The problem with the wars fought in the last century is they were never finished. From WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, etc. There was always a major contingent "rabble rousers" left behind. The present war is no exception. Iraq was invaded and the enemy ran away to hide. They were allowed to hide and were ignored as if by doing so, a peace would ensue.

A tribal mindset will never accept a rational argument because it conflicts with what they believe. The Tribal mindset as been reinforced over years and the tribal morality has been etched into the very being of the person. Anything that conflicts with this belief is bad and therefore conseidered the enemy and must be destroyed.

I do not feel bad about requireing overwhelming force because if we don’t do it first, we will wake up with dirty bombs and tactical nuclear weapons going off in our own back yard. This will be done to the glory of allah. While us rational westerners act surprised that it came to this.

Overwhelming force must be used and it must be used to it’s fullest extent. Anything short of this will only provide the blowback you mention.

The fact remains that IN ANY DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY under the sun (and there aren’t that many, I agree) you can’t go out on the street, or get on the public airwaves and scream that we need to kill the head of government and his immediate retinue in any way possible. You can not advocate publicly or even privately (if it’ll come to ears of the police) that we need to go out on the streets and overthrow the government by whatever means necessary. Try it in any country of your choice and see what happens, if you do not believe me.

You can, however, speak out against the government (in a democracy), you can even curse the government as long as you do not advocate murder or incite to cause bodily harm. If your anti governmental rhetoric is convincing enough and there are better alternatives you will succeed in throwing the bums out. That is how a democracy functions.

The same goes for inciting to kill any other segment of the population because you dislike their ethnic group, their religion or their skin color. Try it if you don’t believe it!

You’d be breaking existing laws in both cases of incitement!

You can say you hate Jews or blacks, for example, and except for making me uncomfortable I can do nothing about it other than either expose your bigotry or shut up. The same goes for any religion, even Islam. You can not, however, burn down a church, a mosque or a synagogue because you do not like the religion and so on.

Now as for what is violence, ever use a dictionary? Here…

Main Entry: vi·o·lence Pronunciation: \ˈvī-lən(t)s, ˈvī-ə-\
Function: noun
Date: 14th century 1 a: exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse (as in warfare effecting illegal entry into a house) b: an instance of violent treatment or procedure

That is the working definition of violence for our purposes here.

Ah, and now we need to define violence. It seems any harsh interrogation techniques are also now not allowed to be advocated.

When it is so easy to distort your intent, you should take a step back and reflect on it.

Try to draw up an objective criteria for separating ‘good’ speech from ‘bad’ speech and you will find it an impossible task. Think of the French law against doubting the Armenian Genocide. Even if you could satisfy yourself, I’m sure posting it here would have someone come up with a situation that twisted your rules into something you wouldn’t like, just like I managed to do with your decree against advocating violence.

Your current rules are as much flawed as the original.

The first nullifies the reason for the 2nd amendment, since it is not violent opposition to foreign powers, but from domestic powers which drives it.

Your second rules outlaws the death penalty.

Last time I checked that either creates blowback later or an economy-sapping quagmire. But yeah, you go by the LGF approach and harm the US more.

" Thus we explain everything they do, away. Worse yet, we provide excuses and practice denial."

No, I am just refusing to accept that they created the problems for themselves in their entirety. They didn’t. To explain things allow for a better solution and approach. Learning that the "manly", right-wing approach has its flaws and proven failures allows one to change the Middle East for the better. In short, overwhelimg force is a bad ideea and you should feel bad.

"Thinking that there are people who aren’t fully human leads to everything from genocide to abortion."

Fail. Abortions have nothing to do with refusing the lives of humans.

"a)  no incitement to violently overthrow the government can be tolerated"

This assumes the government is impeccable, and there are no impeccable governments.

"I am all for peace, but you can not paramoralize the actions of militants Islamists who murder, rape & torture."

As long as they are murdering in self-defense against those that have attacked them they can murder all they want. The rest goes without saying - wrong.

"Call them what they are."

Bad humans. And who are "they" - The taliban or muslim supremacists/separatists? Eastern European christian fascists who subjugate women and  attack homosexuals? They kinda fit in the description.

"We try to be rational but they are NOT rational people"

Because nations like the US is partially responsible for creating societies where rationality cannot take hold. Muslims in the Middle East have been terrorized since before WWI. Recognizing this explains much of the ire and radicalism in the middle east. Immigrants to the west are a different matter - they need to integrate once they’re here, and if racist employers won’t give them jobs we need to meet them halway as long as they don’t turn to vandalism, crime and passivity.

They don’t recognize the rights of others as we do - yet they COUNT on us recognizing their rights; while they abuse ours.  I am all for peace, but you can not paramoralize the actions of militants Islamists who murder, rape & torture.  You can’t put your peaceful intentions on people who count on you "laying down" for it."

I will say that I would not want these ‘people’ to live next door to me.  They treat everyone who is not them badly — and even treat their own like dirt.  Call them what they are.  Realize they don’t think like us and never will.

The playing field is not level.  We try to be rational but they are NOT rational people.  James is right on! We excuse their "reactions."  They are practicing murder under the guise of terrorism.  Until we recognize that and deal with these terrorist accordingly - we will continue to lose valuable human life to sensesless Jihad. 

Psychopathic terrorists & ponerized people may be walking around in a body.  But their soul is dark.  Until we stop sticking our heads in the sand that we aren’t all ‘equal’ — we are going to continue to be in serious trouble protecting & preserving our freedoms.

I agree with James.  But also, Chaim has every right to call them vermin, if that is his opinion.  And group that preaches violence against other members of society, that inserts itself somewhere and doesn’t even attempt to assimilate but HAMMERS its tenets into those around them ‘come hell or high water’ — these are people with serious problems.

They don’t recognize the rights of others as we do - yet they COUNT on us recognizing their rights; while they abuse ours.  I am all for peace, but you can not paramoralize the actions of militants Islamists who murder, rape & torture.  You can’t put your peaceful intentions on people who count on you "laying down" for it."

I will say that I would not want these ‘people’ to live next door to me.  They treat everyone who is not them badly — and even treat their own like dirt.  Call them what they are.  Realize they don’t think like us and never will.

The playing field is not level.  We try to be rational but they are NOT rational people.  James is right on! We excuse their "reactions."  They are practicing murder under the guise of terrorism.  Until we recognize that and deal with these terrorist accordingly - we will continue to lose valuable human life to sensesless Jihad. 

Psychopathic terrorists & ponerized people may be walking around in a body.  But their soul is dark.  Until we stop sticking our heads in the sand that we aren’t all ‘equal’ — we are going to continue to be in serious trouble protecting & preserving our freedoms.

As I started with, they are human beings. They follow the "law of the jungle" while we in the west try to be rational. Thus we explain everything they do, away. Worse yet, we provide excuses and practice denial. We are unwilling to face the truth. They do not see liberty and freedom in the same way we do.  As a rational being it is un-rational to try to place our personnas on these "followers of the law of the jungle".