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[Duuvian]

they found a mosque in the heart of their camp. In it, there were painted pictures of a heavenly scene filled with flowers and virgins.

You sure about that? Depictions of human figures in a mosque are a big no-no.

I don't think he said anything about human virgins.

Nice. Implied beastiality. Is there anything that people you don't approve of won't do in your mind to deserve a good killing?

Why, I bet they must be raping your pigs at this very second. Or were you only implying that the women represented on the walls of their suicide shrine are not human?

Also, by your logic they don't seem to care enough about their religion to avoid breaking it's taboos it in this instance. If that's the case, why are you so enamored of the idea that they are religious psychos instead of people resisting what they see as an oppressive government? If they are fanatics, and the no figures taboo on mosque walls is true (I actually haven't looked this up, feel free to let me know what the story is) then surely they must have beheaded someone for it and painted over it? That means one of the following: either the original quote was misinformed; the guy who responded saying there were no human figures allowed on the wall was wrong; or they really aren't all intolerant religious fanatics like the people who benefit from that generalization are telling you. I'm sure most of them probably are, but I felt I had to argue as the devil's advocate in this case to show the flaw with the evidence that is visible in the original quote after receiving the info about human figures being heretical.

Also, Imperial Japan used suicide bombers quite extensively in WW2. There is a historical example of people who pursued martyrdom in the name of their country rather than their religion. Some of them were also religious men, but some were simply willing to assuredly die for their people and homeland. It doesn't make it any better or worse, though. I'd still call them all crazy.

You sure about that? Depictions of human figures in a mosque are a big no-no.

Nigh-indiscriminate killing of basically anyone in the way of their agenda (Muslim, Christian, whoever) is also a bit of a no-no in Muslim faith as I understand it. Extremist groups have a tendency to cherry-pick parts of dogma that suit them and ignore the rest. Or cheerfully apply double standards to their own actions, as they feel they have divine sanction.

This is true. Perhaps it is excellent evidence to support the idea that all the various religious groups in the region should attempt to re-evaluate their stance as to how much a role their ancient dogma should influence their society and especially governmental actions.

In other words, the peace process has to start somewhere again. If Israel continues down the dark path it's current leaders have chosen, it will have to realize that eventually the chickens will come home to roost whether in the form of a mushroom cloud, losing the economic or military support of the US, or a conventional war that the US either may well be unable or unwilling to support. I don't think it will happen within the next few years barring something extremely bad, but if Israel continues to behave in an irresponsible manner and erode the respect most Westerners have for their tenacity and courage while re-inforcing any Eastern desires to weaken them to strengthen their allies in the region then I believe Israel will be heading to a major war within the next two decades and will do everything it can to drag as many supporting countries in with it.

This is my fear as an American, and I hope you don't accuse me of being anti-Semitic. I write these things because of the government of Israel's own actions during my lifetime, especially the past decade or so. These actions I have perceived to include a blatant disregard for human life, a failure to accept responsibility for the country's actions, a racism that borders on hypocrisy, a dangerous xenophobia which strangely causes any opposing opinion to be deemed as racist, and opposing facts and observations to be lies created and spread by the terrorists and their supporters that almost all governments oppose (at least openly) with the exceptions being countries that either feel threatened by an expansionist, right wing Israel or who have recently been attacked by them.

Yes, I understand that the terrorists do the same thing. That is what makes them terrorists.

Believe me when I say Americans respect Israel and our armies will fight steadfastly beside Israelis if Israel is attacked, and I would hope the opposite would be true. The thing is, we desperately don't want that to happen, and if we the people judge Israel to be the cause of a war that draws us in, then the next election afterward whichever party promises to re-evaluate the one sided relationship will get a hefty boost in the polls due to what would undoubtedly be an extremely unpopular war. This can be countered somewhat with bribes to the politicians, but inevitably one will break the mold and prove worthy of his position... or at least realize he can win utilizing a nation-wide anti-Israeli sentiment that the Israeli government will have brought upon themselves, no matter how much they may declare that it's due to the terrorist propaganda network that manipulates Americans without them somehow knowing because they're so damn stupid and ignorant. Amiright?

