Gyroscopic Investing

Ha!

I've enjoyed it, too.  If you're ever in Northern Nevada let me know and I'd love to buy you a beer. 

I won't call you names, though.  I actually consider myself an independent, as there is enough I don't like about the Republican party, too.  I'm fairly liberal on a lot of social issues. 

Coffee wrote: You're wrong.  They are expansionist in nature.  They seek to install Sharia law in any land they live in, once they acquire great enough numbers.  It's happening already in the UK and Dearbornistan, Michigan.  It happened in Egypt recently, except that the Army was able to push them out.  It happened in Afghanistan. 

+1.

Also noteworthy, if there is denial that Islam is a problem, note who the left sees as the real enemy:

"White House Compares Republicans to Terrorists, Kidnappers, Arsonists"  and while he will not negotiate with the republicans, who are terrorists, he has no problem negotiating with e.g. IRan. 

This speaks volumes, but we are in denial of this as well.

TennPaGa wrote:

Pointedstick wrote: conservatives use to refer to libertarians?

Surely you don't think Coffee is a conservative.  He's not.

He's a neocon.

Well it looks like he's said he's an independent. So I'm happy to go with that.

COffee,

Regarding Islam, expansionism and Sharia law, you might enjoy this:

http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message/2006_04.htm

Dan Simmons writes and wins awards in multiple genres (SF, Fantasy, Horror, mystery) and the above is a  future history very short story as warning.  He is not a conservative.

Simonjester wrote:

Coffee wrote: This was designed to put pressure on Iran (who are nuttier than nutter-butter and we do not want to have nukes).

whose "leaders" are nuttier than nutter-butter, it may not change way we have to deal with the country much now, but it is a important distinction, the Persians were at one time very western and reasonable people and if they wouldn't get shot or disappeared for doing so, many likely still would be...

It's a mistake to pretend that Muslims beliefs or behavior, or any human behavior, represents a single spike on the far end of a spectrum Coffee. That has no basis in fact regardless what your personal prejudices may have led you to believe.

I don't doubt that there are Muslims that hate our culture, but that's only significant because they're willing to engage in violence. There are plenty of fundamentalist Christians that hate "American" culture.

Oh, please.  There is no "far end of behavior" when it's happening every week.  You're entitled to your own opinions but not to your own facts:

Number of terrorist attacks in the past week committed in the name of Islam (the "Religion of Peace"):

Date                 Country City         Killed Injured Description
2013.09.27 Pakistan Peshawar   19           44     Muslim militants blow up nineteen passengers on a bus.
2013.09.26 Yemen Huta           1             0 A homosexual is executed by Islamic fundamentalists.
2013.09.26 Iraq Baghdad           8           14 Eight people including women and children are pulled into pieces by Jihadi bombers at a Sunni commercial center.
2013.09.26 Iraq Baghdad           20           71 A Shahid suicide bomber murders twenty other people at a packed Shia marketplace.
2013.09.26 India Kashmir           10           4 Muslim terrorists go on a 6-hour rampage, eventually killing ten other people.
2013.09.25 Iraq Baghdad             6           0 Three small children and their parents are among six family members brutally murdered in their home by Islamic terrorists.
2013.09.25 Yemen Ataq             1           0 A Religion of Peace suicide bomber manages to kill one other person.
2013.09.23 Iraq Yusufiya             3           2 A Shiite married couple and their child are murdered in their home by Sunni gunmen.
2013.09.23 Dagestan Tabasaransky 2 16 Two others are killed by a Fedayeen suicide car bomber at a police station.
2013.09.22 Pakistan Peshawar         81 110 Two Jundullah suicide bombers obliterate over eighty worshippers at a church service, including many women and children.
2013.09.22 Iraq Baghdad                 12 35 A sectarian suicide bomber hits a funeral, killing at least a dozen mourners.
2013.09.21 Kenya Nairobi         68 175 Nearly seventy shoppers are murdered by Islamic activists in a targeted attack on non-Muslims at a shopping mall. The victims include children and pregnant women.


Number of terrorist attacks in the past week committed in the name of Judaism or Christianity:  Zero.


