S Korean Hostage Dead [Warning- Graphic Photos Included]

Fox NEws Channel ^ | 22 June 2004 | FNC

[Maigrey]

Breaking from Al Jazeera.

[PresbyRev]

The newsletter is not online.

Such as say how both religions have an undying belief as fact that their God is the only true God and the assertion of that is paramount to all else.

That would again be a study in contrasts - no? The deity named allah is a projection of Mohammed's own dementia and immorality. For instance, Muslims seem to believe that asserting their faith best happens at the edge of the knife or in the aftermath of a bomb blast. The Christian finds his or her faith more properly expressed by rational discussion, works of mercy and charity and so forth.

There is only one true and living God. I believe that God calls us to choose, not death but life. God doesn't desire the death of even one sinner, but rather that all should repent and have life.

[r9etb]

Ahhhh, the old "If you point out how my suggestion is similar to what the nazis did, then God must be a nazi" ploy.

Of course, the problem with that little gem is that it requires you to say that the nazis were in the right, lest you be caught opposing God. Too bad for you....

The fact that you don't recognize the differences, as well as the similarities, between situations is rather telling.

In the Biblical accounts, the basic story line is that there is no way for the Israelites to co-exist with the people who already lived in the Promised Land. For Israel to take ownership required them to fully displace the previous inhabitants. You might have noticed that we are not proposing to stay in Iraq -- we're not looking for a new spot to live -- so that parallel goes away.

You might also note that Christian theology has a very difficult time explaining these passages in any satisfactory way.

[r9etb]

Our only hope is to get to the women and children in these cultures, and the unindoctrinated pro-western adult males, and somehow shield and protect them from their terrorist and terrorist-sympathizing adult males until they can face down these animals themselves.

IMHO the only way to do that is to find a way so that the women can convert to Christianity. Being virtual slaves, they're ripe for it, in much the same way women were ripe for it in the early Christian era.

[in the Arena]

We need more of the ROK soldiers trained as they were in Vietnam.

Affirmative...turn them loose...

[BossLady]

#747 Well Put!!! I cannot tell you how many times I have said much of the same. Although not degreed in Arabic and such, I have done much reading and research on these subjects, had Saudi, Iranian, Lebanese, Syrian business associates, spoken in depth with muslims about their faith, spoken with military/government personnel who have spent a lot of time in the Middle East, attended lectures and so on.

I deeply respect your opinion and add it to the many others of the same vein. All, of course, heading in the same direction with the same outcome.....it will come down to Us or Them...

[stevie_d_64]

Of course...Anyone suspecting anything of you would be incorrect...You got this all down pat don't ya...

If anyone thought there was any realistic, "reasonable discussion", with you, or anyone like you...I wouldn't have to nominate you to be the lead in a new effort to "love and hug" the terrorist threat to our country and the rest of the free-world away...Would we???

We know you don't give a "shitte", but we know you want to be "one"!!!

"one" (thats called a number), which appears to still be a challenge to you to comprehend...

My suggestion to you, if you choose to respond or not...

Seek life and entertainment elsewhere...You really do bore some of us...

"reasonable discussion"...hehehe...thats funny...

Later,
Steve

[r9etb]

Steve, I have a suggestion for you: learn how to write a coherent post.

I really have no idea what you're trying to say -- all I see is a few disconnected insults, and no apparent point.

[PresbyRev]

The herem of Joshua (Josh. 6.24ff)was a call for the complete destruction of the people groups who stood in the way of the conquest of the promised land.

It is true, that Christians believe that the same God called Father and love in the New Testament issued this command to Moses, et. al. (Josh. 10.40; 11.12; cf. Deut. 7:24).

One answer is that God took the people where they were --- in their cultural context --- and would move them progressively along toward Christ. The full revelation of God's love and ethical imperatives such as the Sermon on the Mount would wait until the coming of the New or Greater than Joshua.

Beyond that, the call for herem was not simply for the sake of exterminating or killing people. The Canaanites were devoted to religious practices that would threaten the worship of Yahweh (and the redemption of humanity) with corruption and error. Brutal child sacrifice, religious prostitution and so on were essential features of Canaanite religion.

Yahweh did not order Joshua or the Hebrews on a never ending quest to kill all Gentiles. 'Holy war' was not a part of Israelitish religion. It was limited to a particular time and place and for a very specific end - the taking and holding of the land in order to create a foothold in this world for the message of salvation through Yahweh.

Defensive war is not ever necessarily condemned in the New Testament and even preemption may be seen as sometimes morally acceptable (such preemptive action as has been undertaken by President Bush). The conquest of the land was an attempt to stave off the corrupting influence that would later so mar and hinder the life of Israel (Num. 25:1 for example). The conquest and call for 'herem' was in that sense a sad but necessary preemptive defense.

I don't see a comparison between the call for violent jihad as a radical and basic part of Islam - a call and imperative that is to be seen as legitimate and practiced until all non-Muslims are converted or submitted to the rule of Islam & the record of the Land's conquest by Joshua.

[stevie_d_64]

You got it dude...

Coherent or not...(thats your opinion) You just go right ahead and carry on with what you do best...Or is it worse...

Ehhh, why bother...

