The whole idea that the US Government should feel compelled to turn its back on the democratic values were supposedly trying to foster over there and apoligize for something it had no control over nor any responsibility for is ridiculous in the extreme.
Libyans storm American consulate and murder Ambassador
- Thread starter Quackers
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You have me confused with someone else.
Yes, it is ridiculous, but that's what people think, so you better react to it. Being right gets you nothing in diplomacy. In fact you could even characterize diplomacy in general as dealing with ridiculousness.
And no, the US government didn't turn its back on democratic values.
hobbsyoyo
Deity
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It's refreshing in an odd way to see someone describe wholesale slaughter of unarmed civilians as a civil war as if that somehow makes the slaughtering legitimate.
How about to keep the one side from slaughtering the civilians of the other. We didn't target pro-Ghaddafi civilians. See the difference?
Most government's lose their legitimacy when they decide to wipe out dissidents. Just because you call it a civil war (as if we disagree with that label
) doesn't change anything, much less the facts of what happened.Here, I brought that back to reality for you. You're welcome.
Patroklos
Deity
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Who has it kept from dying? Who might it embolden?
Are we back to pretending a YouTube video started this?
Um, you cannot know that? Which is exactly the point why you don't put lifes at risk in an unpredictable situation when it costs you so little.
Well ultimately, the failed American foreign policy with regards to the Middle East caused this over several decades, but I'm sure you're not talking about this. I'm not interested in your government conspiracy theories.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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There was. The dictator wasn't going to live for ever. And the growing economic prosperity would keep increasing the size of urban groups with political ambitions. Dictatorships are usually victims of their own prosperity - when they are not so bad that no prosperity is possible, that is. Libya was prospering and that included a developing internal economy, not just oil exports. That development required more educated professionals, and those would form other groups wanting to have a stake in the power division. So would workers in services and industry in opposition to them. Politics about things other than tribalism or islamism, things shared across Libya instead of divisive. A more complex web of interdependences which would gradually eat away at the old tribal divisions upon which the regime balanced itself.
Yes, I'm convinced that in a decade or so it would rot away and be toppled without any civil war. I'm also convinced that turning what had been a repressed protest into an all-out armed rebellion and making sure it succeeded was calculated to preempt that. A weak, divided Libya is preferable for foreign interests. That card has been played so many times, all over Africa...
Some unarmed civilians may (no one seems to have bothered with any real investigation..) have been killed before the whole thing turned into an armed rebellion and then a civil war courtesy of weapons dumped there by certain countries just to make sure the thing kept going. Not even the warmongers who bombed the place tried to pretend that civil war between armed groups was not going on.
And your solution is to back another group of murderers? Because one is not enough, the party must be nicer with more people going around killing other people...
I hate to derail the topic by returning to the topic, but one of those killed was a gamer and a Something Awful community member:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/09/vilerat/
Talk about six degrees of separation. -_-;
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/09/vilerat/
Wired said:
Talk about six degrees of separation. -_-;
useless
Social Justice Rogue
Rest in peace fellow goon Vilerat.
I hope they manage to get the donations ready for his family
I hope they manage to get the donations ready for his family
jtb1127
Deity
I very much agree that US foreign policy in the ME is responsible for this. But I'm slightly irritated with your failure to include another important factor: the religion. It's quite obvious that US foreign policy has upset a lot of people in the region many times, but there have been other instances in which these people got upset. Take the Jyllands-Posten controversy. Some silly comics of the guy were printed and then crowds of flaming zealots start killing christians and burning Danish flags left and right. Would you blame Danish foreign policy for that? The blind adherence to a silly old book is more of a factor in both cases. Only religion can make people act this irrationally and Islam, above the other two monotheistic cults, has the worst track record in the modern world.
It's slightly more complicated than that. There's a break down where western ideas of freedom of speech are foreign concepts. Mix that in with a population that gets its news from Imams (which is slightly more biased a method than WND.com) and you have a lot of really angry people rioting over something that seems silly to us.
Formaldehyde
Both Fair And Balanced
What do you think about a supposed Christian minister using the same cartoon to vilify Mohammed? How is Christian hatred towards Muslims any different at all?
Communal violence around the world certainly isn't restricted to "westerners causing offence against Muhammad" or even to religious outrages. It is important to remember that in trying to understand what's happened.
"Because Islam" isn't a terribly useful explanation, really.
"Because Islam" isn't a terribly useful explanation, really.
jtb1127
Deity
Yes, I know it's not that simple. I never isolated Islam as the sole factor, but it is an important one. Imam's are clerics who give their opinions to the blindly faithful and if it weren't for the religion the Imams wouldn't matter. Eliminate their faith and you eliminate the Imams (of course I don't literally want to eradicate Islam, but promoting secularism is in the best interest of the human race.)