As to your second point: You're trying to morally equivocate Muslim terrorists (and their supporters who don't condemn their actions) with... some Christian zealots who sit at home and grumble about our culture?  Not a fair comparison. I don't care what people think about our culture (or each other's culture) as long as they're not walking into pizzerias and discos and targeting civilians. 

Islam is associated with Islamic terrorism because that is the association that the terrorists themselves choose to make.

Muslims who compare crime committed by people who happen to be nominal members of other religions to religious terror committed explicitly in the name of Islam are comparing apples to oranges.

Yes, some of the abortion clinic bombers were religious (as Muslims enjoy pointing out), but consider the scope of the problem.  There have been six deadly attacks over a 36 year period in the U.S.  Eight people died.  This is an average of one death every 4.5 years.

By contrast, Islamic terrorists staged nearly ten thousand deadly attacks in just the six years following 9/11.

Coffee wrote: Number of terrorist attacks in the past week committed in the name of Judaism or Christianity:  Zero.

I assume we're leaving out drone strikes, doors kicked in in some Afghanistan village and whatever we might be doing at our 1,000+ foreign military bases that we will never know about, right?

TennPaGa wrote:

Pointedstick wrote: conservatives use to refer to libertarians?

Surely you don't think Coffee is a conservative.  He's not.

He's a neocon.

Name calling is a cognitive bias and a technique to promote propaganda. Propagandists use the name-calling technique to incite fears or arouse positive prejudices with the intent that invoked fear (based on fearmongering tactics) or trust will encourage those that read, see or hear propaganda to construct a negative opinion, in respect to the former, or a positive opinion, with respect to the latter, about a person, group, or set of beliefs or ideas that the propagandist would wish the recipients to believe. The method is intended to provoke conclusions and actions about a matter apart from an impartial examinations of the facts of the matter. When this tactic is used instead of an argument, name-calling is thus a substitute for rational, fact-based arguments against an idea or belief, based upon its own merits, and becomes an argumentum ad hominem.

As an aside...

Q. Why do you never want to date a neocon?
A. Because they always say they're going to pull out and they never do.

MediumTex wrote:

Coffee wrote: Number of terrorist attacks in the past week committed in the name of Judaism or Christianity:  Zero.

I assume we're leaving out drone strikes, doors kicked in in some Afghanistan village and whatever we might be doing at our 1,000+ foreign military bases that we will never know about, right?

Are you implying that we are targeting civilians and that we're doing it in the name of Christianity, somehow? I'll assume not. 

Therefore, you're applying apples to oranges.  There are casualties in war, I agree.  It's regrettable, but it is a fact of war.

No name calling.

[compact moderation by iPhone from son's football game]

***

BTW, is "neocon" a name?  I guess it depends on how it's delivered, sort of like "Mexican."

Nobody likes being pigeon-holed into a label, especially when the label isn't accurate.  That's name calling.

I'm not for military adventurism.  I do believe that war should be avoided by negotiations if at all possible.  (But let's not be naive about our opponents true intentions, either). 

I do not believe in the neo-con idea of spreading democracy.  Sure, water it like a flower when it's in a place where it's already ready to bloom.  But this whole neo-con idea that we're going to force democracy on a culture that doesn't already have a tradition of freedom or openness?  Good luck with that. 

I wouldn't presume to label you a paleo-conservative or a libertarian or a social liberal.  That's not for me to say.

Even ultra liberals like the president have come to understand that drone strikes at the terrorists wherever they may be is an effective pre-emptive defense against homeland attacks.  Clinton's passivity led to 9/11.

Mdraf wrote: Even ultra liberals like the president have come to understand that drone strikes at the terrorists wherever they may be is an effective pre-emptive defense against homeland attacks.

Regardless of whether or not this is true (it may well be), don't you think that the drone strikes terrorize affected communities and serve as a potent recruitment tool for future terrorism? Especially when innocents are killed… I mean how would you feel about the federal government if they killed your spouse/parents/children/siblings while attempting to apprehend a criminal?

YES I KNOW that it's a war and in wars there are collateral damage. Human emotions aren't so discriminatory. If innocent people you care about are killed by a far-off organization that marshalls overwhelming violence against people in your community--regardless of if it's a war or police action--wouldn't you think that would be the kind of thing that would prompt some blowback?

