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Well I have been doing my part for the last 20 years..I vote Libertarian for national elections.
The Libertarians are against war and believe the military should only exist to defend our shores, not to implement foreign policy.
With all due respect for anyone who honestly feels they are doing their part, I can at least appreciate the goal, but the results have proven sorely lacking. Have they not? I've never quite understood how sitting on the sidelines and letting others decide the outcome of our elections achieves anything productive. I attribute this to political naivety, because the long history of election results have clearly demonstrated that voting for other than the Democrats or Republicans (given our political reality) has largely been entirely unproductive. All those votes essentially contribute to the win or loss of the primary candidates in ways the Libertarian and/or "protest" votes don't even intend. One of my political "pet peeves" if you will...
True with just about everything else as well. Either you are part of the solution or you are part of the problem, but choosing to take an off-ramp to nowhere tends to be more a part of the problem than any kind of solution. Might feel better, but from a results standpoint, there's nothing really gained to abdicate the responsibility for the results to others.
In the Bible, the people of Israel, with God’s approval and support, killed lots of people, generally people who were in battle. Killing them was accepted.
And?
Killing people "in the name of" doesn't make the killing much better or different than murder. Does it? And too bad when evaluating all forms of violence, war and murder, we don't do so in a sober, objective and well-reasoned manner. Instead we look to books like the Bible for guidance? Books that are full of violence, war and murder all too common during that time, and justified in ways that we should no longer accept or factor into modern day thinking. Justified in ways that were no more right or justified than murder all considered, and that ultimately took the lives of far too many innocent people in the millions. In ways and for reasons most people consider ignorant and barbaric today.
Are you kidding me? Islamic terrorists would like to wipe the US off the map.
Lol, yes, they would, but they aren't doing it out of thin air but rather over grievances with America, whether valid or not. They didn't just wake up one day and say they were going to target the USA for fun.
That's pretty naive to suggest that "bad Americans" are anywhere remotely as dangerous as Islamic terrorism.
Good thing nobody said that, then.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BaptistFundie
And no, I'm not suggesting that all Muslims are bad, or even a sizeable percentage. But for the most part, it's not Americans wearing suicide vests in the hope of getting to paradise where we can spend eternity with 72 virgins.
Didn't say they were. And remember, I know a teeny bit more about what Islamic terrorism can do than anyone else here, don't I.
It's just different. Terrorists by definition are not at war as a country. They have suicide vests because they don't have stealth bombers and the ability to overthrow and control governments. I don't know if you are seeing on TV there what's going on in Iran as protestors against the extremist Islamic government are being executed, but there is no denying that that horrendous government is a direct result of American and British meddling in their democratic process in 1953 for greed in the form of oil. Yes, everybody responsible for that is dead now, but even in the Bible, resentments were handed down for generations.
America stuck its nose into other countries' business and still does without regard for how it affects the people on the other end, and we can't act shocked when it comes back to bite us in the ass. You now have generations of Muslims who have heard nothing about America except what was done to them by our military and government in the past, and those types are ripe for recruitment to put on those suicide vests.
Not claiming to know what the solution is, either, except to have dialogue with the non-extremists of those countries and show them the better side of who Americans are.
I've developed a fair amount of frustration from always having to be spectator when it comes to these kinds of questions and considerations that none of us can really know much about looking from the outside in. Hard for me to believe the leaders of a government like ours doesn't do far more than you seem to give credit for in the way of assessment and use of our military, before "pulling the trigger," but of course history has well demonstrated that none of us can be too confident about that sort of thing.
And why too aren't there more men demonstrating for women's rights? More white people demonstrating for the rights of people of color. More straight people advocating for the rights of the LGBT community? Always seems the more I learn about all that goes on in politics, more questions are raised than answered...
