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MajorDad

Darwin Award Winner? (Teaching Wanna-Be Terrorists)

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MajorDad


Such mixed emotions . . .

So Mixed!


>:(:(:D:):)>:(:(B|:D:)>:(:(
I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

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What I want to know is this: WTF is WRONG with these people? Their culture. Where do these animals come from?

At the height of the war there were random bombings, constantly, every day, all over the country. Which says something very creepy about the prevalent values of these people and their society. What kind of culture has so many people so evil that they are willing, eager, to set off bombs in public places, deliberately intending to kill large numbers of totally random innocent people? Enough of them to sustain a constant stream of such bombings for months on end?

Not only did they evidently not see anything wrong with it, they did it to themselves, each other, and incidentally a lot of soldiers, so much that it was a trendy, popular behavior like Planking or something.

It takes a special kind of degenerate insanity to harbor a desire to set off a bomb, in public, with the purpose of randomly slaughtering as many of your own people as humanly possible, with complete disregard for the innocence or guilt or even caring who the victims ARE. There's no "targeting", its not like each of these attacks was after somebody in particular, after the first few THOUSAND bombs these people knew full well each one was going to generate random, horrible deaths of whoever was nearby... maybe soldiers. Maybe random women and kids... And in Iraq and Afghanistan both, there were so many of these, apparently seething with psychotic hatred their whole lives, waiting for an opportunity, that the moment the US gov popped the cork on their local authority structures they all came out of the woodwork and began bombing the shit out of their own societies, at saturation levels all over the country.

Did these sick fucks sit at home, giggling with glee and satisfaction after a successful mission? "I bagged 31 sunnis, 12 women and 14 kids today, there are pieces of children all over the street, allahu akbar, yaaay!"

What, the, FUCK!

Now there's no shortage of random individual killer loonies here in the states, but does anyone here seriously think that if someday the government fell and popped the cork on local authorities, that everyone, all over the US, would suddenly start setting bombs on every street corner? IEDs by every roadside, suicide bombers walking into every 2nd or 3rd mall willing to die just so long as they can take as many random innocents with them as possible to make some fucked up political or religious statement?

We just don't HAVE that many savagely murderous people here!
Western civilization, and the values we grow up with, are such that if any of us ever saw one of these happen, I think most of us myself included, would fold up and vomit in horror and shock at the sight of the results, unable to process the kind of raving hatred and insanity that could cause a person to do that. I'm sure we -do- have a few of these... Things... (I will not grant them the status of "people" or "human beings" if you're willing and eager to slaughter large numbers of random people you are not human, you are a thing, a disease, a sickness of the human species) but I do not believe there could possibly be so many of them all throughout america that if given a chance, they'd be able to sustain a constant street-bombing campaign for years on end. If you removed all constraints, let them all do their thing at once, there might be, how many? A few dozen? A couple hundred, max?

Iraqi society was SATURATED with them.

I can understand them wanting to kill foreign invaders. But they spent as much or more effort killing each other, for local political or religious reasons. Sunni vs Shiite etc. It wasn't just a fistful, a few hundred of them nationwide, because the bombers were getting slaughtered wholesale- by US forces watching from helicopters... by their own mistakes like these assholes... by whoever they were fighting... and they did not run out of bombers. They just kept coming... for years on end. Which implies that there were many, many, many thousands of them.

In other words, a significant proportion of the total population.
Had no problem,
killing random men, women, and kids,
as violently, horribly, and gruesomely as possible.

Sometimes I think any society in which this even CAN happen, deserves it. This shit doesn't happen in a vacuum. People associated with the bombers, KNOW about it. Neighbors. Friends. Acquaintances. And they did nothing. Evidently when Abdul the wannabe bomber starts sounding off to his buddies about how he wants to get in on the game, nobody spoke up and said "Hey asshole, don't you think thats a little excessive, a little psycho?"

These "things", had support networks. Suppliers. People who knew what was going on. And backed it. Helped them set it up. Move the explosives. Lent them a garage to build it in. A truck to move it. Turned a blind eye to the activity or even helped it. For every sick fuck who set one of those random bombs, there had to be many people who approved of it. All this says that "desire and willingness to blow the fuck out of your neighbors including uninvolved men women and kids" was and is a prevalent value in their society.

There's a part of me that thinks any part of the world in which this can happen at all should be quarantined like a zombie apocalypse and the disease allowed to run its course until these people fucking learn. Let em die by the tens of thousands until they get the idea through their thick skulls that if you don't want your own kids reduced to bloody chunks of kibble in the streets, stop regarding that kind of behavior as an acceptable set of values in your culture.

