I agree with ever word. I stayed clear from that OP that tried to justify what ISIS does to what Christians did hundreds of years ago. There was no way my stomach was going to handle that nonsense so I purposely skipped it.

You do know what "justify" means, right?

of those agreeing with this ridiculous OP.

"Remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,"

Is the truth, and does not (to those that speak english) mean what ISIS did was justified, please explain how you or anyone can read it in such a way?

are you on board with Michelle Malkin and the repugs who are saying the same to attack him over saying that? I may disagree strongly on his pro banking policies, but he showed true leadership trying to stop the repugs from equating all muslims with ISIS.


He gave them a history lesson and they squealed like stuck pigs.

I always thought you were not at all what you claim to be, now it is pretty clear since you slipped up and joined them using their exact talking points to attack the President!!!

You are busted!! You slipped up, you are joining them in their attack against him even here, you must think we don't know what all the other Republicans are saying the last two days, your disguise has fallen for all to see.

Go back to whichever right wing web rag you decided to join with to attack him.

and that is what I am responding to....

I am glad you agree so much with the Repugs that you even use the same words to respond to his, everyone should have a family, you should leave now and go be with yours on the right side of the aisle and leave us to ours.

Uh no...

You are not very good at reading my mind and apparently not very good at reading Obama's mind either...thanks for playing though!

Same with you, It was your very words not what I "thought" you might say.
The fact that your words in response to his words mirror the Republican attacks on him tells the whole story without need to read minds.


Your problem is that your position (which is their position) is indefensible.

and that is not what either of us said....nice try....NOT!

Horse hockey!

Here are the words...

"Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ."

Doesn't match what you just said in context of the rest of the speech now does it? Where is the dismissal part?

that's for sure...

You can therefore tell yourself whatever you like....

when they are told that is Obamacare they don't like it anymore.

Priceless.

When you post a quote, you must also post the identity of the quoted person so people know whether to agree or not!

Last edited Sun Feb 8, 2015, 02:58 PM - Edit history (1)

You're accusing him of justifying ISIS?

Wow. DU surely has changed.

Plenty of explanation why throughout the thread.

The outrage levels here sometimes get to be beyond believable. Obama brings up history and peoples heads explode!

So was the near genocide of the natives, so was the enslavement of millions of black people from Africa. If you don't like what Obama has to say, then turn off the TVEE!

He just spoke about how all nations have something evil in their closet...does that mean we are going to leave these evil assholes alone now? How the FUCK does anyone come to that conclusion!?

If we get a hold of ISIS, we will kill every single last one of them...bringing up history doesn't change that fact! Are some here really that so far gone...that it is just USA USA USA all the dam time!?

I stand behind Obama and his statements. The only people I see freaking out about it, is the GOP and Foxnews.

Burned alive is burned alive.

I remember being in a barber shop shortly after 9/11 when a military recruiter came in and asked a young man waiting in line if he was interested in "killing some ragheads."

War is insane.

Remember back in the days of George W? And there was a beheading by "Muslim Extremists" that took place in a specific indoor location, with the event being video taped, and then, the US state department or whomever forgot and used the same hallway and same lawn furniture for a press release, several months on down the road.

Ooops!

Besides all that, there is a clear conversation going on in Europe about just who it is that got ISIS the funding and the weaponry.

ISIS has been utilizing state of the art vehicles and weapons. Even if they "found" them in the desert, these are sophisticated pieces of equipment that troops need specialized training on.

Oh, wait...
Never mind.
Never seen it before in my life.
Nope, never ever.

(Don't tell my wife I recognize it!)

The executioner with the British accent I find highly suspect. Could be an MI6 operation to destabilize Assad gone bad.

folks. They are so invested in their Negative Nationalism against the US it is virtually impossible to reach them.

that's, in part, why I listen to him. If he did, I'd find another doctor. Get it?

I hope you are doing well.

I can imagine that you might be politely invited to leave the premises of hospitals housing patients with suppressed immune responses if you are.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

Abused as children so it is okay.

Great, cool story, bro.

that people on DU were 'condoning' burning a prisoner alive in a cage. Sounds truthy, huh?

