Not so fast, Brad. If you really can use "Google define:racist" to support your argument, it must not be that stupid. It sounded stupid to me, but I went to the source he cited and looked for their bias, and they do give a good example of a bias many would call racist that's actually about religion: anti-Semitism.

Is there ANYONE here, a single person who thinks it is "sometimes" justifiable to target civilians to defend US interests. The key word here is interests not the US since the question isn't about defending your house, home or nation but rather an ideology/interest/religion.

I'm not sure if any of them are here today, but many Americans supported targeting civilians with Mutually Assured Destruction or civilian bombings in World War II. In fact I would have to think carefully about whether I could say that it was "never" justified. I wonder if that means I'm more dedicated to my country than my religion, because I would easily say it was never justified to protect Christianity. I guess it's just easier to think of examples for a country where targeting civilians would help.

It's really about how effective it would be, isn't it? It wouldn't have been justified for Jews to murder random Germans during the Holocaust, unless they knew that they could prevent the Holocaust by doing so, then it's kind of an ends versus means argument. Like war in general. Maybe not justified, but necessary. Yuck, I'm glad I'm not in a situation where I have to make this kind of choice, where the ethical path leads to all your friends getting killed. I think I'd have to answer "Don't know" if they surveyed me today.

Second thought, I think "prejudiced" or "bigoted" would be a better word for anti-Semitism than "racist." It doesn't really fit. But some people did used to think Jews were a race, right? From Ham, Shem, and Japheth.

Not so fast, Brad. If you really can use "Google define:racist" to support your argument, it must not be that stupid. It sounded stupid to me, but I went to the source he cited and looked for their bias, and they do give a good example of a bias many would call racist that's actually about religion: anti-Semitism.

The fact that across the Internet it is possible to find some fool that thinks RACEism is not tied wholy to the concept of thinking that one race is superior to another race is irrelevant to me.

The main reason it's irrelevant is that the guy is merely trying to discourage discussion on this topic by throwing a loaded charge.  Oh, we can't criticize Islam because if we do, we're a bunch of filthy racists so we should just be quiet. Right?

His loaded charge had nothing whatsoever to do with the discussion other than to try to derail it and make it stop entirely.  I'm not going to have the topic hijacked into a semantics discussion about what racism means.

There is nothing racist about not liking Islam. It's practiced by all races on this planet. If someone disagrees they are free to think racism means whatever they want -- but not on my blog.

Some people just define racism different.

"I'm not going to have the topic hijacked into a semantics discussion about what racism means."

Agreed lets keep the focus on Islam and Islamic opinion worldwide on westerers.

One more comment I'll make is that, the title of the survey as posted isn't entirely accurate, meaning the part where it says...

"Violence against civillian targets in order to defend Islam can be justified...*" As written, this is not how the survey was shown, the question according to the document provided on the site is...

"Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are
justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that, no matter what the
reason, this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is
often justified to defend Islam, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified?"

So the question wasn't asked specifying any particular enemy though the rest of the survey makes mention of Western and Western relationship, not cowboy Westerns, but the so called "Western World"

I'm not going to wiggle and say the respondents were thinking about everybody but the United States, but clearly the question wasn't asked direcly about the United States.

Now as for the legitimacy of the survey. The survey was done via a process of oversampling, meaning that they were able to more accurately guage the larger population of the countries' actual Islamic representation. More so in the countries with smaller populations of Islam followers but nonetheless oversampling for the most part. This is a good thing and for anyone who wishes to debate the validity of the survey's values at the time taken would have a hard time arguing those facts in the face of statistical analysis.

Unfortunately, the suvey doesn't ask the question directly, what kind of violence is left up to the reader, though one could conclude that most respondents were contemplating suicide bombing. Making the s t r e t c h from violence to murder in your subtitle as you do is probably ok, but the survey questionaire does not state murder. In the Islamic world there is a difference between violence, and murder. There is also a difference here too. I don't want to say you have it all wrong because largely I believe that there is a problem with Islam, and Muslims who think that any violence against civillians is ok, we just have different ways of describing the problem and wanting to deal with it.

Another question asked which I find strikes a huge blow to the argument that Islam is interested in following UBL, is this question

IN EGYPT, TURKEY, INDONESIA, PAKISTAN, AND JORDAN, ASK ABOUT ‘PEOPLE.’ ELSEWHERE
ASK ABOUT ‘MUSLIMS’.
Q.30 In your opinion, how many (Muslims/people) in our country support Islamic extremists like al Qaeda –
would you say most, many, just some or very few?

