When I open this thread and the very first response is a 9/11 conspiracy then I really sort of question why I bothered in the first place. I guess because the small percent of good posters makes up for all the morons?
Then I have to question the OP's intentions in creating this thread. Obviously you won't find many people on TL who will express the opinion that the wars we are engaged in are great. Sure, you will get a couple people, and they will likely be responded into submission. Won't this be a pointless circle jerk, and do people really enjoy that type of discussion? Conspiracies and circle jerking is all I can reasonably expect from these threads.
Edit: I guess the bans will add some merit and enjoyment at least.
Interesting thing is that when I hear the word "terrorism" the first thing that comes to my mind is not about some radical islamist suicide bombers, but about revolutionary movement of late XIX, early XX centuries in Russian Empire. These people, who have committed countless assassinations and assassination attempts (some of them by the means of suicide bombings, btw) on various imperial government officials were highly praised in USSR and there are a lot of places named after some of them even in today's Russia.
On the morality of the acts of terror I'd say they can't be morally justified at any circumstances. The only situation in which physical violence may be morally justified is when applied in retaliation or for the purpose of self-defense (and these terms should never be subejcts to generalizations).
On September 12 2012 03:40 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote: ...and already the tin foils show up. This thread isn't about who blew up the WTC, this thread is about the morality of what is going on in the middle east. As for my opinion on the topic, well, I'm a means-end kind of guy. If a was given a gun, and was told to shoot a mother of 3 and her kids in order to prevent a bomb from going off in Times Square, I would apologize, then shoot them in the head. Once they were all down, I would shoot each one once more in the head to make sure they were dead. As long as the end justifies the means, we should stay there.
jesus christ if that isn't the most disgusting thing i've heard someone admit in a loooong time...
What if you were one of those who was going to die in the bomb blast? I agree with the other guy, and to me, you seem like an ostrich sticking his head in the sand because he is afraid to acknowledge the evils that exist in this world.
And to the others who insinuate that this whole thing was made up/ executed by America in order to further some other sort of agenda is damn-near the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my life.
if i was gonna die? well, i guess shit happens. everyone dies, so why on earth would i be so cowardly as to murder someone in some ridiculous attempt to prolong my own life?
i think it is very foolish to let evil have it's way simply because you're afraid to die. i think that would be far more comparable to an ostrich sticking its head in the sand.
This is a stupid argument, if instead of a nice mother and kids it was a fat rapist your decision would change? Well in the blas tthere could be hundreds of families just like that maybe its family day.
Ends almost always should justify the means, if I had to kill 3 people to save thousands it wouldn't put past me although I would try to save the 3000 and the 3 if the decision came down to it I would do as needed. That being said if I could offer my own life in place, I may have some contemplating to do because I'm no hero but I think I would kill myself to save thousands of people but then the question arises what about hundreds? How much are you willing to sacrifice?
I dunno it's all debatable personally I would though.
1) i would never trust a terrorist, so even if it was a "fat rapist", i wouldn't be putting blood on my hands. 2) even "fat rapists" don't deserve to be murdered in cold blood.
furthermore, the ends NEVER justify the means, in my opinion (and in the opinion of most of human society). to capitulate and murder one person in some misguided attempt to save thousands or millions would just prove that you can be used by any threat of violence. assuming such a ridiculous scenario actually existed, you would have taken all choice out of your actions. after you've killed a family, what if they ask you to kill another one? what if they ask you to blow up 1,000 people to save 1,000,000?
what if we take a ridiculous scenario to its extreme and say that they've asked you to kill 49% of the population in order to save the other 51%? human lives and their value cannot be boiled down to a simple numbers game, which is why you will see thousands of people risking their lives to save 1 lost hiker.
You're arguing whether or not it is possible it isn't happening. I am arguing that in a 100% circumstance where you know, we'll say a god circumstance where some man just says "this will happen" and you know it will so no denying it, then yes it justifys the means. I wouldn't just pop 100 people in the head because a man behind me said "you best or all else DIES!"
