The white supremacist terrorism is on a smaller scale, but there's enough of it that it kills more.
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A thought on Afghanistan
- Thread starter Loren Pechtel
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The white supremacist terrorism is on a smaller scale, but there's enough of it that it kills more.
Christianity from back then was as evil as the Islamists are now. That says nothing about how they compare now.
Elixir
Made in America
Some things never change...
Elixir
Made in America
One should add some fraction of US "excess deaths" since 3/2020 to the total.
Even an extremely conservative estimate of US lives lost due to the racism, lies and propaganda of the Trump Junta, would dwarf anything that all the "islamists" on the planet put together could imagine.
Derec
Contributor
They'd have to do a lot of killing to make up for 9/11 alone, and they'd have to kill a 200,000 to make up for 9/11 on a per-capita basis. I have not seen anything even approaching these numbers.
This claim was always a political one, not factual. It's "white people bad, m'kay" type of thing so popular in certain circles these days.
Derec
Contributor
Such dishonest playing with numbers! There is a big difference between a pandemic and terrorism.
And while Trump did bungle a lot of things, Operation Warp Speed was a success.
In any case, pandemics are off topic here. Your claim was that Christians are responsible for "more and worse terrorist attacks" than your Islamists. Which is ridiculous.
Not even close. How many have ISIS killed in the last few years? Taliban? Boko Haram? Al Shabab? Iran-backed Shiite militias like Hezbollah and the Ansar Allah (aka the Houthis)? You are getting more and more ridiculous with each post.
Derec
Contributor
Elixir made a specific claim that Christians are responsible for "more and worse" terrorism than his Islamists. Conflating that with pandemics is not even just shifting goalposts, it's carrying them right out of the stadium!
Derec
Contributor
He means the "pussy hat parade", aka "Women's March" (originally 2017), and he has a point. There has been a lot of apologetics for Islam at that march.
One of the organizers, Linda "the Cockroach" Sarsour is a Sharia supporter and another, Tamika Mallory, is a supporter of antisemitic and racist "Nation of Islam".
And the march happened around the same time when Iranian women were protesting against being forced to wear the headscarf, prompting comparisons like this one:
Jacob Blake not only grabbed a woman by the pussy, but stuck a finger in her pussy and stole her car (not to mention resisted arrest while armed with a knife) and he is being treated as a fucking hero by the Left! They even burned down a good chunk of Kenosha to honor his ass.
Derec
Contributor
Why do you think we can't identify them?
That was not a "right wing 'argument' against porn" - it was a statement on obscenity laws by a Supreme Court Justice who, while nominated by a Republican president was not a right-winger.
I have similar thoughts about the left-wing "thought police", especially since you guys see Islamists as fellow travelers in your struggle against the decadent, capitalist, West.
As are left-wing extremists.
Derec
Contributor
I know and understand all three. Do you?
I understand that. I would bet I know far more Muslims than you do. I know a lot of nominal/cultural Muslims but also a number of more hardcore ones - and those are both more common and hardcore than the Christian fringe.
I think your workplace is not a representative sample of Muslims.
Derec
Contributor
And thus it should not count as Islamic terrorism? It's this kind of twisting of facts that is common in these discussions. Similar to when Biden was speaking on the Pulse nightclub massacre and never mentioned that it was Islamic terrorism. He was just talking about gun violence, as if the gun was shooting by itself!
It is not an irrational fear. Terrorism is just the most acute tip of the Islamist iceberg. The quieter Islamists who bide their time and seek a political takeover are more dangerous in the long run. Islam has taken territories before through immigration and high birth rates. Look up the history of Kosovo, for example. By the way, one of the darkest hours of the United States was when it took the side of those Shiptar Islamists!
Derec
Contributor
Yes, that should be part of the vetting process. No Islamists should be given visas, period.
On the contrary, letting in unvetted Islamists is a recipe for disaster.
The vetting process should go more in-depth than taking them at their word. Sometimes it's obvious. For example, there are a lot of women in niqabs and burkas in Clarkston, Ga, who were admitted as "refugees". They should not have been.
A "refugee" is like a box of chocolates? You never know what you get until he (or she) explodes?
Derec
Contributor
European imperialism, for all the bad rap it gets, did a lot of good in the world.
Not so much the Islamic terrorism.
DrZoidberg
Contributor
Just imagine the corrupt mess the US supported government in Afghanistan must have been if the Afghani's prefer the Taleban over democracy. It's Vietnam all over again. The US population caring more about labels than reality. And then when the band-aid is ripped off reality hits them in the face with a vengeance.
Failed state building!
