Got this in an email. What do you think? Rattlesnake Logic.... After the Boston bombing the news media spent days and weeks trying to determine why these men did what they did. They want to know what America did(!) to make these brothers so angry with us. They want to know why these men were not arrested before they did something so terrible. The media is in a tizzy about this new era of homegrown radicals and about why and how they can live among us and still hate us. A friend of mine from Texas explained it all to me: “Here in west Texas, I have rattlesnakes on my place, living among us. I have killed a rattlesnake on the front porch. I have killed a rattlesnake on the back porch. I have killed rattlesnakes in the barn, in the shop and on the driveway. In fact, I kill every rattlesnake I encounter. I kill rattlesnakes because I know a rattlesnake will bite me and inject me with poison. I don’t stop to wonder WHY a rattlesnake will bite me; I know it WILL bite me because it's a rattlesnake and that's what rattlesnakes do. I don’t try to reason with a rattlesnake or have a "meaningful dialogue" with it…I just kill it. I don’t try to get to know the rattlesnake better so I can find a way to live with the rattlesnakes and convince them not to bite me. I just kill them. I don’t quiz a rattlesnake to see if I can find out where the other snakes are, because (a) it won’t tell me and (b) I already know they live on my place. So, I just kill the rattlesnake and move on to the next one. I don’t look for ways I might be able to change the rattlesnake to a non-poisonous rat snake...I just kill it. Oh, and on occasion, I accidentally kill a rat snake because I thought it was a rattlesnake at the time. Also, I know for every rattlesnake I kill, two more are lurking out there in the brush. In my lifetime I will never be able to rid my place of rattlesnakes. Do I fear them? Not really. Do I respect what they can do to me and my family? Yes!! And because of that respect, I give them the fair justice they deserve....I kill them... As a country, we should start giving more thought to the fact that these jihadists' are telling the world their goal is to kill Americans and destroy our way of life. They have just posted two graphic videos on the internet showing them beheading Americans. They are serious. They are exactly like rattlesnakes. It is high time for us to start acting accordingly! I love this country. It's the damn government I'm afraid of! Look who's new in the White House! Arif Alikhan Assistant Secretary for Policy Development for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Mohammed Elibiary Homeland Security Adviser Rashad Hussain Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference(OIC) Salam al-Marayati Obama Adviser and founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council and is its current executive director Imam Mohamed Magid- Obama's Sharia Czar from the Islamic Society of North America Eboo Patel- Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships This is flat-out scary! The foxes are now officially living in the hen house... Now ask me why I am very concerned! Do you feel OK with this? How can this happen, and when will we wake up? We are quiet while our Country is being drastically changed! IF YOU ARE NOT CONCERNED, JUST DELETE THIS. Go to bed tonight...sleep well! Otherwise, pass it on get the word out! We've got to have some relief starting with the 2014 Elections!
That's unfortunate. If you understood what conditions cause rattlesnakes to bite, you might be able to avoid situations in which it would. If you knew how rattlesnakes moved, what behaviors they expressed when just about to bite and the correct way to approach and handle a rattlesnake, you'd be more able to manage a situation in which you come face-to-face with one. Dig a little deeper and you might also use the information to help you better organize your home to make it a place less conducive to rattlesnake activity. False equivalence. Rattlesnakes don't bite humans out of malice, nor even because they think they can eat us for food. They bite humans because they perceive us as a threat to their existence. Which, by the way, you prove entirely correct by killing them before they ever do any harm to you. What more is this email asking to happen to the bombers anyway? One of them is dead, the other one would be lucky to be alive if he wasn't for a certainty going to spend the rest of his life in prison with severe, crippling injuries. Also, the United States does not negotiate with terrorists as a rule. "Meaningful dialogue" is something only attempted with governmental regimes, even terrible ones, that show some kind of stability and desire for self-preservation. In that case, even if you have to make a "deal with the devil", at the very least, you are attempting to do so with a "devil" that might have an incentive to follow through with that deal. Which you might recognize as being at least a little bit better of a situation than a "devil" that has nothing to lose and would never even consider honoring an agreement. This part of the analogy is the most disturbing. You can tell that a rattlesnake is a rattlesnake just by looking at it. Can you tell that a terrorist is a terrorist just by looking at him? Should you start killing people BEFORE you know that they are terrorists? The problem is that we do not have any idea at birth who will grow up to be a terrorist*. The better we can understand the conditions from which such people arise, the better we can try to prevent those conditions from being common and the better we can keep tabs on potential future threats. *But for arguments sake, let's say we can. Let's say biologists were able to find a specific gene sequence that guaranteed to a near certainty that a certain individual was going to grow up to be a terrorist. What is your solution? Infanticide? Life imprisonment starting at the moment of birth?
1. Story about, by a broad definition, deadly vermin. 2. Short bridging device implying part 1 is related to part 3. 3. List of people, none terrorists or criminals, mostly public officials, with ethnic names. I hope no one is falling for this.