Your guiding principle in such conflicts is to use the military to push back the terrorists long enough to win over the local population with a nation building exercise. This program has never worked out for the United States, but that doesn’t mean that generations of military leaders don’t insist on going through the motions of applying it anyway.
Seeking the moral high ground is a fool's quest. Wars cannot be fought without hurting someone and trumpeting your morality makes it all too easy for your enemies to charge you with hypocrisy.

Mdraf wrote: Your guiding principle in such conflicts is to use the military to push back the terrorists long enough to win over the local population with a nation building exercise. This program has never worked out for the United States, but that doesn’t mean that generations of military leaders don’t insist on going through the motions of applying it anyway.

I would suggest that this strategy is fatally flawed when the target country is full of poor ignorant people who are already close to the tipping point of supporting terrorists. Push too hard and cause too much collateral damage you end up converting the local population to your enemies' cause faster than you can kill them. Then you need to formally declare war and just kill all of them and stop pretending it's some kind of targeted international police action.

Mdraf wrote: Seeking the moral high ground is a fool's quest. Wars cannot be fought without hurting someone and trumpeting your morality makes it all too easy for your enemies to charge you with hypocrisy.

I'm not saying we should seek the moral high ground. Obviously the business of war is killing people and breaking their stuff. What I am saying is that if a particular strategy of killing people and breaking their stuff happens to result in the production of more people who need to be killed and whose stuff needs to be broken in order to achieve the original goal, then the goal cannot be achieved because attempts to attain it result in it becoming more and more difficult.

That's what it looks to me is happening. The more terrorists we kill, the more people get pissed off and join the terrorists. Our actions result in a never-ending stream of terrorists we can kill. Even if we keep them from striking us, this increased production of terrorism results in a great deal of damage to other countries that may be unable to defend themselves as well, as Coffee pointed out with that sobering list of recent terrorist attacks that succeeded outside of the United States.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding as to what causes terrorism.  Poverty does not cause terrorism.

If it did, then:

- Vietnamese would be hijacking our planes.
- Nicaraguans would be sneaking bombs across our borders
- Panamanians would be blowing up our ships.

Fighting terrorism does not cause terrorism.  Look at our success in Colombia, as an example. 

Do you want to know what causes terrorism?  Political Islam (and other politically aggressive movements) cause terrorism.  It's not a result of poverty, lack of education, etc...  The 9/11 bombers should be evidence of that, alone.  All middle to upper class.

I'm not saying that poverty causes terrorism. I'm saying that terrorism is caused mostly by having a faraway military juggernaught oppressing you or your friends or your family.

If we started doing drone strikes in Nicaragua, do you think we've never be the victims of Nicaraguan terrorism? I think we would. And they're all Catholics!

Why? Do drone strikes cause more collateral damage than carpet bombing we did in Vietnam?

Even with conventional rockets, when terrorists hide behind schools and hospitals, do you think counter strikes at those targets create less collateral damage than drones?

Coffee wrote: Why? Do drone strikes cause more collateral damage than carpet bombing we did in Vietnam?

No. But we stopped carpet bombing in Vietnam. If we resumed it with drones I would definitely expect Vietnamese terrorism.

Coffee wrote: Even with conventional rockets, when terrorists hide behind schools and hospitals, do you think counter strikes at those targets create less collateral damage than drones?

What I'm saying is that it doesn't matter. If your brother is blown up in a drone strike, are you going to say to yourself, "Well, at least those Americans spent billions of dollars developing precision-guided munitions, or else my sister and mother might have gotten it too!" ?

Dead is dead. Angry about it is angry about it.

Yes- it might. Especially if you're Muslim and you live in an area where the manufacture of rage is your wholesale export. 

Again, you're blaming us for their f--ed up psychology.  The reason you don't see Nicaraguans trying to kill us is that Catholicism is not an aggressive, expansionist political ideology. 

When you station your katusha rockets behind schools and hospitals, who's really to blame when the kids you're hiding behind get shot?  Sorry, I'm not gonna accept the blame for that one.  We do more to limit civilian casualties than any other fighting force in the history of the world.

Let me explain my thinking: terrorism is a tactic you use against an adversary you can't defeat conventionally or who doesn't expose their military arm to your retaliation. In Vietnam, there was no need for the Vietnamese to commit terrorism against the USA: we were in their country. They could fight us there. They could shoot at our soldiers and lay traps and set up ambushes.

