News: Religion fosters bad behavior

Tom62 · August 23, 2006, 09:43:50 AM

Wow, I opened a can of worms yesterday. Sorry Iplaw and BigMac that I sounded so angry. I was just a bit annoyed by this America is good and the rest of the world is crap messages. Like I said earlier, most European countries are not neutral in your so called "war against terror". We "euros" try to help the USA as much as possible in this war (f.e. by exchanging intelligence, militairy presence, stronger border controls, etc.). Not only the europeans but everyone ignored the islamitic fundamentalists until it was to late. The FBI and CIA knew that these 9/11 bastards were in your country and up to no good, but didn't stop them.

Be honest, the whole war in Iraq started as an excuse to fight terror. Don't get me wrong, Saddam was a bastard and I'm glad he is gone, but he didn't had those WMD's and was not a thread to the USA. Iraq after the war is now plaged by terrorist bombings and on the verge of a civil war. Should the USA and their allies leave, it is likely that Iraq will become another Islamic fundamentalist state like Iran. The Iraqi war also didn't really help to improve the image of the USA in the Arabic world. Torturing prisoners, secret CIA flights from Europe, dehumanizing conditions in Guantanamo Bay, etc. etc., pissed off a lot of people. The islamic fundamentalists have no problems nowadays to find new recruits. Somehow this makes the "war against terror" look rather ineffective.

I believe that we cannot turn back the clock. Mistakes have been made by all parties involved and I just hope that we've learned from them.

Tom62 · August 23, 2006, 10:04:56 AM

Quote from: "Big Mac"By the way, we all know the Netherlands is where Peter Pan and Tinkerbell go. Don't try to trick us, you kraut!

No, everyone knows that the Netherlands is the most evil :evil:

place on Earth. It is even more evil than Belgium.

http://www.dreamagic.com//cgi-bin/Poetr ... umber=0002

Another proof of our evilness can be found in the film "Austin Powers in Goldmember" where Nigel Powers (Michael Cane) saids "There are only two things I can't stand in this world: people who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the Dutch."

iplaw · August 23, 2006, 02:42:20 PM

Tom62:

I enjoy and respect Europe very much; I want to make that very clear. I have met some of the most wonderful people in my life while traveling Europe. People are basically the same all over the world, but unfortunately so are politicians and nut jobs.

Trust me, with Iraq, mistakes will always be made in wars and 99.9% of our soldiers are noble people, but don't labor under the delusion that anyone in the middle east would feel differently about the West if we wouldn't have gone into Iraq. Their hate existed long before we went there and will last for long after we leave. That's the b!tch about being in power, you always have those who hate you for that power.

As far as WMDs, are you familiar with Georges Sada? He was an Iraqi General who says he knows exactly what happened to those WMDs. He is now a part of the new Iraqi government.

Tom62 · August 23, 2006, 04:56:09 PM

Thanks for your message Iplaw. I agree with you for the full 100%. The USA had always been "the bad guy" according to the Arabs, whether the invasion would have taken place or not. I'm not familiar with Georges Sada, but am highly curious what happened to those WMD's. I surely hope we can bring "order" in the middle east (and elsewhere) and at the same time convince the people in that region that we are not the bad guys after all. My personal belief is that is if we are able to bring peace, freedom, but most of all welfare to those people then we could win this "war on terror".

Big Mac · August 23, 2006, 05:13:36 PM

Well I have to disagree Tom.

The War on Terror will go on forever unless you can make EVERYONE agree on EVERYTHING. Not only would life be boring, but it'd be dangerous because the lack of an opposing view point. The War on Terror is like the War on Drugs, it'll never end and it's a losing battle for us. The only (partially) successful technique is making a dictatorship that makes Hitler look like an Amish guy.

Tom62 · August 24, 2006, 08:19:04 AM

What you are saying makes absolutely sense, Big Mac. We can make some victories in this War on Terror, but we can never win the "final battle". How far should a state go to protect itself against terror, without becoming a "terror" state itself? Pretty soon, we might only able to board a plane after a full medical- and cross-examination, iris scan, finger printing, DNA analysis and wearing nothing but our underware.

iplaw · August 24, 2006, 02:21:17 PM

I think we should all adopt the El Al airlines mentality. Unfortunately this is going to have to come down to profiling for simple reasons of efficacy. We need to scrutinize passengers, but it doesn't make sense to strip search granny or the 5 year old carrying a teddy bear. Right now, 99.9% of our threat comes from Islamic men ages 18-40, and until that demographic radically changes that's who we should focus on and who should get the brunt of the hairy eyeball at the airport.

Big Mac · August 24, 2006, 03:57:14 PM

My thoughts exactly.

When a little girl goes missing, you don't look at the 84 year old Korean lady, you look at the creepy white guy who works at Kinko's as a night manager and talks to himself.