This is where the analogy breaks down, because in real life rat snakes can't turn into rattlesnakes, but when you bomb weddings and drone kids, you turn people who otherwise wouldn't care about you into people who hate you.
The Islamic religious extremism in the Middle East has far surpassed anything that the U.S. has seen or experienced since WWII. As one American general kept asking, "How is this going to end?"
You've misquoted me. I wasn't referring to the Jihadists doing this, I was referring to the U.S. military doing this.
Either way, Islamic Jidahists videotaping themselves chopping off the heads of civilians (aka infidels) is unlike anything that the U.S. military has had to deal with.
It's the globalization of Jihad that's new, not the acts themselves. The US military has been "dealing" with this since the Barbary Pirates. Black Jack Pershing fought the Moro starting in 1899.
Jihadists Crusaders In WWII, the Imperial Japanese Army chopped off the heads of people and the German Nazi government authorized the euthanasia of people who were egregiously deemed to be unclean or impure, such as Jews. The twist for the 21st Century are the Jihadists with their Islamic religious agenda, which is uniquely intertwined with their "religious-political-military" push for world domination. In WWII, the U.S. military fought political-military infrastructures, but in the 21st Century, a Jihadist "religious-political-military" machine is being battled. Extremists religious doctrines are the new twist for the 21st Century. You can call extremist Muslims the new "Jihadists Crusaders" who have vowed to fight for global domination of all peoples i.e. submit to Allah and his prophet Mohammad or die.
"Jihadist Crusaders" is an interesting term. To me it seems like the Muslims are jihadis but the Crusaders are the other side.
Sadly, though videotape may be, few brutalities are new. Several similar examples have been offered from international history. The U.S. has even had to deal with a practice of brutal, very pointedly publicized "to send a message," rogue executions that over the years killed thousands of Americans within the United States. On the just side in these conflicts, "rooting out people with a certain kind of name," as the text the OP quotes seems to suggest, isn't a good idea.
I have a question for the moderation team. Is a long story about literal deadly vermin followed shortly by a list of Americans with ethnic names – who are not terrorists or criminals, but who by bridging and implication are associated with terrorism and compared allegorically to the deadly vermin – in an original post here, unchallenged in that post beyond "What do you think?," consistent with DegreeInfo Terms of Service? I know and I note that this content in the original post wasn't written by our SurfDoctor, but rather cut and pasted here from some other source. The question still stands. It's about these issues in the content of the post, not about the poster, whose contributions to this board I respect.
Given that SurfDoctor is a moderator, the questions almost answers itself, at least in the sense that "constitutional" is whatever five Supreme Court justices says it is. Which term of service do you suspect it may violate?
By the way, I realize that my comments may be misunderstood as saying that Islamic State jihadis are morally equivalent to U.S. military personnel. My problem isn't with U.S. military personnel, it's with the missions they're given. Nor do I think that life in the U.S. is comparable to that in the Islamic State -- I'm aware that if I were in criticizing the Islamic State while sitting in territory they control, my life expectancy would drop considerably.
None. But that's, like, my opinion, man. The moderators, including my main man Surfie-D., like when we have our educated, conscientious, thoughtful community apply their knowledge and rational faculties toward lively discussion of various topics. Speaking for only myself, now- the more polarizing, the better. LET THE FLAMES BEGIN!! opcorn:
I believe Arif Alikhan, Mohammed Elibiary, Rashad Hussain, Salam al-Marayati, Mohamed Magid, and Eboo Patel, Americans and nothing close to extremists, are defamed in how they are invoked immediately after the deadly-vermin story and a short bridging device. Further, there's a long and terrible human history of minority outgroups who are perceived as threatening being compared with vermin. If the "hateful" clause in the list above includes anything, shouldn't it include this? My dispute is not with comparing people who threaten and do bad things, to deadly animals, though I don't think this is that helpful a guide to setting policy.
Jihadist Crusaders Understood. In the Middle Ages, the Christian Crusaders were accused of forcibly marching into the Middle East with their agenda. Conversely, in the 21st Century, there are Jihadist Crusaders who are attempting to forcibly (violently) spread their Islamic religious dogmas throughout the world i.e. you will submit to Allah and his prophet Mohammad or die.
I object to calling the crusaders "Christian" on the grounds that their church forbade them from reading the Bible and mercilessly persecuted anyone who tried to make it available for people to read.
Further, before we go too far using the term "jihadists" for ISIS, maybe ISIS actually comes from a significantly different movement than those previously identified as jihadist. This is exactly what a New York Times background piece says today. Emphasis added: ISIS’ Harsh Brand of Islam Is Rooted in Austere Saudi Creed (David D. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times, September 24, 2014)
An excellent course called "The Global Jihadi Threat" can be taken from the Navel Postgraduate School at: https://www.chds.us/ (then click on "open learning")