Quote by RainOfStarsWell,
we are kind of off topic here. Hope SilentMasamune won't mind.
Anyway, I prefere to think it is the US government's own fault for intervien with the middle east. US is always
trying to gain control of that place for its oil. Now, it pays for its actions. I agree that terrorism is a way of life.
It is a tendency for Muslims (no offense to anyone). It is just the way the religion goes.
I doubt he'll mind - he got in on it a bit after this quote, after all ^_^
You have a point about the US gov't though. Cheney & Halliburton anyone? I know that's a bit too
conspiriacy-theoretical for most, but Rumsfeld, Cheney, that whole little clique of neo-cons have been itching to get
into the middle east for 20 years. I can't say why, it could be oil, munitions, a misguided desire to bring
US-style democracy to the region (yeah, who'd believe that?), whatever. But they've been pushing it for
ages.
It's not just Muslims - the Catholic Church were just as bad, if not worse, during the Crusades. Similar to that
being a domniant group & tarnishing Christianity as a whole, the majority of Muslims are normal, it's just a
bunch of whackjobs who are ruining it for the rest. Personally I think the ones who are doing it for Allah are being
mislead by the ones doing it for an ideology in many cases.
Quote by SilentMasamuneThe war is endless only because people learned that
violence will solve their problems
[...]
people these days don't think as much as they used to back in the past, and that is why there's so much
conflict going on, and the use of guns to solve problems today is much more frequently used than in the past. However,
there is not a thing that's being solved. The only thing happening is the provoking of more and more violence, and
therefore, it has become one of our means of attempting to solve something, as if we've been manipulated by these
cliches.
If you eliminated all violence... what then? There'd be no violence to propagate more,
right? Right. But pretty soon, a little kid somewhere would trip in a game, & his peers would realise that if they
pushed each other over, they'd have a better chance themselves. People all over the world would quickly discover
that hurting someone else can give you an edge, & violence would be back. Except for two differences - one, we
wouldn't have our tools to do it, & two, we wouldn't know how to deal with the social phenomenon.
People don't think much these days, & violence is widespread, I'll agree to that. But do you really think
it's worse than in prior times? We're better at avoiding thought, & better at hurting, but it's not
much more than that. There's no fundamental shift in either, they've just become more efficient.
I also think you're putting too much emphasis on cliches. Ideas are powerful, yes, but they're not cliches if
they're having such an effect - a cliche is a phrase or other representation of an idea (or an idea itself, really)
that's so overused it no longer means anything.
Quote by animefreak3About
slaves. I have no evidence of the fact, but I think this social change would not have happened in a vacum. I don't
think the north really cared if it was right or not. I think they did it in the end because it gave them some immediate
rally call to arms to head off other problems.
You're right, to a degree. Go read some history,
a rallying point was a large part of what made Lincoln so adamant. Of course, the war didn't start because of
slavery, one of Lincoln's black friends had a huge part in convincing him. Ah it's more complicated that
this... but suffice to say that it was used to help with the war effort rather than as the cause of the war, & while
that doesn't negate the altruism & basic humanity of the gesture, it does put a dampener on the whole 'the
north fought a WAR for the blacks!' argument that pops up all the time.
Quote by animefreak3Oh, it
was the US who destroyed it. You need to read up on your history. I saw before, and after photos. It was beautiful
before the Russian armies arrived. Then the Taliban moved in, and set the place back to the 14th century. It was being
destroyed all along. Yet it was the US who's to blame? You are spouting ignorant (un-reasoned)
rhetoric.
All correct, but they haven't made it any worse. Unstable, yes, but that's not
bad when stability was Taliban rule. Maybe now they can get back to before the Russians had their war there. Though to
be honest, Amin's gov't was communist & tried to remove the Muslim traditions of the nation entirely,
which didn't go down well at all with the otherwise modern, yet strongly Muslim populace. He kept arresting leaders
& such. They were already in civil war before the Russians came in & destroyed the place.
