US strikes against ISIS "only the beginning" of a "long, difficult, complicated struggle" that may l - Polidicks

war in the middle east v2: hellfire boogaloo

[QUOTE=BananaFoam;46062124]People seem to think the problem in the Middle East has somehow been caused by the West, and while our support of Israel, our dicking around in the Iran-Iraq war, and the Brit's terrible job of dividing the place up after WWII didn't help, [B]the real problem and creator of most of the conflicts there is religion.[/B] Sunnis and Shiites don't like each other, or at the very least both sides have extremist groups that make it very hard. But in the end, the Middle East has no such idea of "secular". Islam plays a defining role in the areas government, people, and identity, and the divisions among Muslims play a defining role in the region's problems.[/QUOTE] Not religion exactly, but rather a black-and-white attitude to religious life, where it is considered important to define one's own philosophy as being in opposition to something. Even secularists can be fanatics (the persecution of religious people in the USSR and other communist countries is one example, as is the militant atheism movement in general), you just find less historical examples of it due to secularism/atheism/materialism being such a more recent phenomenon than our world religions. I agree with you otherwise though.

[QUOTE=juhana;46062529]Not religion exactly, but rather a black-and-white attitude to religious life, where it is considered important to define one's own philosophy as being in opposition to something. Even secularists can be fanatics (the persecution of religious people in the USSR and other communist countries is one example, as is the militant atheism movement in general), you just find less historical examples of it due to secularism/atheism/materialism being such a more recent phenomenon than our world religions. I agree with you otherwise though.[/QUOTE] What is militant atheism? What is the dogma/ideals of atheism? Islam specifically calls for holy war and it contains an explicit doctrine of martyrdom. Read the book, it's not a mystery.

[QUOTE=ilikecorn;46059833]It doesn't have to be. We can still stop wasting our blood, time, and money in the middle east and just let the region fend for itself.[/QUOTE] And then we can let it spill over into Turkey, Kuwait, Iran, Israel, Egypt, and Jordan. Fun fun fun.

[QUOTE=Explosions;46062628]What is militant atheism? What is the dogma/ideals of atheism? Islam specifically calls for holy war and it contains an explicit doctrine of martyrdom. Read the book, it's not a mystery.[/QUOTE] "Laid back" Muslims usually talk about how they are all interpreting it wrong and that it's not calling for a world wide genocide of non-believers but IMO that's a bunch of bullshit because they aren't following their religion correctly aka ignoring what makes their religion their religion. You can manipulate the meaning of every sentence if you want. So fucking stupid. [editline]24th September 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=RockmanYoshi;46062999]And then we can let it spill over into Turkey, Kuwait, Iran, Israel, Egypt, and Jordan. Fun fun fun.[/QUOTE] It's like a cancer growth. Let it rest until you can't ignore it anymore or spend tons of resources on removing it just to have it pop up somewhere else again. Human Cancer. Gross.

[QUOTE=Rofl_copter;46060337]public opinion can fuck itself, better to do something than sit back and watch innocent people get beheaded on the internet[/QUOTE] I'm thinking intervention is exactly what they want to achieve, because that will net them more recruits from the lines of the victims of "collateral damage". [editline]24th September 2014[/editline] It appears to me that there are too few people in the middle east in general who feel they really need to be liberated. (As opposed to Germany in 1945 for example). So what happens? We've seen it already in Afghanistan and Iraq. You throw a few bombs, invade the place, install a government, and hundreds of thousands will flock to the extremists' cause because they feel they've had their freedom violated by this intervention.

[QUOTE=RockmanYoshi;46062999]And then we can let it spill over into Turkey, Kuwait, Iran, Israel, Egypt, and Jordan. Fun fun fun.[/QUOTE] I don't get why so many think ISIS is going to go on some unstoppable world conquest if the west doesn't stop them now. I know perfectly well they [I]intend[/I] to do so, but one thing extremists are good at is creating themselves an opposing force (and with or without the involvement of the west, they already have). If we allow these events to outplay themselves "naturally", everyone in the middle east will be too exhausted afterwards to be able to do anything of the sort. As a bonus, the people of the middle east might actually learn something about themselves (remember the self-examination the west went through after the two world wars?), which however won't happen if they can always blame the west for anything that goes wrong in their lives, rather than themselves and their black-and-white medieval mindset.