(June 9, 2015 at 1:54 pm)TheMessiah Wrote:I don't have the slightest doubt that, had Islam never been created, ISIS would still exist under a different name. Nothing has a single, isolated cause.(June 9, 2015 at 1:52 pm)Faith No More Wrote: Yeah, because the "let's beat the shit out of some towel-heads" mentality has worked so well for us so far. 9/11 got a large chunk of the population thinking exactly that, and it has led to a foreign policy disaster the likes of which we haven't seen since the Vietnam War. In fact, we now have ISIS in part thanks to our actions and the "get the towel-heads" mentality.
So, yeah, why you'd still cling to such a stupid idea is beyond me. I'm not saying we have to be silent, but terrorism, its causes and its ability to recruit are all deeply tied in the surrounding culture and population. Dehumanizing the people as a whole with a "get me sum towel-head" approach is not only playing right into the extremists' hands and going to make the situation worse, it has led thousands upon thousands of civilian deaths.
While I agree foreign policy had led to this, so has the ideology behind this: Islam.
Most victims of Islamic terrorism are Muslims themselves. Even if the West wasn't involved, there'd still be chaos --- the current war with all these terrorist groups is a war over Islam.
Whichever group wins will be the most dominant force of Islam in the Middle-East.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you