Have you ever bothered to find out how you ended up on the outside looking in? And you don't know anything about what is going on inside behind the curtain where the bells and whistles are. How come your Ten Truths didn't cover this mother of all truths? Evey time you put in your vote, it disappeared into thin air. It's your country. Are you flying this plane or are you somewhere on some runway in the land of the free?
Mightyqueen, I would encourage you to read the Bible and acknowledge what it is. Your posts don’t suggest that you are familiar with it.
For example, you stated that prayer can’t stop a battle. But Joshua 10:13 certainly suggests that prayer can have direct effects on a battle, even stopping the sun. Do you not know what power prayer has, according to the Bible?
And you seem to be staying that the Bible contains statements that are “a problem”. The Bible is God’s Word (2 Timothy 3:16). I find it extremely difficult to accept the Old Testament and the bloodbath in it. But it has to be accepted as God’s Word, and if we acknowledge that God is perfect and all-loving, which He is (Mathew 5:48 and 1 John 4:16), then His actions need to be viewed as perfect and loving. It’s very hard to do with the Old Testament, but it must be done.
Could you give us a modern example with historical evidence of battle that stopped due to prayer. Let's say starting from the American Civil War.
Quaker Norman Morrison set fire to himself to protest the Vietnam War, killing himself and leaving behind children. I disagree with that kind of extreme action, but people needed to stand up against that war. Today in Vietnam, there is a city named after him that lives on.
He didn’t stop the war but did leave his wife and three children without a husband and father for the rest of their lives. Oh, but the Vietnamese named a city after him. That’s nice. That made it all worthwhile.
""An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." -Jesus
Quaker Norman Morrison set fire to himself to protest the Vietnam War, killing himself and leaving behind children. I disagree with that kind of extreme action, but people needed to stand up against that war. Today in Vietnam, there is a city named after him that lives on.
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Self-sacrifice and self-immolation is a time honored tradition of protest. Satyagraha "abiding in Truth" that Gandhi began as protest of the colonial rule in India, became a model of non-violent struggle in many countries to protest atrocities and injustice. MLK was inspired by Gandhi's example. Non-violent protest takes time but eventually justice does prevail.
However the actions of suicide bombers is violent and has a violent history. It only yields more violence, not peaceful resolution.
The purpose of a suicide attack is not so much to die as it is to kill. MONTAGNE: To kill and to spread fear and to force political change; in particular, he believes, to throw off an occupying force. Robert Pape says the London bombers were the latest to use a technique that goes back to antiquity.
Mr. PAPE: The very first suicide attacks are the Jewish zealots in Zakari(ph) in the first century AD. The Jewish zealots sought to foment a rebellion against Roman occupation by often walking up to a Roman soldier in a square and pulling out a knife and killing the soldier, often cutting his throat, knowing that there were other Roman soldiers standing right by that would immediately execute or kill the zealot.
Self-sacrifice and self-immolation is a time honored tradition of protest. Satyagraha "abiding in Truth" that Gandhi began as protest of the colonial rule in India, became a model of non-violent struggle in many countries to protest atrocities and injustice. MLK was inspired by Gandhi's example. Non-violent protest takes time but eventually justice does prevail.
People have had delusions of grandeur coupled with suicidal ideations since time immemorial. Nothing about self-immolation, or any similar form of “sacrifice,” is non-violent because you are acting violently toward yourself. It’s sad. It’s a waste of human life. It’s not a form of sacrifice that actually saves another human being like, for example, declining a seat on a lifeboat of the sinking Titanic so that someone else can be rescued in your place.
MLK, Jr. and Gandhi were assassinated for their activism, but they didn’t stage one-off grand suicide displays—probably because they knew they could accomplish far more alive than dead. They were martyrs who died for their beliefs, but at someone else’s evil hand.
Lol, yes, they would, but they aren't doing it out of thin air but rather over grievances with America, whether valid or not. They didn't just wake up one day and say they were going to target the USA for fun.
Their religion says we are infidels. Regardless, we sometimes have to engage bad people to keep Americans safe.
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