Al Qaeda preparing for nuclear attack on the United States
- Thread starter progunner1957
- Start date
It largely depends on whether you truly believe that the "whole" quietly and tacitly supports the actions of that "minority" yet maintains a public face that ...condemns it.
I think it is easy to suspect that, since there are not "peaceful muslims" LOUDLY condemning the actions of islam's terrorist "minority," the rest of them are sitting there in quiet satisfaction every time someone strikes a blow for allah.
Am I the only one who notices that whenever there is a terrorist attack attributable to muslims, the non-muslim world has to pull teeth to get the supposedly peaceful muslim majority to condemn it?
Hint: It's because they actually don't.
-blackmind
shootinstudent
New member
Did you form this view based on hours of studying the Muslim world, reading newspapers from Islamic countries, etc?
Here's a good starting place on radicalism:
http://www.meforum.org/article/14
Marko Kloos
Inactive
shootinstudent,
don't waste your breath. After 9/11, we had the same outcry of "why don't we hear moderate Muslim condemnations of terrorism?", and I replied in a post that had hundreds of links in it. The moderate Muslims have issued plenty of condemnations of terrorism, and it only takes about ten seconds to find them with Google.
But you know what I heard in return more than once? "Well, that's what they say publically. Who knows what they are really saying behind closed doors in their mosques?"
To those whose minds are made up, no contradictory evidence is good enough. Some people's minds are just barely big enough to sort people in two categories: us, and them. They need an easy-to-identify devil, one that doesn't make you hurt your head with trying to understand all those pesky differences. Sunni, Shi'a, Sufis, Wahhabis, who cares, they're all the same: blood-thirsty towelheads hell-bent on raping our women and destroying our way of life. Just like all Christians are just like Eric Rudolph.
don't waste your breath. After 9/11, we had the same outcry of "why don't we hear moderate Muslim condemnations of terrorism?", and I replied in a post that had hundreds of links in it. The moderate Muslims have issued plenty of condemnations of terrorism, and it only takes about ten seconds to find them with Google.
But you know what I heard in return more than once? "Well, that's what they say publically. Who knows what they are really saying behind closed doors in their mosques?"
To those whose minds are made up, no contradictory evidence is good enough. Some people's minds are just barely big enough to sort people in two categories: us, and them. They need an easy-to-identify devil, one that doesn't make you hurt your head with trying to understand all those pesky differences. Sunni, Shi'a, Sufis, Wahhabis, who cares, they're all the same: blood-thirsty towelheads hell-bent on raping our women and destroying our way of life. Just like all Christians are just like Eric Rudolph.
I'm not presuming to answer for Zekewolf, just myself.
I think that a point can be reached in a conflict between cultures where you get pushed to a wall and can no longer differentiate between the evil people among the other culture and the good/innocent ones.
If you try to surgically strike against the evil ones who occasionally poke their heads out and do you grievous harm, you may get some of them, occasionally. And there will be more hiding and waiting, and eventually they'll sting you again -- possibly in a huge way. But you'll never get them all.
When you get fed up with getting hurt all the time by this hiding evil faction, you might then look to the idea that since they are indistinguishable from the others, the evil faction themselves are responsible for your need to just go off wholesale against that entire population -- just for your own survival. The evil faction that uses the good faction for cover is then really the group culpable for what they forced you to do.
So yeah, there is an argument that -- in the context of the thread starter, for cryin' out loud, in which "they" have struck inside our borders with a freakin' NUKE -- we would have to just identify anything islamic and bomb the giblets out of it, in order to ensure our own survival.
And at that time, since it is recognized that the majority of the threat is islamic males, and some islamic women, the first and largest groups upon which to crack down would be those. In this country, any of them would be suspect. Outside this country, any of them would be suspect. To play a ninny game of "it's not fair to target them just because they're muslim... tha-tha-that's profiling! *gasp!* is just stupid. "Hey, let's be so PC that it exposes us to continued danger from a group that wants to kill us, but which we don't want to offend.
-blackmind
marko kloos said:
Contradictory evidence would be ACTION, not pathetically shallow words and expressions of regret and remorse. Your dismissal that the "public condemnation" could not possibly be a fraud and a smokescreen is ignorant. You act as though it is not at all considerable that they're just paying us lip service.
How about you, in your wisdom, tell us the magic secret to how we are going to identify and ferret out the evil muslims who would nuke us if they got the chance, from the good-hearted sweet muslims who just live by the letter of the koran (which tells them to kill infidels any way they can).
While we are on the subject of sunni, shia, sufi, wahhabi... I find it striking that these factions are animalistic against each other, and not just non-muslims.
