pauli
Member
i can only hope that this is some of the driest humor i've ever seen, cause otherwise, the irony is going to kill me.
Iran leader: Move Israel to Europe
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i can only hope that this is some of the driest humor i've ever seen, cause otherwise, the irony is going to kill me.
Yes. They are calling for genocide against 68 million civillians, including my elderly grandmother, on the basis of one person's statements. That would amount to the largest genocide in history and all because their president, who was fraudulently elected I might add, is a nutcase. If that isn't racist I don't know what it is.TexasSIGman said:
OK, you're added.
I have a pretty good clue as to whose opinions I value.
TexasRifleman
Moderator Emeritus
Kurush said:
And again, they said the same about Hitler, that his election was rigged, he wasn't really in control, and he was a nutcase.
I'm pretty sure we all know how that ended.
If you could go back and stop the Holocaust by destroying Germany and it's military before hostilities began, would you do so?
TexasRifleman
Moderator Emeritus
pauli said:
i can only hope that this is some of the driest humor i've ever seen, cause otherwise, the irony is going to kill me.
No irony. If the only two paths result in destruciton of a country, which path do you choose?
If the end result is that either Iran or Israel is destroyed, which would you see survive? Would you have the rest of the world stand by and wait until it's too late? We tried that one before too.....
I ask you the same question:
If you could go back and destroy Hitler and his military before WWII, knowing what you know now, would you do so even if it meant some civilians in Germany would also suffer? Civilians who elected Hitler as their leader?
Mongo the Mutterer
Member
Kurush, I have heard several reports that the youth of Iran have had enough of the theocracy.
They should take action to clean up their messes, before the Israelis do. The President of Iran declared war against Israel a month ago. If the Iranians don't want to go to war, they should oust him from office.
Iran is on the verge of nuclear weapons, by their own volition. The present regime seems to be a threat to middle east security now. If they continue on this course there will be war.
They should take action to clean up their messes, before the Israelis do. The President of Iran declared war against Israel a month ago. If the Iranians don't want to go to war, they should oust him from office.
Iran is on the verge of nuclear weapons, by their own volition. The present regime seems to be a threat to middle east security now. If they continue on this course there will be war.
I find it hard to believe that you are seriously offering this argument. Are Ahmadinejad and Hitler the only two crackpots ever elected president? How about Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, are you going to commit genocide against their populations and make them "hot enough to turn it into glass" too?TexasSIGman said:
So you want to murder one entire population to prevent another population from being murdered? Furthermore you want to murder an entire population not knowing ahead of time if that's even going to happen? I hope for your sake you really don't believe the things you're saying.
Very easy to say, harder to do. Reformist groups are regularly infiltrated and their leaders are tortured and even murdered. Protests of any kind are broken up by plainclothes secret police armed with chains and batons. Reformist newspapers are shut down, and reformist candidates are denied a place of the ballot. We'd all like to think we'd fight back but you only have so many teeth you can have pulled out.Mongo the Mutterer said:
shootinstudent
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If we could back in time and Nuke Germany out of existence in 1935...every last man woman and child, "hot as glass", do you know what the world would be like today?
We would be the Hitlers, and Hitler himself would be a martyred symbol of the genocidal American period. Not a very good strategy you've got there...
Edit:
Very convenient...the people of Iran are suffering under a regime that, in large part, is the result of Western support for a dictator, yet we're quite fast on this side of the pond to place all the blame on them. Maybe if we hadn't been selling arms to the regime and sitting happily by while Iran and Iraq waged years of brutal warfare, there might be more resistence capability.
orionengnr
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wow, as always...
a certain lack of objectivity.
Quote:
I find it hard to believe that you are seriously offering this argument. Are Ahmadinejad and Hitler the only two crackpots ever elected president? How about Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, are you going to commit genocide against their populations and make them "hot enough to turn it into glass" too?
Notes:
Hitler carried through, without nukes.
Chavez and Castro may be evil but are, so far, incapable of carrying through on a large scale (certain folks will weigh in with anecdotal evidence to the contrary, but we will not hear of numbers in the 6 million-plus range)
Ahmadinejad, perhaps, may inherit (or may seize) the ability to set events in motion which could make 6 million seem like small potatoes. Unlikely? Perhaps. Impossible? No. As long as nukes are part of the equation, the situation must be taken seriously.
Disclaimer: I am not advocating the annihilation of your grandmother or anyone else. I am trying to state facts untainted by emotion.
a certain lack of objectivity.
Quote:
I find it hard to believe that you are seriously offering this argument. Are Ahmadinejad and Hitler the only two crackpots ever elected president? How about Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, are you going to commit genocide against their populations and make them "hot enough to turn it into glass" too?
Notes:
Hitler carried through, without nukes.