[nenjin]

Unless they are part of an accepted military force, they are civilians. If they then point guns at people or do similar things, that is (attempted) murder. Last time I heard, you can drag people into prison for that, question them, and search their homes for further evidence, quite legally.

The Taliban was a government, with soldiers, at the beginning of the conflict, which is still ongoing. Assuming that these people represent the Tailiban would make this an obvious example of wartime conduct, and therefore a matter to be investigated as war crimes. If they are not war crimes, then it is a pretty clear case of a number of criminal offences, which have well established responses.

They aren't the Mafia. They don't function in a normal society, they don't abide by any laws except their own and the Afghani police are ill-equipped and powerless to stop them. At what point does a 'citizen' become 'a warlord?' We have the benefit of stability, a government that has existed unbroken for 100+ years, and social order. There is none of that in Afghanistan. They've been at war for almost 30 year straight now. Karzai barely controls half his country, and he's busy making money off that half rather than trying to unify his country. Some of the tribal warlords on both sides of the border are actually turning back to the Taliban after fighting with them, simply because the Taliban is winning.

Applying our Western civic understanding to their world is.....naive. It's almost Bush-esqe in its view, only on the other side of the spectrum. They exist worlds apart from the law, order and certainty we enjoy. You guys want Law & Order in a war zone. Seriously, watch some Nat Geo on Afghanistan. Watch 5 marines in the middle of nowhere with zero cover trying to track down insurgents so they can be "apprehended" and getting pinned by sniper fire, right before they shove an RPG into the rear of their Humvee.

Law & Order that ****ing ain't.

If we cannot agree on an academic ideal version of evil, how could we possible justify agreeing on a practical level? You are just trying to shock people into agreeing that there are things that cannot be tolerated, but practical matters are never that simple, there is no good and evil, only different perspectives... Well, the underlying nature of the universe might qualify as evil, but otherwise...

That IS a practical level. Instead of it being 1,000 miles away from where you live, make it the next town over. Make the bodies in those graves your family members, your countrymen. Make the peace they are threatening YOUR peace. I love watching people say "quit trying to shock me" as they avoid THINKING ABOUT THE SCENARIO GOING DOWN IN THEIR BACK YARD. Am I freaking out about possible extremists in our country? No. But I'm asking you to live in that world for a minute, instead of viewing everything through your comfy, secure lens.

Practical is it's real, tangible impact. You're still debating the philosophical "everyone has a right to believe blah blah blah" "I'm sure there's something else blah blah blah." Get past that, and ask yourself, if faced with the situation yourself, what would be your ACTUAL response? I'm asking you get out of the armchair and put yourself in the reality of it, away from the certainty that it's not your problem. Make it your problem, then ask yourself what you'd do.

This is basically the entirety of your definition, that they are committed to their cause. If someone is committed to clean oil off of endless stretches of featureless sand, then their morality is generally not questioned. If someone is committed to their country, then many would celebrate their virtue. The virtue of a cause changes completely based upon who you ask...

You cannot question the results. Judge the results, not the justification. Being wholly committed to cleaning up an oil spill has utterly different results than being committed to murdering any non-Taliban Muslim to make the point you're not going away. I'm not going to humor your quote war above, you're not being that clever.

And please don't come with the "too dangerous to keep in a normal prison" argument that regularly turns up: Homicidal maniacs of the worst kind can already be kept in normal prison, so where is the problem? Just because they claim a religious foundation for their crimes does not change them in any fundamental way from any other homicidal criminal.

