All I want for Xmas issssss
the Prezzzzz immmmmmpeeeeeached.

Merry XMas from a Patriotic Xian

We’ve already been through this: the Chinese freed the Tibetans from serfdom and China is an authoritarian regime against whom suicide bombing is a futile approach. I believe Robert Pape, who authored the study on terrorism, was quite explicit about the fact that the targeting of liberal democracies reveals the strategic nature of terrorism- they evoke public opposition to the occupation which can be used to pressure the leadership to withdraw. Witness the opposition to the Iraq War over the American casualties. I do not, as your latest enthymeme would have it, support or assent to the Chinese occupation. I merely observe that you are dealing with two quite incommensurable situations. For all your prattle about “facts”, you have precious few of them.

The people of Tibet have been brutally repressed. Just a quick example: The PRC has had a policy of moving hundreds of thousands of Chinese settlers (interesting how you guys only worry about the ones on the west bank!) to Tibet in a deliberate effort to make the Tibeten people a minority in their own land. Also, China removes large amounts of their natual resources and channels it back to China without giving any of the proceeds to Tibet. Then we have the thousands of monostaries that have been destroyed, the political prisoners, the systemic torture, etc. And yet despite all that the Tibetens remain peaceful and don’t resort to violence like the Muslims do.

The Tibetens are Bhuddists, but religion has nothing to do with it, right?

Your points aren’t solid. They’re very facile and riddled with mistaken inferences.

I mean, really! Is that the best you can do? You refuse to allow for the possibility that the reasons the people don’t commit terrorism in Tibet is because most of them are Buddhists.

I reject that possibility because suicide bombing is a rational strategy that only works with liberal democracies, not an irrational response.

You can’t allow for this possibility because it damages your thesis that religion is not the motivation for terrorism.

We’ve already seen that religion can’t adequately explain terrorism, since terrorism of this type only emerged very recently and because religion has become a surrogate for nationalism. Quite possibly there is a catalytic relation- the Qur’an does, after all, command Muslims to fight oppression, which is a perfectly laudable trait, and can therefore be more easily used as a pretext for terrorism than Buddhism can. But Tibet and Saudi Arabia are two quite different situations, and can’t really be equated, for reasons I’ve already touched upon.

I mean the Palestinians blow people up and they are not afraid of the consequences. They blow up themselves and they know that the Israeli government will demoish their family home for doing so. Yet they do it anyway, why?

Retaliation for 60+ years of Palestinian retrenchment and occupation might have something to do with it.

In Tibet, I contend the the people there have been treated just as badly, if not worse, than the Palestinians yet they don’t resort to violence.

They’ve been treated a lot better than the Palestinians, despite the suppression of their domestic culture. Under Chinese occupation, their standard of living has improved. Serfdom was abolished, and the brutal Buddhist theocracy that once ruled Tibet was ousted.

Another point you made was that the Quran says “there is no compulsion in religion.” That is true but you failed to mention that the Quran also says anyone who does not accept Islam must live as a “Dhimmi” a second class citizen who must pay a tribute tax to his Muslim overlords and he must practice his religion very quietly.

It’s simplistic and reductive to attempt to explain a 25 year old phenomenon like suicide terrorism by digging through a 1,400 year old text, especially when so many examples of intolerance in the Torah could be found. One has to examine the material realities facing the modern day Muslim world.

You see, the facts are incongruous to your worldview so you grasp at straws and make up lame excuses. I don’t mean any disrespect but it is hard to argue with folks like you because no matter what the facts are you don’t want to hear them and you just go on and on.

This is about as apt a summation of your output as could be mustered. We don’t “make excuses”, we go beyond the simplistic causality that you imagine your “facts” prove. In fact, they aren’t even accurate, because the presence of foreign troops on the ground is a far better predictor of suicide bombing than radical Islam. Your attempts to circumvent this simple piece of reality consist of individual case studies that ignore the fact that a correlation works at an aggregate level. In short, you haven’t presented any “facts” beyond the heuristically obvious.

The reason I didn’t respond to some of your points is because, like Kenneth, it seems futile; no matter what I say, no matter what solid facts I point to, you will make us excuses that fit your worldview. For example, the best response you could come up with for my example of Tibet was that they have low population density and China is an authoritarian regime. I mean, really! Is that the best you can do? You refuse to allow for the possibility that the reasons the people don’t commit terrorism in Tibet is because most of them are Bhuddists. You can’t allow for this possibility because it damages your thesis that religion is not the motivation for terrorism.

I mean the Palestinians blow people up and they are not afraid of the consequences. They blow up themselves and they know that the Israeli government will demoish their family home for doing so. Yet they do it anyway, why? Religion! Namely, radical Islam. In Tibet, I contend the the people there have been treated just as badly, if not worse, than the Palestinians yet they don’t resort to violence.

Another point you made was that the Quran says “there is no compulsion in religion.” That is true but you failed to mention that the Quran also says anyone who does not accept Islam must live as a “Dhimmi” a second class citizen who must pay a tribute tax to his Muslim overlords and he must practice his religion very quietly. You see, the facts are incongruous to your worldview so you grasp at straws and make up lame excuses. I don’t mean any disrespect but it is hard to argue with folks like you because no matter what the facts are you don’t want to hear them and you just go on and on.

Still, I can understand their anger of having “the Great Satan” to such close proximity to their holy places, all the while playing footstool to the Israelis.