Failed state building!
DrZoidberg
Contributor
What good did it do? Defending European imperialism is like defending Communism. The few positives and the cost to reach them cannot justify the price paid.
It didn't help the the Europeans were deeply deluded about why they were comparatively powerful and the reasons why they were conquering the world. They thought they were doing the world a favour. They weren't.
Derec
Contributor
How do you know? And for those that prefer Taliban, how do you know why they prefer them? Corruption is your assumption, but they might just like the ruthless Islamism of the Taliban.
Also, dude, it's Afghans. Afghanis is the currency. And apostrophes indicate possessives, not plurals.
Derec
Contributor
Disagree. What is really doing no favors to neither Europe nor the World is the naïve and facile anti-imperialism that is en vogue these days.
DrZoidberg
Contributor
Sweden has a pretty significant Afghani population today. I listen to an ex-Muslim Swedish podcast. One of them is Afghani. His family still lives in the country. They talk. Afghanistan isn't an insular little bubble where no information gets out. We know a lot about the situation for Afghanis.
The Taleban are back in power because they're the least bad option for most Afghanis. It's as simple as that. We can debate why that is. But the moment US money stopped propping up the old regime it switched sides in an eye blink and joined the Taleban. Ie, they were Taleban supporters all the time. Only opportunistically pretending to support to US regime, and lining their pockets.
You are aware that they Taleban hasn't had to fight anywhere in Afghanistan? They're very popular in the country. Which annoys secularists like me. But everybody isn't a secularist. A lot of people are deeply conservative and religious.
Have you never wondered how come all the leading Afghanis in the US supported regime spent their adult lives outside Afghanistan, comes home the moment USA is in power and then get prominent positions in the new regime. Locals didn't seem to get anywhere in the political hierarchy.
edit:
I don't know if you remember this, but around 2004 it emerged that Osama Bin-Laden was just a guy living in Afghanistan. He wasn't supported by the state, nor was part of an organization. Al-Qaeda wasn't an organization. It was just Ayman al-Zawahiri, who Bin-Laden gave money in order to spread his ideology. And the little group around him. The 9/11 hijackers were all Saudis Osama knew from his time there. They had a lot of money, thanks to Osama. But they were never a popular movement.
US state prosecutors needed Al-Qaeda to be an organization in order for their anti-terror legislation would allow them to effectively combat Bin-Laden. So they invented the organization Al-Qaeda. Various Islamist terror groups then started using the name, with zero connection to Ayman al-Zawahiri.
al-Zawahiri and Bin-Laden's theory was that that 9/11 would trigger a world wide Muslim uprising that would lead to the re-establishment of the Caliphate. Well... that didn't pan out. It turned out that Ayman al-Zawahiri had about zero pull among the Muslim mainstream. His world wide uprising died out almost immediately. By 2003 Ayman al-Zawahiri's dream and Al-Qaeda was dead.
After that all that remained were it's ghosts. The war on terror was only ever a war on a ghost from the past.
I supported the war in Afghanistan and the ousting of the Taleban. Good riddance IMHO. But the regime to replace it was harder to build. In hindsight it turned out that perhaps maybe, we should have just let the Taleban be left alone. We know now they weren't hurting anyone outside Afghanistan. They can't be held accountable for what two guys (Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama Bin-Laden) did in their remote mountains.
I'm pretty sure ISIS was as much a surprise to Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama Bin-Laden as everybody else.
The Islamist "conspiracy" is, and was always, an utter complete mess. A headless chicken.
DrZoidberg
Contributor
Don't confuse things. Just because the post-colonial studies people are complete idiots (yes, they are) doesn't mean imperialism was great, or even a force for good.
Power structures have to be self re-enforcing or they fall apart the moment you stop pointing guns at people. In the age of imperialism Europe used superior firepower to take power but were unable to withdraw their troops and keep their colonies self sustaining. The only colonies that survived were those where the native populations were mostly wiped out, and India. But India was more industrial in 1857 than in 1947. Great Britain wrecked their economy to make it easier to control.
There's no example where imperialism helped the natives. They'd all been better off without help from Europe.
Elixir
Made in America
Ah, a little ad hom in lieu of an actual rational argument. Typical right wing bullshit.
Millions have been terrorized by your orangeman's antics. Hundreds of thousands have died unnecessarily. Call it an "accident".
Fewer than the 4,457,866 (and couunting) have have succumbed to the Trump virus - by a long shot!
"You are getting more and more ridiculous with each post." = obvious projection.
I will concede that you get credit for no longer pretending to be anything but a DINO trumpsucker.