Brussels Terrorist Attack

[dazeagle2112]

"Those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities."

It's a powerful motivator, to think that 'God' is on your side.

Every religious person walking the planet today is part of the scaffold upon which these murderers sit. We (society in general - even secular society) still, after all this time, insist that believing things for no good reason - i.e. being religious - is perfectly okay, and even something to be proud of.

The religious deserve to be mocked in the same way that you would be if you turned up in a British school and confidently declared that you believe in witchery and voodoo. That is to say that ridiculous ideas with no factual, moral or intellectual foundation should be open to ridicule and pushback. The level of delusion is just the same, but call it 'Christianity' or 'Islam', and it's a protected viewpoint, for which not only are you free from ridicule, but positively shielded from it - by law!

It is absurd. 'Fundamentalists' are not the issue - the fundamentals of ancient religious texts are.

'Pray4Brussels' doesn't help. Opposing bad ideas, and being free and willing to oppose them, is at least a start.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Ideologies cannot be imposed at gunpoint.

Love yer, Thump, but history demonstrates just the opposite.

Boru

Let me clarify -- they cannot be imposed as a change of mind. Of course they can be imposed upon a society ... but it's individual members?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Love yer, Thump, but history demonstrates just the opposite.

Boru

Let me clarify -- they cannot be imposed as a change of mind. Of course they can be imposed upon a society ... but it's individual members?

Fair enough. To that extent I agree completely: you can't make me believe your ideology at the point of a gun. But if you hold that gun to my wife's head, you can certainly make me act as if I believe your ideology.

Boru

[Thumpalumpacus]

Sorry for not making that clear the first time.

[KevinM1]

Tragic, but hardly surprising.  This is what happens when the West continually meddles in a region for generations, leaving it progressively worse every time.

That or our intervention has actually helped and beaten back full-blown armageddon. That's more what I think. We have to constantly push back against the forces of anti-humanism and anti-civilization. If we stop, those forces will build up and mount the biggest attack possible and destroy us. Sorry for the Godwin, but it's kinda like if we hadn't done the whole appeasement thing before WWII and we had actually beaten back Hitler, and people like you would have been like "god damn us for our fucking meddling, that is why Hitler is so angry in the first place, it's our fault, why can't we just leave him alone?" And it's because of these voices, who you can never convince that people may have bad intentions for us for no reason, that things always have to get worse and worse until they cross a threshhold of true existential threat, at which point it is too late to handle without causing hundreds of millions of deaths and entire countries reduced to corpses and rubble.

I love how 'people like you' comes out when I wrote a total of two sentences.  It's funny, since you don't really know what kind of person I actually am from that.

Anyhoo....

I have no problem trying to make the world a better place for all.  But, we need to:

1. Understand the region(s) and people(s) we're dealing with.  Our policy in the Middle East has been woefully naive, where we assume that the people there view things through a Western lens.  Remember, there were people who legitimately thought that we'd be 'welcomed as liberators' after we ousted Saddam Hussein.  That didn't happen, at least, not with the people that mattered.  What did happen was that the sectarian conflicts that Hussein ground beneath his heel bubbled back to the surface as each faction tried to fill the power vacuum, which anyone who was actually paying attention knew would happen.

2. Stop making alliances of convenience.  The enemy of my enemy isn't necessarily our friend.  See: Bin Laden of the 1980s, Saudi Arabia in general, the various warlords we paid off during the surge, etc.

3. Have an actual long term (as in, generational, because that's what it'll take) plan for post-regime change.  We did a piss poor job of it in Iraq, and didn't even bother in Libya (true fact: drones don't do much after a leader is toppled).

We keep going in, fuck with established power structures, and either leave or stay as an occupying force (complete with puppet government that the locals don't feel is legitimate) that just sits in place for a while before leaving.  We don't actually accomplish anything.  Even the best of post-Hussein Iraq was the result of a bribe, and untenable.

So, if we're going to do it, we need to do it right.  It needs to be a total commitment, one that will likely last generations because people are stubborn and it's hard to change minds.  And we need to be prepared to deal with the fallout of being an occupier/expansionist government.  Anything less than that creates a ton of instability, as we're currently seeing.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

IMO the conflict has very little to do with religion on either side.  It's more of a King Asa situation with each side using the excuse of religion to impose its will upon the other side.

http://www.bricktestament.com/king_solom...09-11.html


The conflict has been going on for over 1380 years, with each side getting its licks in.

In the middle of WWII the racist FDR and his cronies were scheming against the Arabs, regarding them as simpletons that needed their guidance.  http://www.nisk.k12.ny.us/fdr/1943/43_gi...030603.GIF  In the meantime FDR and his fellow racists were screwing over their fellow black citizens by depriving them of their civil and human rights.  And that's been American foreign policy in that area for the past 73 years.  