I wasn't going to. But you bring up a nice point. Since when did our soldiers become police men for other nations? Since when did their primary mission change from 'kill the enemy' to 'kill the enemy...and put people in jail?' Our whole definition of what's going on over there, what our real mission is and what our priorities are, is ****ed. The US has been policing the world for a while now, but only recently have our troops started functioning as police instead of soldiers.

And as you point out, there are shades of gray, and if you claim to arbitrarily set the definition of evil on your own, personal attitudes, you already make it useless for society as whole. For we don't need laws that are based on personal whims but rather those based on more or less universally applicable definitions (I know, laws allow some leeway, but there are limits to that).

I never claimed to be stating a belief system that works for society as a whole. I've made the point, emphatically I thought, that laws are all nice and dandy, but it will always come down to the individual to decide the difference between good and evil, and that laws are ultimately secondary. There have been unjust laws, there have been evil laws. There have been great laws. Laws merely mean something is legal; their proponents are the ones who will always claim that they are righteous as well. I don't rely on legal definitions to decide for myself what is right and wrong. I use them to know what will get me a jail sentence and what won't. There's a big difference.

What will you do then, if you are hit by that arbitrariness you wish for?

By placing the responsibility on the individual to decide their own morality and ethics, you are forced to accept that their belief is sacred, to them at least. And you will be forced to fight if you don't agree. Yes, I'm advocating the law of the jungle. Is it the most enlightened view? No. But I think it's truer to who we are; the dissembling and obfuscation of these moral and ethical arguments is just cover for the fact we believe, and we disagree, so now what? I'm in favor of cutting the BS. I believe in relativism; but it's gotten to the point where people believe in it so strongly that they ignore the REAL impact of the things and they blithely say "it's not that simple." I think it's just a dodge to avoid the visceral reaction it deserves, to not seem like the warmongers many of us despise. Be real. That shit is wrong, and someone who lives "just to inflict the pain on your people that you have inflicted on mine" is evil in my book, regardless of race, creed or color. They don't need a court hearing, they need a lethal dose of exactly what they are peddling; unflinching belief.

It's almost like a bad episode of Law and Order, to tell the truth. Killer A says he killed for an ostensibly non-criminal reason. Prosecution says reasons rarely justify the ends. Defense says Killer A had a good reason and therefore shouldn't be sentenced to the maximum extent. As if the only killers we should be worried about are the ones that do it for no reason at all.

You sure about that? Depictions of human figures in a mosque are a big no-no.

I was unaware of that stricture, I thought it was just the Prophet. It wasn't technically a mosque--more like a shelled out building with tile work that they hand painted, and where they chose to worship. I'm not sure if that makes it a mosque...but yes, the video did show somewhat abstracted human figures.

Guys, I'm going to encourage you read what I'm actually saying before defaulting to "zomg he's bashing Muslims and Islam!" Big letters for everyone.

If I'd had a relevant, recent Christian example to give, I would have.

[DJ]

Depictions of humans for purposes of worship is considered idolatry and is strictly forbidden. Mosques are places of worship, so it's a no go. A fair deal of Muslims think that any depiction of Mohammed, even a completely secular one, is an affront to Islam, because he as a prophet is prone to becoming an object of idolatry. Mind you, there's a fair deal of depictions of him from medieval Islamic countries, the strictness of this rule varied through time.

[nenjin]

Being extremists, I'm sure they've re-written the rules to suit their needs. Again, I don't know if the people in the camp called it a Mosque. If it was just a building where suicide bombers hang out before they die, then it's probably *kosher*.

And for those of you questioning the validity of what I watched....please. Grow up. I'm not here to win points on the Internet. Nor am I saying I was all "Great job guys!" with Guantanamo, Abu-Grahb (sp?), clandestine detention centers, torture and all that. But as some of you are so fond of saying "Gosh...it's just not that simple."

