|
Another article
|
View this Thread in Original format
| Shakka |
This is a bold statement on the part of the author, and certain not to sit well with plenty of people on this board, but at the same time I think there are some on this board who will appreciate it. Apparently from a newspaper in Florida, though I don't have the direct link as it came through email. It's an editorial piece--that means it's not necessarily my opinion, though I think the argument has some merit.
| quote: | Up Against Fanaticism
By Phil Lucas, Executive Editor, Panama City New Herald
If straight talk of savagery offends you, if you believe in ethnic and gender diversity but not diversity of thought or if you think there is an acceptable gray area between good and evil, then turn to the funny pages, and take the children, too. This piece is not for you.
We published pictures Thursday of burnt American corpses hanging from an Iraqi bridge behind a mob of grinning Muslims. Some readers didn't like it.
Mothers said it frightened their children. A woman who works with Muslim physicians thought it might offend or endanger them.
Well, we sure don't want to frighten, offend or endanger anybody, do we? That's just too much diversity to handle. I mean, somebody might get hurt.
We could fill the newspaper every morning with mobs of fanatical Muslims. They can't get along with their neighbors on much of the planet: France, Chechnya, Bosnia, Indonesia, Spain, Morocco, India, Tunisia, Somalia, etc. etc. etc. Can anybody name three ongoing world conflicts in which Muslims are not involved? Today, where there is war, there are fanatical Muslims.
We might quibble about who started what conflicts, but look at the sheer number of them.
One thing is sure. Muslim killers started the one we are in now when they slaughtered more that 3,000 people, including fellow Muslims, in New York City.
Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state and feckless appeaser who helped get us into this mess, said last week Muslims still resent the Crusades. Well, Madam Albright, if Westerners were not such a forgiving people, we might resent them too.
Let's recap the Crusades. Muslims invaded Europe, and when they reached sufficient numbers, they imposed their intolerant religion upon Westerners by force. Christian monarchs drove them back and took the battle to their homeland. The fight lasted a couple of centuries, and we bottled them up for 1,000 years.
Now, a millennium later, Muslims have expanded forth again. Ask France. Ask England. Ask Manhattan. Two-and-a-half years ago fanatical Muslims laid siege to us. We woke up to the obvious. Our president announced it would be a very long war, then took the battle to the Islamic homeland. Sound familiar?
Let's consider the concept of a "long war.! " Last time it was 200 years, give or take. Anybody catch Lord of the Rings? You know, the good part, the part that wasn't fiction, the part that drew us to the books and movies because it was the truest part: the titanic struggle between good and evil, between freedom and enslavement, between the individual and the state, between the celebration of life and the worshipping of death.
That's the fight we are in, and it never ends. It just has peaks and valleys.
There may be a silent majority of peaceful Muslims - some live here but that did not save 3,000 people in the World Trade Center, the million gassed and butchered in the Middle East, the tens of thousands slain in Easter Europe and Asia, the hundreds blown to bits in the West Bank and Spain, or the four Americans shot, burned and hung like sausage over the Euphrates as a fanatical minority of Muslims did the joyful dance of death.
Maybe we are so tolerant, we are so bent on "diversity," we are so
nonjudgmental, we are so wrapped up in our six-packs and ballgames that our brains have drained to our bulbous behinds. Maybe we're so addled on Ritalin we wouldn't know which end of a gun to hold. Maybe we need a new drug advertised on TV every three minutes, one that would help us grow a backbone.
It doesn't take a Darwin to figure out that in this world the smartest, the fastest, the strongest, and the most committed always win. No exceptions.
Look at your spouse and children. Look at your self in the mirror.
Then look at the pictures from the paper last Thursday. You better look at them. Those are the people out to kill you.
Who do you think will win? You? Or them? Think you can take your ball and go home and they will leave you alone? Read a little history. Start with last week, last month, last year, and every other year back for half a century. Then go back a thousand years. Nobody hides from this fight.
Like it or not, that's the way it was and that's the way it is.
But many Americans don't get it.
That's why we published those pictures.