All you need to know about who MIGHT have engineered by either of the parties < United States higher ups > / < Middle East "Terrorists" > can be found here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
No need to go conspiracy crazy on this topic, at this point, it could've been either way, since I'm not in a top position in the CIA or KGB or NSA or any real agency who deals with this kind of information....It would be foolish of me to pick 1 side. One thing is fore sure, neither the middle eastern people nor the americans benefited off the attack/war that followed the attack.
Radical muslims are crazy and US security higher ups apparently have no consideration of human empathy ( from the false flag OFFICIAL document ).... So who knows...
What is the most odd is how defensive people get over the subject when you say "9/11 might have been caused by western higher ups". They say: Oh you crazy conspiracy theory guy...And they dismiss you because you don't BELIEVE in the official story which has been released 400+ days later in that report book. In the best case scenario, it took them 400+days to release that because they tried to cover up all the holes they left in because they are complete incompetent morons.Also the conspiracy guys are crazy really...You go on a youtube video and say: Hey, you know the terrorist might have caused it man...you can't really know. They call you mindless ignorant sheep or whatever.....Oh the humanity !
Also, it's also a good thing to not trust the government....there is the reason why it's called like that.At least let's be agnostic about it...
On September 12 2012 03:40 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote: ...and already the tin foils show up. This thread isn't about who blew up the WTC, this thread is about the morality of what is going on in the middle east. As for my opinion on the topic, well, I'm a means-end kind of guy. If a was given a gun, and was told to shoot a mother of 3 and her kids in order to prevent a bomb from going off in Times Square, I would apologize, then shoot them in the head. Once they were all down, I would shoot each one once more in the head to make sure they were dead. As long as the end justifies the means, we should stay there.
jesus christ if that isn't the most disgusting thing i've heard someone admit in a loooong time...
What if you were one of those who was going to die in the bomb blast? I agree with the other guy, and to me, you seem like an ostrich sticking his head in the sand because he is afraid to acknowledge the evils that exist in this world.
And to the others who insinuate that this whole thing was made up/ executed by America in order to further some other sort of agenda is damn-near the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my life.
if i was gonna die? well, i guess shit happens. everyone dies, so why on earth would i be so cowardly as to murder someone in some ridiculous attempt to prolong my own life?
i think it is very foolish to let evil have it's way simply because you're afraid to die. i think that would be far more comparable to an ostrich sticking its head in the sand.
This is a stupid argument, if instead of a nice mother and kids it was a fat rapist your decision would change? Well in the blas tthere could be hundreds of families just like that maybe its family day.
Ends almost always should justify the means, if I had to kill 3 people to save thousands it wouldn't put past me although I would try to save the 3000 and the 3 if the decision came down to it I would do as needed. That being said if I could offer my own life in place, I may have some contemplating to do because I'm no hero but I think I would kill myself to save thousands of people but then the question arises what about hundreds? How much are you willing to sacrifice?
I dunno it's all debatable personally I would though.
1) i would never trust a terrorist, so even if it was a "fat rapist", i wouldn't be putting blood on my hands. 2) even "fat rapists" don't deserve to be murdered in cold blood.
furthermore, the ends NEVER justify the means, in my opinion (and in the opinion of most of human society). to capitulate and murder one person in some misguided attempt to save thousands or millions would just prove that you can be used by any threat of violence. assuming such a ridiculous scenario actually existed, you would have taken all choice out of your actions. after you've killed a family, what if they ask you to kill another one? what if they ask you to blow up 1,000 people to save 1,000,000?
what if we take a ridiculous scenario to its extreme and say that they've asked you to kill 49% of the population in order to save the other 51%? human lives and their value cannot be boiled down to a simple numbers game, which is why you will see thousands of people risking their lives to save 1 lost hiker.
You're arguing whether or not it is possible it isn't happening. I am arguing that in a 100% circumstance where you know, we'll say a god circumstance where some man just says "this will happen" and you know it will so no denying it, then yes it justifys the means. I wouldn't just pop 100 people in the head because a man behind me said "you best or all else DIES!"
There was a really good line I read in the Halo series books. I am sure that the book wasn't the first one to believe in the philosophy but it stated that we shouldn't sacrifice people for the greater good but instead we should try to save everyone.
All it takes is one person to make a difference. A single drop of rain can raise a sea level.
C'mon people, use your head. Don't listen to what the media is force feeding you.
