Bill Maher's Islamophobic Career-Ender

[Mr.Fitnah]

Absolutely untrue Maddie. The violence is world wide. You forget 9/11 already? And it is directly related to islam, period, end of story, and no amount of you ignoring it or denying it will change that fact.

That's not quite true. I'm a fluent Arabic speaker, born and raised Muslim (atheist but culturally identify as Muslim), and I saw a couple of bin Laden's videos before 9/11, so I'm well aware of his narrative and if it consisted merely of "let's kill the infidels" it would have never become a global movement with any real success.

While you can argue that without Islam 9/11 wouldn't have happened, you can far more easily make the same claim about various US policies in the Middle East that are perceived in the region to have killed lots of civilians. Where are all the jihadist attacks against Sweden, France, Germany, and just about any other country that minds its own business and reserves its armed forces for defensive uses (plus the occasional peacekeeping mission)?

You think people out to destroy the west would choose to bomb the Madrid subway instead of--say--Frankfurt, the continent's financial capital? Do you really deny that Spain joining the occupation of Iraq had something to do with it? Switzerland recently banned the construction of new minarets, so where are the jihadist hordes who you insist are waging a cultural war against ALL of the west and that if we ceased our killing of Muslim civilians they would hate us anyway?

Also, non-Western and non-democratic countries that are involved in occupying Muslims also get attacked--Russia and India for example (I take no side in neither separatist conflict).

It seems to me that the only common denominator among countries targeted by jihadists is some form of military occupation/action in Muslim population areas.

I get the feeling that people like you are more loyal to having a neo-conservative foreign policy than you are to actually minimizing terrorist threats, or you wouldn't be doing everything in your power to make sure the motivations behind 9/11 are never allowed open debate so the public doesn't start asking which policies are worth the trouble. Never mind that said motivations are openly proclaimed by bin Laden in much of his videos and leave little room for speculation or debate, a point you should keep in mind before you predictably feign offense at my mention of foreign policy & 9/11 thereby "justifying" it.


Without the widespread belief in the Middle East that the US will never stop killing their men, women, and children, no amount of strictly religious propaganda would create a global network of committed anti-American terrorists anywhere near the scale we see. While of course anything bin Laden says about US foreign policy is a caricature of a more complicated reality, we're not exactly helping by providing him with all the gut-wrenching footage of dead Muslim civilians he needs to show the Islamic world that we're monsters.

Madeleine Albright's infamous "it was worth it" quote about half a million dead Iraqi children from sanctions is still repeated in that part of the world, even though it's long-forgotten here, because as much as Republicans love shitting on liberals apparently liberals who kill a million Muslim civilians (when adults are included) by starvation and disease are at least admissible.

I spent some years living in Canada and several summers in Europe, and throughout the entire Western world I see a revulsion to warmongering that is lacking in American society and almost entirely missing in the South.

Until we figure out a way to feel awesome as a country/society without the need to kill craploads of foreigners we will always be a target by someone. Today it's Muslims, in the 80s it was Puerto Ricans, and in the future it will hopefully be nobody since we're probably going to be too broke to go around killing as many Third Worlders as in the last century, and we will begin losing enemies just as the UK and France did after they dissolved their empires in the 1950s-60s. When the Palin-zombies are sensible enough to embrace Ron Paul you know the neo-cons' grand scheme for the world is in peril.

George Carlin said it best: "Speaking of American values, aren’t we about due to start bombing some small country that only has a marginally effective air force? Seems to me like we’re weeks overdue to drop high explosives helpless civilians; people who have no argument with us whatsoever. I think we ought to be out there doing what we do best gang: making large holes in other people’s countries. I hate to be repetitious but we are a war-like lot. We can’t stand it not to be fucking with somebody!"

Less of a mess, lets see what it says

 

[Si modo]

France and others are very much involved in the Middle East and only the naive or willfully blind think otherwise.