Chavez and Castro may be evil but are, so far, incapable of carrying through on a large scale (certain folks will weigh in with anecdotal evidence to the contrary, but we will not hear of numbers in the 6 million-plus range)
Ahmadinejad, perhaps, may inherit (or may seize) the ability to set events in motion which could make 6 million seem like small potatoes. Unlikely? Perhaps. Impossible? No. As long as nukes are part of the equation, the situation must be taken seriously.
Disclaimer: I am not advocating the annihilation of your grandmother or anyone else. I am trying to state facts untainted by emotion.
TexasRifleman
Moderator Emeritus
Kurush said:
Yes, I would indeed advocate the "murdering" of one entire population to prevent another population from being murdered if:
1) The people in question had elected a leader whose primary goal is to cause the extinction of another group and
2) This leader has the ability, which is what is being discussed here, to carry out his DIRECT and CLEAR threats. Understand this is not about, as you say, not knowing ahead of time if it's going to happen. The elected leader of this country has made clear and regular threats to carry out exactly that.
3) The people that would be the victims of the assault ( in this case Israel ) have not said the same thing in kind about their enemy (which they have not) thereby turning it into just a pissing contest.
So, you are talking about an extreme, no question of that.
In that extreme, if the only 2 options are:
1) Allow one group (Iran) to destroy the other (Israel), after being told ahead of time it was their plan to do so and they had both the ability and desire as well as the backing of the majority of the populace (your argument that he is not the elected leader carries no weight, since there has been no move by the people to stop him).
2) Make a preemptive strike, probably killing innocents as well, to prevent a country from carrying out it's intent to destroy another nation and it's people.
So yes, it's an extreme situation, but I'd prefer to live with the consequences of #2 rather than #1. Absolutely.
To live in a neighborhood, you can't go around constantly threatening to kill all your neighbors and expect to be allowed to stay until you begin to carry out your threats.
TexasRifleman
Moderator Emeritus
Kurush said:
And a bit of a history lesson for you as well. The closest the world has been to seeing anyone "made into glass" since 1945 was a direct result of actions by Fidel himself. He tried this once and was dealt with appropriately. His entire nation was within minutes of being nuked, along with the Soviet Union and all the rest of us as well.. So yes, we HAVE been prepared to commit genocide to deal with trouble makers of all sorts. Dealing with Iran would be no different than what has already occurred.
Your analogy loses it's impact when everything you've said hypothetically has already happened in reality.
shootinstudent
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SIGman, herein lies the problem:
Here, you are speaking of millions of people who do not all speak with one voice. They are individuals, and they will have a range of opinions and the vast majority of them are not personally guilty of any crime whatsoever.
Later in your post, you go to this:
Turning a whole population into "one neighbor" in a neighborhood is a terrible analogy because it presumes collective guilt. The only way to treat a whole population as you would one individual criminal is to rely on the theory that members of a group are collectively responsible for what other members of that group do...regardless of their level of support for those said members.
That, my friend, is "collective punishment" when you decide to start bombing. I think it's a defective worldview that's been used to perpetrate some of the worst crimes against humanity history has ever seen.
What's your view of the individualism vs. collective guilt debate?
Here, you are speaking of millions of people who do not all speak with one voice. They are individuals, and they will have a range of opinions and the vast majority of them are not personally guilty of any crime whatsoever.
Later in your post, you go to this:
Turning a whole population into "one neighbor" in a neighborhood is a terrible analogy because it presumes collective guilt. The only way to treat a whole population as you would one individual criminal is to rely on the theory that members of a group are collectively responsible for what other members of that group do...regardless of their level of support for those said members.
That, my friend, is "collective punishment" when you decide to start bombing. I think it's a defective worldview that's been used to perpetrate some of the worst crimes against humanity history has ever seen.
What's your view of the individualism vs. collective guilt debate?
TexasRifleman
Moderator Emeritus
shootinstudent said:
The atomic bomb was used against Japan. Most of the victims were NOT military. Looking back on history, the greater good was served by using that horrible weapon. Collective guilt applies to any population that won't stop it's leaders from this kind of thing.
To prevent such a thing, the majority must do whatever it takes to regain control. In this case here, no one has given any evidence to show that the current leadership in Iran is not EXACTLY what the collective voice wants.
If the majority of Iranians do not wish this, where is the outrage and uprising?
So, if the collective voice calls for the destruction of Israel, then it needs to be prepared to pay the collective debt for that kind of thinking.
And again, we're talking extremes here. Your idea that this argument has been used to perpetrate some of the worst crimes against humanity is very valid, but in this case we're talking about perpetrating one horrible crime to stop another. Which path is correct? That's the debate isn't it?
Do you leave Iran to carry out it's DIRECT threats that is has shown a WILLINGNESS to act upon and punish them after the fact? Or do you make the situation such that they can no longer carry out their threat at all, even if it has terrifying results all it's own?
That is my argument, and one that the United States HAS used before (see the Cuban Missle Crisis for more on this.
