Atlas,
I have never excused the United States from its misguided political calculations, most of which are the result of denying what's truly at stake. This is a war of ideologies, period. The difference between the West and Islamic neerdowells is ideology. The U.S. can only be said to act poorly in comparison to its founding ideology and resulting laws, the same can't be said for ISIS or KSA. To put it bluntly, if the U.S. put a crescent moon on a battle flag and mandated its soldiers put their asses in the air 180 degrees from Mecca five times a day you wouldn't have shit to say about U.S. activity. Your vitriol relies on comparison to two different standards.
In an attempt to make progress in the dialogue, let's adopt one standard. I propose the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. To be sure, the U.S. will be held accountable where it runs afoul, but the itemization will assuredly reveal that Islamic states have much more to answer for. Bases in KSA or the money we give the state in exchange for our insatiable thirst for oil is not a cause of the regime's treatment of its own people or others who are not the right type of Muslim. This fact is unassailable.
The west doesn't choose to build a new palace instead of a new hospital. The west doesn't decide to take the money to enrich the already powerful rather than parlay it into industry that would help ensure the country's future prosperity in the face of Dutch Disease. In Saudi Arabia women are fighting for the right to drive or not be chaperoned by a five year old member of the family born with a fifth appendage; in the west women are fighting to close an earnings pay gap. Even if not perfectly executed (yet), I will passionately defend my country's ideology over the tyrranical claptrap that comes from Islamic states; your fealty to the Quran and willingness to jettison the Hadith is akin to championing 19th century medicine over that practiced in the 13th century.
You abhor Islamism, but only want to shed fealty for Hadith in exchange for your particular interpretation of the Quran, just another religious based tyranny that wont improve the lot of the average citizen. At no time have you ever espoused the idea of religious freedom, only that your interpretation should be adhered to, presumably with the same punishments. Any ideology that must be enforced with the promise of death is intellectually bankrupt. Whether ISIS or the KSA, dissent will not be tolerated because the idea with which each operates cannot be reasonably supported and must be supported by the penalty of death if it is to survive.
As an example, you provided a reminder of the USS Liberty yet didn't invoke the USS Cole. To me this is a clear betrayal of your agenda here. We could both swap seemingly endless lists of atrocities, but for what purpose? Do you desire an existence where your voice is muted by the threat of death or an environment where your voice could be heard and protected by law? The West in general and the U.S. in particular is not Utopia, but on an individual level exponentially better than living within the constraints of an Islamic state.
I live in a country where burning the nation's flag was upheld under the idea of 'freedom of speech' and vigorously defended by our most conservative and religiously motivated Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia. You defend nations where the mere thought of dissent is a criminal offense, the punishment for which is often corporeal, including death. How dare you even suggest that the ideals with we approach the disagreement approach equivalency?
I have never excused the United States from its misguided political calculations, most of which are the result of denying what's truly at stake. This is a war of ideologies, period. The difference between the West and Islamic neerdowells is ideology. The U.S. can only be said to act poorly in comparison to its founding ideology and resulting laws, the same can't be said for ISIS or KSA. To put it bluntly, if the U.S. put a crescent moon on a battle flag and mandated its soldiers put their asses in the air 180 degrees from Mecca five times a day you wouldn't have shit to say about U.S. activity. Your vitriol relies on comparison to two different standards.
In an attempt to make progress in the dialogue, let's adopt one standard. I propose the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. To be sure, the U.S. will be held accountable where it runs afoul, but the itemization will assuredly reveal that Islamic states have much more to answer for. Bases in KSA or the money we give the state in exchange for our insatiable thirst for oil is not a cause of the regime's treatment of its own people or others who are not the right type of Muslim. This fact is unassailable.
The west doesn't choose to build a new palace instead of a new hospital. The west doesn't decide to take the money to enrich the already powerful rather than parlay it into industry that would help ensure the country's future prosperity in the face of Dutch Disease. In Saudi Arabia women are fighting for the right to drive or not be chaperoned by a five year old member of the family born with a fifth appendage; in the west women are fighting to close an earnings pay gap. Even if not perfectly executed (yet), I will passionately defend my country's ideology over the tyrranical claptrap that comes from Islamic states; your fealty to the Quran and willingness to jettison the Hadith is akin to championing 19th century medicine over that practiced in the 13th century.
You abhor Islamism, but only want to shed fealty for Hadith in exchange for your particular interpretation of the Quran, just another religious based tyranny that wont improve the lot of the average citizen. At no time have you ever espoused the idea of religious freedom, only that your interpretation should be adhered to, presumably with the same punishments. Any ideology that must be enforced with the promise of death is intellectually bankrupt. Whether ISIS or the KSA, dissent will not be tolerated because the idea with which each operates cannot be reasonably supported and must be supported by the penalty of death if it is to survive.
As an example, you provided a reminder of the USS Liberty yet didn't invoke the USS Cole. To me this is a clear betrayal of your agenda here. We could both swap seemingly endless lists of atrocities, but for what purpose? Do you desire an existence where your voice is muted by the threat of death or an environment where your voice could be heard and protected by law? The West in general and the U.S. in particular is not Utopia, but on an individual level exponentially better than living within the constraints of an Islamic state.
I live in a country where burning the nation's flag was upheld under the idea of 'freedom of speech' and vigorously defended by our most conservative and religiously motivated Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia. You defend nations where the mere thought of dissent is a criminal offense, the punishment for which is often corporeal, including death. How dare you even suggest that the ideals with we approach the disagreement approach equivalency?
