Mosque at ground zero

All hail TAE - All Hail TAE

Thank god you were so efficient at your job, which I find incredulous that you are so free to talk about here. Thank god you went from being the all important spook to a pimp. All hail TAE!

Man, if I hear about separation of church and state once more spoken like it was here Im gonna puke. All it says and all the courts have upheld is that the government cannot make laws regulating religion. And what freaking morons really believe that the 9/11 attacks had anything to do with religion? SeriouslY? you really believe it was a religious attack? Not one founded by a dissident that was fed up after the US stopped supporting him, especially after all the training and support we had given him? *sigh*

Keep on talking and continuing to feed the ignorance as the opiate for the masses.....*sigh*

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

The courts have interpreted this as meaning that government institutions can't show any support for religion. The term wall of separation between church and state was used by Thomas Jefferson in his writings regarding religion and the state.

As far as 9/11 not having religious motivation: That's a pretty absurd narrow view of the attacks. Bin Laden's entire life is religiously motivated and so are the lives of his followers. He fought against the Soviets because of religious conviction. They had invaded Muslim lands and under Koranic law it is the duty of every Muslim to fight invaders of Islamic controlled lands. Sure we supported him and every other Mujaheddin who fought the Soviets in the 80's. So what? We weren't worried about Islamic terrorist back then we were worried about the Soviets. Law of unintended consequences sucks though.

His stated reason for declaring war on the US in 1996 was to force the US presence out of the middle east, specifically he was enraged by US bases in Saudi Arabia. Why? Because Muhammed had ethnically cleansed all non-Muslims from the Arabian peninsula and declared it a land that only Muslims could inhabit. The US presence was an affront to gods will in his eyes. You can toss in ancillary things like despotic leaders, support of Israel, and sanctions in Iraq, but the underlying religious ideology is the main motivator for all Islamic terrorists. To ignore this is to be incredibly unsophisticated in ones understanding of events.

It reminds me of folks who say things like the Civil War was really about the right to succeed, and not slavery. In this historical context the slave issue was the historical underpinning for all the event led led to the Civil War. People who say nonsense like that just demonstrate there woeful ignorance of history. They might as well say something stupid like the Civil War was all about the attack on Fort Sumter.

So to say that 9/11 was about the US cessation of funding the the Afghan ant-Soviet militias is patently absurd. Ignoring the ideological and religious underpinnings of Al-Qaeda makes one completely unable to have an understanding of transnational Islamic terrorism. Eighteen Saudi Arabians didn't fly planes into buildings because they were upset about losing US funding a decade ago. They did it because they believed they were striking at the enemy of Allah, and that they and there families would be rewarded in paradise for their actions. Sure there were underlying political reasons involved, but without the overriding religious belief, you don't get 9/11.

It reminds me of folks who say things like the Civil War was really about the right to succeed, and not slavery. In this historical context the slave issue was the historical underpinning for all the event led led to the Civil War. People who say nonsense like that just demonstrate there woeful ignorance of history. They might as well say something stupid like the Civil War was all about the attack on Fort Sumter. Originally Posted by shazzan

You might want to read up on the economics behind the Civil War, in particular Wall Streets profiteering on Southern trade. Also the reinvention of the horse collar. Finally which President was the first to enslave Americans with a draft?

Sorry for the digression...

[quote=shazzan;
It reminds me of folks who say things like the Civil War was really about the right to succeed, and not slavery. [/quote]


I think the next civil war may very well be about the Right to Succeed but the last civil war probably had more to do with the Right to Secede.

JMO

[quote=shazzan;618503
So to say that 9/11 was about the US cessation of funding the the Afghan ant-Soviet militias is patently absurd. Ignoring the ideological and religious underpinnings of Al-Qaeda makes one completely unable to have an understanding of transnational Islamic terrorism. Eighteen Saudi Arabians didn't fly planes into buildings because they were upset about losing US funding a decade ago. They did it because they believed they were striking at the enemy of Allah, and that they and there families would be rewarded in paradise for their actions. Sure there were underlying political reasons involved, but without the overriding religious belief, you don't get 9/11.[/quote]

++1

I think the next civil war may very well be about the Right to Succeed but the last civil war probably had more to do with the Right to Secede.

