Posted on 07/19/2007 4:26:07 PM PDT by Bladerunnuh
I agree, but you missed my point, which is that we can make a million laws against "beliefs" but they would be unconstitutional and unenforceable because we can't just read people's minds and decide they have criminal "beliefs".
That's the problem with so-called "hate crime" laws too. People's "beliefs" alone can't hurt anyone, if they take no action. We must keep, and enforce, laws against criminal behavior. And not just after an attack. We must enforce laws against terrorist conspiracies also.
And never let anyone off the hook just because their criminal behavior was supposedly required by their beliefs.
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1: formal religious veneration : worship
2: a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also : its body of adherents
3: a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious; also : its body of adherents
4: a system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator
5 a: great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book); especially : such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad b: the object of such devotion c: a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion
The only incorrect inference in using the word cult to describe Islam, is that Islam is not small, but 1+ billion and growing. The remaining definition fits precisely. More precisely, it's a death and destruction-based cult.
The same definitions, with the same caveat, apply equally well to Catholicism, Mormonism or any other major religion. Actually, until a few decades ago the term “cult” did not have the Children of God, Jim Jones or Manson connotations that we think of first today.
If you disagree, please point out the definitions that are not applicable to other major religions.
The only difference I can see is who the people are who regard each religion as “unorthodox or spurious.” If you believe your own religion is true, all those that disagree with or contradict it are more or less by definition false, “unorthodox or spurious” to varying degrees.
I am by no means a fan of Islam, but calling it a cult does not accomplish anything except to irritate its adherents, some of whom might otherwise be willing to work on our side. If we wish to avoid a Holocaust-like resolution of the conflict, we need these people.
Not even Jesus, the Christ avoided calling evil what it was. He called evil by different names.....snakes, vipers, whited sepulchres, hypocrites...by all means more direct words than "cult". Islam will never work on our side, to fix the mess they've created in this world. Regardless of what we do to accomodate them or try to work with them. It is a religious death-loving cult based totally upon utter and complete submission. Not loving and willfull obedience,but by forceful total submission - like a slave. You will either submit and become Muslim, pay jazirya tax, or die. Either you will submit to them, or they will have to be forced to abandon their prime objective. Please don't fall into the trap of thinking you can change their line of thinking through cooperative efforts. They will only interpret your actions as "submission". Just look at their actions toward Israel.
1B+ plus Muslims are not “Islam.” They are individuals, just as Christians and Jews are.
It is not a monolithic entity. Islam caused essentially zero problems in American from 1820 to 1970, 150 years, despite it holding the same beliefs it now does.
You say there can be no peace with Islam. This tends to leave us with two alternatives, submit to Islam or exterminate all Muslims.
These are indeed two options. I reject the first and am willing to do almost anything to avoid having to implement the second, including not unnecessarily alienating potential allies.
“they will have to be forced to abandon their prime objective.” What is your prescription for accomplishing this?
My prescription is superior firepower and technology and an unwavering and crystal clear position stated world-wide that any act of war by Islamic-facists against the United States will be responded to ten-fold up to and including their annihilation, regardless of world opinion, and depending on how they choose to ratchet up the action, including innocent and guilty alike since they hide like cowards behind children and women. This is what they will get from the USA if they do not heed our clear warning. Choose wisely and live in harmony, because America will not submit. I think that's a clear prescription.
How does this differ from the German policy of reprisals as applied at Lidice?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice
While I understand your frustration with our present policy, implementing yours means that the Islamists could get us to wipe out any neighborhood they wished just by attacking us nearby.
How many women and children are you willing to kill to get one Islamist? Your policy is predicated on the assumption that the Islamists will be deterred by our killing lots of Muslims, many of whom are probably not Islamists (yet). Since Islamists enthusiastically kill lots of Muslim women and kids themselves, upwards of 150,000 in Algeria, this doesn't seem to me to be a very workable policy.
It worked perfectly when applied to other warring suicidal cultures.....see Nagasaki and Hiroshima in WWII. They decided real quick that they wanted to stop killing us and surrender unconditionally when their society and culture faced annihilation and utter destruction. If they had not surrendered when they did, their own people would have immediately began to overthrow the leaders. It's worked in every war fought to successful conclusion.
I hope we don’t feel obliged to use your methods, and if we do I hope they work. But I’m not optimistic.
The Japanese kamidazes were not suicidal in the same sense as the suicide bombers. The kamikazes were simply using the only method they had left to fight back in the defense of their homeland. Suicide was a side-effect, not the purpose of the exercise, as it is for the Islamists.
Admittedly, many Japanese killed themselves rather than surrender, but that was out of what we would consider a perverted sense of honor, shame that they had failed in their defense of the Emperor.
On that we can agree. I'm not optimistic about our leaders following that approach either. I fear our nation has lost much of its will to survive at any cost. That may likely lead to our undoing. Thanks for the discourse. I enjoyed it.
Same here.
My concern is that our enemies have made it very clear they want us to use such methods, on the theory that it will unify Islam against us.
One of the more basic rules of strategy is to try to avoid doing what your enemy wants you to do. While you may be right, and he may be wrong, it’s not a good bet in this case. Chances are Islamists know more about how Muslims worldwide will react than we do.
Of course, we would still win easily even in a conflict against Islam united. But it’s not one I really want to fight.
I don't want us to have to do it either, but I fear that it may be unavoidable, much like the evil that consumed the Axis leaders in WWII, it became unavoidable to fight to the death against them because they became too emboldened by the unwillingness of their early victims to beat them back. Evil will never back down on its own or be talked into backing down. Inevitably, it must be forced to back down.
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