Bucket Guild | FUBU BH Forums

Out some tyrants, make life better for citizens through bloody civil war.

Oh thats winding down? Better start attacking US embassies next.

A couple things:

1.) It's important to understand that these Libyan/Muslim extremists are not representative of the entire religion. I just think too many people get caught up in "ISLAM IS EVILLLLLLL THEY ARE ALL TERRORISTS"

2.) From my understanding, this was in response to a film that portrayed Muhammad and Islam in a negative light. This film was created by an Israeli-American (surprise surprise) who has now gone into hiding because of what happened. Again let me state, I hate extremist Israeli nationalism just as much as extremist Islam. I think the man who made this film has some measure of blood on his hands. If you throw a rock at a hornets nest and the person sitting under it gets stung, you deserve some blame I think.

3.) Mitt Romney's campaign immediately criticizing Obama for idk "sympathizing" with the killers was hilarious

The Arab Spring is a scam. The US armed a bunch of terrorists and stirred up trouble against evil tyrannies (Libya, Egypt, Syria) for ideological reasons, and in doing so, removed all stabilizing elements from the picture, and set in motion events that are beyond anyone's control.

Whether anyone likes their government or not, no-one, American, Arab or otherwise, likes a foreign power coming in, starting shit, turning the country upside-down and making a bad life into an unlivable one.

Which brings us here to embassy attacks. All that's changed since the 70s and the embassy attacks in South Vietnam, Lebanon and Iran, is the US has come up with an slightly better excuse than "we made a big boo-boo".

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Oh this is a shitstorm on a dozen levels, and everyone's at fault.

I'm just sick to death of that entire region.

It's a cycle that keeps playing itself out over and over. What happened in Afghanistan? The US didn't like the Soviet Union, so they funded/armed Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. Then...oops, he turns out to be a huge asshole and orchestrates 9/11. Then the US is fighting the army they themselves trained/armed.

The US is going to continue to destabilize shit, then things are going to come back to bite us. No one likes America over there...so we need to stay the fuck out.

I'm curious to everyone's views on isolationism? I know in this day and age with our economies so entangled it would be impossible to be totally isolationist...but man...sometimes I really wish we had more of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Sta ... ventionism

Where are my boys Teddy and Woodrow

Isolationism doesn't work because the worlds economies are so intertwined now.

But we don't need anything from most of those shithole countries, aside from oil, and we can always buy from allies or collect our own.

"I'm against generalizations... unless we're generalizing rich people, tea partiers, republicans, people working at Fox News, and everyone in between."


The blood is on no other hands than the idiots who turned protest into violent action. Political cartoons, movies, books or any depiction of their religion is no reason for them to act in an uncivilized manner, and by trying to spread the blame around, you're legitimizing the actions of these animals and condemning a man for making a movie. He did nothing wrong.


HURHUR SO FUNNY.


Have fun voting for this administration -- helped Libya by supplying them with weapons and destabilizing their government, helped give rise to the Muslim Brotherhood's power grab in Egypt, and remains largely weak in the region. Seriously, how can you have people to defend your embassies but you don't give them the ammunition needed, as recent reports are suggesting.


Damn, one post later and you're back to generalizing. There are plenty of people who like America in the middle east... those voices are, of course, drowned out by the louder, more violent, minority.


Dead, as if it'd matter. You're so far up Obama's thigh you wouldn't cast a vote for either of them if you could.

Faulty analogy.

Islamic radicals who tune in to bin Laden are a subgroup of Arab Muslims.
Republicans/Tea Partiers who tune in to Limbaugh are a subgroup of Americans.



If someone insulted your mother, would you stand there and take it?



"Defend the embassy" with machine guns then have it called a massacre. Sounds like win!



How would you feel about the Nazis or Soviets or Red Chinese taking over this country?

Well, I'm sure there are those who would like them. They'd just be drowned out by the louder, more violent majority that would resent ideologically motivated foreigners coming in to what they see as their country. Which side of the fence would you be on?



It wouldn't matter. Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson did some things well, but for the most part they were typically American foreign policy bunglers.

Teddy Roosevelt bullied a bunch of loser countries around, and in doing so, continued a long-term process resulting in many of the problems we inherit to this day. How much good did it really do us that we conquered Guam, Puerto Rico and a handful of other nowheres, but continued to antagonize the whole of Latin America? Did we really have a valid reason to wade into WWI?

Woodrow Wilson gave the moralistic banter about being too proud to fight, but apparently politics alone were sufficient incentive to throw his "pride" away and join the war for all the wrong reasons. Did Woodrow decide to join because the Germans started the war or torched Louvain or because some American business used civilians as human shields then cried when the Germans blew up their ship carrying illegal weapons anyway?

