Doomsought
Well-known member
That is because terrorism only became a category in the late 90s. Not because people weren't' getting killed.
Gun Political Issues Megathread. (Control for or Against?)
- Thread starter Free-Stater 101
- Start date
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Now, I'm not a gun guy by any stretch, but my understanding is that using terms like "assault weapon" or "assault-style weapon" are a telltale sign of illiteracy when it comes to firearms? (Branding them "assault rifles" is even worse, I'd think, seeing as civilians are barred from owning fully automatic weapons, save for a handful of hurdle-ridden exceptions.)
DarthOne
☦️
You'd be correct on all counts according to my understanding.
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Thought so, thanks.
Unfortunately, the Right hasn’t had nearly as much success labelling lefty activists and pundits who don’t know basic terminology that can be Googled with the click of a button as the reverse. (e.g.: Demonization of “climate-change deniers” and all that.)
That's because the Right wants to try to 'conserve' society, so they do not play the same word games the Dems do to get their shit though or to rile up the base.
Of course, that refusal is also another tacit admission that the Right doesn't really have any pro-active tactics for the Culture War, only reactive tactics, which is why it keeps losing.
The Right never tries to get ahead of the cultural curve, instead it demands the cultural curve stop bending at all, and when it doesn't the Right loses yet another step to the Left.
We didn't force your governments to import them in the name of diversity - they did that all on their own.As for fucking things up in the Middle East, this wasn't exactly unprovoked, and in one case was actually asked for. But to be honest this talking point is a tired old Leftist one, used to excuse Islamic terrorism and stuff like the rape gangs and other crimes, while also refusing to do anything about it.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Yes, Islam, which spent more than a thousand years trying to invade Europe, and has an explicit religious mandate to conquer the world and subjugate all peoples, forcing conversion or putting them to the sword, totally only started going berserk (again) because the US hit back after 9/11.
It definitely wasn't caused by the soviets invading Afghanistan.
Or what they've done to the Chechens.
Or what the Chinese have been doing to the Uighurs!
Or their religiously (and often ethnically) ingrained hate-boner for Jews.
No, it's definitely because of the US, not for any other reason, because if it was for any other reason, then the Democrats and European leftists wouldn't be able to blame American conservatives, instead muslims might actually be responsible for their own actions!
Gasp!
...More seriously, have you ever actually read any of the Koran? Or lived in Arab/other Muslim cultures?
Harlock
I should have expected that really
Some immigration would likely happen, but remember most of the islamic countries were authoritarian dictatorships which firstly don't like letting people leave, and secondly formed a hard barrier greatly limiting immigrant traffic from countries further into asia and africa.
American adventurism created the immigrant explosion and the massive jump in Islamic extremism, two issues that caught Europe completely by surprise. European immigration laws are pretty damn tough, but those borders are huge and hard to secure. Texas can tell you the same story.
The one country you should have invaded was the country hiding Bin Ladin, which was the entire point of the exercise. You hit the wrong country, then another for reasons, then had to try and bomb Isis which was again your fault. It is spectacular how badly you fucked this up, and you are far enough away you only get traces of it.
There is no excuse for Islamic terror, but there is a reason for it, and a reason why it has reduced since America stopped fucking around as much. So no, Europe shouldn't be telling the US how to handle its gun laws, not their business. But America also needs to understand the responsibility it has for fucking up European security because it didn't stop and think before acting.
You're right. Europe should be securing itself...
Harlock
I should have expected that really
I have read the Koran in highschool, and the Bible which has some choice quotes too.
Facts are facts, America didn't make Islam what it is but it did awaken jihadism and focused it on the west, and then blew up all the dictatorships that had been keeping those immigrants where they belonged.
Why do you think so much of Europe hates you now when they were totally cool with you in the 90s?
This isn't a completely random action, it is cause and effect
It absolutely 100% should, because it has no one else it can rely on
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
I don't know why you started picking up this narrative, but it is completely and utterly wrong.