Reminds me of gangster rap. They spend all this effort making music lamenting the violence of the ghetto, but they are the same people -doing- it. Writing songs glorifying drive-by's and glamorizing the killing while simultaneously moaning about how many friends you've lost to it. Just a suggestion: If you don't like it, stop making it that way. Stop regarding it as a value you aspire to.
Christ.

Sometimes I have very little hope for the human species.
End rant
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

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We just don't HAVE that many savagely murderous people here!
Western civilization, and the values we grow up with...

Not long ago a substantial majority of Americans were quite willing to incinerate most of the world's population, and condemn the rest to a miserable death from radiation poisoning, over a choice of political system. "Better dead than red" and all that. Perhaps it was similar on the Soviet side. Fanatics of all stripes have always been ready and willing to put their religious or political priorities above everybody else. Committing mass murder in support of a twisted version of religion seems abhorrent to us, but we seem to be OK with it when our political or economic interests are challenged.

Do we deliberately target innocent civilians? No. Neither do we expect our soldiers to commit suicide to accomplish their mission. But we are not as different from the jihadists as we like to think. If the US was occupied by a foreign power, I have little doubt but that there would be patriotic Americans who would be willing to do "whatever it takes" to fight back, including actions to "wake up" a complacent population. Timmothy McVeigh was not unique in his views, and some are sympathetic to his methods. We do ourselves a disservice, and put ourselves at risk, if we assume all Westerners (including Americans) are too "civilized" to resort to such tactics.

Don
_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

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lurch

What I want to know is this: WTF is WRONG with these people? Their culture. Where do these animals come from?



Wasn't so long ago that the IRA was setting off bombs in crowded places in Belfast, Londonderry, London, Birmingham... and killing random collections of civilians.

And good Americans in Boston, NYC, San Francisco... were sending them the financial wherewithal to do it.
...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

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kallend

***What I want to know is this: WTF is WRONG with these people? Their culture. Where do these animals come from?



Wasn't so long ago that the IRA was setting off bombs in crowded places in Belfast, Londonderry, London, Birmingham... and killing random collections of civilians.

If, in fairness, you're referring to the same morality that led to British troops - the fathers and grandfathers of the generation caught up in "The Troubles" - committing atrocities in the 20th Century against Irish and Indian civilians, then I'd agree.

Atrocities are always atrocities; but brutally, they usually don't occur in a vacuum.

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lurch

If you removed all constraints, let them all do their thing at once, there might be, how many? A few dozen? A couple hundred, max?

Iraqi society was SATURATED with them.



You're projecting the relatively static state of society we enjoy in the west on the middle east. You have to think in terms of rates as opposed to absolute quantities, and then remember to consider nature vs nurture.

GeorgiaDon

Not long ago a substantial majority of Americans were quite willing to incinerate most of the world's population, and condemn the rest to a miserable death from radiation poisoning...



Talk is cheap.

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1: Disagree.
If you'd surveyed the country during the cold war you'd be hard pressed to get anyone to openly state they'd be "willing to incinerate the world's population". The cold war was all about nationalistic chest-beating. Basically a dick-measuring contest. An abstract. Big talk, big spending, but nothing personal. And when it came down to it, neither of us was willing to pull the trigger on it.

2:"I have little doubt..."
Agree. But consider... Mcveigh did his thing, yeah... he's one of those "things" that doesn't deserve to exist... and has been removed. But what did NOT happen was a sudden wave of thousands upon thousands of imitators joining in the fun. We've got plenty of antigovernment guys running around in the woods in Montana playing apocalypse games with stashes of firearms, but you don't see these guys committing saturation bombing campaigns in crowded areas. Mcveigh was the outlier, the one sample at the extreme end of the spectrum who was actually willing to DO such a thing, as evidenced by the fact that he did it.
We had ONE.
Iraq had so many they could not be counted accurately, and were able to sustain a saturation bombing campaign, nationwide, sometimes multiple per day, for years on end. We had one, regarded as a monster. They had -legions-, enough to establish constant explosions as NORMAL.
I'm not arguing we don't have our fanatics- we certainly do... but enough to saturate our society with such acts, day in and day out for years? Kinda doubt it.
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

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There's no "targeting", its not like each of these attacks was after somebody in particular, after the first few THOUSAND bombs these people knew full well each one was going to generate random, horrible deaths of whoever was nearby... maybe soldiers. Maybe random women and kids...



Carpet bombing German cities is somehow different? What about dropping a nuclear bomb or two?
Napalm bombing in Vietnam?

