tar

dimreeper, you can kill an idea by throwing the holder off a building it slows down the next guy who puts that idea out of their mind to avoid being thrown off of buildings It is an obviously affective stategy. Employed by the Nazis and the KKK and any number of authoritarian rules, like Daesh. The ISIS ideology is not spreading because it is a wonderful idea. It is spreading because it looks to the outside like the people inside want to be there. Several links I have posted here, suggest that the people under the rule of the ISIL do not particularly like the idea, but would rather it, than die. I watched Footloose the other day with my wife and daughter. The kids wanted to dance. The society wanted to protect them from evil. Some were burning books and even the preacher saw that was not the way to go. He liked sex with his wife the same as the next guy. In the end the kids danced. I watched Mockingjay 2 the other day with my wife. (I won't tell you the end, I was about to) but suffice it to say that the human spirit won in the end. Ideas will die when they are shown to be unworkable. Maybe not right away. Maybe you have to fight. Maybe you have to die. But good will triumph in the end. There is no reason to let evil stand in this world. No reason. Being afraid to stand against it, is cowardice. Maybe prudent, but cowardly. Regards, TAR how do you fight an idea? show it to be unworkable and provide a workable one that is better I am not suggesting we be like the KKK and Nazis and Daesh. I am suggesting we stand together against them. Whatever the cost. An analogy to fighting an idea, that is real here on ScienceForums is to give a neg rep. when the idea is bad and unworkable, and a pos rep. when the idea is workable. It encourages good thinking and discourages bad thinking.

waitforufo, Well of course that is my point, but Overtone will never think that her hatred of Voldemort is an analog. And sarcasm doesn't help the situation, because then she just gets more defensive and strikes out harder and louder against he that shall not be named. It is a big complicated world. I don't have a clue, as to how best to come together on this and find the right way forward, but I am pretty sure that we can do a better job trying to give the other the benefit of the doubt...AND holding to our collective principles. But we have to look to make friends with the people that have our same interests and with the people who have contrary interests and try to find out where reasonable concessions can be made. Regards, TAR registering muslims is not the answer, but obviously, even in France, we know where to go, to find the snakes that are likely to bite us ISIS is just sitting out in the open, daring us to attack them. As the thread is saying, we should not give them what they want. We should not do stupid stuff and kill children and families like Trump is saying...except I suggested something along the same line at work over a year ago. Find all the Caliph's sons and capture them. Hold them and kill one, every time ISIS claims responsibility for a murder. (you don't really have to kill the son, just make it look like you did) Then if that does not slow him down, you capture him, and cut off his balls. With no visible heirs, the shia would have no reason to follow him, and the Baathists would lose a manly Sunni Caliph to rule the Muslim world. Tounge in cheek. it is probably best not to bomb them into the stoneage one they are already 1400 years closer to the stoneage than we would like them to be two, there are too many beautiful buildings, and archeological sites that are important to all of us, in the area Boots on the ground, and into the tunnels under it, is probably the best way to go.