I read a story the other day where they said that islamic factions had been beating up "the other kind" of muslims even in Guantanamo! They act as animals, fueled with islam-inspired abject hatred of anyone who does not worship the exact same way that they do. They cannot and will not behave as civilized human beings, and will always be a danger -- if the evidence they present lately is to be understood. When they cannot even be peaceful among other muslims, how can anyone expect they will ever live in peace among atheists, protestants, jews, catholics...?
To hear you tell it, they're all saints.
-blackmind
Marko Kloos
Inactive
There are one billion Muslims in the world. (The majority of Muslims aren't even Arabs.) 99% of the world's Muslims neither want to kill us, nor are they actively engaged in trying to do so.
Do you consider it reasonable to "bomb the giblets" out of those 99% in order to get the 1% of violent radical extremists among them?
This has nothing to do with "political correctness", or any other such nonsense. It has to do with basic principles, and whether your conscience and morals permit the killing of 99 innocent people so you can get the one bad guy in their midst. Now, whether the innocents oppose the one bad guy, are indifferent towards him, or silently support him, the fact remains that they have not done you an iota of harm, and their stance towards the bad guy in their midst has absolutely no bearing on your right (or the lack thereof) to visit harm on those 99.
That's not PC, that's called "having a moral backbone". If we start using the methods of the terrorists and just declare all infidels legitimate targets, then we are not any better than they are.
Ever hear a fundamentalist Baptist call Catholicism "devil worship"? The different factions of Christianity dislike each other worse than they do the non-believers, so that phenomenon is not unique to Islam. At one point in the not-so-distant past, they killed each other over who was the One True Faith, and they did so for centuries...in Northern Ireland, they did so until quite recently, bombings and all.
That's not what I think at all. I am merely pointing out that my moral code does not permit me the murder of 99 innocents to get at one guilty, and neither does it permit me to justify the same by saying, "well, they had it coming by not speaking up."
shootinstudent
New member
There I think Marko has it covered.
blackmind, what's happening is that you are continuing to assume that, because there are some muslim terrorists, all of them must behave that way. Judging a billion people based on the population at Guantanamo is tantamount to judging all Americans based on the unabomber.
The islamic world is not a bloodthirsty mass of people in turbans, but you don't know that, because you do not know anything about the islamic world. How you managed to convince yourself that you know what "they" are doing and thinking is beyond me.
marko kloos said:
I don't agree.
If it could be shown that that silent majority is giving aid and comfort to the enemy that is actively trying to kill us, that establishes that they are then, for lack of a better term, a "passive enemy." If they are funneling money and arms to our enemy, they are our enemy. If they are giving our enemy food and shelter, they are our enemy. Indifference is one thing; opposition is one thing; silent support is very different from those, and yes, I do believe that it makes them our enemy.
If the majority makes it easy, deliberately, for the enemy to conceal himself in among the population, then the majority is aiding the enemy, and making it more difficult for us to protect ourselves from him. You may ask what business we have going into their population to find him and eliminate him, and my answer is that the alternative is to wait for him to eliminate himself among OUR innocent population via suicide bomb.
Why don't you ask yourselves, when you try to liken us to being "no better than they are," when the last time an AMERICAN partisan walked into a mall or up to a police barracks and detonated a bomb to kill innocent people was.
We ARE better than they are, even if we end up having to use all-out tactics to get at them, because WE know that once we have eliminated those who threaten us, we don't continue to just slaughter for the hell of it.
It's like when people say that "violence begets violence." That's bunk. If I am accosted by a violent attacker, and I shoot and kill him, I don't continue off shooting and attacking people as though this were a domino setup. The violence stops with me as soon as I use violence to halt the violence being used against me. There's no chain reaction. The chain stops with the person whose nature is such that he uses violence only as a defense.
-blackmind
Marko Kloos
Inactive
Your analogy does not hold water. You have the right to shoot the violent attacker, but you have no right to shoot innocent bystanders, even if your attacker is hiding among them, and regardless of their attitudes towards you or the attacker, as long as they are not actively using violence against you.
Do you wear the robes, Heist? You certainly do make yourself seem holier than I am.
The only place where I used an epithet -- "towelhead" -- was used in an example of what I felt would be the likely response of a large number of people if islamic terrorists detonated a nuclear bomb on U.S. soil.
You can accuse me of being shrill and bigoted and blah blah blah all you want. I am not bigoted. I judge people based on what they do and what they say. If I see evidence that muslims are hateful, religio-fascists, I dislike them for it. If they ceased to be that, and demonstrated that they can get along with the rest of the good peoples in the world, that would be fine. But they are not doing that. Observing this fact does not make me a bigot, any more than attempting to show that there are muslims who are not wearing bombs in markets makes you an islamic-terrorist sympathizer.