Quote

We just don't HAVE that many savagely murderous people here!
Western civilization, and the values we grow up with, are such that if any of us ever saw one of these happen, I think most of us myself included, would fold up and vomit in horror and shock at the sight of the results, unable to process the kind of raving hatred and insanity that could cause a person to do that.



Bullshit, just watch the large number of people who will justify the above examples.

Quote

Let em die by the tens of thousands until they get the idea through their thick skulls



Oh look, your hatred and dislike quickly turns to thoughts of mass murder as well.

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Ah, the customary Speakers' Corner Word Twister makes an appearance. There's always one of you guys in every debate.

"I'm pro-choice"
"Ah, so you admit you're FOR the wholesale slaughter of babies!"

"I'm pro-2nd-amendment"
"Ah, so you admit you're FOR allowing kids to be killed by all these guns"

Your shit is weak.

My hatred and dislike are reserved for the kinds of people who would blow up other people at random, and the set of cultural values that allow such a thing to be regarded as acceptable by a sufficient proportion of the population to sustain such activity at saturation levels for years on end. In the end I can only express the frustration by saying "Fuck it, let em kill each other till they've had enough" like locking a psycho in a rubber room and letting him beat himself against the walls and scream till he gets exhausted, stops, and hopefully someday learns that this is not acceptable behavior.

This is far from "Turning to thoughts of mass murder" especially since your phrasing is intended to try to cast me as someone who thinks it is ok or wants to commit it. Since my whole point has been what the fuck is this abhorrent shit and where does it come from, the stretch you're trying to do of completely inverting what I was talking about and attempting to make it mean the opposite, is too much of a stretch to work.

SC Twister Score: 1/10. Fail.
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

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SkyDekker

So what about the carpet bombing of German cities in WWII and the use of two nuclear bombs?



...and now you're projecting the relatively static state of society Europe and much of the Pacific Rim enjoys today on the 1940s.

It's absurd to hold someone to answer for events that occurred 70 years ago against the standards we strive for today before you'll consider acknowledging complaints and grievances about events that are ongoing today. What do you want him to say? "Yeah, if we were currently carpet bombing and nuking cities right now I'd bite my tongue."

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champu

***So what about the carpet bombing of German cities in WWII and the use of two nuclear bombs?



...and now you're projecting the relatively static state of society Europe and much of the Pacific Rim enjoys today on the 1940s.

It's absurd to hold someone to answer for events that occurred 70 years ago against the standards we strive for today before you'll consider acknowledging complaints and grievances about events that are ongoing today. What do you want him to say? "Yeah, if we were currently carpet bombing and nuking cities right now I'd bite my tongue."

I think that all of them are wrong. But he wasn't discussing judgement of the bombings. He was telling us how he couldn't understand the mindset of mindlessly killing, specially innocent women and children.

Merely showing that without the capability of laser targeting, GPS guidance etc, this was the way things were done.

Breaking society was often considered as a goal, or at least a path towards a goal.

He claims not to understand the mindset of a small group of people displaying the same behaviour displayed by many, many other groups throughout history.

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Insofar as I replied to both of you in a similar fashion I see the parallel you're trying to draw, I just don't think the "Oh yeah? Hypocrite!" approach is very productive.

Plus, comparing concerns about actions across centuries with concerns about actions across continents has some other problems, especially if you want to address them. Time machines don't exist. The internet and international flights do.

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I can't tell if your sentence there is a command, an accusation or a statement... "how you justify"

Uh, I don't. The behavior of a national government in a global all-out war is outside the scope of this discussion, and involves far more complex factors relative to individual behaviors and their relationships and influence on the behavior of those governments than can be addressed briefly here. Just to nitpick your point thoroughly, if they'd polled the population of the US at the time, held a survey, including the relevant situational information, (Germany all but wasted already, full explanation of the consequences including the full firestorm effects) and asked the public to vote on it, I think they'd have said "No".

Same goes for Japan. When a goverment acts in war the civilian population does not get a say in how the war is prosecuted and do not call the shots. If they're lucky they're at least kept -slightly-informed, after the fact. If.

More often the relevant goverments lie, keep secret, and otherwise obfuscate and conceal their activities both from the enemy and to prevent that clueless civilian population from trying to armchair quarterback every decision.

The topic was individuals willing to commit such acts themselves, in person, with little to no target discrimination. How did wwII get into this?

Even then your attempt to draw these parallels doesn't work. For the behavior of the various governments involved to approximate the behavior of individuals in Iraq, the firebombing of Dresden or the nuking of Japan would have to be expanded to "Says they meant to hit Dresden "for the war effort" but dropped bombs at random all over the planet including the US itself and our neighbors in Canada and Mexico". The analogy breaks down too easily to make a point with.