The truth is 9/11 was an insde job. Bush needed 9/11 to happen so he could justify invading Iraq and Afghanistan to get his oil and make himself billions of dollars and kill Saddam and Osama, both of whom the Clinton administration had actually supported in the 90s. He was inside an elementary school when the planes hit the World Trade Center, when the plan was for 4 planes to target the 2 towers, the Pentagon, and the White House. Also 9/11 was just a few months after Bush took office.
Coincidence? Hardly.
The Bush administration needed 9/11 to happen to advance their own agenda.
EDIT: there are theories that the planes hit the buildings AND there were some sort of explosives inside the buildings that went off at the same time. So more evidence to show that it might be true.
I think the simple truth is that people fight to win.
Seems pretty obvious, which it is, but it seems people forget the implications of this. The US fights as it does, because it (at least in the minds of the people employing the force) plays to the strength of the US. This is certainly true to a certain extend, as no country can match the US military, which also means that if you wish to fight the US, you do it in a way that plays to your own strengths, not the US'. That's where terrorism (and IEDS, shoot-and-scoots, hiding behind civilians, using kids, etc) stems from – trying to fight on your own terms, playing to your own strengths and exploiting the enemy's weakness.
Which brings me to my answer to the question about the morality of it: I think bringing morality into it is a fundamental mistake, as 99,999% of people will reach a certain point where desperation (whether justified or imagined) overrules any moral scruples you may have. I'm an officer of the army, and I'm pretty familiar with the feeling that neccesity overrules many things. While I've never been even remotely close to doing anything in conflict with the laws of armed conflict, I believe the thoughts have crossed the minds of most people actively involved in an armed conflict. I can easily imagine – if you truly believe that the US is threatening the very existence of the world you life in, or you're convinced your religion dictates it – that civilian casualties become unimportant, even in extreme amounts. The same logic pretty much applied to the cold war, both sides were – at the very extreme end of the spectrum – willing to destroy millions of lives to ensure their own way of life. Terrorism is just the same, only the means of the terrorists are very different, and require a different strategic approach. Its very easy for me (and the rest of us in here) to claim the moral high ground, because its perfectly possible for us to respect humans rights and the laws of armed conflict while still winning the conflict. However, if we look at historical examples, in Denmark we killed a lot of suspected nazi sympathizers (many innocent) during and after WWII, and most countries have similar examples from one time or the other. I'm not saying its RIGHT to kill civilians, but I'm saying that most of us would – in times of crisis – eventually be willing to resort to it.
In short: The more desperate you get, the more the ends justify the means, and the easiest way (well, pretty much the only way) to ”defeat” the US is through terrorism. While you could argue for and against the morality of fighting civilians, in the end it means very little.
This is going to sound like highly controversial and it really isn't.
Terrorism is not that big of a deal, statistically speaking.
The odds of you or any of your loved ones dying to a terrorist related attack is infinitesimal.
When it happens it's very in your face and very emotional, kind of like any major disaster, like a plane crash or earthquake, etc. People greatly over-react and politicians use to to grandstand and demagogue.
In the grand scheme of things though, it really isn't that big of a danger and the amount of time, engery, and money we as a society are dedicating to it is ridiculously out of whack.
But yeah, WTC7 is way to obvious ^^. You can easily justify that by saying they wanted to get rid of a ton of important documents which should've been made public in the near future..
anyway whats all the fuss u make when ur civilians die when u killed +/- 200k at hiroshima nagasaki hell its just 2k people that died more have died in other events and none of them have gathered as much coverage as 9/11 NEVER FORGET OMGOMG
Everything about all of this is so depressing. Humanity is descending in a downward spiral of shitness and greed and apathy and submission and you're not allowed to think outside the box and if you dare to criticize something that is difficult to stop you are immature and if you dare to dare you are told to suck it up and you have always to choose a side and be a fucking moron about it and if you dare to value people you're not supposed to you might just die because what the fuck we need more money and we are not allowed to think that everyone deserves to eat we are told that poverty and huger are natural and there is nothing to stop it nothing to stop the hate and there is nothing to stop the war and while I was writing this message 900 people died of hunger and I'm not supposed to give a flying fuck because well, it's 9/11's 11th annniversary.
EPT