It's tough being a nuclear superpower. You may be called upon to do some nasty things. Would you have us do nothing? We know the results of that.
shootinstudent said:
I think I can legitimately chime in here, because my family on both sides was Austrian, and opposed Hitler. My father's family had enough Jewish blood to have been exterminated, but they managed to conceal this fact long enough to survive.
Their city was bombed and many people died.
Were they guilty? No. Did anyone think they were? No. In fact, we knew some people who'd flown bombers in the war and they felt horrible about what they had to do, and said so.
But people, even those on the receiving end, realized that what happened to Vienna was not about "collective guilt", it was war.
There IS no such debate.
Hkmp5sd
Member
Guess what Bill Clinton has to say about Iran and its leadership.....
...
You argument could be taken almost word for word from Mein Kampf. If you read Mein Kampf he outlines very clearly that his reason for hating Jews is a belief that they intend to destroy Germany and enslave its population. Combining that belief with your pre-emptive genocide doctrine, your doctrine indicates that Hitler was right to exterminate the Jews.
Of course, you will object to this, because in reality your pre-emptive genocide doctrine only applies to populations that you personally don't consider valuable.
You're clever to try to head off my point before I get there, but you're not clever enough by half to turn a peaceful resolution into a case for genocide. The truth is that Kennedy did not destroy Cuba, but rather employed political and military pressure to the situation and resolved it peacefully. Kennedy was not a person who enthusiastically called for his enemies the be fused into glass, but a careful planner who acheived his goal without bloodshed.TexasSIGman said:
I don't want to bring in yet another issue in the justification of nuking Japan, but I'll point out that Japan started the war, not us. Your pre-emptive genocide doctrine is more like Japan nuking the entire USA because they believed (correctly) that we intended to starve their army of oil and assist the Chinese in gaining the upper hand and counterattacking.
Mongo the Mutterer
Member
Ya know, while I was driving home in the snow I had a thought.
The folks over in the Middle East had better realize that now when they holler "Jihad!" and swing their AK's over their heads they just might grow another eyeball between the two Allah gave them.
If you don't want to die, leave it alone. We are listening to your rantings now, and we just might take action on what you say ...
The more ruthless the better. They push, we shove.
The folks over in the Middle East had better realize that now when they holler "Jihad!" and swing their AK's over their heads they just might grow another eyeball between the two Allah gave them.
If you don't want to die, leave it alone. We are listening to your rantings now, and we just might take action on what you say ...
The more ruthless the better. They push, we shove.
trapperjohn
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WOW! thats pretty much the same logic Osama Bin Ladin uses to justify killing american civilians?
Did you 2 study foreign policy at the same school?
Standing Wolf
Member in memoriam
Jimmy Carter could have solved Iran's problem in 1978, but wanted to keep his hands clean.
Al Qaeda declared war on us and we have no choice but to fight that war. But war means we kill and capture combatants. If some innocent people get killed along the way that sucks but we try to minimize it. We don't nuke Afghanistan and Pakistan and fuse them into glass because certain people who live there threaten us.Mongo the Mutterer said:
There is a big difference between fighting a war and murdering an entire civilization (that we're not even at war with!) because their current president is a crackpot.
Lone_Gunman
Member
If the majority of people vote for a crack pot, then that means the majority of the people are crack pots.
I would be more sympathetic to the Iranian people if this fool of a president had not been elected. Maybe the election was unjust. I have no way of knowing. If it was an unfair election, then the Iranian people are at fault for not rising up and overthrowing him.
I would be more sympathetic to the Iranian people if this fool of a president had not been elected. Maybe the election was unjust. I have no way of knowing. If it was an unfair election, then the Iranian people are at fault for not rising up and overthrowing him.
pauli
Member
they're working on it. believe it or not, these things take time - it's not easy to overthrow a totalitarian regime that decides who is even allowed to run for office.
Cousin Mike
Member
Lone_Gunman said:
You do realize that about 2/3 of the known world says the same thing about us for electing George Bush, don't you?
Talk about crazy people, this calling for genocide of the Arabs is some scary stuff. Pretty crazy. Are you people really that scared? I'm not. My brother, who is over there in Iraq, he's not. It makes no sense why anyone so safe behind their computer is that afraid. Do you really think that they are all bad people because their president is a jerk? That's illogic, it's immoral, it's insane, and it's probably the craziest thing I've ever heard.
What's worse is that this is the 2nd thread I've read tonight where the conversation took such an ugly turn. What the hell is wrong with you guys? Is this just a buncha macho, tough guy behind a computer crap, or is this the way you guys really feel?
By the way, does anyone have evidence of anything Ahmadinejad has done (not that he said - people say things all the time) to prove he is so much of a nut? Anything to prove he is doing anything more than talking, and saying the same thing people say over there all the time? Which specific actions of his make you so afraid of them as to think we should use nuclear weapons? I'm curious.
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