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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   20893 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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These terrorist attacks have nothing to do with middle eastern conflicts, although I know leftists are desperate to draw connections between the two in order to say Americans deserve it somehow

Seriously, how does some guy driving a car into a crowd end up being connected to some resistance groups being given guns? If anything the jihadists would be grateful to America, if they weren’t under the influence of a monomaniacal death cult

ISIS wins in Syria and that inspires Jihadists in the west. Just like in Syria unlike under Assad, secular education that respected Christians is replaced by Islamic education, likeminded people become more brazen in the west as well.

There is a connection with helping destroy Christian people in middle east and helping inspire the same fanatics to harm Christian people outside the middle east.

There is also a connection between inviting these kind of people in your country as legal migrants. This terrorist was even an educated person IIIRC.

These terrorist attacks have nothing to do with middle eastern conflicts, although I know leftists are desperate to draw connections between the two in order to say Americans deserve it somehow

You are treating the victims of terrorist attacks who certainly don't deserve it and the immoral American foreign policy establishment who isn't the one dying, as being on the same boat here. If the foreign policy establishment is to blame the American victims are also their victims. This establishment could deserve to be blamed while the victims definetly don't "deserve it"

Regarding blame.

Of course there is a relation between populace in general and governance to a degree but to be fair it isn't as if the average American has that effective control over whether America funds jihadists or not. The American establishment kind of does as it wants. In certain periods the American public was willing to support regime change in Iraq, and so they aren't blameless for the consequences of regime change in Iraq but for the most part the American elites do as they please without the average American deciding about putting troops in Syria, training Jihadists, or not.

Or take the Pakistani rape scandal in Britain. The British establishment and parts of population have a responsibility there for allowing this, and their logic of "antiracism" leads to monstrous abuses. But this is different than blaming the victims. Rather the society has harmed part of its own people by allowing monstrous foreign child rapists gangs.

If anything the jihadists would be grateful to America, if they weren’t under the influence of a monomaniacal death cult

If you help a wild dog and he ends up killing people who you are responsible for, you kind of have your own responsibility. The American (foreign policy establishment) love affair with Jihadists including Osama Bin Laden in the 1980s, in the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, and of course in the Syrian war has its consequences. If Jihadists are ungrateful immoral fanatics, then you are doing something very wrong if you support them. To allow them to ruin other countries because you are in favor of them weakening those countries it is pretty awful on its own right too. But blowback is another consequence of this.

There have been almost no Islamic terrorist attacks in the United States since 2017 compared to the 20 years before that. It could be a coincidence that we get the biggest one in 10 years immediately after Assad's Syria falls, but I have suspicions.

I mean, the jihadists(or at least their western followers) are clearly batshit crazy, so maybe stop trying to ascribe logical and rational motives.

Islamism is internally consistent, not crazy, it's just evil.

Western blacks who convert to Islam in prison (not sure if this is the case here, but it seems quite likely) generally didn't pick up the internally consistent version of Islam. Batshit crazy is a better model than smart-evil or intellectually-coherent-but-wrong for that group.

IIRC their hostility to America started with an Egyptian named Qutb who came to America on scholarship, and basically was an incel who hated that Americans dated and danced and listened to jazz music.

All of these things are arguably or not so arguably literally condemned by Islam, though.

And thus he could have simply concluded that Muslims shouldn’t be in the West and banned his followers from using Western media or visiting the west. I mean a lot of the Woke stuff is anti-Christian as well, and most serious Christians avoid exposure to that kind of media and so on. They don’t drive through crowds.

I mean a lot of the Woke stuff is anti-Christian as well, and most serious Christians avoid exposure to that kind of media and so on. They don’t drive through crowds.

Christianity also gets pissed on and blasphemed in its home countries a million times a day in media and culture, nobly turning the other cheek year after year as it shrinks. I'm not religious myself, I'm just saying it's not totally inscrutable why a fanatical Muslim might not consider it an example to emulate.

These terrorist attacks have nothing to do with middle eastern conflicts

How would fighting multiple wars in the middle east not be connected to blow back? Having large well organized and well equipped jihadist groups can very well cause terrorism in other countries. 9/11 wouldn't have happened without the CIA-asset Bin Ladin, multiple attacks in Europe have been conducted by people trained in the middle east. The ideological inspiration, propaganda and connections between jihadists in the middle east and the west do exist. Terrorism increased markedly in Europe during ISIS hay day in Syria.

The neo-con project, mass immigration and terrorism are intertwined.

There is quite literally a direct line of causality between deBaathification in Iraq and ISIS. Purging the Iraqi military and public service resulted in thousands of professional soldiers and officers as well as otherwise peaceful professionals like graphic designers, accountants, intelligence analysts, etc being unemployable overnight and so they joined up with fledgling ISIS and that's how it became such a competent organization so fast. This was even predicted by US analysts and foreign policy writers at the time, but Rumsfeld et al proceeded any way and only rescinded after most of the damage was done.

So "otherwise peaceful" but now unemployable Baathist graphic designers, accountants and intelligence analysts just naturally sign up with ISIS because, well, what else would they do?

Shouldn't we be thinking of people like this in similar terms as we might view southern Confederate sympathizers during and after the American Civil War?

just naturally sign up with ISIS because, well, what else would they do?

Why don't you try to consider it from their perspective? Almost overnight, their careers are ended and are made unable to support themselves and their families and their own government and fellow people subjected to tremendous violence and destabilization more or less for no good reason. Why wouldn't that radicalize a person?

This was both the anticipated and actual outcome of deBaathification.

Shouldn't we be thinking of people like this in similar terms as we might view southern Confederate sympathizers during and after the American Civil War?

You mean we should have extended them a blanket pardon conditional on an oath of loyalty? Yes, I think that would have been the ideal outcome and may have stopped Iraq from sliding toward Iran puppet-state status by having continuity and more robustness in its institutions.

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