I don't know why you feel the need to defend Islam in this circumstance and change the focus of the conversation to Christianity (though it probably has something to do with your desire to misconstrue my points such that I'm in line with Terry Jones). I think the process is so mechanical for you that you cease to think about it. It's not "Christianity vs. Islam" that I'm talking about, it's the conflict between religious fundamentalism and fundamental human rights. In many Middle Eastern countries these rights are simply not present and the are continuously violated by religious beliefs.
(I'm not going to except the cultural relativist counter point to these rights. Doing so would mean that barbaric honor killings are permissible since it's the societal norm wherever they're taking place.) Christianity was used in an identical way for centuries so this problem is in no way unique to Islam.
Again, I will rebuild my initial claim here. Islam is not the factor, but a factor. And I don't mean to single out Islam. "Because religion" is a much better explanation.
For anyone who cares: my reference to Islam is simply a result of the modern world. Several hundred years ago, I'd be sent to the inquisition for stating that Saturn had moons. In the contemporary world the devoutly religious are an era behind us. Middle Eastern societies need to adopt secularism.
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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Do you mean "apologize for allowing it to be made"? If so, you've either never seen the movie, missed the first 15 minutes, or failed to understand it.
Patroklos
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Why are you assuming it cost os nothing. It would cost us nothing to deliver said YouTube produce hog tied on a platter to the mob either.
Placating these radicals does cost us, and since we have had oh so many posters wax on about how this is just a vocal minority doing these things the State Departments words were not for the consumption of the Muslim community at large. They were providing an excuse where there is no excuse, full stop.
Surely it has nothing to do with a community of people who engage/encourage/do little to stop spontaneous violence at the slightest pretext. Libyian citizens aren't actual people you see, responsible for their actions like the rest of us.
Perhaps you haven't read the thread, but the posh thing these days is apologizing for anything and everything that could be seen as sacreligeous by anyone anywhere Iit's what all the cool kids are doing. Life of Brian most definitely counts. As do Jesuses depicted in any race or gender. The US should apologize for all of them, god only knows how many people the US government is not saving by not doing so. Then they should apologize for me not capitalizing God in that last line, and then for me capitalizing it in this one.
utgotye
Warlord
I like it a lot better when Muslim extremists blow up Muslims.
In a way, I found the immediate response of the administration to be quite thoughtful, too much so in fact. Their statement was designed so as to convince the Libyan people that we didn't hold them responsible for the actions of a select few. Fine, no people with that. But why not just say exactly that? Why the need to more or less condemn the right to free speech?
If you (and/or the locals) can't (or won't) protect your missions in other countries, you shouldn't have them. No sense or need in providing them with targets. That said, treating this like an internal security matter of Libya is ridiculous. These people aren't criminals and shouldn't be treated like criminals. They should pray to alibabah that the Libyans find them first because one can only hope that if we find them they'll be slaughtered like the animals they act like. It's just like the Somali pirates: we are bringing them to the US to be tried...why? Hang them from the yardarm or shoot them in the head and be done with it.
Small dogs yap the loudest. These terrorists are no threat if you don't give them opportunities to attack away from your places of strength. The war on terror was just so that the US government could show the public that it was "doing something".
In a way, I found the immediate response of the administration to be quite thoughtful, too much so in fact. Their statement was designed so as to convince the Libyan people that we didn't hold them responsible for the actions of a select few. Fine, no people with that. But why not just say exactly that? Why the need to more or less condemn the right to free speech?
If you (and/or the locals) can't (or won't) protect your missions in other countries, you shouldn't have them. No sense or need in providing them with targets. That said, treating this like an internal security matter of Libya is ridiculous. These people aren't criminals and shouldn't be treated like criminals. They should pray to alibabah that the Libyans find them first because one can only hope that if we find them they'll be slaughtered like the animals they act like. It's just like the Somali pirates: we are bringing them to the US to be tried...why? Hang them from the yardarm or shoot them in the head and be done with it.
Small dogs yap the loudest. These terrorists are no threat if you don't give them opportunities to attack away from your places of strength. The war on terror was just so that the US government could show the public that it was "doing something".
Leonel
Breakfast Connoisseur
Right. Remember kids, disagreeable speech is as bad as murder. Worse, probably.
We're not the ones that needs to be told that the people of Benghazi don't support acts of war being committed in their name. It's the militants that did this. So the English signs posted don't impress me much.
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