Mosul has fallen

[hornadylnl]

Huh. Like a jihad. Interesting approach.

It's not jihad when when Kirk does it. American superiority and stuff.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Kurds continue to move to block ISIS, make neutrality agreements with militias, and strengthen their hold on what could be the first independent Kurdish state since the Ottoman Empire rolled into town.

BBC News - Could Iraq conflict boost Kurdish dreams of independence?

Hmm, 3 disparate groups, all Muslim, all fighting for different things and with different mandates for the areas they control.

Anyway, I wonder if an independent Kurdish state comes to be if it would become the Israel of the Kurds, drawing the diaspora back in from Turkey, Iran, etc. If so, that'd ease Kurdish/Turkish tensions, which would also be good for the US as they have both traditionally been allies of ours.

 

[Kirk Freeman]

What's better that forcibly changing someones religious beliefs in order to further foreign policy goals?

With all the projection going on, INGO might as well show movies.

Force is YOUR baggage. There's no call to use force. Your projection is causing your eyes to see words that are not there.

Specifically I have called for an effort to reform Islam to avoid violence, but INGO wants to inject it right back in.

Huh. Like a jihad. Interesting approach.

Again, projection. The violence is yours.

Like draining the enemy of his will to fight.

No jihad, no Muslim aggression, no war.

Kirk's state-sponsored religion and Ministry of Propaganda makes the current Republican Party look like small - government types. Thanks for reminding us that it really can get worse.

We have destroyed the religion of our enemies before. We can do it again. Protecting us from foreigners is a legit function of federal government.

I wish to avoid bloodshed. The best way to defeat our enemy is to eliminate his motivation for fighting, which is the duty of jihad. No duty to jihad, no more continual war.

There are reform efforts, however tiny, right now. We should reinforce them and modify Islam so we don't have 19 year olds charging machine guns.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Specifically I have called for an effort to reform Islam to avoid violence, but INGO wants to inject it right back in.
No jihad, no Muslim aggression, no war.

1.6 billion Muslims. Most of them seem to get along just fine without a war of any type. I don't think they need Kirk Freeman to redefine their religion for them.

With all the projection going on, INGO might as well show movies.

Force is YOUR baggage. There's no call to use force. Your projection is causing your eyes to see words that are not there.
...
Again, projection. The violence is yours.

Start killing the terrorists instead of wanting to hug them.

Yup, gosh, where would we have gotten the idea that your plan calls for violence. Apparently up this point in your mind, we simply haven't been violent enough. Drone strikes killing thousands and the invasion of two countries resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths, all that was just hugs. We really need to step up our game and start killing some people. No, I'm pretty sure we've been killing terrorists (and non-terrorists) and at a pretty good clip.

The ultimate irony in this coming from you is if that we have to do all this so we can "be safe." The ends justify the means. However your whole job is to get accused criminals back on the street as fast as possible. If you can get key evidence excluded from court, you consider it your duty to do so. If they have to plead, you'll argue by any means necessary that the sentence should be as light as possible, that the plea should call for as little time segregated from society as possible. Then you'd consider it unethical to even consider the safety of the community.

So, in short, Kirk, tell me where this is wrong:

If Kirk believes you killed someone because of your religion, its a five step program that involves everyone in your religion, even those who have nothing to do with the crime and believe your acts are repulsive, and assassinations for those who don't go along with the program. "Until we rid ourselves of the threat of jihad we shall never be safe."

If Kirk believes you killed someone for their wallet or because the voices in your head say so, then its his job to get you back on the street as soon as possible. Any attempt on his part to get rid of the threat caused by that guy is unethical.

Given that I'm in much more danger from a local criminal than a regional terrorist on the other side of the world, maybe Indiana would be a bit safer if you'd switch your model.

 

[KG1]

Huh. Like a jihad. Interesting approach.

Does'nt it seem curious to you why "Ms. Adam's Apple's" comment sounds exactly like a jihad? Could it be because she said it that way purposely to make a point about the act of jihad itself?

 

[Destro]

Thanks for reminding us that it really can get worse.

Im reminded daily of the dangers inherent in the Tyranny of the Few thanks to INGO.

 

[jamil]

Which is virtually NEVER.

Been there a number of times....it's a sh$t hole.

Lived there for 6 years. You're dead wrong.

Well, one person's **** hole is another person's paradise.

 

[hornadylnl]

1.6 billion Muslims. Most of them seem to get along just fine without a war of any type. I don't think they need Kirk Freeman to redefine their religion for them.








Yup, gosh, where would we have gotten the idea that your plan calls for violence. Apparently up this point in your mind, we simply haven't been violent enough. Drone strikes killing thousands and the invasion of two countries resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths, all that was just hugs. We really need to step up our game and start killing some people. No, I'm pretty sure we've been killing terrorists (and non-terrorists) and at a pretty good clip.