BIG difference!

No one said that because "X" did such and such it is reasonable that "Y" did this and that.

Maybe the Raiders of the Lost Thesaurus are looking for "rationalizing" but even that one is past pushing it and requires a particularly jaundiced assumption of motive but people have motives and at least it would be a walk back from a position of willful, hateful, and slanderous lying apparently to score a weak ass point on the internet.

We understand the humdrum and matter of the fact "compare" isn't going to put any heat of the kitchen of a person you are debating and won't bring eyeballs to an OP but to go that many miles down the road is pretty shitty and the clean up offered is not much better.
I guess justification at least requires some reasoning while one can condone without even bother to think but both indicate saying it is okay and that is despicable and dishonest.

As I've stated before, I belong to a minority community that is indigenous to Mesopotamia (Assyrians.) They are on the frontlines of the ISIS terror in both Iraq and Syria. The Iraq wars already forced most of them to flee their homelands, now these savages have turned their sights on them, and the daily terror they live with is incomprehensible to most of us. Bringing up Vietnam means nothing when your female relatives are too afraid to leave the house lest they be kidnapped and forced into a camp where they will be repeatedly raped by these monsters. Mentioning the Inquisition is worthless when your son and his friends are dragged into the streets and executed for watching a soccer game on tv. The Inquisition? Tell that to the families who were forced to watch their children beheaded or buried alive for the sin of not belonging to the right religious group.

These false equivalencies are insulting. Everyone has acknowledged the wrongs done in the past; to tie them to the barbarity displayed by these animals is only furthering the agenda of ISIS.

You can even join yourself and square this all away and make safe the lands for the women!

As for me, I'm beyond done and have zero tolerance for further ever more destructive shenanigans each touching off greater blowback in the region and consider it a regional matter until further notice.
My confidence is high that with us a short a crutch the locals will settle this nonsense in short order when the gap between their heads and pikes is more clear and present. Power never surrenders and their capacity is overwhelming only will is lacking and I would see that will fostered by the relentless whip of necessity.

We now have a 4,000-strong militia in the region that are bravely confronting these assholes. Given the merciless barbarity ISIS has displayed, the amount of courage it takes to join such a force is pretty high.

Both Newsweek and the WSJ have featured their story:
http://www.newsweek.com/4000-strong-christian-militia-formed-fight-isis-northern-iraq-304371#.VNJ5WZC_jOY.twitter
http://www.wsj.com/articles/iraqs-christians-take-up-arms-to-fight-islamic-state-1423017266

If anyone wishes to help out, I know they'd appreciate it:
http://www.restoreninevehnow.org/?page_id=29

As an American, I don't want boots on the ground. Believe me, I'm as war-weary and jaded as you are about our endless campaigns and MIC. I'd love nothing more than to see the Arab world grow a spine and confront these savages themselves instead of constantly turning (and then blaming) the west for everything. Maybe the horrific death of the Jordanian pilot will be a turning point. We shall see.

I'll admit that I'd pile more weight on you guys because I oppose all action not just boots so you'd need air support, artillery, and armor and probably a lot more guys, there is overwhelming capacity considering what the opposition has available (and would have nearly nothing if our decade plus "trainees" didn't give/abandon stuff plus our funneling shit to "moderate allies" we see coming and going).
Nor would they have money and reinforcements streaming in without the indulgence and even back door encouragement by our supposed bullshit allies like Turkey and of course the Saudis (who you might be able to convince me of a war of aggression on them, I can buy they are the center piece of the mess for a dollar).

I'm tossing then in the pool and see if they swim, I'm not worried a bit because the motherfuckers can go like Michael Phelps if they want to. We can yell for the lifeguards or jump in later if need be.

They do NOT want to leave their lands. And, more importantly, they are willing to fight for it. We all saw how the Iraqi army fled, and the Kurdish Peshmergha pretty much did the same in areas where Kurdish majorities didn't live. Who better to protect their homes than those living in them? But we were always denied -- by both the KRG and Iraqi government -- permission to form our own militias, receive any kind of training or weaponry. Thankfully, the Obama administration recently authorized financial support for minorities in that region so they can now arm, train and defend themselves. It's a lot more affordable (in resources and American lives) to fund those wanting to fight these animals than to send in our troops.