JMO

Your confusing trigger with cause. Somebody might die of a heart attack, but the underlying cause is usually years of untreated cardiovascular disease. Yes succession was the initial trigger for the Civil War, but the entire build up to succession was largely based on the slave state free state issue. Without the slavery issue it is very unlikely that the Southern secessionist movement would have grown and succeeded like it did.

Your confusing trigger with cause. Somebody might die of a heart attack, but the underlying cause is usually years of untreated cardiovascular disease. Yes succession was the initial trigger for the Civil War, but the entire build up to succession was largely based on the slave state free state issue. Without the slavery issue it is very unlikely that the Southern secessionist movement would have grown and succeeded like it did. Originally Posted by shazzan

Dude, I'm not confusing jack shit. You can try and spin it however you want but the civil war was not about the Right to Succeed.

I believe the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was not really about the 9-11 attack. The Afghan government's "harboring" of al-Qaeda was a pretext just as WMDs in Iraq were a pretext. Afghanistan and Iraq were both attacked, and compliant governments installed, using 9-11 as a pretext. In support of this in Afghanistan I cite only two things: 1. The Afghan government did everything it could under the circumstances to permit the US to come in and get bin-Ladin, but the US didn't do this. Instead it attacked the whole country to change its government, and 2. The Taliban government signed a surrender ending their belligerence. This agreement however was violated by the US when it hauled two of their senior government members off to Guantanamo. That ended the surrender and peace with the Taliban. The US broke its treaty in the same manner it broke treaties with the native Americans in the 19th century - and for the same reasons.

These American invasions have fomented a volcano of anti-American militancy which has a religious expression. This belligerence and violent ill-will towards America would largely not exist if it were not for America's own actions.

Aside from this there is a much smaller, very limited and extreme pre-existing antipathy toward the US from the pre-9/11 al-Qaeda. Those grievances had to do with the pro-US alignments of the Egyptian and Saudi Arabian governments. Even this antipathy could have been remedied if the US would have returned to the "over-the-horizon" military policy we had until after the first Gulf War. If the US would have done that, and stopped bribing the Egyptian government with 2 billion dollars a year to support our line on Israel, there would not even be an al-Qaeda; it wouldn't even exist.

As for the notion that muslim fanatacism drives this conflict because the Muslim Brotherhood will not rest until the US has been converted to Islam, I simply beg to differ. You have to separate the antipathy arising from US policy from any seeming to exist simply because of alleged muslim hegemony.
Regarding this I can only say that both Islam and Christianity have strong hegemonic eras in their past, but that was a long long time ago.

I don't think that the Muslim Brotherhood has it's sights set on bringing an Islamic government to North America when it is so impossibly deficient in bringing one to their own country of Egypt. Their antics are much like those of the Bader-Meinhoff gang or the Red Brigades in the 70s. It's a horrible nusance but hasn't a chance in hell of changing anything. It only makes a lot of headlines and prompts politicians to do stupid things accordingly.

This whole conflict is unnecessary, every bit as much as the US participation in the First and Second World Wars was unnecessary, and brought about by blundering, incompetent diplomacy and inept government policy. For that matter the American Civil War was unnecessary. In that instance it was the anti-slavery zealousness of one man, Abraham Lincoln, whose agenda was to overturn the social order of the South. To that end he CREATED PRETEXTS to draft a lot of other people who had to pay a high price to achieve a moral end that they neither believed in nor understood.

Dude, I'm not confusing jack shit. You can try and spin it however you want but the civil war was not about the Right to Succeed. Originally Posted by Budman

Thanks for pointing out that I didn't pay attention to my spell check, or your post for that matter. And, thanks for being impolite about it too. Reminds me of when my English teacher ripped me for a stupid spelling mistake in high school. I admit, I'm embarrassed about this one.