The ultimate irony in this coming from you is if that we have to do all this so we can "be safe." The ends justify the means. However your whole job is to get accused criminals back on the street as fast as possible. If you can get key evidence excluded from court, you consider it your duty to do so. If they have to plead, you'll argue by any means necessary that the sentence should be as light as possible, that the plea should call for as little time segregated from society as possible. Then you'd consider it unethical to even consider the safety of the community.

So, in short, Kirk, tell me where this is wrong:

If Kirk believes you killed someone because of your religion, its a five step program that involves everyone in your religion, even those who have nothing to do with the crime and believe your acts are repulsive, and assassinations for those who don't go along with the program. "Until we rid ourselves of the threat of jihad we shall never be safe."

If Kirk believes you killed someone for their wallet or because the voices in your head say so, then its his job to get you back on the street as soon as possible. Any attempt on his part to get rid of the threat caused by that guy is unethical.

Given that I'm in much more danger from a local criminal than a regional terrorist on the other side of the world, maybe Indiana would be a bit safer if you'd switch your model.

70 million killed in WW2 and Kirk could have interpretive danced the religion of the nazis and Japanese away. Only if he'd been born a couple generations earlier.

 

[jamil]

Which is virtually NEVER.

Been there a number of times....it's a sh$t hole.

AND finally................... In before some obama apologist comes in here and claims that just because they are alqaeda does not mean they are terrorists.

You called that one. The obama sack suck commenced not long after. Went on for pages.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

70 million killed in WW2 and Kirk could have interpretive danced the religion of the nazis and Japanese away. Only if he'd been born a couple generations earlier.

I'm looking into the claim that we altered the Japanese religion as a condition of peace now. My WWII knowledge is limited at best, and what I do know focuses outside of the Japanese and the Pacific theater.

Looking into it, though:

No mention of it in the official surrender treaty:

Featured Document: Japanese Surrender Document

The "Declaration of Humanity" is apparently what Kirk is referencing, and doesn't appear to be that clear cut.

Humanity Declaration - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Critics of the Western interpretation, including the Emperor himself,[SUP][3][/SUP] argue that the repudiation of divinity was not the point of the rescript. Since this rescript starts with a full quote from the Five Charter Oath of 1868 by the Meiji Emperor, the Emperor's true intention was that Japan had already been democratic since the Meiji Era and was not democratised by the occupiers. As was clarified at a press interview of 23 August 1977, the Emperor wanted the Japanese people not to forget pride in Japan. This interpretation is confirmed by the fact that the imperial rescript was published with a commentary byPrime MinisterKijūrō Shidehara that dwelt exclusively on the prior existence of democracy in the Meiji Era and did not make even passing reference to the emperor's "renunciation of divinity"

Japan's Emperor - A Mortal Man - NYTimes.com

When the American military high command in Tokyo in 1945 suggested that Emperor Hirohito renounce his divinity, the Emperor was bemused. ''I have never considered myself a god,'' he said, ''nor have I attempted to arrogate to myself the powers of a divine being.''

But let's assume it is clear cut. Did the change stick?

Japan's revisionists turn emperor into a god once more | World news | The Guardian

The Japanese emperor's godlike status has not changed since the second world war, according to a new exhibit at the country's most popular war museum.
The slick, Shinto-oriented rewrite of history at the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo denies that Emperor Hirohito renounced his divinity in 1946, as most westerners and Japanese believe....

"The occupation forces tried to sever the bond between the emperor and the Japanese people," it says. "They widely advertised the new year statement as the 'emperor's declaration of humanity', but in actuality the emperor had done no more than to announce a return to the principles stated in Emperor Meiji's [1868] charter oath."Shinto, Japan's biggest religion, has 110 million registered worshippers but few Japanese worship the emperor. However, Daisuke Takahashi, a Yasukuni priest, said: "Since the war, the view of the emperor has changed in society, but within Shinto it is the same as before: his ancestors are from the world of gods so he is a divine being."

Interesting. Perhaps something to add to the reading pile one day.

 

[kiddchaos]

it's called hypocrisy. and we believe.
[www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUcQnl6zdkE]



So who's cutting the ISIS checks?

 

[mrjarrell]

Looks like they've decided they need to take a stand and fight. The regular troops have been bolstered by the militias and the Kurds and they're not running. Let's hope they can start to push them back.

BBC News - Iraq conflict: Sunni militant push on Baghdad 'halted'

 

[BehindBlueI's]

BBC News - Is this the end of Iraq?

Is it all about religion?

For more than 1,000 years, Iraq has served as a battleground for many of the events that have defined the schism between Sunni and Shia Muslims.