Then why don't you enlighten us with examples of visible involvement of these countries in mass-killings in the Middle East sometime in the past, say, 30 years

Ah, but that's not what you said. Are you changing the goalposts now?

Amateur.

 

[Madeline]

No can refute dino's points? How typical.

I'd like to remind you geniuses that the 9/11 terrorists were all Saudis, yet we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.

Bush and Cheney both need to be arrested, convicted and executed for War Crimes and any American with an ounce of integrity knows it.

 

[chanel]

Oh I have a couple ounces of integrity and disagree with you 100%.

 

[Madeline]

Oh I have a couple ounces of integrity and disagree with you 100%.

I know you do, chanel. (Have integrity....I am surprised we disagree about Bush and Cheney.)

Shall we convo here about this or begin a new thread? Not many are gonna come here looking for a debate on Bush's culpability for War Crimes.

 

[chanel]

I'm not interested in revisionist history Madeline. Nagasaki might have been a bad idea in hindsight. War is ugly. Mistakes are made. I am grateful there are braver people than I making those tough decisions.

 

[Madeline]

I'm not interested in revisionist history Madeline. Nagasaki might have been a bad idea in hindsight. War is ugly. Mistakes are made. I am grateful there are braver people than I making those tough decisions.

"Revisionist history"? It was like 9 years ago....and people screamed at the time that Bush and Cheney were lying.

If you dun wanna debate this subject, fine by me, but let's not play the "simple maiden" card, okay?

 

[chanel]

Feel free to start another thread Madeline. I may not be an expert in war, but I am a pragmatist. What you are suggesting is so decisive it could lead to a civil war. Prosecuting leaders, soldiers, and spies would paralyze this country. If that's what you call "playing the fair maiden card" then guilty as charged. I think you might find some "fair maidens" in the Armed Forces as well.

 

[Madeline]

Feel free to start another thread Madeline. I may not be an expert in war, but I am a pragmatist. What you are suggesting is so decisive it could lead to a civil war. Prosecuting leaders, soldiers, and spies would paralyze this country. If that's what you call "playing the fair maiden card" then guilty as charged. I think you might find some "fair maidens" in the Armed Forces as well.

So, IYO, Bush and Cheney are/probably are guilty but a prosecution would be contrary to our national interests?

 

[chanel]

I have no inside info on guilty or innocence. What national security clearance do you have?

 

[Madeline]

I have no inside info on guilty or innocence. What national security clearance do you have?

Where are the WMDs we *had* to deprive Saddam of again? Where is *bin Laden's* prison cell?

IYO, only the folks on the CIA's payroll can form a valid POV on Bush's criminal liability?

 

[chanel]

Nope. How about our Congressional leaders? The same ones who agreed with Clinton that Iraq had WMD's in the 90's? Should we prosecute them too?

Give it up Madeline. Arrogance about issues that are waaaaaay above our pay grades is not pretty.

 

[Madeline]

Nope. How about our Congressional leaders? The same ones who agreed with Clinton that Iraq had WMD's in the 90's? Should we prosecute them too?

Give it up Madeline. Arrogance about issues that are waaaaaay above our pay grades is not pretty.

Neither is apathy, chanel.

 

[dino]

France and others are very much involved in the Middle East and only the naive or willfully blind think otherwise.

No, you gave an example of how France *used* to be involved militarily in the region, a very long time and several major policy shifts ago. The fact that you cling so desperately to an example that goes as far back as the 1960s indicates you're not having an easy time making your point.

 

[Si modo]

Nope. How about our Congressional leaders? The same ones who agreed with Clinton that Iraq had WMD's in the 90's? Should we prosecute them too?

Give it up Madeline. Arrogance about issues that are waaaaaay above our pay grades is not pretty.

Neither is apathy, chanel.

Rejecting your delusions is not apathy, Madeline.

 

[chanel]

Is Madeline a card carrying member of Wikileaks now?

Concerned Americans who want to see school records and a birth certificate are called insane. People who demand classified national security documents are called what?