The majority, in each of these countries responded that they either "didn't know", "very few", or "just some" rather then "many" or "most" except for Nigerian Muslims, in which the majority favored "most" and "many". That is interesting because we don't often here about Nigeria in the war on terror, or Nigerians being stopped at the airport, or plotting the next terrorist attack, yet, the majority of Nigerian Muslims believe the majority of their countrymen&women directly support Islamic extremists like al Quada.

Based on the numbers one would conclude that trying to net the greatest reduction in threat would result in an invasion of Nigeria. Perhaps not. The situation worldwide with Islam, and Islamic extremism is a complex and dynamic problem. What doesn't change is that followers of Islam are people just like you and I, and that they want similar things in life as well. A home, a family, job, opportunity to improve their children's lives. To believe that the entire group of them are here on the Earth simply to threaten our way of life is simply a fear.

I'd post the numbers but the copy/paste doesn't work great in the forum, check out the questionaire here...
pewglobal.org/reports/pdf/253topline.pdf

I would imagine that if we took a similar survey of non-muslims the numbers would not be much different, maybe 10-15% points but in large case, I think if the question were asked,

"Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend the United States from its enemies." and the answers were ofen, sometimes, rarely, never, don't know, we would see a breakdown, of number pretty similar.

A major failing of the questionaire was to ask about "suicide bombing", and "other forms of violence" together instead of seperately. There is no way to know wether most people that answered in any way, approve of suicide bombing over other forms of violence, heavily, rarely, almost never, not at all or only, or vice versa. It's legitimate to ask them together, but it would have been more insightful to ask it seperately.

Strange. I posted how the survey Brad posted does not support his conclusion, yet everyone seems more interested in the definition or racism. To restate what I said:

Acording to the poll you posted, the number who suport violence against civilian tagets have gone down in Pakistan, Jordan and Indonesia, while they have gone up a little in Turkey. Those numbers do not sound like horrible numbers. Unless I am reading the charts horribly wrong, I do not see the majorities your talking about. Except in Jordan, Egypt, and Nigeria, the majority believe violence against civilians can NEVER be justified. That is the exact opposite of what you are talking about. I do not see a majority.

Brad's original argument was that:

In many Islamic countries, intentionally murdering innocents in the name of Islam is considered acceptable by significant portions of the population. By significant, I mean near majorities or outright majorities.

Yet the numbers do not support this statement. I would like to hear Brad's response to this.

The main reason it's irrelevant is that the guy is merely trying to discourage discussion on this topic by throwing a loaded charge.

OK, I agree with that. It caused a lot of distraction, too. My semantic nitpicking was not helpful.

"Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are
justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that, no matter what the
reason, this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is
often justified to defend Islam, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified?"[/qoute]

That was the specific question.

In response, within the past couple of years, Jordan,  Egypt, Pakistan, and Nigeria all had outright majorities responded that there are cases where it is justified to target civilians.

How someone can argue that the stats don't back up the claim that significant percentages of Muslims thinks it is okay to murder civilians to the name of Islam escapes me.

How about this: It is NEVER acceptable to murder an innocent in the name of your religion EVER. If the answer to the question is not "never" then that means you think there are cases where it is okay to deliberately target civilians.

I think the survey demonstrates the sickness of Islam as an ideology. We aren't dealing with a handful of fanatics, we are dealing with outright majorities of the Islamic population in many of these countries that can envision targeting bystanders with suicide bombers (like flying planes into the World Trade Center) as being an acceptable option.

The numbers absolutely support my statement, TOV. >50% supporting murdering civilians is a majority.

 

www.climatecrisis.net/trailer/

The numbers absolutely support my statement, TOV. >50% supporting murdering civilians is a majority

However, their are only three countries in the survey were there are over 50% in support of such murder.

In response, within the past couple of years, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, and Nigeria all had outright majorities responded that there are cases where it is justified to target civilians.

You are incorrect about Pakistan.. The latest numbers say 69% believe such murder is never justified. In Egypt and Jordan, the majorities are becoming smaller. Hopefully, the majorities their will continue to become smaller.

"It is NEVER acceptable to murder an innocent in the name of your religion EVER."