Socialist and Communist comrades uniformly support their efforts around Kobani specifically and I tend to defer to their views, not having time to acquire the local linguistic or cultural expertise required to evaluate the situation.

I hate to be so flippant on such an important issue, but that about sums it up. To be honest, I'm not that familiar with YPG and PKK as they are more active in Turkey, and my knowledge is mainly with the KRG in Iraq. The Kurds have been trying to establish a homeland in various locations (northwest Iran, southeastern Turkey, northeastern Syria, and now northern Iraq) for decades. And while the Assyrian community (itself nationless) is understandably sympathetic to their cause, establishing a country on others rightful ancestral home (northern Iraq) is not really very popular with us. Furthermore, the Kurds have been interfering with internal Assyrian politics for years, further increasing resentment.

Having said that, the fact that the Kurds are less religiously militant than their Arab counterparts has been a plus. They have officially apologized for their role in the Armenian Genocide (which wiped out over 700,000 Assyrians, and Pontic Greeks as well), and have a more secular approach to governing. Their bravery in Kobani is definitely commendable. The Peshmergha are fierce fighters -- when they want to be.

about the Assyrian population (other than that one of my favorite characters in literature, Yossarian from Catch 22, claims descent from Assyrians, IIRC). If you don't mind, I may push back at my Socialist and Communist comrades using some of your insights here. I'll try to message you back with their responses (some of which tend to get very micro-macro tendentious).

I can tell you that my comrades universally despise ISIS\ISIL and will brook no rationalizations or justifications for it, although their opposition mostly derives from different sources than the bourgeois liberal democracies'.

We're quite small -- maybe 3 million, most of whom reside in the diaspora -- so not much is known about us. I can tell you that the comments from your Kurdish contacts won't be kind. As Jalal Talabani (former head of the PUK and former President of Iraq) once said (I'm paraphrasing) "your history remains underground, ours is being built above it" (referencing the treasure of Assyrian artifacts that remain buried in Iraq.)

Thumbs up on the Catch 22 reference

have taken an almost entirely uncritical line with respect to the PKK and YPG at Kobani. So when I read your work here, I wanted to get the perspective of someone whose experiecne does not exclusively derive from dusty volumes of Marx and Lenin (and their heirs). I'll let you know what response if any my pushing back engenders from them. (I'm sure it will be lively!

"Unless we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ," Obama said. "In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ."

"So it is not unique to one group or one religion," Obama said. "There is a tendency in us, a simple tendency that can pervert and distort our faith."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026184066

I commend both your posts in this subthread, and am frankly shocked at the meanness toward you after a post like this. Wow.

I get the frustration at not wanting to get involved militarily. As I've said, I'm in the same camp -- I DON'T want more money wasted, more vets returning in coffins, more endless war. But I know first-hand of the atrocities being committed, and though saying "but X did the same!" may not sound like justifying anything....it kinda does.

To those you're talking to:

EVERYTHING. IS. NOT. ABOUT. YOU!

That is exactly what the false equivalences, say -- that it's all about you, and your "concerns".

This is a different issue, which happens to matter too. And this one is now. It hasn't already been beaten to death every day of the week since who knows when.

Here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026184066#post13

And even before that thread, I covered it here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026182131#post95


The self-absorption on this board, even when the issue has nothing directly to do with us, is AMAZING! What egos! And so many! We aren't even being asked for anything right now except compassion, and we can't even manage that because our egos are all up in the way! Me! Me! Me! It's all about meeeeeeeee!!!!!!!

It's kind of ironic, I appreciate what the President said, although I'm a critic of many of his policies.

Links?

AFAIK, we are not allowed to discuss these issues using a person's name. But we can discuss the concept brought up.

...the op is trying out a newly revived deflection which attempts to shame by projecting their invented notion that pointing out the barbarism committed by the U.S. is some sort of approval or excusing of other comparably barbaric acts. It's a fatuous argument which only highlights their own unwillingness to confront and condemn acts of the government we actually have responsibility for.