Rhetorical question of course.

 

[theHawk]

Absolutely untrue Maddie. The violence is world wide. You forget 9/11 already? And it is directly related to islam, period, end of story, and no amount of you ignoring it or denying it will change that fact.

That's not quite true. I'm a fluent Arabic speaker, born and raised Muslim (atheist but culturally identify as Muslim), and I saw a couple of bin Laden's videos before 9/11, so I'm well aware of his narrative and if it consisted merely of "let's kill the infidels" it would have never become a global movement with any real success. While you can argue that without Islam 9/11 wouldn't have happened, you can far more easily make the same claim about various US policies in the Middle East that are perceived in the region to have killed lots of civilians. Where are all the jihadist attacks against Sweden, France, Germany, and just about any other country that minds its own business and reserves its armed forces for defensive uses (plus the occasional peacekeeping mission)? You think people out to destroy the west would choose to bomb the Madrid subway instead of--say--Frankfurt, the continent's financial capital? Do you really deny that Spain joining the occupation of Iraq had something to do with it? Switzerland recently banned the construction of new minarets, so where are the jihadist hordes who you insist are waging a cultural war against ALL of the west and that if we ceased our killing of Muslim civilians they would hate us anyway? Also, non-Western and non-democratic countries that are involved in occupying Muslims also get attacked--Russia and India for example (I take no side in neither separatist conflict). It seems to me that the only common denominator among countries targeted by jihadists is some form of military occupation/action in Muslim population areas. I get the feeling that people like you are more loyal to having a neo-conservative foreign policy than you are to actually minimizing terrorist threats, or you wouldn't be doing everything in your power to make sure the motivations behind 9/11 are never allowed open debate so the public doesn't start asking which policies are worth the trouble. Never mind that said motivations are openly proclaimed by bin Laden in much of his videos and leave little room for speculation or debate, a point you should keep in mind before you predictably feign offense at my mention of foreign policy & 9/11 thereby "justifying" it. Without the widespread belief in the Middle East that the US will never stop killing their men, women, and children, no amount of strictly religious propaganda would create a global network of committed anti-American terrorists anywhere near the scale we see. While of course anything bin Laden says about US foreign policy is a caricature of a more complicated reality, we're not exactly helping by providing him with all the gut-wrenching footage of dead Muslim civilians he needs to show the Islamic world that we're monsters. Madeleine Albright's infamous "it was worth it" quote about half a million dead Iraqi children from sanctions is still repeated in that part of the world, even though it's long-forgotten here, because as much as Republicans love shitting on liberals apparently liberals who kill a million Muslim civilians (when adults are included) by starvation and disease are at least admissible.

I spent some years living in Canada and several summers in Europe, and throughout the entire Western world I see a revulsion to warmongering that is lacking in American society and almost entirely missing in the South. Until we figure out a way to feel awesome as a country/society without the need to kill craploads of foreigners we will always be a target by someone. Today it's Muslims, in the 80s it was Puerto Ricans, and in the future it will hopefully be nobody since we're probably going to be too broke to go around killing as many Third Worlders as in the last century, and we will begin losing enemies just as the UK and France did after they dissolved their empires in the 1950s-60s. When the Palin-zombies are sensible enough to embrace Ron Paul you know the neo-cons' grand scheme for the world is in peril.

George Carlin said it best: "Speaking of American values, aren’t we about due to start bombing some small country that only has a marginally effective air force? Seems to me like we’re weeks overdue to drop high explosives helpless civilians; people who have no argument with us whatsoever. I think we ought to be out there doing what we do best gang: making large holes in other people’s countries. I hate to be repetitious but we are a war-like lot. We can’t stand it not to be fucking with somebody!"