How about murdering innocent people for your country?

"We aren't dealing with a handful of fanatics, we are dealing with outright majorities of the Islamic population in many of these countries that can envision targeting bystanders with suicide bombers (like flying planes into the World Trade Center) as being an acceptable option."

So....
Why is it that there isn't the same level of support in the same survey for Al Qaeda?
Why isn't there support for Islamic Extremists at the same level of majority in the survey?
Why isn't there the same level of support for Islamic extremism over modernization "in general"?

Maybe what's needed is revealed in the survey itself, i.e. why most Muslims blame their problems of lack of prosperity and the Muhammed Cartoon publication. Numbers like 90,87,86,84,81,80,79,73 are even clearer majorities stating western disrespect here, higher and with more clarity, then the supposed majority of support for murder numbers.

Maybe what's needed is more respect of Islam, perhaps hand in hand with more tolerance. Maybe just maybe so many Muslims wouldn't feel threatened, or support such violence if western civilization was more tolerant of things that were different i.e. Islam.

Certainly Abu Gharib has taught us a few lessons in respect or has it, no human, detainee, terrorist, murder whatever, should be treated the way our troops were allowed to treat those detainees, there is absolutely no excuse, and for crying out loud, they knew they were on watch beforehand. I'm not blaming the troops as a whole, only those who chose to do this, to take it to the extreme, because in the absence of rules this is what happens. The rules were the responsibility of the military and civillian leadership and what a fu*ked up job they did on that.

You're supposed to learn in kindergarden how to treat people, nothing complex there, basically as you would want to be treated yourself. Not all the detainees are terrorists, or criminals, some are just civillians caught in the crossfire, but one thing is certain, terrorist or civillian, they are all human, and that used to mean something to this country, before this war. I'm not entirely convinced that is means something to us anymore. Has humanity in our generation gone the way of good customer service? Optional but not to be expected?

It's actions like this that demonize our side of the fight against radical extremist groups. Wrongdoings like this seriously erode domestic support in nations that would rather support us on the whole then Al Qaeida, but if you give them the choice between murders that give the perception of respecting of the Islamic way of life and us, who clearly haven't done so in the past, well you can see how the numbers speak for themselves.

The survey numbers are numbers and as such cannot relay more than answers to relatively "for or against" questions leaving no room for gradations. Unfortunately, our (American) perceptions are strongly biased against what we perceive as "primitive" values. As to whether Islam is a religion of peace or not, it rests in how individuals identifying themselves as belonging to that religion (or any other) interpret or are taught to interpret those values. If you look at history, when a person hates another (or a group of others), or seeks to enslave another, demonization (or dehumanization) and justification are common mechanisms. A sentence or statement can be found in any of the Testaments/Kuran, etc. that can be used to such purpose. Those individuals overlook the Testaments/Kuran's OVERALL views and spirit.

Way to sneak that trailer into here. You just know this is going to be a firestorm issue.

I like the way Gore put it "Is it possible we should prepare for other threats besides terrorism?"

Um yeah. It is.

"If you look at history, when a person hates another (or a group of others), or seeks to enslave another, demonization (or dehumanization) and justification are common mechanisms. A sentence or statement can be found in any of the Testaments/Kuran, etc. that can be used to such purpose. Those individuals overlook the Testaments/Kuran's OVERALL views and spirit."

Exactly,

Brad and a few others, have in an effort to either state opinion or just damage the credibility of our own, stating that we don't know history but making it out as if he knows something we don't, and that we don't know Islam's true agenda, also denying it as a world religion is another talking point. Islam is as much a world religion as any other religion is an ideology. Arguing between the two is silly, do people not have as much right to follow their own ideology as religion. Also Brad you've made the point that Islam has no redeeming value whatsoever. So the 5 pillars of Islam don't qualify? How about Islam as an avenue for peace loving people just like you and me to find God?

If you are content to see only the bad and none of the good, then that's a pretty narrow minded position to take don't you think?
The pilgrimage to Mecca, giving to the poor, purification through fasting, daily I guess these none of these qualify as something good for people to do?

Read this...