The dummies in Washington like to claim that we are in a war.  So they bomb the hell out of places like Syria and Yemen, turning the cities and towns into rubble and causing millions of people to leave their countries and flood into the West.  Well, since we are at war we should expect the other side to reciprocate in some fashion and cause damage in our towns and cities.  That's what war is:  pain, sufferring, death, and destruction.

In November 2015 Trump boasted about how he would bomb the shit out of ISIS. http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-tr...is-2015-11  The US, France, and Russia did.  Now ISIS has done a minor attack in Brussels and everyone is upset.  Brussels doesn't look like this: http://media2.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/20...0-1000.jpg

Ted Cruz wants to bomb until the sand glows in the dark.  http://crooksandliars.com/2015/12/ted-cr...sand-glows

Hillary wants to commit genocide against Iran.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O894bXmqqGU

Sanders thinks that it's perfectly fine to turn Syria into rubble.  http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Be...-0015.html
http://www.bisconia.com/wp-content/uploa...-Syria.jpg

Obama thinks that since the Syrian government is killing rebels and terrorists that are trying to overthrow it we ought to go in and kill even more people.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-un-ass...2F20150928

The situation is like a typical zombie movie where there's three normal crazy non-zombies surrounded by thousands of hungry zombies but the three nuts can't get along with each other and spend most of their time trying to kill each other off.  Maybe the war will be over in the year 9836.  

Where's that damn asteroid?

[scoobysnack]

The Paris attack, and now this is just the beginning unfortunately. It's likely going to be a bloody summer. For some reason the political left has a love affair with Islam. They want more refugees and Muslims to live in Europe, some of who will become radicalized, and within striking distance of major European targets. Europe and especially Germany has too much past guilt to prevent their enemies from infiltrating their countries. Those that want to close the borders are labled racists, xenophobic etc, whatever labels the PC crowd comes up with to aid in their own destruction. They have no pride in their culture, hate themselves and everyone else. Destroying the culture of Europe in an effort to erode nationalism is the goal of the globalist establishment, who are intentionally allowing Muslims to flood in. Canada and the US are next. Most Arab nations have the money but don't want them, due to their sunni/shite disagreements.

Yes it's good to help war refugees, but these people are not vetted when they come in, so along with the good people who just want safety, we have the jihadis in the mix. Those are the ones you have to watch out for, but since they blend in, it's inevitable more attacks are coming your way Europe.

This is the thing also which is another example of the inverted reality. The left says Islam is a religion of peace, and the only reason they attack is because of the war, which is a good reason I suppose, but another is they because we say hurtful things, which then encites them to become racial violent extremists. So the best thing to do apparently is shut your mouths, and ban pork products to avoid offending them, keep women covered up to avoid arousing them, and eventually convert to Islam to stay alive. Never mind forcing them to adopt your culture, as that would be bad, and don't hope they assimilate, because your culture is bad.

In fact shut down all free speech to avoid offending them with your bigotry, but allow them to do whatever they please. After all, you don't want to be racist.

The left is ideologically rudderless, and headed towards a water fall. And unfortunately, you are all in the same boat.

[KevinM1]

The refugee crisis is actually a perfect piece of strategy from ISIS. Their stated goal is to increase anti-Islamic sentiment. They want all Muslims to feel disenfranchised and isolated in the West. And we're playing right into their hands with the refugees. They want us to turn away millions of tired, hungry, sick, desperate people because of the threat posed by a relative handful in their midst (note that I'm not denying that threat exists). Even 'better', ISIS can turn around and say, "Look! Look how the West proves their own hypocrisy! Look how they make our brothers and sisters and children die in the streets!"

It's terribly brilliant. The best solution would be to let them in after a thorough screening process, then monitor them closely. I'm not sure if separating them would be beneficial or make things more difficult.

Regarding leftist PC stuff, there's a push back taking place. I consider myself pretty liberal, but I find the notion that ANY religion must be treated with kid gloves abhorrent. Fuck Mohammed up the ass with a rusty spike.

[Minimalist]

Experience shows that they cannot be monitored that closely.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Yeah, I don't think there's any easy answer to the issue of the refugees acting as a Trojan Horse, outside of severe restrictions which would clearly be inhumane.

Screening would create a constellation of camps that would surely act not only as breeding grounds for diseases but also as centers for radicalization, I think, unless it consisted of something so simple as a questionnaire (easily flouted) and fingerprinting -- I can't imagine background checks reaching into Syria and Iraq would be very useful.

Monitoring would probably be outside the scope of the resources available to the EU's security apparatus, and would likely entail the use of NSA-style techniques which they have so recently and rightfully castigated.