After the war was over, neither had a clue as to what to do next. Woodrow strutted into Versailles talking like a hippie, clueless to the world, while the Europeans were, understandably, upset and angry about 15m dead. If it were up to Teddy he probably would have just agreed with the EU that all blame should be laid on the Germans, and events would have played out all the same.

What Azelma and you are unwittingly demonstrating is that this whole mess is an outgrowth of uniquely American arrogance, borne of ignorance of how bad and messy these kinds of situations really are. In the last century that American arrogance has never been challenged by a good sharp kick in the ass.

PS: For the first half of his life, Teddy Roosevelt was a conservative. This changed when two things happened: he began to hold political office, in the midst of the poverty and corruption of early 20th century America; and when he met Samuel Gompers. Roosevelt initially blew off Gompers and his socialist views, so Gompers challenged Roosevelt to spend a day touring the tenements with him. Roosevelt had more courage and integrity than most, so he accepted the challenge.

What he saw changed him forever, and ultimately he wound up accepting most of Gompers' ideas and founded the Progressive Party. Unfortunately, most of America lacked the vision, the integrity, the open-mindedness to accept what Roosevelt had learned; the two-party system remained mired in the status quo for the next hundred years, and now we are here.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Really? What are we in... middle school? If someone starts running their mouth about my mom then I'd likely respond with my mouth, if that. I'd like to think I'm past that and that I'd just ignore whatever kid was running their mouth... but, what should I do? Storm an embassy and start killing people that said nothing about my mom?


For whatever reason, in light of everything that's even happened during your lifetime, I don't understand how you can still pretend threats don't exist and that guns and ammunition are, often, adequate defense. Walls, locked doors, bullet-proof glass, cars, barbed wire and don't seem very effective. If I were president, I'd heavily arm embassies in some countries and I'd authorize the Marines to kill anyone who breeches the walls or even points a gun/RPG in the direction of the embassy. At some point these animals would get the message.


I'd be pissed and I'd do what I could to help defend the country but we're not talking about an angry mob defending Libya from the USA, because we're not taking over Libya... nor are we taking over Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia or Yemen or any other country in the middle east.

They are there as agents of the country that have through word and deed insulted your country. This whole business of people getting offended about things supposedly said about Muhammad didn't get started until the US began coming into other people's countries, and that is what this is all about. Not about what was said but how it is seen as the pinnacle of arrogance.

What about the War of Independence? Would you oppose killing British tax collectors, because they "didn't do anything to you"? If the Chinese government was subverting American institutions, would you oppose storming the embassy where they do their business?



So do you think other countries' embassies don't get attacked because they have more ammo?

You are drawing a false dichotomy between disarmament and pacifism and total reliance on overwhelming armed force to get by. There always has to be a viable political answer in there somewhere, otherwise what you get is Vietnam.



What's your basis for calling them animals? Because they do the kinds of things you just talk about doing from the comfort of your suburban home?

This is what violence, you know, using guns, looks like. It's not cute or heroic. It's ugly, dirty business.
Sorry it doesn't live up to your expectations.

You call them animals because your argument is mired in bigotry and arrogance: you presume the rest of the world must be weak, cowardly or stupid. Because if they are not then inevitably the tide will turn. No force can protect a country that makes only enemies, never friends.



We most definitely are. We are overturning governments and replacing them with ones compatible with our world view. The fact we're not annexing the country outright is moot. No one likes it when foreigners come in to their country.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Eturnal - do you believe you never generalize anything?



Not legitimizing these criminals reprehensible actions. But look at all of the protests now going on in the middle east. Look at the firestorm this set off. Idk, just seems like this guy caused controversy for its own sake.



So you think Mitt Romney, or any other politician would do better? This isn't Obama/Romney...this is American politics/foreign policy in a nutshell....no matter who's in charge.



I think people who hate America enough to be violent are in the minority. I think people who love America or even "like" it are also in the minority. I think the majority of people in the middle east have a generally unfavorable view of the United States.



False. You have taken my active dislike of Romney as some sort of love for Obama. It's the lesser of two evils.

This. THIS. God damn it, THIS you fucking morons.



They do. In general, at best, they view us as selfish and short-sighted. At worst, they view us as imperialists. We may feel like the shit when we're within our own borders, but take one step out and you'll realize it's not so "cool" to be American anymore.