You know what, just for shits and giggles, let's try something that's politically charged in a different way. Mexican drug traffickers on the US border. Decapitating people, dumping bodies in town, gun battles in the street, using kids as drug mules, the 15-year-old who got shot this week by US border patrol, kidnappings and ransom of everyone from civilians to judges to politicians, gruesome torture.....are there 'extenuating circumstances' for those guys? An 'alternative perspective we need to consider'? Is that evil, or just run of the mill, gray drug dealing? Is that close enough to home for you guys to have a real opinion about it?

[Duuvian]

Sure. The border guard screwed up in an evil way in shooting a young man for throwing stones and then his boss screwed up even more in my eyes for claiming that it was justified, and most of the South manages to make themselves evil by extension by congratulating them like it was something to be proud of. Guns>rocks, even the biggest ones, to such a degree that it's inexcusable. The Mexicans are fully justified in my eyes in requesting a criminal trial. The last thing we need is a bunch of wannabe cowboys shooting up teenagers for relatively minor infractions. This one is actually pretty obvious to me. I'm sure we've all had rocks thrown at us before, we either moved out of the way or received minor injuries. We didn't go for our rifle and blast the nearest person. So why didn't the cowboy pull back if it was such a dangerous situation requiring deadly force? The man on the ground is worth shooting a 15 year old?

EDIT: Also, nenjin the only reason I doubted your original quote was because evidence had arrived that made it less certain. It wasn't a personal attack on you, I was just trying to explore your quote because you could have been misinformed and that's the way it sounded to me after a major taboo in Islam was apparently violated judging from the info given me. I was mostly annoyed at the joke Josephus made so I apologize if that annoyance bled into my wording about your quote. I'd like to edit my previous post to change the part about possibly being made up to possibly misinformed, with your permission.

[nenjin]

S'ok. Were I sourcing to the fullest, I would link you guys the video. But I'm lazy, and if people are really interested, they should Google it. I'm a habitual night owl, and am always catching Nat Geo documentaries at 3:30, 4am, which is when they run a lot of the politically-themed docs.

[Josephus]

they found a mosque in the heart of their camp. In it, there were painted pictures of a heavenly scene filled with flowers and virgins.

You sure about that? Depictions of human figures in a mosque are a big no-no.

I don't think he said anything about human virgins.

Nice. Implied beastiality. Is there anything that people you don't approve of won't do in your mind to deserve a good killing?

Why, I bet they must be raping your pigs at this very second. Or were you only implying that the women represented on the walls of their suicide shrine are not human?

Nope. If the flowers haven't been pollinated, then they're technically flower virgins.

Besides, pigs are unclean. No good Muslim would go anywhere near pigs.

[Duuvian]

Sure, I'll go for that to avoid an argument starting.. What about the other parts of my post? I wouldn't mind hearing your opinion on my views.

[nenjin]

I more or less agree with you; it was a disproportionate response, despite the fact it's looking like the kid was a known, caught and released trafficker for the cartel. Whether he should be given over to the Mexican authorities.......I'm not sure. It will be ugly, either way.

I guess I'm just looking to see if anyone sees some moral relativism going on there, with regards to what's happening on the border.

Comparing two situations which are equally horrific but have different context and historical background.

They're both evil, traffickers and extremists, not necessarily for what they believe but for what they do and how they express their beliefs. As much as I have sympathized with what many Muslim countries have been through...I'm getting less and less tolerant as the zealots get more and more extreme. In many ways the cartels and the extremists are very alike. They deal drugs. They murder. They torture. They kidnap. They're indiscriminate. Only the Taliban claims a political/religious/justice motive.

What if Mexican Cartels declared semi-independence tomorrow? (They probably could, if they wanted.) Is that an evil we'd need to stamp out immediately before it took hold, or are there moral/ethical considerations there? (And not the ones involved in the Bush doctrine...that's a whole 'nother thread.) I guess what I'm asking is: why is it that extremists still get the benefit of neutral treatment, when cartels on the border are almost as dangerous and violent,  and can and will probably be executed when law enforcement gets around to it? Because they have a slightly better reason?

