Explosions and Gunfire Reported At Three Locations In Paris

[MajGenl.Meade]

By the way, since you usually like to count these things LJ - third and fourth posts to this thread and the Muslim and immigrant bashing starts. Before even any expressions of concern or sympathy.

I'll refrain from characterizing those posts for the moment. If I can manage to hold myself back....

Don't hold yourself back, Guin. The fourth post was mine. Let's see....

It's a war - you mean it isn't?
Close the borders - France did that (not because I suggested it of course)
Throw 'em all out - your interpretation is "all immigrants and Moslems"???

Well, that certainly would be one way to reduce the number of terrorists swimming like fish in the ocean but it's a bit more radical than I intended.

Here's my Facebook post. "Prayers tonight. For the families. For death for all Islamic terrorists with pork stuffed in their throats. For my evil heart which wants to forget my Savior and revel in loudmouth vengeance"

I'm very much aware of the atavistic (and quite frightening) reactions aroused by horrors like this

[Guinevere]

No thanks Meade. I'm not biting, I'm still too upset. Anger and vengeance won't get us anywhere but caught in the cycle of more anger and more vengeance.

[Guinevere]

Before I go back to sleep - here you go LJ:

[Lord Jim]

I'm glad you put that back Guin....

[MajGenl.Meade]

No thanks Meade. I'm not biting, I'm still too upset. Anger and vengeance won't get us anywhere but caught in the cycle of more anger and more vengeance.

I agree completely.

[Lord Jim]

Anger and vengeance won't get us anywhere but caught in the cycle of more anger and more vengeance.

I quite agree....

We certainly don't need another "cycle of more anger and more vengeance"....

That will accomplish nothing...

What we need, is total annihilation...

We must bring to bear upon these Islamo-fascists, the same grim resolute determination that William Tecumseh Sherman brought to bear on my ancestors...

Death, death, and death again....

[Crackpot]

If there's one milartaristic policy the OT teaches is the folly of "total annihilation".

[wesw]

I feel much as meade does

unfortunately, I think that for once RayThom may be right about something.

if we are going to fight, we should not do it with anger, fighting angry makes you careless.

when I was fighting I always tried to make my opponent as angry as possible, if I had the time. anger makes you reckless and careless and less effective as a fighter.

[Guinevere]

Anger and vengeance won't get us anywhere but caught in the cycle of more anger and more vengeance.

I quite agree....

We certainly don't need another "cycle of more anger and more vengeance"....

That will accomplish nothing...

What we need, is total annihilation...

We must bring to bear upon these Islamo-fascists, the same grim resolute determination that William Tecumseh Sherman brought to bear on my ancestors...

Death, death, and death again....

I was speaking as to Meade and I, for our nation or any other.

And while I agree ISIS is a scourge on the world and need to go, what happens after? What rises fill its place? Taking it down is only cutting the head off the snake, and we know seven more will grow back. What's the plan to take down Medea?

[MajGenl.Meade]

Wow! I completely misread that last word there, Guin! Had the bags half packed before...

[Crackpot]

Depriving the of territory is a start. Attacking funding would be another.

[Econoline]

Right. If Da'esh were deprived of their territory, they could no longer pretend to be "the caliphate" or "the Islamic state".

But we're left with the question I posed several months ago, and still haven't seen adequately addressed: how can you annihilate a religious movement by military means?

[wesw]

oh, so now it s a religious movement?

the scales have fallen from your eyes! thank god!

I don t suppose that any of you still believe that ISIS and their relations are just "a few dozen" extremists who are no threat to us.....

[Econoline]

At this point they're a few tens of thousands (out of more than 1½ billion Muslims), and they pose more of a risk to other Muslims (especially the Shi'a) than they do to the U.S. or Europe. I think I've always thought of Da'esh (or ISIS, or ISIL or IS or the Caliphate, or whatever anyone wants to call them) as a religious movement/sect/cult; as such, it mostly exists in the minds of its followers, so I really don't know how or even if such an entity can be "annihilated".

[MajGenl.Meade]

Lead through the head. Ideas follow.

[BoSoxGal]

Fall of Freshman year in High School I was getting a D in French I, primarily because I'd ditched class too much - the class was right after lunch and we had an open campus. I still regret not learning it better, although I think I would do okay with a few months' immersion.

My French teacher offered me an opportunity to earn extra credit to bring my grade up that term, so I did a huge research report/class presentation on the history of the French colonist Acadians, who later were deported from the Maritimes and migrated to Louisiana, establishing Cajun cultures. It was a spectacular endeavor and I raised my grade from a D to a B by the project alone. This was also when I fell in love with Maine and the Canadian maritimes, having not ever yet actually seen those places.

I learned a ton and became very interested in my family's own French heritage, as Huguenots (Calvinist Protestants) who fled France for Germany in the late 1600s. My dad, a 'proud German' and conservative Republican, wasn't terribly pleased with the proof I presented that we were actually, ethnically, French. He thought only negatively of the French.

I'm very proud of my family's 200-400 years in Germany - my dad's branch of the family emigrated to the US from Berlin in the very late 1800s, and entered the country via Ellis Island - we are proud IMMIGRANTS on that side, and as both of my great-grandfathers were brew masters who worked at the Knickerbocker Brewing Company in NY, thus we contributed very importantly to the skills base of the new homeland.

I'm also very proud that I am, deep down and way back, French. It's a beautiful country, beautiful culture, and my heart is with the people there who are all so terribly effected by this terrorism.

[rubato]

I have to wonder at an organization which is so single mindedly devoted to guaranteeing its own destruction.


The effects of this and all of their other atrocities will only be to harden resistance, enlist more resources and justify the greater use of force in wiping them out. And we can wipe them out as an occupying force in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan (and their sister organizations in Nigeria Somalia &c). We can keep them from re-emerging by guaranteeing honest governments which don't systematically prey on their own people or oppress religious minorities (like The Bush-installed government oppressed the Sunni in Iraq). And we will be greatly helped in all of this by the fact most of the population in the areas they control hates them and wants them dead too.

We can further ensure success by devoting our own energies and money to improving the quality of life in other countries and giving their people a reason to work for a better future for their children.

Isis feeds itself by extorting money at pain of death from the populations they control kidnapping and selling women to be raped by Isis 'fighters'. They do not govern with the consent of the governed, in other words. An insecure situation.




yrs,
rubato

[wesw]

rube, I won t say that I disagree, or agree , with you.

just realize that what you are now saying is akin to world war and will require occupation and control of numerous regions and countries and would require the provision of govt for these areas for the foreseeable future

[Joe Guy]

rube, I won t say that I disagree, or agree , with you.

Were you once William Shatner's acting coach?

[BoSoxGal]