However, let's say we hypothetically started doing drone attacks in Vietnam. It's the standard situation: we don't officially declare war, we call them targeted strikes, etc. Because we're not actually there, and because we're striking them with a weapon against which they can't strike back, now the Vietnamese people have no means to express their anger against us in violent terms--a totally normal reaction when someone starts blowing stuff up in your country IMHO. So since they can't shoot down our drones, and since we haven't declared war they can't attack us without us saying they're the aggressors, terrorism seems like the best choice.

Does that make sense?

I understand what you're trying to say, I just think it's phooey.  Any civilized people would turn to the terrorists hiding in their midst and say, "Get out!  You're endangering us... and we will not stand for it!"

Is that really too much to ask?

Furthermore: Were all of these victims (below) of last week's "Religion of Peace" terrorism a result of launching drone attacks? Of course not.  So, what it comes down to is that you're trying to apologize for Islamism and place the blame for their actions on... our drones?  Obviously, our drones have nothing to do with this.  They are animals because they are animals.  Our drone attacks are not going to make them animals.

2013.09.28 (Timbuktu, Mali) - Two civilians on a horse-cart are sent to Allah by Shahid suicide bombers.
2013.09.27 (Peshawar, Pakistan) - Hardliners fighting for an Islamic state blow up nineteen passengers on a bus.
2013.09.26 (Gamboru, Nigeria) - Twenty-seven villagers are massacred by terrorists fighting for an Islamic state.
2013.09.26 (Huta, Yemen) - A homosexual is executed by Islamic fundamentalists.
2013.09.26 (Baghdad, Iraq) - Eight people including women and children are pulled into pieces by Jihadi bombers at a Sunni commercial center.
2013.09.26 (Baghdad, Iraq) - A Shahid suicide bomber murders twenty other people at a packed Shia marketplace.

Coffee wrote: I understand what you're trying to say, I just think it's phooey.  Any civilized people would turn to the terrorists hiding in their midst and say, "Get out!  You're endangering us... and we will not stand for it!"

Is that really too much to ask?

Yes, I think it is. Is this really a realistic expectation? If a country is being aggressed against by a foreign power and a small subset of the population becomes terrorists, I would expect sympathies to run deep for the terrorists--who of course will be considered freedom fighters or revolutionaries.

I mean, from the perspective of the British during the American revolution, George Washington et al. were the terrorists; did the civilized British living in American colonies expel them? Of course not. Many of them were sympathizers.

I'm not saying that the terrorists we're talking about are terrorists entirely because we're aggressing against them. Clearly they're ignorant violent barbarians. But by aggressing against them and constantly messing with their shit, we invite them to turn their ignorant violent barbarism on us. As you've indicated, they're more than happy to kill each other. Why get in the way and give them a juicy external target when they seem to be already in the middle of destroying their own societies?

Now we're just retreading territory we've already covered. 

Reub wrote:

MediumTex wrote: What exactly is our beef with Iran?

Yes, they are sponsors of international terrorism, but has any of it been against the U.S.?

Yes, Iran has probably made life more difficult for U.S. forces in Iraq, but perhaps that is a good argument for simply getting U.S. forces out of Iraq.

Yes, Iran has probably been trying to develop a nuclear weapon.  Is that not their prerogative as a sovereign state?  Have they signed any treaties agreeing not to do that?  (maybe they have, I just don't know).

Sometimes it's useful to take a step back from an enemy and make sure you remember exactly why he is your enemy.  The truth with the U.S. and Iran probably has more to do with other Middle East countries (i.e., Arab countries) wanting the U.S. to act as its bodyguard against Iran (i.e., a Persian country).

The thing that puzzles me about the Persian/Arab tensions, though, is if they are all Muslims, what's the problem?  Surely the will of Allah is that all Muslims should love and respect one another, right?  (I thought it was the infidels who were supposed to get the rough treatment.)

This is why I could never be a Libertarian. We would be pledging allegiance to Adolf Hitler's successors if this line of reasoning won out in the past.

Thank you for illustrating the problem with knee-jerk reactions to slogans.