Thread, I get you. But there is more to this than hatred because you are being hateful and fearful and stupid. Sometimes we just can't stand the way the other is conducting themselves and need to stop them. http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/islamic-state-group-targets-gays-with-brutal-public-killings/ar-AAfVhvb?ocid=spartandhp ​ "They are violating God's laws and doing something that is forbidden in Islam, so this is a legitimate punishment," said Hajji Mohammed, a resident of the IS-held northern Iraqi city of Mosul. There the group has thrown men suspected of being gay off the Insurance Building, a landmark about 10 stories high." Regards, TAR​ And here I mean to say that we should stop people who suspect someone of being gay from throwing that person off a building. although we have to be cognizant of the use of the word justified (legitimate) in the quote, the speaker is justified because the gay guy is the transgressor In Western Law and secular law and current U.S. public opinion, the transgressor is the guy that is throwing the gay off the building. So you get someone here saying they do not want a Mosque in their neighborhood. On the face you would say they are not holding to the principles of secular law and the constitution which allows everyone to follow their own god. But if the reason for their objection is they do not want public whippings and stonings and gay people being lynched and tossed off of buildings, and having speakers calling everybody to prayer....well then you might just agree that Muslim law and U.S. Law cannot coexist in the same neighborhood. at least not the 6th century version of Islam in the U.S. we had slaves, we burned witches, we lynched blacks, we beat up gays because the group allowed it. The group insisted that this was the legitimate way of operating to protect one's way of being. But "being a good person" is dependent on how the people around you feel about the thing. It is hardly something that can be measured by some scientific standard. Socrates was put to death, because he didn't get along with his society. Being right however, apparently is not very useful, if you are dead. I like to use myself as an example. On the theory that I am not that much different from anybody else, with the same basic brain structure, hormones, motivations and desires. I grew up in West Orange NJ, and Orange NJ, then moved to Macungie PA then back to Orange to go to school in East Orange, then the Army in SC, GA, KY and Kaiserslaughtern, then back to Orange and East Orange to finish school. I was hitting a tennis ball on a court across the street from my Dad's house, which was just off the campus of the school the court belonged to. I had gone to the school, my dad had been professor at the school. I was home. I hit the ball over a high fence that separated the court from the dead end street, and would have had to go all the way round, through the campus and out a gate to retrieve it. A young black boy was standing there, looking at the ball in the street and I motioned he should throw it back over. He just stood there. I asked him if he could throw it over and he said he couldn't because he was Muslim and was not suppose to have anything to do with white people. I went around and retrieved it myself, but this small incident tints my feelings about muslims. When I read about the NOI and it teaches that the white man is the devil, I wonder why exactly I should get a warm and fuzzy feeling about the followers of that religion, or at least that sect of the religion. Even if I give them the benefit of the doubt, they won't toss my tennis ball, back over the fence.

Overtone, Well yes, perhaps we should go with what the French feel is appropriate. But they used to be an imperial power themselves and have a bit of the same problem we in the U.S. have in feeling responsible for the place. I have a feeling that our state department, for instance, had something to do with the Arab Spring. I don't think all the social media sights and bloggers were spontaneous, home grown things. We have a tendency to be in everybody's business, at all levels from all directions, covertly and openly. Some well received and some not asked for. Maybe just waiting for someone to ask us to the party will leave us standing outside a party we really need to attend. And are already so closely involved with so many nations in terms of commerce and banking and law enforcement and anti-terrorism efforts and such, there are obligations and agreements that you and I don't know about. That is why we have state departments. And currently the state departments are under the control of our head of state, and he is not of the party which shall not be named. Public opinion though, like you said, should not be the guiding factor. We don't need blood for bloods sake. The cycle of violence is for France's sake right now. That is, they are the ones that need the justice. We took a good measure already. We should follow their lead. And maybe the Arab spring was not so well planned. The people overestimated the goodness of freedom from authoritative rule, when they woke up and found there were no systems in place to get anything done. Regards, TAR notice for instance how we had special forces in place to help with the Mali hostage situation we are all over the world We have interests everywhere. On another note, having to do with striking ISIS leadership, I saw where extensive underground tunnels were found in one of the retaken Iraqi cities where ISIL had been and munitions and medical supplies were found, with pain pills strewn on the floor. These were tunnels carved into the bedrock, safe from airstrikes. I would guess that every city that ISIL holds is thusly outfitted. Drone strikes might not do the trick...but then I should probably leave the details up to the pros. John Cuthber, "And, perhaps more importantly, the enemy is an ideology. The enemy is the belief that "the West is evil".​" Well there is the 64 thousand dollar question. How do you talk somebody into not hating you. How do you talk a person who is "justified" in their beliefs, whether its Overtone against the party that shall not be named, or the Palestinians or the Ukranians, or the Iranians or the Baathists or the Iranians into swallowing their pride, and yielding the point to the other side. It can't really be done in any sustainable way, unless both parties in the situation bury the hatchet. Nations can have peace talks, and make agreements on behalf of their citizens. Stateless terrorists are difficult to talk to. You just have to absorb their hatred and kill them back. They don't really give you much choice. It is like dealing with a rabid animal. And you are right, it doesn't really make sense to declare war on an animal. You just kill him or let him alone, or capture him or tranquilize him, but you don't need to talk. Regards, TAR