It's not like I will change the mind of someone who is that obviously anti-war and ant-interventionist as Austinescorts, but here goes. Essentially we are looking at differing interpretation of events. As far as the Afghan treaty stuff I never heard of what you are talking about, and I have my doubts about the authenticity of that information. But, I will say that the Afghan war is the most justified war the US has been in since WWII. Since you disagree with our participation in all wars I doubt that means much. Wow! I guess if Nazis weren't worth fighting nobody is. I suppose our response to Pearl Harbor was a gross over reaction and part of Roosevelt's nefarious plot. No war except against us because we deserve it.

As far as the other stuff, I don't disagree with you that we kicked the ant hill of Islamic rage with Afghanistan. Maybe if we hadn't stupidly gone into Iraq it wouldn't have inflamed Islamic militancy, but I doubt it. I think it probably just sped up a process that had been happening since the 1970s. The Islamic doctrine of Holy War to defend Islamic lands does not care if a war against an Islamic nation is justified or not. To a strict Islamic fundamentalist, both Spain and India are Islamic lands that must be recaptured through Jihad. Under Islamic law, once a land is controlled by Muslims it becomes a holy Waqf that belongs to the Islamic Ummah forever.

I'm not really concerned about the Muslim Brotherhood taking over the US, but the only thing keeping them from taking over Egypt is the fact that it's a police state. The Brotherhood is by far the most popular political/religious organization in the country. Bader-Meinhoff was a leftist terrorist group with a small number of members, not a popular political movement. You take Mubarak and his ruling structure out and The Brotherhood would control Egypt tomorrow. They are not Al-Queda, but they are the intellectual forefathers of virtually every Islamic terrorist group in the world. Next to the Koran, the writings of the founding Muslim Brotherhood members are the foundation of militant Islam. They would definitely turn Egypt into a more strictly religious and antagonistic nation. Say goodbye to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.

I'm not really that ideological. I just read a lot and keep up with the news from all over, and form opinions based on that. I don't really have strong political or religious views that I filter everything through first before I interpret it. Although reading the Koran has greatly influenced how I view the Muslim world. I get the feeling Austinescorts ideology is pretty central to how he sees the world.

Actually I don't think defeating the Nazi regime in Germany was in the national interests of the United States, and I don't think it furthered our values overseas. War should be a form of diplomacy by other means, not a moralistic crusade. Moral judgments can be misleading. The international world is one of moral paradoxes and ambiguities which are not easily reconciled on understood. Relying on morality can lead you with the best of intentions to do things which have even worse consequences.

We all agree that the Nazis were appalling, but by forming an alliance with Stalin to defeat them we empowered a force which was even more malevolent than Hitler was. If we had just let Hitler finish off Stalin, China would never have fallen to Mao, and there would never have been a Cold War with it's dozens of bloody third-world battlegrounds. Pol Pot would never have taken over Cambodia. There would never have been the Afghan war in the 1980s which created al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Osama bin-Ladin would just be just another rich kid living in Arabia. All these events resulted directly from our moralistic zeal to defeat Germany, and the necessity of empowering the Soviet Union to that end.

In the early 1980s I worked my ass off supporting the most extreme of Muslim fanatics to kill Russians in Afghanistan. All our efforts at that time went through the Pakistanis, and their choice was to support only the fanatics like Globadin Hekmatiar - no one else. Now these same guys are out to kill us anywhere they can find us. As they say, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

From the popular point of view war is conducted for moral reasons, to defeat a sinister enemy. But that is a fanciful view that only the media and population possess, and it is promoted by government propaganda to motivate the population to endure the sacrifices they are asked to for government to conduct the wars they wish.

IMHO all the wars the US has been involved with have been non-defensive ones in which diplomacy was substituted with what was perceived as a simpler answer - to just kick the shit out of them. Sometimes this has worked and other times it has failed, but it was never really necessary. IMHO even the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor could have easily been prevented. The truth is Roosevelt was hoping something like that would happen, and goaded the Japanese into doing it, although he did not have prior knowledge of the attack as some believe.

We in the US have the safest homeland any country has ever had. We live surrounded by oceans that have always buffered us from any other hostile power, and our size and wealth make us impossible to invade and overcome by force. All of our potential adversaries know that.