...your own projection brought on by your own inability or unwillingness to understand the points made.

More self-righteous, outrageier-than-thou grandstanding.

...and try and accept that not everyone will see things the same as you do. maybe you do see that. I don't know, but then again, you're not the target of the scorn.

Great post!

The moral relativism chickens come home to roost.

if anyone was "condoning" the burning. Of course, no one is, so your point is not relevant.

No one is condoning anything. But the comparison is apt. How is burning someone to death (for disagreeing about infant baptism, for crying out loud) at the stake significantly different from burning someone to death in a cage?

Pointing out atrocities committed by ourselves and others may or may not be relevant, but ...
... in no way does that CONDONE what ISIS did.

The OP is on a high horse chasing down a strawman.

and it's not because they are monsters, it's largely in spite of it. There's a part of the human spirit that yearns for purity and perfection, especially among the young. In the short term, they won't lack new recruits.

ISIS must be doing something right, in other words.

Yes, they're kill crazy criminals who grab foreign nationals and hold them for ransom, slaughtering them with maximum cruelty when the ransom doesn't come through. Yes, they've financed a land war on stolen oil revenues and stolen military gear. And yes, they've declared war without any of the rules so-called civilized countries often break, anyway, something they learned from our war against Iraq. Yes, they need to be fought tooth and nail.

However, there is no prayer of defeating them until and unless local people get tired of slaughter and fully turn against them. It will happen. However, until it does, efforts should concentrate on eliminating as much of their funding as possible and humanitarian aid to the people who have fled them.

I know that of the people living in the areas that ISIS have taken control of, and that's in no way the 'Islamic world', welcomed it because they were Sunni and they'd rather live with brutal law and order than what they had, which was oppression of Sunni Muslims and chaos. Who knows what the people who thought like that think now. But when it comes to governments of majority Muslim countries and prominent Islamic scholars, there's an overwhelming view that they don't support ISIS. And extremists exist not only in countries with majority Muslim populations, but in ones like my own where a few hundred have headed to Syria to join them...

Last edited Thu Feb 5, 2015, 06:15 PM - Edit history (1)

"They just are!11"

No one is 'trying to condone' what ISIS did.

Very poorly constructed strawman, but a strawman none the less.

nor is there a false equivalency. Horrendous acts against human beings have taken place all throughout history and still happens today. ISIS is nothing new nor are the atrocities they are committing. Are they evil, pure and simple? Of course. Inhumanity is evil. I've seen plenty of it in my lifetime, often, shamefully, committed by my own country.

burning a man to death in a cage I would be a billion light-years past shocked save some odd troll droppings by fools trying to go on Rush or Medved or Hannity or Prager (and eventually to push it up to FOX forcing it then to the mainstream corporate stations of course) and say "look here what these gawdless librahs sez".
The statement is vile, foolish, devoid of honesty, and deserves actual ridicule.

What you are doing is little different just twisting statements you'd rather not discuss at the moment and declaring them to be some evil and vile position by some transitive power of your own concoction.

Pure lashing out to quiet cognitive dissonance as we head down the same well worn and dangerously counterproductive paths yet again for the same old rationales.
To go to this extreme shows that you actually know better but stubbornly press on, that buzzing in your head is getting so loud ALREADY that it is making you testy as hell to make such a nasty, stupid, and wickedly false accusation.

"condoning" the horror of burning a man to death when one comments that the West HAS done some pretty horrible stuff, too. It is a REALITY that must be faced and accounted for.

The worst - for me - was the two atom bombs that we dropped on innocents in Japan.

But it is the same as saying, "that's no big deal; we did far worse things 40, 70, or 150 years ago."

That's an insulting response that belittles the problems millions of people are facing in trying to deal with ISIS.

It's tactless, unsympathetic sounding, and a useless distraction. Every time I hear it, it sounds to me like the spouse/parent who can't just let you do something about a problem without shouting at you about all the times you made things worse.

You and Peacetrain clearly misrepresent what some Duers have said.

even on our shores. These are crimes against humanity whether carried out by our own people or by others and they should be soundly rejected and condemned by the entire human race wherever they occur.