[✔] [item]Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker[/item] (Three)
[✔] [item]Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros[/item] (Two)
[✔] [item]32837[/item] & [item]32838[/item]
[✔] [item]Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury[/item]
[✔] [item]46017[/item]
[✔] [item]49623[/item] (Two)
[✔] [item]71086[/item]

Here's the problem, and why Romney was right to say something about the initial response to this violent reaction to some idiocy on YouTube:

What are our principles?

Are we a people who believes that people are free to express themselves?

The majority of us probably think this YouTube video (which I don't think anyone has even seen...does the fucking thing exist?) was not an expression of a deep, philosophical position. A lot of people here in the US would probably find it to be a reprehensible piece of shit with no redeeming qualities. That is exactly why 1st Amendment rights are so important. This is exactly the sort of speech the 1st Amendment is meant to protect: controversial, unpopular speech. Popular speech doesn't require protection.

There is no right that does not come with responsibility, and the right to free speech is no exception. There are consequences to our actions when you behave irresponsibly, but I don't believe that any of the consequences of speaking should ever be any type of violence, as that violent reaction is itself a more egregious failure to responsibly exercise all of the rights that allow us to move about in and interact with society at large.

If we were to "responsibly limit" free speech to be "sensitive" to various religions, we'd have to shut down all sorts of internet forums critical of religious groups, and probably a lot of atheist web sites. I have no interest in that. The responsible response to the type of bigotry that sometimes appears in those spaces, which is no different than the type of bigotry reflected in the film in question, is to avoid it. If it's particularly offensive and wrong, oppose it with your own words.

Once we start saying this phrase or that comment is unacceptable, we'll start seeing people attempting to stretch the limit of what is out-of-bounds to censor any criticism of their religion as some type of "hate speech." Imagine not being able to criticize the Roman Catholic Church for its failings in regards to keeping pedophiles away from children because the church and or its members would be able to claim such criticism is "hate speech." Would we be changing the terms of Obamacare to remove the free contraception if Catholics starting rioting, killing, and looting? Because right now that is the only difference between criticizing Western religions and criticizing Islam: there are no "consequences" to criticizing Western religions. Admit that the only reason "offending" Islam matters is because there is a sizable minority following that religion who are an unrestrained, violent mob, and we're afraid of them.

We already have a great deal of trouble discussing racial and cultural issues in this country because of excessive sensitivity without actively telling people what they are and/or are not allowed to say about a given subject. Not only does this political correctness not help solve our racial/cultural difficulties, it also makes those difficulties worse by insulating behaviors and attitudes that need to be challenged from criticism.

I believe it is better that people like those who disrespect the religion/race/ethnicity of others do so in full view of the public without legal/physical consequence. Without those protections, these people would simply move their bigotry underground. We would have no chance to exercise our own rights to free speech to attempt to influence them to change their mind and/or to intercede in the conversation to keep them from influencing impressionable minds. They would fester as a movement out of the view of the general public. I believe that possibility is far more dangerous to a free society than the hurt feelings of a few over-sensitive people who are constantly in search of something about which to be offended. These are some of the reasons why the limits on free speech are as rare and specific as "no yelling fire in a crowded theater."

Your Pal,
Jubber

AKA "The Gun"
AKA "ROFeraL"

World Renowned Mexican Forklift Artiste

Well put Jubber!

It's just a shame that we have to protect people saying stupid things...this filmmaker, the Westboro Baptist Church...in order to protect the free speech rights we all enjoy.

To be clear, I'm not advocating the US punish this filmmaker in any way (though he obviously fears retribution from society as he's tried to disappear). I just think he exercised his rights to free speech in a reckless manner either intentionally or unintentionally. He knew what kind of film he was making either way. I just question if it was a film that needed to be made...and if it's worth it considering what has happened.

Longwinded BS. This isn't about freedom to express oneself, it's about the anger of these people at American arrogance. Nowhere is any discussion about Islam or any other subject or media under threat.

If the issue is really freedom of expression then why haven't they taken up arms against anything or anyone else that would be offensive to them - that is to say basically the entirety of Western culture? And why have only countries where the US has made a point of intruding attacked embassies? What about Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey?

Freedom of expression is predicated on having something to express. That is the difference between free expression and things that are not - and have never been - covered by freedom of expression: fighting words, indecency, slander. What was this Israeli guy doing, "expressing" himself or engaging in some permutation of those three things?

Plain and simple you are being manipulated. A justification is needed to remain in these countries and deliberately offensive behavior furnishes it. The intent is to recast a war over money and power into being somehow about American values (hint: it's not).

And if you think the Arab response is strange or unreasonable then go look up how the Franco-Prussian War (prequel to World War I) began and get back to me.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.