The Muslim brotherhood of Egypt would have much less support if the US changed its policies. I honestly disagree about its role in Egyptian society. If it were as potent there as you suggest no level of suppression by the Egyptian government could overcome it. Most people in Egypt are ambivalent about them. On the one hand they think Camp David was a sell-out and that their government is too close to the US. On the other hand they are not willing to adopt the rigid Islamic state that the brotherhood espouses - no way man. Most Egyptians think the brotherhood actually forms a needed counterbalance to the government.

It's not even ON Ground Zero.
It's NEAR Ground Zero..


Guess what else is on or near Ground Zero.
Mc Donalds.
Strip Club & Sex Shop.
Catholic Church.
Salons.
Bars & Gentlemans Clubs.
etc.. etc..




Going back and forth on Religion being the cause of what happened is only reverting us backwards. We need to move forward as a country and unite. Work together and start again.

A friend of mine said "Build a Mosque there and I will fly a plane into it." It was probably the most ignorant thing I have ever heard in my entire life. How is doing a wrong making a right? Segregating these people for their beliefs. I know a lot of Christians who have done some very terrible things on acts of "God" but we don't condemn the Church.

The double standard does not fly with me.

Usually I stay out of this controversy, but this just gets on my nerves.

SHAZZAN, yours is probably the best stated response to the goals of the Islamic extremists. I agree 100%. You hit the nail on the head when you said we may have kicked the top off the ant hill, but the hatred and plots were brewing for a long, long time.
I think we have to accept that some people on this forum simply feel that there isn't anything worth fighting for. TAE in one sentence mentions the Japanese attack and in the other states how the USA has nothing to worry about because it's oceans have always protected it. I couldn't disagree more and it was this mentality that allowed terrorism to take foot on our shores in the first place. We always viewed terrorism as a threat that the Europeans and middle eastern countries had to contend with but that they could never be successful on our shores. The first WTC bombing killed that myth and 9/11 just confirmed that our country is in no way immune to attack.
The notion that if we had stayed out of Hitler's way, somehow the world would be a better place or fewer wars would have been fought is absurd.
There will ALWAYS be a Hitler, Pol Pot etc that come along and decide to change the world to their liking, to their ideals and to satisfy their insatiable appetite for power. A simple reading of the history books will confirm that. It is in the interests of a free society to confront and stop these types of people wherever they may pop up and threaten free people.

Thanks for pointing out that I didn't pay attention to my spell check, or your post for that matter. And, thanks for being impolite about it too. Reminds me of when my English teacher ripped me for a stupid spelling mistake in high school. I admit, I'm embarrassed about this one.

It's not like I will change the mind of someone who is that obviously anti-war and ant-interventionist as Austinescorts, but here goes. Essentially we are looking at differing interpretation of events. As far as the Afghan treaty stuff I never heard of what you are talking about, and I have my doubts about the authenticity of that information. But, I will say that the Afghan war is the most justified war the US has been in since WWII. Since you disagree with our participation in all wars I doubt that means much. Wow! I guess if Nazis weren't worth fighting nobody is. I suppose our response to Pearl Harbor was a gross over reaction and part of Roosevelt's nefarious plot. No war except against us because we deserve it.

As far as the other stuff, I don't disagree with you that we kicked the ant hill of Islamic rage with Afghanistan. Maybe if we hadn't stupidly gone into Iraq it wouldn't have inflamed Islamic militancy, but I doubt it. I think it probably just sped up a process that had been happening since the 1970s. The Islamic doctrine of Holy War to defend Islamic lands does not care if a war against an Islamic nation is justified or not. To a strict Islamic fundamentalist, both Spain and India are Islamic lands that must be recaptured through Jihad. Under Islamic law, once a land is controlled by Muslims it becomes a holy Waqf that belongs to the Islamic Ummah forever.