John Cuthber, Well of course you are right. But where is the answer? We bombed Germany and got peace. We bombed Japan and got peace. I am not trying to use 1984 doublespeak, I am trying to learn from the past, that there are times you need to defeat tyrants to defeat tyranny and a tyrant rarely will go without a fight. Yes we "chose" to go into Iraq, but in some ways it was a continuation of kicking Saddam out of Kuwait. That the Shia did not throw flowers at our feet might have something to do with Iran. That the Sunni did not throw flowers at our feet might have something to do with the Soviet Union, and the Baathists and our breaking faith with Saddam and dropping devastating bombs slaughtering his Guard. They had to be somebody's brothers and sons. And our feet were probably not the place for their flowers. We have pissed off a lot of Arabs supporting Israel in her fight to survive. We have been pissing off Arabs since the Crusade. We didn't want Iran to have nuclear weapons that would threaten Israel when perhaps she just wanted to have equal power with the other nuclear powers. To have the ability to control her own destiny. Iraq does not want to be occupied again. It is humiliating to be occupied. Assad wants his country back, it is humiliating to be the head of a state, and be talked to like a child. Yes, the West is not done with our Imperialist nature. Our authoritarian attitude that people would be better off, if they were like us. With civil liberties, rule of law, tolerance and inclusion, great education, wealth and the other indications that a country is first world. Its a hard choice to know when to declare war. It is always the wrong decision. And always the proper choice. Regards, TAR and we have pissed of Persians as well Not really proper since the Tigris and Euphrates is thought to be our collective womb. The Ottoman Empire certainly a first world type of civilization. The Arabs responsible for our numerals and all sorts of other indications that Egyptian Culture and Turkish culture and the other cultures that sprang forth from the Middle East are indeed first world civilizations. I think perhaps I need to get the idea that I live in civilization and dessert nomads and muslims circling the stone are anachronisms, out of my head. I suppose to avoid a clash of civilizations one has to recognize that we are more like each other and have more common roots than we are different from each other. And killing your brother is a bad idea. Perhaps we should not continue to fight the crusades. Perhaps we have to. I really am not sure. Sort of feeling we have an intractable situation here. Damned if we do. Damned if we don't. Regards, TAR

John Cuthber, I think Jihadi John was a British citizen. You think perhaps we should have targeted the Queen instead of his vehicle? Most of the Paris Attackers were French Nationals. Should France commit suicide? We are fighting a foe that has no state. And I think it would be best to defeat them, before they turn somebody else's state into their own. Regards, TAR

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iraqi-shiite-militias-pledge-to-fight-us-forces-if-deployed/ar-AAfTNvM?ocid=spartandhp S​eems that other than the Kurds, we might not have any friends left in Iraq. Do we? Or don't we? ​ Yemen has about as many factions fighting for control as Sryria. The Saudi Sunni, the Iranian Shia​, United States hitting AQSA with drone strikes. Strategically important to many as much of the world's oil passes through the straight. It is not a black and white choice as to who it is in our best interest to support and help win the day. Speaking of principles that is, what principles are the most important here. World peace speaking?

Overtone, Stop right at your first phrase. You call our reaction to 9/11 cowardice and panic? Some evil thing flew planes full of people into buildings. One missile did not hit its mark because some few brave men took the plane down, for us. For the living. Love for the living. We found out who did it and went after them. We had to go through the Taliban. We had to do a lot of things to protect our way of life, against an enemy that would kill us. Paris did the same thing after the attacks. It is normal, wonderful strength and resolve that she showed. The people bound together, and said we will not stop living, we will not be afraid, but we will seek out the perpetrators and arrest them or kill them if they resist. The first responders to the World trade ran toward the towers to save people. They died when the towers came down. Many many hundreds of brave men and women. People from my town, my county, my state died that day. Not running away from. Running toward danger. I have sacrificed none of my values. I stand with those in my family and those of my friends and co-workers who sacrified in Afghanistan and in Iraq and here at home, to protect my way of life. I went to the movies on Sunday at a theatre at a regional mall. It was the Sunday between black Friday and Cyber Monday. I was surprised at how few people were there. The parking lots were only about 1/4 full. Maybe they were eating a Sunday roast after church. Maybe people, knowing they could buy on line the next day, stayed home. Maybe they were worried a little about being in crowds, and stayed home and ordered on line. I don't characterize our reaction to 9/11 as cowardice, nor would you, I think, characterize France's reaction that way. Regards, TAR I have never broken faith with my government, nor my neighbors, nor my country's NATO allies. My values are intact. On September 11th as I stood at Port Imperial watching the incredibly huge and ominous pillar of black smoke coming from where the towers once stood, I knew there was evil in the world. I did not know who, but someone was my enemy. Mortal enemy. Either I would die, or he would die. My world was changed. I didn't make that choice, I made that realization. If we feel it safe now, to go to the mall, it is not because we don't have enemies that would kill us, but that we have fellow citizens that would search the world, and our cities and find them and neutralize them. The CIA and the military and Bush and Cheney have been building the intelligence and the infrastructure to find the people and make it so that they can not launch the second wave. You know they have been wanting to. The first wave was in 2001 it is now 2015 and Bin Laden is dead. I would say we have not been cowards, and I know we have stopped plots. France almost immediately stopped a cell from launching a second wave. There are more plots in the works, we are sure. There are sleeper cells and lone actors commanded to kill us any way they can. We have every right to be vigilant and protect ourselves. It is not cowardice to wear a helmet into battle. My fault you know, the Paris Attacks. Jihadi John cut off the head of a U.S. Citizen from Indiana. I called for Jihadi John to be hunted down and killed, to stop his terror. He and I could not share the same world. My CIA hunted him down, found him separate from innocents in a vehicle with others of his gang and my President ordered a drone strike that blew up the vehicle, the fighters with him, and Jihadi John. Immediately came the Paris attacks, and the Russian Flight, Beirut and Mali. Not unlikely his death was a trigger for these planned plots to take place. But knowing that death of innocents might well occur and signing the order anyway is a courageous act, and I applaud my president for taking the action. An evil actor, that publically killed an American citizen was brought to justice. The president did his duty as my commander in chief.

