(September 18, 2009 at 1:50 pm)dry land fish Wrote: I agree that we should not send soldiers to fight a war we can't win. When they are there they have to kill in order to save their own lives. Once you see someone who doesn't look like you trying to kill you every day then you suddely develop this instinct to kill everyone that looks like them. Especially when women and kids strap bombs to their bodies and walk up to soldiers and blow them up. At that point no one is off limits to be killed.
I can see how this would be the case. If I were out there fighting I'd be shooting my rifle every which way out of fear for my life and the lives of my fellow soldiers. It's hard to fight against crazy. The troops need to come back. Move on to plan B.
dry land fish]
No...I'm not talking just about extremists. I mentioned WHY some of the would be extremists aren't so extreme when they suddenly find themselves living in a country that doesn't tolerate extremism. There is a book called not without my daughter" and there was also a movie called that as well. It's based on a true story of an American woman married to an Iranian doctor in America. He lies and says he's going to visit his family in Iran but will be back in two weeks and suggests she bring herself and their daughter. She agrees and when they get to Iran and to his radical Islamic family he throws away the passports, starts beating his wife and controlling her in true islamic fashion and tells her they are never leaving Iran. She isn't allowed to ever call her parents or family in America either. Then he puts his daughter in a Muslim school and terrifies the little girl. This really happened. The woman fled the country and risked her life to save her and her daughter. In America this man was completely peaceful. He practiced Islam in America and no one not even his wife ever thought he was capable of such violence. This is an example of how you never know about Muslims and you never know if they are truly extreme or not.
[/quote Wrote:The law of the land certainly does turn a lot of extremists mild. However, if I take a quote from Stephen Pinker's "The Blank Slate":
[quote="Stephen Pinker"]
I was a true believer in Bakunin's anarchism. I laughed off my parents' argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 A.M. on October 17, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike. By 11:20 A.M. the first bank was robbed. By noon, most downtown stores had closed down because of looting. Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine service that competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty cartloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city authorities had to call in the army and, of course, the Mounties to restore order.
Basically, without the restrictions placed upon people by their governments, they go batshit crazy. While you can say "the reason muslims in America don't seem extreme is because it wouldn't be accepted here", you could just as easily say "the reason average civilians in America don't seem like villainous scumbags is because it wouldn't be accepted here". Both observations would be valid, but neither grants you the right to go on a killing spree of an entire group of people.
Sorry for the long post.