That’s why HAMAS, a militant and terrorist organization, an organization that makes no qualms about killing inncoent women and children, won the elections in the Palestinian terretories

The Palestinian Authorities are widely viewed as corrupt and self-enriching. Compare that to Hamas, who apart from their business of attacking Israel, also provides a lot of charity and social support projects to the Palestinians.

So between a greedy, ineffective party and one that does a lot of good works in the community (tendency to send people to blow themselves up nonwithstanding), you still find the reason they pick Hamas to be confusing?

That’s why the Pew Global Attitudes Research Project shows support for suicide bombings to be at about 51% in Pakistan and close to 70% amongst Palestinians.

Gee, do you think the fact that Israel is widely seen as a hated oppressor has anything to do with that? Do you even TRY to understand the reasoning behind their hatred, instead of going, “ah, they’re doing that because they’re Muslims and they hate Freedom(tm)”?

Liberals like you don’t care what the facts are,

STOP. DOING. THAT.

I HAD it with fools conveniently labelling people as “liberals” or “conservatives”. I support small government and austere fiscal policy (conservative), state-funded welfare program for the poor and unimpeded freedom of speech (liberal). So what would that make me?

People, human beliefs are too complicated to be given a simple label. The only reason anyone would deign to this is to mindlessly demonize their enemies. So please, enough with this frankly idiotic categorization of something as complex as a person’s ideological system.

And the only reason people do bad things is because they are oppressed and so they have an excuse.

Yes, because people spontaneously blow themselves up for no reason whatsoever. The IRA bombed the British for the heck of it.

That is your worldview and when the facts contradict it, you say to hell with the facts!

Pot, kettle, black. So far, I haven’t seen any of my posts being contradicted. If I missed it, or if my English is that bad (it’s not my first language), I apologize.

A closely cropped video of highly questionable origin (Israeli sources) which could have depicted the celebration of a wedding for all we know…but of course, having watched a similarly cropped video of KNOWN origin, that of Israelis dancing in the streets, doesn’t seem to evoke similar anger. Funny that. I guess you also hadn’t heard of the interview with people in Montenegro who said they were rather happy that the United States was seeing what that kind of attack feels like after having suffered similar attacks at our behest. No, those people were too white looking and were probably not Muslim; must stick with the script of a narrowly defined enemy as the monster to whip people like you up into a frenzy of unreflective hatred.

“I have not been dispassionate about this subject since that morning and doubt that I shall ever be.”

You labor under a cloud of anger and bigotry that you are beginning to admit to us if not yourself. You’re also feeling precisely that degree of anger and hatred that Arabs feel toward us, having suffered YEARS of murderous rampages from us, directly and indirectly. Aside from your cowardice and armchair comfort, you actually are very much like the Muslim fanatics.

For age 18, you are a smart young guy but maybe not smart enough to stop arguing with an idiot.

Tune this guy out, I have received private email that he is the laughing stock of this blog and no one takes him seriously. You should not either.

Best regard,

Phil

Why don’t you try moving against the herd for once? Retaining one’s independence of mind in a culture characterized by complacency and populated by polyannas like yourself who put stock in a political order that has serves the powerful systematically and the masses incidentally isn’t an easy task and leads easily into cynicism and fatalism. I daresay you have never once fundamentally questioned the underpinnings of the system as it exists today. Perhaps at one time you entertained a maudlin liberalism that resonated with your inner desire to use state-sanctioned violence to transform the world, but you’ve never truly *radical* in your outlook or placed a high value on reason or truth. That much can be deduced from your seeming indifference toward every datum I present, as though it would not change your preferred solutions to issues real or perceived. You seem awfully panglossian for someone supposedly learned in the ways of the world. How sickening.

Why all the insults? You can be better than that. As I like to say, can’t two people agree to disagee, without being disagreeable?

The insults are a response to the patronizing remarks you’ve made on another thread and your repeated invocations of venerated historical figures to lend an aura of respectability to a tenuous argument replete with cliches and pretensions of iconoclasm.

Also, you seem so sure of yourself. You know what I have learned, being a few years your senior? I’ve learned that I don’t know everything, I don’t have all the answers, and I should at least listen to and consider other points of view, because who knows, maybe I can learn something from them.

Tim, you’re every bit as cocksure in your attitude as you claim I am, and with far less reason. Every worldview at least implicitly claims the monopoly on truth, and harping on about another’s alleged excess of certainty is about as logically vacant a rejoinder as I can think of. I don’t claim to have the answers- indeed, I don’t have much in the way of a personal ideology. I don’t know how to solve the world’s issues, other than the immediate ones like terrorism. I’m an inveterate old empiricist who prefers facts to philosophy. And worst of all, your sermons on this subject merely divert attention from the fact that you haven’t managed to generate a single substantive reply to my comment.

Maybe I can learn something from you!

Maybe you can, but you’ve shown precious little inclination to do so.

So try to open your mind a little bit and don’t feel the need to insult people who disagree with you

Tim- I’ve thoroughly tabulated my reasons for disagreeing with you. If you wish to contend that I’m, in some sense, “close-minded” (a slippery term that seems to obfuscate more than it elucidates, to be sure), at least don’t do so on the basis of the arguments I’ve made in favour of my position, and don’t employ it as a last line of defense in the face of a rhetorical defeat.

doing so only demeans you.

As though I weren’t demeaned enough by the people I have to deal with regularly.