By the way, I think they are Moslems. They call themselves Moslems and what they do is in the name of Allah. They have interpreted Islam in their own evil, perverted way. They are radical, fundamentalist Moslems who don't speak for the vast majority.

The first is whether one can justify ISIS' blanket barbarism from rapes to beheadings to burning a man alive. The other is whether, in the context of such barbarism, we are justified in engaging in similar acts.

On the first point I cannot justify ISIS' horrendous acts. The Koran strictly forbids, in fact, the burning of the human body. We know ISIS is not driven by Islam. They wrap themselves in Islam to justify their actions just like the killer of Dr. Tiller wrapped himself in the name of Christianity. They are not a political force at least there is no discernible end game for them. They claim they want to establish a caliphate. If so they have already claimed a sizable chunk of both Syria and Iraq. If that was their end game they should get to establishing the caliphate where they are and demonstrate the benefits to Muslims of living in that caliphate. They would then have something positive to take to the rest of the Muslim world about joining them.

They don't care about establishing a caliphate. Their ends and means are the same - terrorize as many people as possible and get their jollies doing it. They are evil but not any more evil than the Japanese and Germans in WWII, the genocides in Sudan and Rwanda, the actions of Boko Haram, the Catholics under the Inquisition, etc.

As a result we must accept the need to deal with this evil. Unfortunately that means we need to eliminate them or at least contain them and deny them access to money, arms and publicity. That is a tough call coming from me who doesn't believe war is ever the answer. But with these guys I don't see any other option than to systematically destroy them. There is no negotiating with them because their ends are simply to terrorize. They have no other goals.

The other point about this justifying American torture is totally wrong. I have had to de-friend a family member on Facebook for suggesting ISIS' actions justify our torture and that we should be torturing more. The alleged objective of American torture by the Bush-Cheney crew (and I'm not entirely convinced it isn't still going on under Obama to some extent) was to gain actionable intelligence. Despite 5-time draft-dodging and habitual lying Cheney's assertions, those involved with these enhanced interrogation techniques never gave us anything meaningful. Since that is the case the only reason for us to torture is revenge or a tit-for-tat.
Torture is illegal under U.S. law and under international treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory. If we are going to allow torture then withdraw from the treaties and change the law.

That does not mean the logical progression is to say one side is right because the other side is wrong. At this moment, ISIS is flat out fucking wrong.
Period!

When you pretend that the same atrocities -- when committed by others -- are not as bad...

You're wrong.

Germans, Russians, now these folks...

Here, by the way, is something that it looks like you could re-purpose to fit your hate propaganda...

to imply that is the very definition of intellectual dishonesty. unrec...



“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I can not be Silent.”

― Martin Luther King Jr.

First, I think the larger point the PResident was trying to make was precisely that we ought not ascribe the actions of ISIS to Islam generally, just as most (in this country, at least) don't ascribe to all Christians what Christian extemists do or have done.

Second, maybe, somewhere in the recesses of the PResident's conscience, he realized how hypocritical it would be to go on and on about atrocities committed by ISIS while his own drone campaign continues . . .

Just sayin'.

Sometimes certain voices on the left can get so myopic in their criticism of U.S. policy they end up equivocating at best and defending at worst some truly subhuman acts...

ISIS is scum that deserves anything that the rest of the world can do to them., but that does not change the fact that they were created by GW Bush.

You are absolutely spot on. Any attempt to minimize or equivocate what those devils did is beyond sickening. These monsters are the Nazis of our time.

Yes, would be if I'd seen anyone actually doing it.

How many people were burned to death by our bombing of Iraq during the Iraq war, do you think?

We (the U.S.) burned to death a lot more people than ISIS ever has, during the Iraq invasion, and that is not ancient history.

Do you really think it makes a difference whether our bombs made fires and people burned to death, or whether a person was burned to death in a different way, to the person burned to death, I don't think they would appreciate any difference. Dead is dead.

Yea, it certainly makes some people uncomfortable when comparisons are made like this, but tough, its reality. And I haven't even brought up drones, did you know we have wiped out wedding parties by drone attacks? It is true, and how horrible and morally wrong is that.