To illustrate more clearly what I was driving at, let's expand the discussion in a relevant direction with another example arguably even more dramatic of the same mass individual behavior: Rwanda.

Something like 800,000 dead, must have been, what, 1/5? 1/3, half the population? Killing each other mostly with machetes. It was started by their own government, yes. Who ordered a million machetes because they were the cheapest mass killing implements available, passed them out to the population along with a saturation radio campaign urging them to violence, and told them to use em on their neighbors.
They complied.

You seem to be arguing that if this happened in the US, the gov passed out a million machetes and ordered the population to start chopping each other to bits, that they'd do so.

I argue that the vast, vast majority of us would be like "Are you on drugs?" And would not comply. I also argue that you would have to fuck up this country and its values beyond all recognition for generations to create conditions under which such a thing would even be possible. Most of us, you get mad at somebody, politically or personally, you write an angry letter, sue em, hold a protest, maybe you pee in his mailbox. The more extreme of us might punch him out, start a fight, have a scuffle to settle it, and the most extreme go as far as direct murder and just go kill the guy, which is regarded as too savage to be tolerable by the vast majority of the population. The thing that we as a population do NOT do is, we do NOT go set a bomb at the mall or a random intersection hoping to maybe affect the target of your anger along with the huge group of totally random people you just blew up.

But apparently this is ok in Iraqi culture because it was the dominant attack of choice for year after year, so much so that a big proportion of the population had to be personally participating, in a similar fashion as the population of Rwanda did.

What I want to know is how things like empathy and sense of connection to your community break down so thoroughly that your society ends up full of individuals savage enough to personally pull the pin on these, going to great effort to do so, knowing full well the results are random victims, and not caring if it's their own neighbors, or the guy down the street running the store, that gets bagged. It's a form of virulent hate based nihilism I cannot process, like the square root of -1, divide by zero error. Best I can do is try to build a box around the psychological black hole where that idea lies and try to understand its origins.

It's scary. I want to at least try to understand it so I can avoid ever being infected by it. We see periodic bits of it surface under stress, such as all the "glass parking lot" comments after 9/11... but again, how many of those blustering noisy individuals would personally pull the pin on a random market in Iraq? I'm betting few.

I'd bet if you grabbed em by the face, teleported em there, put the initiator into their hands, pointed em at the market 400 yards away and said "Bombs right there, 600 kilos of semtex and a phone, go for it, Rambo, there's the people you wanna kill, take your shot" they'd drop it in horror and look at you like you were insane.

The locals, had no such qualms. They DID pull the pin, on that specific act, in person, in mass numbers, again, and again, and again...
What I want to know is why.
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

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lurch

It's scary. I want to at least try to understand it so I can avoid ever being infected by it. We see periodic bits of it surface under stress, such as all the "glass parking lot" comments after 9/11... but again, how many of those blustering noisy individuals would personally pull the pin on a random market in Iraq? I'm betting few.

I'd bet if you grabbed em by the face, teleported em there, put the initiator into their hands, pointed em at the market 400 yards away and said "Bombs right there, 600 kilos of semtex and a phone, go for it, Rambo, there's the people you wanna kill, take your shot" they'd drop it in horror and look at you like you were insane.

The locals, had no such qualms. They DID pull the pin, on that specific act, in person, in mass numbers, again, and again, and again...
What I want to know is why.
-B



If you genuinely want to know, dig deeper into the culture rather than just assuming every Iraqi citizen is a psychopath from birth.

Learn about the difference between the Sunni and Shiite muslims who make up much of the population. Learn who had it made under Saddam, and who was getting shafted.

This will tell you who was shit scared when Saddam was ousted that they were about to get their comeuppance - this will explain motives for continuing instability in the region.

That Sunni/Shiite divide also makes your accusation of completely indiscriminate targeting misguided - you could target an area known for a higher population of your opposition quite easily. Think of the Civil War - you didn't have Americans killing Americans, you had Southerners killing Yankees and vice versa.

Now you need to reevaluate the biggest apples-oranges part of your viewpoint - you can't compare the education and upbringing in a Western society against one from the Middle East. Priorities are different. You're not going to have a kid just pick up a phone and detonate a bomb for the joy of it. But that kid may be raised to value family above all else, and then later have that twisted into a fanatical love for his faith, and then someone points him at people who are mostly like him but is told "They're trying to destroy your family. They welcome the invaders, and want to take away everything we've built".

Indiscriminate bombing is fucked up, no matter who does it. But please try not to condemn an entire nation of people as being fundamentally broken without digging a little deeper.
You are playing chicken with a planet - you can't dodge and planets don't blink. Act accordingly.

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