"An individual may also give as much as he or she pleases as sadaqa-h, and does so preferably in secret. Although this word can be translated as "voluntary charity" it has a wider meaning.
The Prophet said, "Even meeting your brother with a cheerful face is an act of charity." The Prophet also said: "Charity is a necessity for every Muslim." He was asked: "What if a person has nothing?" The Prophet replied: "He should work with his own hands for his benefit and then give something out of such earnings in charity." The Companions of the Prophet asked: "What if he is not able to work?" The Prophet said: "He should help the poor and needy." The Companions further asked: "What if he cannot do even that?" The Prophet said: "He should urge others to do good." The Companions said: "What if he lacks that also?" The Prophet said: "He should check himself from doing evil. That is also an act of charity."

www.islam101.com/dawah/pillars.html

Judge for yourself Brad before you accuse the rest of us of knowing nothing about anything, including history, Do you not see/read anything good in the above excerpt? I do. I would wager if we polled I wouldn't be alone. Maybe sir, it is you who need to do some further study. Or will you deny that and slap us down for indicating that you might not be entirely correct. Please do go on to say my views along with everbody else's views are totally and completely, it exposes your position further. There is good and bad in everything in this world and existence, but Islam is not all bad to make the argument that it is quiet silly. Have I strawmanned ya or just misunderstood your earlier posts on the subject?

One more since I can't resist

Ever heard of Algebra? You know from Math class, I'm sure ya-all use some algebra,

Well it's Arabic for al-jabr. HaHa no redeeming qualties at all huh? I suppose it's all how you define redeeming.

Dare I post a wiki? I do indeed Dare.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Musa_al-Khwarizmi

"The numbers absolutely support my statement, TOV. >50% supporting murdering civilians is a majority" However, their are only three countries in the survey were there are over 50% in support of such murder. In response, within the past couple of years, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, and Nigeria all had outright majorities responded that there are cases where it is justified to target civilians. "You are incorrect about Pakistan.. The latest numbers say 69% believe such murder is never justified. In Egypt and Jordan, the majorities are becoming smaller. Hopefully, the majorities their will continue to become smaller."

Tova, you need to boost your reading comprehension significantly.  You claimed just above that you had shown me to be wrong.

Here was the sub-header to the article: "Significant percentages of Muslims thinks it's okay to murder civilians in the name of Islam..."

My entire article is only two sentences long. 

Focus..... In a survey of a bunch of Islamic countries, significant percentages of the Muslim population (or outright majorities) think it is okay to target civilians to defend Islam.  That was what I posted. That is what the survey shows. I didn't write that all the countries were by majority. And it's also irrelevant whether Pakistan currently or last year had a majority that supported it. 

Let's review:

1. Islamic apologists claim that Terrorism is the result of a tiny extremist minority who have "hijacked their religion"
2. These terrorists use suicide bombings to target civilians in the name of "defending Islam".
3. Surveys of citizens in various Islamic countries show that significant percentages of the population and in some cases outright majorities actually do think it is justifiable to defend Islam by targeting civilians.

Therefore: Islam can hardly be claimed to be the "religion of peace" if significant percentages of its adherents believe it's okay to murder innocent people in its name.  A similar poll of Christians or Hindus or any other religion would not have had these results.  Even 36% of Muslims living in France think it's justifiable to target innocent civilians with suicide bombers in the name of Islam.  This is not a peaceful religion.

Since one assumes that the people who follow this religion are no more predetermined towards murderous violence than anyone else, what is the variable that makes millions of people think it is acceptable to hijack airplanes and crash them into buildings or blow up a shrapnel filled bomb in a cafe? Answer: Islam.

 

"It is NEVER acceptable to murder an innocent in the name of your religion EVER." How about murdering innocent people for your country?

That's a strawman argument. First, it's too vague. Define "for your country"?  Second, the point is, it's never acceptable to murder people for an IDEA. A BELIEF.

You can disagree with me. Isn't that nice? And despite you disagreeing with my position, I don't think one of my options to defend my position is to have you murdered.  In fact, even if you insulted some of my sacred beliefs, I would, amazingly, not insist on your extermination.

If you condemned my world view or insulted my wife, I would still not arrange for murder or the murder of your family.  Does that help the poll make more sense now? Muslims, because of their beliefs, are murdering innocent people when their beliefs -- Islam -- are challenged, insulted, whatever.

If the pope says something that Muslims don't like, people get murdered. If the Danes release cartoons that Muslims don't like, people get murdered.  And for years, we've had weak equivicators try to draw comparisons with Christians or whatever when all the while all you needed to do was ask Muslims and a significant percentage (or majority in some cases) would happily tell you that there are times when 'dem infidels just needed a'killin.