Also:
That you believe this, tells me you're completely out of touch with reality on the issue.
European immigration laws and culture around those laws is so weak, that there have been active campaigns to keep convicted criminal immigrants from being deported. Other parts of the EU tried to bully Poland into accepting migrants they didn't want. Women have covered up the fact they were raped because they didn't want the migrants to get in trouble. Sweden stopped recording ethnicity in a lot of crimes because the statistics breached the politically correct narrative on migrants and crime.
Islam has never stopped being a militant and violent religion. The radicals aren't a symptom of US adventurism in the Middle East, they're the cause of US adventurism in the Middle East.
How familiar are you with the US's relationship with the House of Saud?
How familiar are you with the US's relationship with Iran before the radicals there took over?
Are you aware that Sadaam Hussein was a largely secular ruler in Iraq?
Now to be fair to you, the utter incompetence of the Obama administration, especially their outright funding of some terrorists, has made a mess of things, like the collapse of Iraq, and Biden has been Obama 2.0 with what happened to Afghanistan, but these are still third-order effects, not the source of radicalism beginning.
Also, if the islamists were to respond to provocation against muslims in general (which they rarely do, and functionally never did before they realized they could use it as political capital in the West), they would have pushed terror campaigns against Russia, not the USA. The US has handled Islam with kid gloves, even after 9/11, while the USSR and Putins Russia have happily just butchered muslims who were causing them problems.
Harlock
I should have expected that really
They have been waging a terrorist campaign against Russia, you are familiar with the theatre and school sieges tied the muslim terror groups? Those are the well known ones but I can pull up others.
Islam has its violence, always has, but this stirred up a hornets nest and because they couldn't hit America itself they went for the next nearest thing.
I mean is it truly your position that the US adventurism in the Middle East was not in any way, shape or form responsible for the simultaneous surge in jihadism or refugees flooding out of those nations and into Europe?
I'm well aware of Wahabbists and the Ayotollahs big old death to America spiel and the Israel connection and so on, but I'd like to know why you seem to think America ganking the Middle East was entirely coincidental to the jump in terrorism and illegal immigration
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Obama engineering the collapse of Iraq and worsening things in Syria, that absolutely played a role in the surge of refugees and 'refugees.'
The surge in muslims travelling into Europe though, is symptomatic of three things. First, rapid modernization making travel much easier and cheaper than it ever was before. Second, information technology giving a lot of chancers a perspective of what life was like in other parts of the world, as well as an idea that they could get a portion of the gibs themselves.
Third, the EU and most European nations' absolute failure to protect their borders and eject illegal and/or unneeded immigrants.
The US didn't issue Angela Merkel's 2015 'all migrants welcome' proclamation. The US didn't open your borders for you then, or in the past when immigrants were being allowed in, even though it was already obvious a decade or two earlier how much of a problem the muslim enclaves were becoming in France, and the Turks in Germany.
If you want to blame the US for what happened under Obama destabilizing things further, that's fair. If you want to claim muslims wouldn't have been trying to gain opportunistic entry to Europe, or engage in terror attacks, if the US hadn't gone into Afghanistan and Iraq, or going back further helped the Saudis and worked against communist encroachment, that is not accurate or fair.
Just look at how muslims in the Indian subcontinent and SE Asia treat Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, etc.
Harlock
I should have expected that really
I blame America for creating the problem, I blame European leaders for not responding effectively to it. Europe fucked up plenty, supporting Obama was a big one, but that doesn't absolve US conservative led adventurism for starting this whole mess and being by far the key element.
Bin Ladin needed to be held to account and his supporters destroyed, but there are ways and means to do that that doesn't kill catastrophic numbers of people and ruin geopolitics across swathes of the world for generations.
That is at America's door, and unfortunately there isn't any way to dodge the responsibility for that. So to tie back to the original point, it is hypocritical to mock Europe for something America created.