Later,
Steve

[r9etb]

Thanks for that. Good discussion.

Beyond that, the call for herem was not simply for the sake of exterminating or killing people. The Canaanites were devoted to religious practices that would threaten the worship of Yahweh (and the redemption of humanity) with corruption and error. Brutal child sacrifice, religious prostitution and so on were essential features of Canaanite religion.

The question I've always had about this part is: if the Canaanites could have been converted to the worship of Yahweh, would it have been necessary to kill them? I think the answer is "not necessarily" -- Rahab, the Jericho prositute being a particularly good example.

[job]

Excellent post.

I think what most people have trouble with is the slaughter of innocents, where children were killed (if that happened), and of people who weren't necessarily guilty of the whole. If they did not deserve this punishment, why did they get it, and isn't that injustice?

I've have always understood that total eradication was necessary to eliminate their evil, brutal practices, such as child sacrifice. There would be no one left to ever commit such crimes against humanity and against the Lord again. If not, a new generation would reinstitute the evil practices, not only committing the new crimes, but infilitrating the Hebrews (as you said; I know I have repeated many things you have already stated). Isn't the destruction of that evil, as important as the Hebrew people claiming the Land of Israel?

[PresbyRev]

Using a contemporary example I would suppose that any number of Japanese in Nagasaki or Hiroshima would have been amenable to U.S. occupation, representative democracy and such. I suspect there were plenty of Germans in Dresden about whom the same could also have been said.

However, the U.S. in order to achieve victory, saw fit to fire bomb (in the case of Dresden) and atomic bomb (in the case of Nagasaki and Hiroshima) the inhabitants of those cities rather than argue the merits of the Constitution and American republicanism.

It is an analogy that can only be pushed so far - but aside from intramural discussions of the mystery of election (Rahab and her family are saved out of all others) - the analogy of wartime expediency, necessity, etc. would seem to hold some water.

Beyond simple expediency, there are examples of others in the Hebrew Scriptures who came into Israel from outside peoples, presumably converting to the worship of Yahweh, but bringing in their errors and abominations (exs. Jezebel, some of Solomon's wives). Perhaps that was a danger that 'complete destruction' of the inhabitants of the Land was meant to prevent.

[Publius6961]

Does it ever bother you that you're proposing to act like the nazis?

The most asinine question of the day.
I act like a nazi every day: I eat breakfast. So no, it doesn't necessarily bother me.

I would need to know a lot more about the details of Lidice to be able to tell if it would bother me to emulate it. It might. It might not.

[r9etb]

Good points. Wartime expediency does have some merit if the point of it is to forestall some greater loss of life -- still wrong, I think, but less bad than the alternative. In that light, I believe that the atomic bombings, and Hirohito's response to them, did prevent an even greater loss of life.

OTOH, that does not mean that destroying cities is in all cases justified. For example, unlike the usual German targets, there are doubts about Dresden's military value, and the Allies recognized even at the time that the bombing may not have been justified. Churchill wrote: "It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed ... The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing." At any rate, the bombing basically caused huge loss of life without any apparent savings of life: the war continued for another 5 months.

The question in this thread is whether there is a valid "wartime expedient" in flattening Iraqi cities in response to the murderous and barbaric activities of Islamic terrorists. Given that there is no clear connection between entire cities (even Fallujah), and the activities of a relatively small number of foreign terrorists, there is no clear pretext for the destruction of entire cities.

Moreover, there are significant arguments against the idea of flattening cities in a country that we're ostensibly liberating, and to which we intend to restore autonomy.

[holden]

They surrendered because the emperor said "enough."

You can say that because only the emperor's surrender would have resulted in the country's official capitulation, but my Omuta POW camp #17 father told how the prison's guards all abandoned their posts shortly after Nagasaki took a hit "on their really big ammo dump."

Well, to be more accurate, those guards who weren't torn limb from sinew by the marauding, 89-pound POWs abandoned their posts. There was plenty of giving up and going home going on to help the emperor's decision.

HF

[Saundra Duffy]

I hope South Korea does something...and does it fast.

Let's roll!!!!!!!!!!!

[Saundra Duffy]

The Second Amendment is more and more important day by day.

[Jorge]

What "our" people did at Abu Graib (sp) was not only wrong, it put our own soldiers at greater risk -- not to mention giving the 'rats something to bash Bush with. Stupid comments like the one in question ignore the real importance of the crimes committed.

So you agree with the leftist propaganda and the Muslim extremists that "panties on the head" are to blame for attacks against Americans and beheading of innocents?

[r9etb]

I would need to know a lot more about the details of Lidice to be able to tell if it would bother me to emulate it. It might. It might not.

How would you know if the question is "asinine" if you do not know enough details to tell the difference? C'mon, Publius -- you can do better than that.

I have provided one link (twice) within this thread. Google will provide you with thousands of other discussions.

While bringing yourself up to speed on the details, please keep in mind the context in which my comment was made, and the various bloodthirsty suggestions to which I was responding.

[Saundra Duffy]

Bush is making me want to vomit lately.

It's like he stopped caring or something. I want to see some outrage. He should NOT go home but stay in a war room with his people and come up with a plan to stop this monstrous behavior. Something drastic. And keep us posted. This cannot go on another minute.