Brad and a few others, have in an effort to either state opinion or just damage the credibility of our own, stating that we don't know history but making it out as if he knows something we don't, and that we don't know Islam's true agenda, also denying it as a world religion is another talking point. Islam is as much a world religion as any other religion is an ideology. Arguing between the two is silly, do people not have as much right to follow their own ideology as religion. Also Brad you've made the point that Islam has no redeeming value whatsoever. So the 5 pillars of Islam don't qualify? How about Islam as an avenue for peace loving people just like you and me to find God? If you are content to see only the bad and none of the good, then that's a pretty narrow minded position to take don't you think?

I think you have no credibility because you're an equivicator. You mistake a lack of decision making to being endless tolerance. You want to avoid having to make conclusions or take a stand at all costs. And that's your right. But in the meantime, other people will draw conclusions.

This article isn't about whether there are good parts of Islam. It isn't about what Islam's "real" agenda is. It isn't even about whether the Arabic world which happened to be Muslim at the time invented Algebra (In grown-up countries, we don't give credit for inventions to religions, we give them to people or countries).

This article is simply pointing out the results of a survey: Signfiicant percentages of Muslims think it is justifiable to target civilians (with suicide bombers and such) to "defend" Islam.  That's it.

When the adults of the world had to go and defeat Nazism, I am sure there were warm fuzzy people arguing that there were nice Nazis. I wonder if a survey of Nazis in Germany would have had double digit "Yes" answers to targeting civilians to defend Nazism. And hey, Hitler was nice to animals and a vegetarian.

But you know what? It doesn't matter. What they DO matters. And the facts are, Muslims have been going around for decades now murdering innocent people in the name of their religion and weak equivicators have tried to make excuses and argued that it's only a tiny fringe group that thinks this way. Now we have a survey that shows, no, it's not a tiny fringe group. It's millions and millions of Muslims who feel this way.

Judge for yourself Brad before you accuse the rest of us of knowing nothing about anything, including history, Do you not see/read anything good in the above excerpt? I do. I would wager if we polled I wouldn't be alone. Maybe sir, it is you who need to do some further study. Or will you deny that and slap us down for indicating that you might not be entirely correct. Please do go on to say my views along with everbody else's views are totally and completely, it exposes your position further. There is good and bad in everything in this world and existence, but Islam is not all bad to make the argument that it is quiet silly. Have I strawmanned ya or just misunderstood your earlier posts on the subject?

What exactly am I not entirely correct about?  My article points out that significant percentages of Muslims thinks it is justifiable to target civilians in the name of Islam. Your wiki entry won't change that. 

Similarly, a wiki entry showing that innovation occurred in Islamic countries in the past is irrelevant as well because they are in the past. When I say (elsewhere, in a different article) that I don't think Islam has any redeemable value, I am talking about the present.  And even if I wasn't talking about the present, you wuold have to demonstrate that Algebra occurred as a result of being a Muslim as opposed to say the trading caravans of the middle east needing it. I don't credit Geometry to Zeus any more than I credit Calculus to Jesus. So I'm not inclined to give Allah credit for Algebra.

I think you know history. I just think you lack the ability to take principled stands. Nobody's really wrong and nobody's really right. You'd rather have other people take responsibility and make decisions. And that's fine. We will. And you can make yourself feel better by standing back and condemning people who have to deal with the real world.  And that's your right. You have that right because people who make decisions have given you that right and defended your right to sit around in comfort complaining about every action other people take.

What exactly am I not entirely correct about? My article points out that significant percentages of Muslims thinks it is justifiable to target civilians in the name of Islam.

What about the Cold War? Vietnamese villages were bombed to defend democracy. Pinochet's reign of terror was supported to defend democracy. "Our bastard" Saddam was supported in his war against Iran to defend democracy.

Westerners have always, always been willing to see the deaths of civilians in quite large numbers to defend their ideologies. Must we abandon democracy too because people are willing to kill innocents to protect it?

If Islam is an ideology which calls for the deaths of civilians to protect it, then democracy is no better. The 20th century is full of examples of civilians sacrificed on the altar of democracy.

what always amazes me in these types of discussions is the fact that there are ppl that will jump over themselves to defend the Muslim religion. Especially when these same ppl will jump over themselves to condemn Christianity at the drop of a hat.