iNow,- No, the points being made are largely tangential to the OP. I am just responding to anti-American and anti-republican propaganda and rhetoric as I do not think it true or helpful in defeating ISIS. Regards, TAR

Overtone, absolutely not agreed you give them no credence at all they responded to things the way I wanted to respond to things They were my leaders, as Obama and Biden now are. They were my protectors and my voice in the world. Bush was my head of state at the time. What he did I did. You know I read the whole thing differently than you did. Why would I see it differently now? Now what Obama does I do. He is my head of state. What he should do as our collective leader and representative to the world is what is important here. Forget the election. Give me your wisdom as to what we should do now. See if you can put together a sentence without the words "the republicans s**k" in it. Something that would help us plot a path forward. Regards, TAR maybe you have never been in the military and pledged the oath of enlistment "I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).​ Carter was my commander in chief, and then Reagan. I followed the orders of my commanders as was my duty. i I am not so closely held to things now, but I still respect the office. No matter who voted the person in. And no matter if I agree with them or not. Still my president.

Ten Oz, Except that white extremist terrorism is associated with KKK which is associated with the tea party which is associated with republicans which is associated with Bush and Cheney who are associated with me. I took your comments as coming from Overtone's position. Regards, TAR

I had hopes, same as Bush, that the Iraqis would have free elections, and the Kurds, and the Sunni and the Shia would govern the place together, free from corruption and reprisal. Pulling out our troops, that were engaged in nation building turned out, not so good.

Nobody I associate with says the things DimaMazin says. Overtone, Well then the vote is 8 billion to one against Bush and Cheney. I still think they did the right thing. Regards, TAR

Maybe it was a friendly fire incident. But some of your tracer rounds were coming from the same part of the woods, as Overtone's. Ten Oz, Please don't associate me with DimaMazin. I am not sure what he is talking about most of the time, and couldn't tell you where he is making sense and where he is not. For instance, I would not think any war should be undertaken for population control. Regards, TAR I would rather you associate me with Overtone. She at least says stuff that my Aunt might say.

Overtone, I disagree with your take. And 7 years is not a few years, and if the splits in the Iraqi soul could not be sewed up by democrats in 7 years, Bush giving them a chance, does not qualify Bush for your demonization. Besides, if you are not voting for Hilary and you are not voting for Trump, who are you voting for? I ask myself the same question. Just wondering what your take is? And what exactly does that have to do with what America should do tomorrow about ISIS and Syria, since Obama is our leader now, and will be still a year from now? What stupidity either sides presidential candidates come up with is not the main problem. Support for the president and helping the president make some very tough calls, is what we have to do right now. How do we help France? How do we address global warming without causing economic hardship? How do we proceed WITH the part of the country you believe are destructive to our future? How do we proceed WITH a third of the world walking around a stone reciting memorized lines from 14 hundred years ago. It is possible. We have been doing it for 1400 years. But I am feeling we can not do it well with ISIS establishing a state that circles the Mediterranean. Too many losers would accrue. Too many lives, too many principles. Far more loses than letting some good ole boys in West Virginia go hunting for deer. Regards, TAR Overtone, As an aside, the 27% you fear is not the only group that is easily manipulated. The majority of the Democratic electorate are city folks, and not all are in the top 15% of those that vote democrat. In fact 85% are just as vulnerable to propaganda from the left as are the 85% of right leaning folk vulnerable to the propaganda from the right. You act like there are no illiterate democrats . I am afraid that we are stuck with having to trust that the top 15 percent of our nation. Those people with the trust of the people they lead, and the capability to lead will remain trustworthy and capable regardless of the party they align themselves with. Regards, TAR Sheldon Silver's verdict for instance, does not cause me to devalue anything you have said, or my aunt or my father, just because he is a democrat. He still had the responsibility to not take bribes. He broke my trust, as well as yours. Our party affiliations don't play into the Paris Attacks, and what we should do now.