I'm not really concerned about the Muslim Brotherhood taking over the US, but the only thing keeping them from taking over Egypt is the fact that it's a police state. The Brotherhood is by far the most popular political/religious organization in the country. Bader-Meinhoff was a leftist terrorist group with a small number of members, not a popular political movement. You take Mubarak and his ruling structure out and The Brotherhood would control Egypt tomorrow. They are not Al-Queda, but they are the intellectual forefathers of virtually every Islamic terrorist group in the world. Next to the Koran, the writings of the founding Muslim Brotherhood members are the foundation of militant Islam. They would definitely turn Egypt into a more strictly religious and antagonistic nation. Say goodbye to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.

I'm not really that ideological. I just read a lot and keep up with the news from all over, and form opinions based on that. I don't really have strong political or religious views that I filter everything through first before I interpret it. Although reading the Koran has greatly influenced how I view the Muslim world. I get the feeling Austinescorts ideology is pretty central to how he sees the world. Originally Posted by shazzan

For the record, I never stated that I believe the Muslim Brotherhood will take over the U.S....What I've tried to point out is what their "intentions" are. With terrorist groups, it doesn't really matter if their goals are realistic or not, it's the damage they do in trying to reach those goals, no matter how unrealistic those goals may seem to us.
TAE, you can talk about how ineffective Baader-Meinhof and the RAF were but maybe you didn't live in Germany during that time. I can tell you first hand that they DID instill a sense of fear among the German people. Had they been left unchecked, their attacks would have become more successful and more damaging to the German government and the people. If you underestimate or ignore terrorists' intentions, then you simply will never be prepared to prevent or stop their attacks.

Terrorism is theater. All it takes is one person, or a small number of people, to set off a bomb and the whole population goes into a tizzy.

That doesn't mean that we have to exaggerate the importance of the terrorists. By doing so we play into their hands.

The best way to fight terrorism is to ignore it. Treat their crimes like the stupid, pathetic antics they really are. Don't send armies. Send the FBI, and haul their miserable asses into court and a gas chamber where they belong. Terrorists are miserable, pathetic A-holes who live for drama so they can think of themselves as heroes when in fact they're the opposite.

Marginalization works, exaggeration doesn't.

Anyone who claims that muslim terrorists here are a real threat must explain why they are so utterly, utterly pathetic in their attempts. If the "shoe bomber," the "underwear bomber," and the "times square smoking van" are all they have to offer than it's clearly folly to spend a TRILLION dollars and kill hundreds of thousands of people to try to suppress them.

Could it be that those who exaggerate their importance do so because they want to believe that there is a real enemy out their to fight? Could it be that conflict and fighting for such people is what gives their lives meaning? Some people love drama. I know the media does, and for them what bleeds leads. The sad truth is that for some of the American public this whole matter is one of entertainment. It makes them feel good about themselves, and gives them something to focus on in their otherwise boring, meaningless lives.

Before 9-11 the media had wall-to-wall coverage of what? Gary Condit! LOL.

Both the terrorists and the counter-terrorists need to stop all the drama and go get some kind of real lives aside from playing hero and killing other people.

TAE, I try, I really do, to understand your logic. I simply can't. How exactly do you "marginalize" the death and consequences of 3,000 Americans being killed?
How do you marginalize the effect that attack had on our economy, our airline industry, etc? I guess even without knowing the full extent of the attack, we should have allowed our airlines to keep flying that day and the following day and just treat the attack as "stupid antics"?!
The fact is, the only way to know if your twisted logic actually has any truth to it would be for us to sit back and do nothing. We've tried that and it's always come back to bite us in the butt!
Maybe you think that the underwear and shoe bomber were pathetic in their attempts but I'm sure the passengers on those aircraft were thankful that their explosives did not detonate as intended.
Again, by your logic, why even bother having a Police force? I mean crime doesn't affect most American's, only a few unfortunate ones, so why should Austin pay millions of dollars per year to fund a Police force that most of the times doesn't prevent crime but instead simply responds to the aftermath? Is that worth millions of dollars per year?
You really need to think your logic through a bit more carefully. We spend money to keep our country safe. We do so by having a well trained (mostly) and well equipped (mostly) Military, by having well trained and well equipped Police Departments and by spending money on intelligence gathering. To NOT do so would mean the Government is failing in it's most basic responsibility, that of keeping it's citizens safe and secure.