You seem to have omitted the biggest reason Muslims around the word hate the US - the existance of Israel and the humiliating losses Muslims have had in the last 50 years to the Israelis. While personally I don't believe the Zionist agenda is a realistic one, they are a free country and if they want the piece of land they "occupy" and are willing to fight for it then its theirs. This is the way the world has been since the begining of mankind. But Muslims seem to think they're special and suddenly the land they lost in war should still be theirs. Only they are too cowardly to actually form an army and take it from the Israelis, so they've resorted to a new tactic - terrorism. Infiltrate their society and blow up women and children. Of course any sane person would never do anything like that, so hmmm...how can we recruit suicide bombers? Enter Islam! A completely insane religion that is based on lies of a pedophile false prophet, worships a false god, and lies to people telling them if they kill infidels you can go to heaven and have 72 virgins waiting for you! Then of course conduct all terrorist operations within the civilian population that way when the sane people trying to protect their lives strike, they take out a bunch of "innocents", and the slippery slope begins as that just adds to more recruitment for terrorists.

 

[dino]

No can refute dino's points? How typical.

I always found it interesting that as much as Republicans of the Limbaugh variety love to indulge in tough-talk and "Political Incorrectness" because it makes them feel like the testosterone-gushing bad asses they never were in real life, the foreign policy link to 9/11 is sort of like their Political Correctness Achilles heel. This is where they become the mirror-image of the ultra-PC liberals of their imagination--the ones who absolutely deny racial differences in crime rates or the gay vulnerability to HIV, for example. Just observe neo-conservatives and their sympathizers in their TV appearances, and you will see that they are never more uncomfortable than in a discussion about foreign policy and it's link to 9/11. That's because the evidence is so overwhelming--and their own positions so untenable and unable to withstand the daylight of open debate--that the only thing forcing them to hold onto their absurd position is ego, national or personal. It's the only sort of debate where they are visibly trying to change the subject and digressing, in sharp contrast to their seeming addiction to butting heads with their liberal detractors. Ron Paul confronted them on their own turf in 2007, Republican Presidential primary debate, in South Carolina, and hosted by Fox News no less--and he humiliated the man who acts as if he was the first and biggest victim on 9/11. Another example is Pete Dominick going on Opie & Anthony and he pushed the same argument and as charged-up as the 2 hosts were about his argument they were completely ineffective at anything but expressing how much it upsets them (you can find it all on YouTube). When Chris Matthews took Rick Lazio to task (also on Youtube) for attacking the Manhattan Imam for his 9/11-foreign policy comments he left Lazio such a demoralized mess you couldn't help feel bad for him. When it comes to foreign policy and 9/11, many Republican will tell you flat out that they're not interested because such dangerous thinking is offensive and "blame America first" (codeword for blame America ever). It's amazing how it completely goes over their heads that they're behaving no differently than a social liberal insisting that the only way you can be tolerant is to categorically deny any racial differences in crime rates, something very few liberals or minorities I'm aware of actually do. On the other hand it seems that upward of 90% of Republicans angrily insist that the hijackers attacked us because they hate "democracy & titties" (or "infidels" if you find the need to sound tough).

 

[Madeline]

Our foreign policy may explain why the attacked they US rather than another nation, dino, but only the most craven evil explains why they chose to commit mass murder to begin with.

I am NOT NOT NOT taking any of the responsibility for those evil acts, nor will I go forward in shame or fear.

 

[Madeline]