In recent decades, the dominance of Iraq's minority Sunni Arabs and their persecution of the Shia majority only served to stoke sectarian tensions.
The overthrow of Saddam Hussein gave the Shia an opportunity to seek redress.
Though religious divisions have been a major catalyst of the violence, many argue that blaming sectarianism alone overstates the case.
Ethnic conflict has contributed to the instability, with Kurds and Arabs both claiming control of oil-rich Kirkuk.
Political groups have also played an important role, with Iraqis subscribing to a broad spectrum of ideologies and affiliations.

• ISIS has exploited the standoff between the Iraqi government and the minority Sunni Arab community, which complains that Shia Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is monopolising power

Seems like some pretty secular concerns for the fighting.

 

[KG1]

BBC News - Is this the end of Iraq?






Seems like some pretty secular concerns for the fighting.

I would venture to say that it's both. You have the secular struggle for things like control over resources and you have a religious power struggle over Sharia dominance which is the major stumbling block to western goals of a secular democracy based on an American style Constitution.

That is the difference between post war Japan and our failed efforts so far in Afganistan and Iraq.

I think that's where Kirk's argument of pushing reforms of the religion of Islam from one of violent militancy as being the key to success comes in.

 

[Kirk Freeman]

70 million killed in WW2 and Kirk could have interpretive danced the religion of the nazis and Japanese away.

No, we ordered them to renounce their religions and they did.

American reformation of German religion: Denazification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

American reformation/recodification of Emperor Worship: BBC - Religions - Shinto: Divinity of the Emperor

We also ended the religion of the USSR and the USSR fell apart without a single shot fired by us.

We must subdue the enemy without fighting. The path to this victory lies in reordering Islam.

 

[hornadylnl]

No, we ordered them to renounce their religions and they did.

American reformation of German religion: Denazification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

American reformation/recodification of Emperor Worship: BBC - Religions - Shinto: Divinity of the Emperor

We also ended the religion of the USSR and the USSR fell apart without a single shot fired by us.

We must subdue the enemy without fighting. The path to this victory lies in reordering Islam.

You're right. The 400,000+ American men and women who died fighting WW2 had nothing to do with our ability to issue any such order. We simply gave such orders and our enemies threw down their weapons and complied.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

American reformation/recodification of Emperor Worship: BBC - Religions - Shinto: Divinity of the Emperor

From your own article:

The Japanese concept of the divinity of the Emperor is often misunderstood by Westerners. Neither the Emperor nor most of his people ever thought that the Emperor was a God in the sense of being a supernatural supreme being.

It's been suggested that the divinity of the Emperor was one of the central tenets of the Meiji restoration but this isn't true; none of the official Meiji documents actually declare that the Emperor was kami or god.
The divine status of the Emperor did become a general assumption during World War II, but as a vital element of the Japanese patriotic understanding of themselves as a nation rather than a theological reality.

During the 1930s there were some who taught that the Emperor was akitsu mikami ('manifest god') a human being in which the property of kami nature was perfectly revealed, but they qualified this by saying that the Emperor was neither omniscient or omnipotent......When the Emperor gave up his divinity on the orders of the USA, in the Imperial rescript of January 1 1946, he in fact gave up nothing that he had ever had, but simply restated an earlier traditional set of beliefs about the Imperial family.

The end of divinity

The article you link to in order to bolster your position seems to do the opposite. Claiming that Nazism or Communism are religions stretches the word beyond any recognized use, and isn't worthy of a place in the debate.

We must subdue the enemy without fighting. The path to this victory lies in reordering Islam.

Which ignores two critical facts. One is that the vast vast majority of Muslims lead peaceful lives without your "reordering" so perhaps the root of the issue isn't "un-reordered Islam" to start with. If you recall from the reading you said you did, Germany attempted to revive "Jihad" as a method of recruiting Arabs against the British occupation of Egypt. What were the results? Did an outsider "reordering" work? Two is the multitude of secular reasons for war in the region.

 

[Kirk Freeman]

Germany attempted to revive "Jihad" as a method of recruiting Arabs against the British occupation of Egypt. What were the results?

Himmler's fascination with Islam lead to Bosnian, Azeri and Turkestani SS and Einstatzgruppen units.

Did an outsider "reordering" work?

Almost.

Outsiders ordering the "reordering" of Nazi Germany and Japan worked quite well.

Outsiders bringing down the USSR worked very well indeed.

Claiming that Nazism or Communism are religions stretches the word beyond any recognized use, and isn't worthy of a place in the debate.

Nazism and Communism were religions to those people that lived under them, meeting all elements of religion. We reordered them and they no longer exist.

 

[KG1]

We might as well get out of Iraq and Afganistan because it appears that one key factor is missing. The total dominating victory which destroyed the will of the Japanese and Nazi's to fight that enabled a total societal reformation.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Nazism and Communism were religions to those people that lived under them, meeting all elements of religion. We reordered them and they no longer exist.

That is perhaps one of the most delusional things I've read in this thread to date, and that's saying something. You get the last word, I'm done.