-blackmind
The only place where I used an epithet -- "towelhead" -- was used in an example of what I felt would be the likely response of a large number of people if islamic terrorists detonated a nuclear bomb on U.S. soil.
You can accuse me of being shrill and bigoted and blah blah blah all you want. I am not bigoted. I judge people based on what they do and what they say. If I see evidence that muslims are hateful, religio-fascists, I dislike them for it. If they ceased to be that, and demonstrated that they can get along with the rest of the good peoples in the world, that would be fine. But they are not doing that. Observing this fact does not make me a bigot, any more than attempting to show that there are muslims who are not wearing bombs in markets makes you an islamic-terrorist sympathizer.
-blackmind
You know what? I probably am, robes or no robes.
Got any more genocidal rants to go on?
Even though you strike me as a person with average or reasonable intelligence, you carefully ignore every contradictory point that Mr. Kloos brings up. I guess some perspectives just can't be countered with adult logic and reasoning.
Got any more genocidal rants to go on?
Even though you strike me as a person with average or reasonable intelligence, you carefully ignore every contradictory point that Mr. Kloos brings up. I guess some perspectives just can't be countered with adult logic and reasoning.
Blackmind's words are just the reformulated slogans of centuries of genocidists.
It doesn't matter who we're talking about, or why. The 'guility by association' thinking gets extended to whatever group is politically convenient: Blacks, Jews, Catholics, Irish, Moor, Kurd, Mormon, Slav, Mexican, Protestant, Italian, whatever. There's always some "knowledgable" bigot available to inform us all which genetic, national or religious affiliation is to blame for whatever ails us.
I would like to live in an age where the majority is immune to that kind of blind stupidity.
Curious about something? - read, or go to school.
Forming an opinion? - think first. Be critical of all points of view.
Have to make a decision? - be aware of your own prejudices and make the right decision, not the most comfortable one.
It doesn't matter who we're talking about, or why. The 'guility by association' thinking gets extended to whatever group is politically convenient: Blacks, Jews, Catholics, Irish, Moor, Kurd, Mormon, Slav, Mexican, Protestant, Italian, whatever. There's always some "knowledgable" bigot available to inform us all which genetic, national or religious affiliation is to blame for whatever ails us.
I would like to live in an age where the majority is immune to that kind of blind stupidity.
Curious about something? - read, or go to school.
Forming an opinion? - think first. Be critical of all points of view.
Have to make a decision? - be aware of your own prejudices and make the right decision, not the most comfortable one.
I would say a bigot is anyone that lumps whole groups of people together under one, simple, convenient little label.
Since there are really bad folks in every race, creed and color.....that can't "get along" with others (congress comes to mind
)
So I guess we all need to "go"
Since there are really bad folks in every race, creed and color.....that can't "get along" with others (congress comes to mind
)So I guess we all need to "go"
As has been said, the same stuff that happened after the planes operation, but on a larger scale. There would also be ecological consequences.
Absolutely. It's the logical extension of all the previous attacks. The real question is why it hasn't happened already.
Unlikely. The operation would be the most important in the history of al Qaeda, and consequently CIA operatives and analysts would have picked up a large amount of chatter through the various communications channels that they monitor, just as they did before the planes operation. They might not know exactly what was being planned, but they'd know that it was something big, and this time they would be much more rigorous in their investigation. We'd probably have heard about it.
Absolutely. If not, they can make one here.
None.
Nope, I just don't care enough.
One important thing to remember is that nuclear devices are not all the same. A fizzled weapon could create a blast in the sub-ton range, equivalent to a very large truck bomb, while a well-constructed Teller-Ulam device of reasonable size could have a yield in the low megaton range. Remember, constructing a primitive nuclear weapon is the easiest thing in the world. Constructing a good one is among the most difficult.
Perhaps this is why it hasn't happened yet. Al Qaeda operatives undoubtedly know that working in the U.S. would become much more difficult in the wake of even the smallest nuclear attack. Perhaps they have access to smaller nuclear weapons but they're waiting until they can get a very high yield warhead (megaton range) that can level the entire New York metropolitan area instead of just a section of the city.
Anyone with a few hundred grand can build a gun type, low efficiency device of a few kilotons. You'd need some thorium and/or depleted uranium, a fusor or other neutron source, maybe a centrifuge or two, some explosives, a detonator, plus safety equipment for handling radioactive materials (unless your don't care about your own life). It couldn't fail. So there must be some reason that it hasn't already been done.