If they jarred you off the sofa, if they offended you, if they scared your children and sent you into a rage at mass murderers or heartless editors, then I say, it's a start. |
|
|
|
| Reverend_Trance |
Wow, that article touched a nerve. It was good and it is what people need to hear. Sympathy and compassion is a sign of weakness in the Islamic culture. The only authority they respect is military strength. Look at Islamic civilation throughout history. The live and die by the sword.
In Iraq, the only way to get their attention and control is to kill three prisoners for every one American killed. For Islam, Mao Zedong was right: "Real power comes from the barrel of a gun." |
|
|
| MisterOpus1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Reverend_Trance
Wow, that article touched a nerve. It was good and it is what people need to hear. Sympathy and compassion is a sign of weakness in the Islamic culture. The only authority they respect is military strength. Look at Islamic civilation throughout history. The live and die by the sword.
In Iraq, the only way to get their attention and control is to kill three prisoners for every one American killed. For Islam, Mao Zedong was right: "Real power comes from the barrel of a gun." |
If you think that article was something people needed to hear, then I seriously worry about your rational thought.
Did you notice how the author cleverly tied the extremist Muslim group Al Qaeda, who killed 3,000 people, to the leap of logic to going to war in Iraq?
Perhaps you could fill the gap for me, because this author, completely laced in bigotry, seemed to have missed that point about Al Qaeda not having any ties whatsoever to Iraq. But if this is what the common American believes, and if this is what our President continues to believe (even though he has publicly admitted the lack of evidence to the relationship between the two), then I will continue to be afraid of our rationale behind this war.
Furthermore, if it is because the Muslims are inferior intellectually and no very little else but war and violence, or at least that is what we are led to believe by this author, then again I seriously worry about our rationale for going to war. It is serious news to me how we somehow and in someway gained the superiority and permission (from the Christian God Himself, I must assume) to spread our peaceful democratic way through force, if necessary, upon these inferior Jesusless heathens. I suspect that it is serious news to the rest of the world as well, if this is our true rationale.
Finally, a quick "recap" of the Crusades. Actually, let's just do a "recap" of the 1st Crusade, and what started it all:
-Sometime in the mid 600s AD, the Arab Muslims conquered Palestine. This included many sacred areas of the Christians, which of course the Christians weren't particularly fond of.
-1000s The Seljuk Turks invaded and conquered Asia Minor, Palestine, and Syria
-1071 The Seljuk Turks conquered the Byzantines in the Battle of Manzikert. The Turks were also Muslims, however they did not allow Christians to visit their holy sites. This, of course, really peeved the Christians.
-1095 Alexius Comnenus, the Byzantine Emperor, asked Pope Urban II for help in fighting the Turks. Urban wnated to defend the Christina holy sites against the Muslims, so he agreed to help. People were shocked in Western Europe by the words of Pope Urban II, "The Muslims have conquered Jerusalem". The Muslims forbade Christians and pilgrims to come to Jerusalem to pray. Pope Urban wanted the Christians to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims. People shouted "God wills it". All over France these were the words of the Christians. Christian crusaders marched off to attack Muslims occupying the Holy Land -- but before leaving, they massacred "the infidel among us," Jews living in Germany.
-July 15, 1099 Jerusalem fell to the Crusaders after a five week siege and the victors proceeded to massacre the city's population of Muslims and Jews. Then they gave thanks to God. After 460 years of Muslim rule the Crusaders restored Jerusalem to Christian hands, and declared the city the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
This Christian group of English, French, German, and various other Europeans -- deliberately incited by Pope Urban II -- organized themselves in what must be one of the most destructive groups in history. Their atrocities were conducted on such a scale that was not equaled until fairly recent times. The conquest of Jerusalem alone resulted in the whole scale slaughter of 31,000 Moslems and 9,000 Jews; and, according to eyewitnesses, the conquerors waded in ankle-deep blood of their victims. And all this, it must be remembered, without a formal declaration of war or military provocation of any kind.
I sincerely believe, among other ridiculous fallacies, this author should have shied away from using the Crusades as a worthy example to exemplify his bigoted point of view. |
|
|
|
|