Putin has caused a lot of recruits from the Caucasus. Maybe some more from Turkey after some of his bombing runs. We know he is targeting people we are allied with and not totally fighting ISIS, but supporting Assad against all the rebels, including ISIS. We may not be able to fly in Syrian skies if we alienate the Russians, who have sophisticated anti aircraft weapons now installed. Terrorists and rebels are sometimes our friends and sometimes our enemies. If we join with Russia to fight ISIS we will have a hard time fighting Assad. So are we to break faith with the people we have encouraged to rebel against Assad, 250,000 lives later, and allow the soviets to reinstall Assad? Are we just to step back and have Russia and Turkey settle their differences? This is not Republican vs Democrat, or Religious vs. secular, or Global vs Anarchist, or Capitalist vs. Communist. It is all of the above, and it is better to frame it as freedom and law and order and civil rights against repression and corruption and totalitarianism, because those are things you can support and that you can defend against, just being a good person. If my memory serves me correctly there were reports of a major ISIS leader being successfully targeted by coalition planes just .days ahead of the concert shooting in Paris. Often during Bush's term, in the hunt for Bin Laden, it seemed we would find out where he was, but not act, as to not anger Pakistan, or to not activate sleeper cells poised to awaken in such an eventuality as his death by our hands. This reprisal threat is obviously effective in keeping us from acting against ISIS. I am thinking that, like not paying ransom, we should take the hit that might come should we act, and not be afraid to cause more recruits by our actions. If we would be afraid of causing more recruits we would be losers and would have allowed them to win. Better, as others have suggested to attempt to win the hearts and minds, because freedom and law and order and human rights is appealing to everybody, and promise to capture or kill anyone joining up with the anti freedom and law and order and human rights group, of their own free will. wait...that sounds contradictory. Kill the anti freedom people...that have joined of their own free will. will have to think about that

iNow, I will not yield that point, until you explain how the Democrats cleaned up the mess the Republicans left 7 years ago. You can't, because we didn't make the right decisions over the last 7 years. Maliki and ISIL grew on Obama's watch. Regards, TAR People tend to be drawn to the winning side. ISIS has been winning the last two years. They have proven their strength, they are not the JV squad. Turns out we gave Maliki's freshmen squad our Abrams in error. Acting in a way that would not encourage new recruits at this point would be to not let ISIS win. AND to not entrust our weaponry to anybody but our troops AND to not fight a proxy war for the Saudis or the Russians or the Iranians, but to fight a proxy war for France and others that share our interests and values. Which may or may not include Turkey, depending on what their values are. After all, they cheered Allakuakbar during the moment of silence, and they according to Putin, are trading with ISIS. ""We have every reason to think that the decision to shoot down our plane was dictated by the desire to protect the oil supply lines to Turkish territory," Putin said during a news conference on the fringes of UN climate talks near Paris." So we have to choose which of our principles are the most important to stand behind. And the fact that Trump says crude and unworkable stuff and the fact that Hillary says stupid and unworkable stuff, does not mean in the least that our decisions are between Democratic and Republican thinking, nor that we should use one part of our brains or the other, or that we should be fearful and strike out, or tolerant and lose the day. We have to protect ourselves against ISIL and we have to do it in such a way as that we win without sacrificing too many of our principles. We have to sacrifice a few though, because we have run out of cheeks to turn.