That's not quite true. I'm a fluent Arabic speaker, born and raised Muslim (atheist but culturally identify as Muslim), and I saw a couple of bin Laden's videos before 9/11, so I'm well aware of his narrative and if it consisted merely of "let's kill the infidels" it would have never become a global movement with any real success. While you can argue that without Islam 9/11 wouldn't have happened, you can far more easily make the same claim about various US policies in the Middle East that are perceived in the region to have killed lots of civilians. Where are all the jihadist attacks against Sweden, France, Germany, and just about any other country that minds its own business and reserves its armed forces for defensive uses (plus the occasional peacekeeping mission)? You think people out to destroy the west would choose to bomb the Madrid subway instead of--say--Frankfurt, the continent's financial capital? Do you really deny that Spain joining the occupation of Iraq had something to do with it? Switzerland recently banned the construction of new minarets, so where are the jihadist hordes who you insist are waging a cultural war against ALL of the west and that if we ceased our killing of Muslim civilians they would hate us anyway? Also, non-Western and non-democratic countries that are involved in occupying Muslims also get attacked--Russia and India for example (I take no side in neither separatist conflict). It seems to me that the only common denominator among countries targeted by jihadists is some form of military occupation/action in Muslim population areas. I get the feeling that people like you are more loyal to having a neo-conservative foreign policy than you are to actually minimizing terrorist threats, or you wouldn't be doing everything in your power to make sure the motivations behind 9/11 are never allowed open debate so the public doesn't start asking which policies are worth the trouble. Never mind that said motivations are openly proclaimed by bin Laden in much of his videos and leave little room for speculation or debate, a point you should keep in mind before you predictably feign offense at my mention of foreign policy & 9/11 thereby "justifying" it. Without the widespread belief in the Middle East that the US will never stop killing their men, women, and children, no amount of strictly religious propaganda would create a global network of committed anti-American terrorists anywhere near the scale we see. While of course anything bin Laden says about US foreign policy is a caricature of a more complicated reality, we're not exactly helping by providing him with all the gut-wrenching footage of dead Muslim civilians he needs to show the Islamic world that we're monsters. Madeleine Albright's infamous "it was worth it" quote about half a million dead Iraqi children from sanctions is still repeated in that part of the world, even though it's long-forgotten here, because as much as Republicans love shitting on liberals apparently liberals who kill a million Muslim civilians (when adults are included) by starvation and disease are at least admissible.

I spent some years living in Canada and several summers in Europe, and throughout the entire Western world I see a revulsion to warmongering that is lacking in American society and almost entirely missing in the South. Until we figure out a way to feel awesome as a country/society without the need to kill craploads of foreigners we will always be a target by someone. Today it's Muslims, in the 80s it was Puerto Ricans, and in the future it will hopefully be nobody since we're probably going to be too broke to go around killing as many Third Worlders as in the last century, and we will begin losing enemies just as the UK and France did after they dissolved their empires in the 1950s-60s. When the Palin-zombies are sensible enough to embrace Ron Paul you know the neo-cons' grand scheme for the world is in peril.

George Carlin said it best: "Speaking of American values, aren’t we about due to start bombing some small country that only has a marginally effective air force? Seems to me like we’re weeks overdue to drop high explosives helpless civilians; people who have no argument with us whatsoever. I think we ought to be out there doing what we do best gang: making large holes in other people’s countries. I hate to be repetitious but we are a war-like lot. We can’t stand it not to be fucking with somebody!"

You seem to have omitted the biggest reason Muslims around the word hate the US - the existance of Israel and the hummiliating losses Muslims have had in the last 50 years to the Israelis. While personally I don't believe the Zionist agenda is a realistic one, they are a free country and if they want the piece of land they "occupy" and are willing to fight for it then its theirs. This is the way the world has been since the begining of mankind. But Muslims seem to think they're special and suddenly the land they lost in war should still be theirs. Only they are too cowardly to actually form an army and take it from the Israelis, so they've resorted to a new tactic - terrorism. Infiltrate their society and blow up women and children. Of course any sane person would never do anything like that, so hmmm...how can we recruit suicide bombers? Enter Islam! A completely insane religion that is based on lies of a pedophile false prophet, worships a false god, and lies to people telling them if they kill infidels you can go to heaven and have 72 virgins waiting for you! Then of course conduct all terrorist operations within the civilian population that way when the sane people trying to protect their lives strike, they take out a bunch of "innocents", and the slippery slope begins as that just adds to more recruitment for terrorists.

I agree, except that the land belongs to the Israelis because the whole world NEEDS Israel. It is our first bullwark against the greatest evil the world has ever known, and I support Israel as vigourously as I support the defense of the US.