[Duuvian]

That's an excellent point. I personally try to examine all the sides viewpoints before I make a decision. To me, the Mexican drug war isn't anything besides a civil war fought over the right to sell a product that will enable a person to make incredible amounts of money while harming others. Note that I am talking about drugs other than pot, I believe that's entirely different from Cocaine or Heroin. I read in Yahoo news that 23,000 Mexicans have died due to the drug war. Even if the cartels are doing most of the murdering, the government is directly to blame by arresting/killing the main bosses who are able to keep violence comparatively in check through intimidation and by having a recognized and respected power structure. Once the leaders are gone, struggles for leadership and also attacks on rival gangs increase due to the power balance being shifted by a lack of a leader on one or both sides to keep strife in the gang down and also to present an organized front to the competition. My theory is the government knew this; because I know this; and did it anyways in the belief that the people would rally behind them. Unfortunately, massive corruption in local government, young people witnessing crime bosses become wealthy from dirt, and also the simple fact that the drug dealers produced better music and participated in Mexican culture as civilians rather than police or soldiers has swayed many Mexicans to the cartel's side. Also, the massive death toll that I'd assume is not added to entirely by gang members, and which can be tied to Felipe Calderon's decision to target cartel leaders, probably helps as well. It makes me wonder if he believes the benefits of weapons, helicopters, and money he received from Bush was worth starting a civil war in his country. I'd say from his recent criticism's of American policy that yahoo claims is a sign of his growing need to boost his poll numbers by turning on the country many Mexican's blame for the whole fiasco that the answer is, eh probably not.

Now, what I would do if I inherited this mess is look for an honest, intelligent gangster who is fed up with the feuding and who knows you make ever so much more money when people aren't being killed left and right and bloodying up the place. A Luchiano rather than a Capone, if you will. If they were to support him in taking over, a treaty could be organized and perhaps he could be made into a section of the government. If this is the case I'd suggest finding someone who never got into the Cocaine and Heroin trade, since while a wise dealer never samples the wares drug dealers are not known for their wisdom. I'd suggest a (former?) marijuana dealer, since he would know the way things work in an underground society better than the politicians who caused this whole mess, while being able to enjoy being a popular folk hero/businessman who never surrendered to the temptation of truly evil money like so many others. Also, I believe pot would have to be legalized for this to work, or else the stigma would still be too strong.

Thoughts on this? I certainly think it's a more feasible suggestion than "Kill 'em all" that the yahoo news trolls enjoy in various forms.

[Phmcw]

This is a foreseeable consequence of the American's stance on drug, combined with American social policy.
A lot of very poor poeple, traditionally consumer of drugs, with no unemployment fee, and very low minimal salary, thus strongly attracted by Illegal activities, lead to a strong demand for drug, at high price given the risks.
That have completely destabilized Mexico, whose drug cartel grew incredibly powerful.
Solutions : change the drug and social policy in America in order to ruin the cartels.

[nenjin]

No amount of lobbying is going to get the American government to change its stance on several Schedule 1 drugs like Cocaine and Heroin. And unfortunately, that's where their money is made.

[RAM]

Then get them to change their stance on desperate people...

[Sir Pseudonymous]

they found a mosque in the heart of their camp. In it, there were painted pictures of a heavenly scene filled with flowers and virgins.

You sure about that? Depictions of human figures in a mosque are a big no-no.

I don't think he said anything about human virgins.

Nice. Implied beastiality. Is there anything that people you don't approve of won't do in your mind to deserve a good killing?

If I remember correctly, the "virgins" they're promised aren't humans, they're celestial spirits (they're supposed to be androgynous too, if I remember correctly). The specific name for them escapes me at the moment.

[Phmcw]

Yet ... wtf.
And for another good news, http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/07/wired-and-adrian-lam.html
Apparently, violating human right of enemy fighter is not enough.
Freedom of speech and transparency are next.