Ten Oz, Well Ok. My point is your point and your point mine. But putting the republicans on the evil side of the good vs evil battle is what I am saying one should not do. If learning to make concessions and stop trying to be right, and stop trying t o punish the other for being unjust, is the way out of this mess, then you cannot do it, by ridding the world of religious people, or selfish people or people that hunt, or people that like to gamble, or gay people, or any group. Thinking that the world will be better off once it goes the way you want to see it go, IS the problem. It is not likely to go Athiest until there is nobody left that believes in god. It is not likely to go progressive until there is nobody left that wants to do it the old way. And it is not likely to go the way the top 15 percent think it should go, until the 85 percent are all properly subjugated. I think we are stuck, figuring it out, one crisis at a time. And I have no doubt that the medicine that cures one crisis will be the poison that creates the next, but that seems to be the way it goes. In regards, to this thread, my question stands. What do we do next? Regards, TAR I was reading about the NOI the other day on Wiki. They spoke about the 5 percent. That the world was broken into the 85% and the top 15%. And of the 15% there was the 10% that ruled over the 85% and the 5% that warned the 85% about the 10%. Tricky business placing yourself in the 5% and making sure you are not in the 10%. Especially hard to know what is going on, if you are in the 84th percentile, unable to discern the 5% from the 10%. or if the leader of your team is not a black Muslim, you must then either be in the 85% or in the 10% leaving you no choice but to follow the 5% which thinks you should have nothing to do with white devils, so you are out of luck if you are white

Ten Oz, Well actually we did try and fight the cartels in central America. And we are actually sensitive to the drugs that come across our border with Mexico. But this world domination thing that some blame the U.S. for, and this requirement to be the policeman of the world that some demand, are two aspects of our personality. We can be moral leaders, but not without a specific set of moral standards. And not without choosing the winners and losers. Let's say we know everything that went down, who was supporting who, and so on...we still get situations like the Ukraine, with some leaning toward the West and some leaning toward Mother Russia. I happen to live in the West. I happen to live in the U.S.. We already fought the crusades, we already fought the revolution and the civil war and two world wars and the Korean War and Vietnam and Iraq and so on. In Cambodia the Khmer Rouge, in Viet Nam the Viet Cong. The French made that mess. Or was it the Communists? Should we have fought the Soviet Union or let her take Afghanistan? I am thinking we are all to blame. I am thinking we all want to see the world go a certain way. I worked for a Japanese company for 26 years even though she bombed Pearl Harbor and I dropped two atomic weapons on her. The world is the way it is, because at each point we do the right thing. That means everybody has the responsibility to do the right thing tomorrow. Not yesterday. That is past. Not next year, that is too late. Now. What do you suggest is the right thing to do, now. Regards, TAR My dad is a strong democrat. He lost the full use of his left hand to a German Machine gun bullet during the battle of the Bulge. I am a registered Republican with liberal leanings, an Atheist raised Presbyterian that spent two years of my life protecting West Germany from Soviet tank invasion. I saw my flag getting burned and trod upon by 6 or 7 Iranians, at a festival on the streets of Kaiserslaughtern, during the hostage crisis. I have friends, like everybody else has friends, that are religious, non-religious, democrat and republican, rich and poor, from all over the world, with all different backgrounds. The world is our place. We are all responsible. What do we do about ISIL? If those young men and woman were your sons and daughters, what would you do, what would you say? Come home, or fight jihad and kill everybody that is not Muslim? What kind of sense does killing everybody that is not Muslim make? Only works in 6th century Arabia. After that, and in other places, we have to use different standards of excellence.