How hard is it to say it is horrible and should be condemned when a military power or a terrorist group kills innocent people either by military weapons, or by terrorist torture, both are wrong and should be condemned.

Last edited Thu Feb 5, 2015, 10:51 PM - Edit history (2)

Our direct, not-that-long-go ancestors used to things like tear people apart slowly over an hour or more with red-hot pincers. It is not wrong to make note of these things, in general. It would be stupid to use that to *excuse* these fuckers, sure. It does nothing of the sort. What it does is shows that what these fuckers do is not somehow "inhuman." It isn't "unislamic" and it sure as hell isn't "unchristian."

When some of us bring it up, it is *most of the time* A) a response to "these people aren't truly members of group X," B) a response to "only group X-sub-i could be so evil, unlike the one true X, the X-sub-j" or C) an attempt to immunize the discussion vs the (all too likely) event that someone will go off about A or B in the near future.


Do you know what these cages are, that hang from the steeple of a Christian church in Münster Germany?

personal attack. By all means disagree with the OP but please leave the slurs out of it.

The comparison is apt.

I was a little angry because when someone that appears to be an ally of the President, no matter what, turns around and joins Republicans in the outrage fest, it is somehow worse than when those that can be expected to behave this way does it.

I often disagree with the President especially regarding his appointments from the financial sector, but on this he hit the ball out of the park and I was proud as hell of him for having the courage to speak the truth that he must have known would be unpopular with the war monger segment of the country.

The OP is the one that needs to apologize in my opinion.

Do you agree with the OP or not?

Or Mormon. Or Christian Scientist/"Scientist". When your religion dominates the globe, you get to be a hypocrite, I get it. You can enjoy basking in the reflected light of those groups who wish to hitch their horses to your Secretariat.

It doesn't matter what people did hundreds of years ago. This is like trying to justify slavery now by saying "Well, everyone used to do it."

The world has changed. It is trying to become more civilized. ISIS is a criminal state with a markedly psychopathic leadership.

And they are taking kids!!! and indoctrinating them into this mindset and belief system. YOUNG KIDS! They are doing it systemically.

Every once in a while the worst potentials in the human race find a focal point and begin to fester. You lance that boil ASAP before the surrounding healthy tissue goes putrid. Only thing to be done.

We didn't look at Ariel Castro's kidnapping of three women by saying "Well, this used to be common practice." It's true but irrelevant.

it was horrific. stuff we've done including vietnam and iraq are also horrific.

I don't think I have seen any posts condoning what ISIS did. What I have seen, however, is a number of posts failing to condemn it and criticizing those of us here who condemn the ISIS actions because we are Americans and we have supposedly done nothing about our own government's horrors. For my part, I have marched against racism, against the Vietnam war, and protested against the Bush mess. I could have done more. I didn't give my life for the peace movement like the two students at Jackson State and the twelve wounded when they protested the invasion of Cambodia or the four students killed at Kent State. But I don't think I'm a hypocrite for condemning ISIS because my own government has caused terror and death. I have been consistent in criticizing violent horror wherever it occurs, as you seem to be as well.

personal attacks you endured by posting this. Some of the responses you got just prove that some folks here will jump to make everything personal and then will of course accuse YOU of making personal attacks if you respond in kind. Just consider yourself fortunate that you will probably never have to be in the same room with these... (edit) individuals.

I don't necessarily agree with this OP but I applaud your restraint so I'm happy to rec it.

such. Good for you to feel so strongly against the autocracies of ISIS. But, know what? We all feel the same about ISIS. Yes, all of us. The difference is some here are appalled at all atrocities especially those committed by the strongest country in the world, or the biggest bully on the block. But some like to pretend that we don't commit atrocities or that they were committed last week so they don't count. But they continue under the current Democratic President. I think our drone killer program is killing innocent people at a rate of 10 innocents for each "suspect" killed. All hail American Exceptionalism.

I doubt that you or those that rec'd this thread recognize the hypocrisy of condemning some autocracies while ignoring others.

As a number of others have pointed out, your OP is a strawman.