protecting us against a potential Romney presidency. At least Obama believes in something; all Romney believes is that he wants to be President because power is fun. Oh, and that he should cut taxes on himself and his friends who are helping him in his campaign.
I'm voting for Romney because I'm his friend
I'm voting for him just because HuffPo liberals annoy me more than Hotair conservatives at the moment. It was the other way around last election.
Everyone agrees that HuffPo is annoying. But at least HuffPo is rarely taken seriously. Even hardcore liberals like myself tend to disregard it.
The ad doesn't include any apology. It says the US supports religious freedom, and that we condemn people who denigrate any religion. Usually the conservatives want religious freedom protected, not the freedom to bash religion. The fact that they're up in arms defending an donkey-cave's right to bash Islam just speaks to the fact that they don't care about protecting religion in general, just about protecting their own religion, and feth anyone else's.
Manny... we've already had this discussion...
The ad announces that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clintondenounce the movie... as in, a representative of our government "offically" had a stance on this religious view... you don't have a problem with that?
What they should've said is simply the US Government neither endorse or denounce any religious views. That's it.
That's what was my original contention from that Egyptian communication...
And for the record... I bash all religions... I send my kids to Catholic church/school... and they eat their god.
2014 we pull out. All the surge troops have left already. Training of their forces have halt due to the numerous Green on Blue killing. 2015 the fall of the current admin in Afghanistan
Jihadin wrote: 2014 we pull out. All the surge troops have left already. Training of their forces have halt due to the numerous Green on Blue killing. 2015 the fall of the current admin in Afghanistan
Damn... do you know if that 2014 is the current administration's target date or is that some agreement with the Afgani government?
d-usa wrote: Does it matter now long we stay? Place still going to crap if we leave later.
I guess that's the age old question now eh? Can we make enough difference there? We've already spent blood/treasure... and if there's any hope for sucess, I'd rather stick around and help.
EDIT: well... lemme ask Jihadin this... is it worth staying?
The ad announces that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clintondenounce the movie... as in, a representative of our government "offically" had a stance on this religious view... you don't have a problem with that?
Why should he? Most of the members of our government have official stances on religious views, they just tend to be sympathetic stances with respect to certain Christian religious views (I believe in God, I believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, etc.). Members of government can have any official stance on a religious view they want, they just can't sign those views into law if they involve specific codification (eg. No Muslims Allowed, or the Bible can only be interpreted literally) of their views.
What they should've said is simply the US Government neither endorse or denounce any religious views. That's it.
Except that would be a lie, because we denounce religious views in other countries (and this one) all the time. The most obvious example is radical Islam which we denounce in basically every way we can without specifically referring to radical Islam despite the fact what we denounce is a key part of it.
The ad announces that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clintondenounce the movie... as in, a representative of our government "offically" had a stance on this religious view... you don't have a problem with that?
Why should he? Most of the members of our government have official stances on religious views, they just tend to be sympathetic stances with respect to certain Christian religious views (I believe in God, I believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, etc.). Members of government can have any official stance on a religious view they want, they just can't sign those views into law if they involve specific codification (eg. No Muslims Allowed, or the Bible can only be interpreted literally) of their views.
What they should've said is simply the US Government neither endorse or denounce any religious views. That's it.
Except that would be a lie, because we denounce religious views in other countries (and this one) all the time. The most obvious example is radical Islam which we denounce in basically every way we can without specifically referring to radical Islam despite the fact what we denounce is a key part of it.
.
d-usa wrote: Does it matter now long we stay? Place still going to crap if we leave later.
I guess that's the age old question now eh? Can we make enough difference there? We've already spent blood/treasure... and if there's any hope for sucess, I'd rather stick around and help.
EDIT: well... lemme ask Jihadin this... is it worth staying?
Worth it? Not an easy question to answer. Short term, most definitely not. Long term, really hard to say. Afghanistan is a very mineral rich country, not to mention a very strategically placed country. Having another "friendly" Islamic nation in that part of the world would be very beneficial as well. The more there that support us, the easier it is for us when we do have to drop the hammer somewhere. Economically, the benefits could be astounding, but we may have already missed our window on that with China snapping up huge amounts of whats being found there.
I'd say the best justification we could have for staying there is the humanitarian aspect. If we pull out, and the current government collapses with the Taliban taking over again, it'll be bad. Real bad. Every Afghani who ever helped us over the last 11 years will have to fear for their lives. Also, don't think for a second that they won't be looking for a way to hurt us again as well. It may not be something on the scale of 9/11, but they can cause a lot of trouble for us and our allies. A resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan could have resounding effects in Pakistan as well.
Pakistan is certainly not our friend, but we don't want them to be our enemy. The government there is unstable, and I don't think that the Taliban would hesitate for a second to try to tip it over and then all of a sudden they're in control of a nuclear power. Bad situation.
There is no easy answer for Afghanistan, and that is why I won't point any fingers at the Obama admin over this one. We're going to get burned anyway we go on this.
I'd say the best justification we could have for staying there is the humanitarian aspect. If we pull out, and the current government collapses with the Taliban taking over again, it'll be bad. Real bad. Every Afghani who ever helped us over the last 11 years will have to fear for their lives. Also, don't think for a second that they won't be looking for a way to hurt us again as well. It may not be something on the scale of 9/11, but they can cause a lot of trouble for us and our allies. A resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan could have resounding effects in Pakistan as well.
Be mentally prepare for it. There will be executions once we leave.
I'd say the best justification we could have for staying there is the humanitarian aspect. If we pull out, and the current government collapses with the Taliban taking over again, it'll be bad. Real bad. Every Afghani who ever helped us over the last 11 years will have to fear for their lives. Also, don't think for a second that they won't be looking for a way to hurt us again as well. It may not be something on the scale of 9/11, but they can cause a lot of trouble for us and our allies. A resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan could have resounding effects in Pakistan as well.
Be mentally prepare for it. There will be executions once we leave.
It'll be hard to do. We've been in Afghanistan the entire time I've served. 8 years of that time I've spent in theatre or at units that directly supported from CONUS. I've put a huge portion of my life out there helping the mission, and the last thing I want to see was it all for nothing.
Yes and no. The US took an existing situation and took it up to 11. Afghanistan was dangerous, and then they armed everyone and his goat.
Not yes and no, just yes. Afghanistan has never been effectively controlled by a Western power because it wasn't so long ago that it controlled itself. The present political infighting actually dates back to the aftermath of the Anglo-Afghan wars, and the amount of weaponry in country dates back to Russian support of the PDPA.
Simply blaming America in this situation is just lazy.
depends on the wound. Either arterial, veinous, or a bad flesh wound
From a political studies point of view it's quite a fascinating subject.