Overtone, There are facts and then there are the ways facts are interpreted and disagreements on the causes and in some cases we still not knowing all the causes and facts associated with a situation. We do not ever know everything that is going on, who is trying to gain our support and who is playing us for a fool. As individuals and as leaders. Even with our 20-20 hindsight the view can differ depending on which part of the scene you are concentrating on. Two ways we differ. Not on the facts, but on the interpretation of those facts. What they mean and how they should inform our current decisions. Children died during the sanctions. Fact. Bush and Cheney killed them. Overtone’s interpretation. Tar’s interpretation. Saddam killed them by not acting in the way the sanctions were in place to force him to act, and by bringing in other than food for his children when he was given the chance to bring in food, not giving rations to areas that held his political enemies, and for not telling his people to feed their children before they fed themselves. It .was to Saddam’s political advantage to have children die. So people like you, Overtone would lift the sanctions. Holding them for ransom. Like ISIL does when they kidnap someone and ask their parents to pay a huge ransom. Our government does not allow it. Our government still does not allow it. We don’t pay ransom to terrorists. The kid gets his head chopped off and its Obama’s fault, but you still say it’s Bush and Cheney’s fault. Really? Who has the blinders on? We are not in an election cycle. Bush already lost. Obama has been in charge of the situation. The mistakes that have been made, the good decisions that have been made, the stance that America has taken on each issue and at each point was my decision, your decision, America’s decision. It is not a Republican or Democrat thing. We vote these people in. And we vote the congress in as well, and the congress and the president and our diplomatic corp and our CIA and our military decide on how best to protect us and our interests, and our citizens at home and around the world. Your simplistic Republicans are bad, Democrats are good, is not helpful. The situation is much more complex than that and open to various interpretations. Regards, TAR Ten Oz, Why indeed. Why not go after gangs and drug lords and research the causes of suicide and try to solve the economic issues, and make it easy for people to start businesses and help each other out in making a living. Why blame it on Republicans. Besides, we are talking about Paris, how they should respond and how we can help. We have a common enemy and its not the Republicans. And it is not me. Any reading comprehension issues I might have are not really important. What is important is whether or not we are united in defeating ISIL and how best to go about doing such without causing a war between Russia and NATO, while at the same time helping Syria return to normalcy (which I hope means girls can wear short shirts.) Along with my reading comprehension problem I have this thing where a get a fairly nice dopamine fix when I see a pretty female shape. I would rather young boys get their dopamine fix by girl watching, than by stoning and whipping and cutting off heads, having slave wives, shooting people and cleansing the world of me. Regards, TAR Well we are in an election cycle, but the argument to remove somebody that is not handling international affairs well, in this case would be to have a commander in chief other than our current one, if currently we are doing it wrong. http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/seven-roles-one-president

Overtone, No, disagreement on the reasons for why somebody does a thing, and whether they are justified in doing what they did. You said somewhere that the united states should pay reparations for causing harm in the middle east. I don't think it was easy to stop the hatred that existed over there, and the U.S. I thought was being courageous to stand up for civil rights and freedom. You take a set of facts and see it one way, I see the same set of facts another. Disagreeing with your take, is not equivalent to ignoring facts. For instance you are rather sure that the Invasion of Iraq by the coalition led by the U.S. and Great Britain was a mistake. But had a Shiite massacre occurred had we not invaded, it would also have been on the U.S. for NOT acting. The question now though is not who is to blame for ISIL and who is to blame for Syria, and what actions caused the cell to attack the concert, the question is what should we do now. Whose side are we on, and how much blood and money should we spend for what desired outcome? Talk about that. And come up with a solution that does not include Republicans in the answer, before you continue to blame Republicans for the problem. Regards, TAR

Overtone, I agree, but you and I both assign motivations to the other that the other does not have. I am guilty sure. But you are as well. This is important to realize in talking about the injustices that have occurred in the middle east. It is important to take into consideration, that it doesn't matter if you are right, if in insisting you are right you commit an injustice. Such is what fuels cycles of violence. It is not so important that the republicans are wrong and the democrats right or the Sunni are right and the Shiite wrong, or the Iranians right and the Zionists wrong. What is important is that everybody agrees to live together and give the other party the benefit of the doubt. As if somebody could just call "no backsies". Earlier I think it was CharonY that suggested we not use playground mentality. I am thinking perhaps we are all still in the playground, and injustices are still hard to excuse. I remember a best friend, blood brother I had as a very young teen. We had a falling out and wrestled in a creek to exhaustion. We never were friends again and ran in different cliques. Which was hard to do in a summer community with only 24 cottages and just a handful of boys around my age. But our parents used to be close friends and play bridge and my sister was best friends with 'one of my friend's older sisters, and our families just didn't hang together after the fight. I couldn't even tell you what injustice I was guilty of or what he might have done to me. But such I think is like the playground of the middle east. Perhaps it is still the crusades, or maybe some line in the Koran. Who knows what started the mess. But for some reason the one family doesn't wish to play with the other, anymore. Regards, TAR