Bin Ladin needed to be held to account and his supporters destroyed, but there are ways and means to do that that doesn't kill catastrophic numbers of people and ruin geopolitics across swathes of the world for generations.
That is at America's door, and unfortunately there isn't any way to dodge the responsibility for that. So to tie back to the original point, it is hypocritical to mock Europe for something America created.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
You're treating muslims as subhuman. Stop it.
Harlock
I should have expected that really
I don't really follow?
To put it another way, it's the Titanic. It sank because it had brittle metal, poor rivets, too few life boats, a dozen other things. But the main reason is that big old iceberg, if not for that none of the other factors would be applicable.
That is the analogy, you can talk about Obama making it worse, and Merkel making it worse, but ultimately those wouldn't be a factor without that America shaped iceberg
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Muslims make their own choices. If this was all lashing out against US adventurism, then they would logically be targeting the US primarily.
But it isn't.
They're making their own decisions, just as you and your people have made decisions.
You can say that the Obama administration is responsible for the collapse of Iraq and for worsening the collapse in Syria. You can even say the US at large holds some responsibility for that, for allowing that traitor into the White House.
Each individual muslim has chosen how to respond to those events. Those who went to Europe made that decision. Those who went to Europe and then decided to commit terror attacks against Europeans also made their own decision.
You can fairly say the US bears some responsibility for some of the suffering in Iraq, and even in Syria. That's complicated by the fact that Saddam and his regime also caused a lot of suffering, and Syria was collapsing without US mucking things up.
You cannot fairly say that the US is responsible for a muslim that decides to move to Europe, then decides to commit a terror attack. That's on their head. If they were moving to the US and attacking military bases, you could make some kind of 'action reaction' argument, but that is not what this is.
This is Islam acting as it always does, and doing it in nations foolish enough to be wilfully blind to the nature of Islam, often because they're blinded by their hatred of Christianity.
Harlock
I should have expected that really
Honestly, yeah, I can blame America because it is the cause. Again I have to ask whether you think any of this would have happened without American invasions? I'd also like to remind you Obama was in fact the American president, so his actions are also your responsibility.
Those that could hit America did, here were some terror attacks on US soil but you are nicely insulated with 3,000 miles of ocean. Europe is less fortunate, and if they can't hit America they will go for the allies.
You are right, it is about individual choice, and those choices don't happen in a vacuum. The question is why have those decisions been made? What motivated them? What pushed someone into becoming a terrorist or refugee?
It is easy to imagine you are a normal man in a normal job when suddenly your home is attacked, thousands of your people are killed by a foreign aggressor who attacks for no clear reason and with no regard for the aftermath. The shock and anger can very easily alter what you consider morally acceptable, and as you can probably read between the lines I'm not just referring to the US invasions. The same goes for 9/11 itself, look how many people completely re-evaluated their outlook there, who became far more hardline and motivated to destroy that which hurt them. Go back to Pearl Harbour either.
Everyone has a choice, but why have they been pushed to even make that choice in the first place? What suffering or injustice has guided their decision? What actor has driven them to a place where committing such terrible acts is even on the table?
The critical point becomes, without American actions would those choices be viable for people? Would the situation and circumstances have changed so much that a choice even needed to be made?
it isn't just a Muslim thing, if an enemy attacks you then you still have a choice to act or not, but it is a very different choice to make when you are at war rather than at peace. America created that war and without it there would not have been anywhere near the problems Europe has had to try and often fail to fix.
I quite like America, but you aren't perfect, you do fuck up and you won't improve yourselves if you do not understand and take responsibility for your actions. Same goes for everyone else too, the only reason the US is singled out here is because it was brought up in a tweet.
It is undeniable fact the US invasions were the critical factor and main cause of the surge of Islamic terror in Europe, and many other places too. If you had been more surgical in retaliation I am confident that all of the other factors feeding into terrorism would not have been sufficient to trigger what we historically saw.