What about the Cold War? Vietnamese villages were bombed to defend democracy. Pinochet's reign of terror was supported to defend democracy. "Our bastard" Saddam was supported in his war against Iran to defend democracy. Westerners have always, always been willing to see the deaths of civilians in quite large numbers to defend their ideologies. Must we abandon democracy too because people are willing to kill innocents to protect it? If Islam is an ideology which calls for the deaths of civilians to protect it, then democracy is no better. The 20th century is full of examples of civilians sacrificed on the altar of democracy.

TARGETS civilians. No, in the Cold War the US military did not intentionally target civilians.  And civilians weren't killed over a belief, even accidentally. 

Let's be clear here: The survey was about TARGETING civilians as in suicide bombers and the like. They are trying to murder civilians.  Civilians aren't a means to an end in the attack, they are the goal. 

Muslims aren't killing civilians in the process of some other tangible objective. I.e. they aren't attacking a war production factory and some civilians happened to be killed. The civilians are the TARGET. This has been stated over and over again.

Please, by all means, explain how murdering civilians was the goal of the United States in any war. Even Hiroshima in World War II was not targeting civilians but its warp making capacity (a number of cities in Japan were not bombed in World War II such as Kyoto because of the lack of military value in doing so).

Do you understand the distinction:  Flying a hijacked plane into the Pentagon is one thing. Civilians died but they were attacking a military target. Flying a hijacked plane into the WTC is a whole different matter.

But let's carry out the "evil US" to its logical conclusion:

If Islam is an ideology which calls for the deaths of civilians to protect it, then democracy is no better.

Then why doesn't the United States simply incinerate every man, woman, and child in Iraq and the rest of the middle east? We have the capability. There is no one who could stop the United States from doing it.  If the US is "no better" then why not?  

Do you think you could get more than a single digit percentage of Americans to agree that it would be justifiable to annihilate the middle east to "defend democracy"?  If Iran invaded democratic Iraq, should we exterminate Iran?  If we are no better, why shouldn't we?

The moral equivalence stuff gets really old here.  Here we have it in black and white that millions of Muslims think it is justified to intentionally go out and murder civilians with suicide bombers and the like -- attacks like 9/11 and what do we get? That this is no different than civilians who happen lose their lives in a struggle between opposing military forces?

Brad, why even bother? These discussions always go to the point where America is the actual terrorists, and that the poor, downtrodden Muslims wouldn't bother anyone if the big bad America would just leave them alone....

Personally, it makes me sick to my stomach. The so-called "liberals" rally around the same flag of those that would strip them of every one of their rights. It is easy to say what they are saying....until those they are defending are forcing them to bow 5 times a day toward the Holy City....

According to the press the British PM had to dissuade Bush from bombing Al Jazeera in Doha. Al Jazeera is a civilian organisation. Ergo George Bush is not against bombing civilians for military or political gain. And if he's willing to do it, I don't think it's that rare a belief. US presidents aren't known for the originality of their policies.

Flying a hijacked plane into the WTC is a whole different matter.

How? Tokyo was firebombed as an economic target. The WTC was attacked as an economic target. Both produced goods and services needed for the purposes of war and so were attacked. Both mostly involved the deaths of civilians.

Many western nations have declared war on terrorism, so they should expect their economic institutions to be attacked. They do the same, using contacts in the international banking system to freeze and isolate terrorist bank accounts. The nature of their technological and diplomatic superiority makes civilian deaths largely unnecessary.

But this is getting off the point. We have no information about US or other western attitudes towards killing in defence of democracy/Christianity/the flying spaghetti monster, so all we can do is state our opinions. As you've told me before, we can't argue opinions as if they're facts.

Brad, why even bother? These discussions always go to the point where America is the actual terrorists, and that the poor, downtrodden Muslims wouldn't bother anyone if the big bad America would just leave them alone.... Personally, it makes me sick to my stomach. The so-called "liberals" rally around the same flag of those that would strip them of every one of their rights. It is easy to say what they are saying....until those they are defending are forcing them to bow 5 times a day toward the Holy City....

G'ah, and it's people like you who label, generalize, bash, and slam those who are liberal. It's disgusting, I dont do it to you. At least show some respect, and try to do the same.

Grow the heck up.

Geesh.