iNow, I don't have so much a reading comprehension problem, as I have a tendency to overthink the implications of a statement based on just a fact or two, and the fact might be a typing error, or a bad choice of words, but I take it, as I would "a look" if I was with a person that I am listening to. "This is one of the core questions you seem to be evading: Why is that a conflation? In what ways are they different enough to warrant different responses and approaches? Why are the acts of a small few sufficient to cast shade on the entire group for one but the acts of a small few appropriately recognized as the exception for the other?" I already answered your first question, that handling an internal criminal you have your own law enforcement community to help you, where as handing a criminal that is outside your borders, you have to get agreement with the other place's law enforcement, violate their sovereignty, declare war, or "let it go". In terms of the second, I will use your highway death example to prove a flip to your question. Why should we get all flustered and reform the law enforcement establishment because a couple people on PCP fight the police and get shot? The numbers are so small, we should not change the course of the ocean liner, because a couple of people fall overboard. Regards, TAR besides, if the KKK is like ISIL in this example, then the Sunni's are like the Republican party and Maliki is like Obama How closely would you like to conflate the two issues?

Ten Oz, When we went after the internal terrorists, we had law enforcement officials at every governmental level on our side. When we went after Bin Laden to bring him to justice, we had the Taliban in the way and sleeper cells within our own country. Paris today has to close its borders and get suspicious of radical muslims because they have a major global warming conference coming up. Coordination between countries and the sharing of intelligence is required to fight this particular threat. This creates a different situation than fighting an internal threat. Let us say for instance that we had not gone after Saddam. Would the Baathist supported caliphate have emerged earlier? How can we know? How do we tell how effective or ineffective the patriot act has been in preventing incidents like Paris? iNow suggests that we should not worry about a few buildings coming down, and a few people being killed...less than are killed on our highways, but there are situations where we make laws and reform systems, based on just a few incidents. I don't know where you said we should excuse terrorism, it might have been still my reaction to overtone using the word justifiable and the group that shot up the concert, in the same breath, and the conflation of white Christian terror in this country with radical Muslim terror in Paris that made me think you were arguing that I had no right to try to bring the Caliph to justice, until I eliminated racism from my own heart. I think I can still make the distinction between good and evil. Even if others don't think I have the right borders drawn. And currently France is doing everything that you say I have no example to show effective in making us safer...and they have stopped at least one bad event from occurring. Regards, TAR and while we are talking about internal threats and enemies and NOT fearing whole groups, consider Hilary's answer to who she sees as her enemies if a leader is afraid of their own citizens, you get Saddam killing Shia and Kurds, and Maliki killing Sunni, and Assad killing the rebels ANDERSON COOPER: Which enemy that you made during your political career are you most proud of? CLINTON: Well, in addition to the NRA, the health insurance companies, the drug companies, the Iranians; probably the Republicans.

Overtone, Where do I get this stuff? iNow had a thread that was entitled something like "how does religion hijack the neurocortical functions of the brain". In it I learned that we have a section of the brain that develops around the age of 3 or 4 that allows us to put ourselves in someone else's shoes. This area of the brain is responsible for allowing us to converse with unseen others, and also is active while we make moral decisions. To this, a lot of our thinking and conversing with others is actually happening in our own brains, not out in the open, where the other can participate. I have, in the many threads I have read where you and I tangle, developed a model of you, in my brain. Crude and filled with errors, and modified by you being "like" my aunt in this way, or like my sister in that way, or like a poster I used to argue with on Guardian talk who was filled with anti-American rhetoric, in that way, or like my father in this regard, etc. My image of you, and who I lump you in with, is "where I get this stuff". I can have an argument with you and you don't even know it. I don't even need you around. I can have a conversation with an unseen other. But to the Paris attacks, we all have the ability to put ourselves in other people's shoes and think we know what its like to be the other, and draw conclusions as to another person's motivations. We are likely to be pretty close in some cases because we are all human and we use language that has meaning to communicate with each other, but we all are likely to label people and build a false image of them, that is probably incomplete. Maybe quite accurate, and maybe wildly off target. People have images of other people that may or may not be true. When we see ourselves in others, we tend to associate with those people. When we see someone who wants to hurt us, we tend to associate that person with evil things. If you and I met on the street we would be liable to nod a greeting. If on the other hand, you tell me how evil the U.S. is, how stupid the Republicans are, and how misguided all my beliefs are, I am liable to think you mean it, and liable to adjust my image of you, the model that I converse with, that unseen overtone, in that direction. If someone shoots up a concert or a clinic, I am liable to associate evil with that person, his ideology, his race, his mother and father, his country, his religion...etc. And I am liable to be guilty of not getting it right. Regards, TAR