Unreasonable search?... Naked body Scan or Groped.

You know full well that the actions of one, affect the many. As a member of your corps, your regiment, company, or platoon, the actions of an individual represent the actions of the whole. Thus, a disgraceful act begets harsh penalties and public outrage from that group. A public declaration of solidarity against dispicable actions is the norm. ESPECIALLY within a minority society.

You say: "Let the proper authorities deal with it." But do not frame the context in which they are operating... which as someone who claims to have been on the tip of the spear is a great disservice to those people. I've worked in the confused political BS that McChrystal turned Afghanistan into, and can see a much larger confusing beast in the N. American travel system. The only way Afghanistan became easier to operate in, was when the ROE's changed and we were free to reclassify actions into hostile, and deal with it in a battle-group sort-of-way.

Your affilitaion of Islamic Fundamentalists to the Aryan Brotherhood or the Black Panthers is not very apt, as the latter groups do not pull out the holy book and point to a definable and measurable way to justify their actions, straight from the lips of God himself. It is this ability that makes Islamic Terrorism such a real threat. They can, have, and have been able to challenge moderate islam into silence using the book they both read from.

__sneaky__ wrote: ^ Triple post, nice.  Certainly not helping the not-FE argument either.

You're really worried about this? Report it to the mods, they can check all my past activity, double check my IP address, and see if ANY of the info they come up with is remotely similiar to that bone-head. I've been a member of this forum for just about longer than everyone else in this thread, and probably longer than most people on this forum. I'm not him.

I'm not saying that he's right. For the record. I AM saying that, with regard to my wartime experience, and my experience in the hinterlands of Afghanistan, I've had the time to study our enemy, and his ilk, and I'm liable to agree that Islam is not the "peace-loving" religion it's been touted to be. It hurts the people who are a part of it, and in my very honest view enslaves them. With my desire to know my enemy I've researched what I can about Islam, and am NOT convinced that it is a religion that can co-exist with it's neighbours, and I believe that the "minority-fundamentalists" of which there are literally multi-millions are reading the book as it is meant to be read.

Not only that, the madrassa's are creating more of them everyday. I spent my entire tour getting targetted by IED's from Pakistani's getting shot by, and shooting at, Chechnyans, Iranians, and Albanians. I have been fighting the Jihad Allstar team, and I think that the islamic threatis underestimated by everyday westerners. Especially when you look at the popular support that they have not only from the obscure african and middle-eastern islamic nations, but also from Muslim populations within the western nations fighting the wars. it's something that I think should be recognized by, if not joe-public, at least the sweating, bleeding grunt on the front-line.

I have never proclaimed to know the answer about the scanners, I'm inclined to say that airport security is 90% a waste of resources. A trained eye is the best tool, and as a highly experienced IED hunter, I feel qualified to say that technology is merely a crutch for the inexperienced... but I don 't make policy. I DO assess threats though, and in my professional opinion, we as a society, are underestimating the Islamic one.

edited for clarity

Edited by Bravo2ZERO - 21 November 2010 at 4:44pm

Bravo2ZERO wrote: Your affilitaion of Islamic Fundamentalists to the Aryan Brotherhood or the Black Panthers is not very apt, as the latter groups do not pull out the holy book and point to a definable and measurable way to justify their actions, straight from the lips of God himself. It is this ability that makes Islamic Terrorism such a real threat. They can, have, and have been able to challenge moderate islam into silence using the book they both read from.

Stratoaxe, I don't see where you are coming from. As an American, you are tasked with explaining, or refuting your position on American issues, whether you like it or not; Foreign policy, Domestic issues, even social issues that have very little to do with any real consequences in the rest of the world... when you rail against them, or rally to them, you are expressing support- for, or against.

That was a poor example, but yours was not entirely in-line with your point either. We are not talking about denying responsibility for something that our ancestors prepetrated. That example was an isolated series of events that is not attributable to even the same generation of people. You are attributing slavery (am I wrong?) to every white person on Earth. A concept of action that, as a people we have long since abandoned as both archaic, and horrifying.

In contrast, I am attributing tacit approval, by lack of counter-action from a group of people against their opposite contemporaries. I've already explained what I mean in this manner, but let me change the example: Take Americans (as this is as both general, and specific as I can get). You've got the anti-war protestors on the campus, and on the streets, screaming about blood for oil... and as a counter, you have a vast movement of people supporting the war, the troops, and joining the military in droves. On both sides you have a debate that at times is cut-throat and bloody (regretfully so). But the point being is that BOTH sides are in counter-point to each other, and both are dedicated to pushing their agenda. There is an equally loud voice on either side.

We'll leave that discussion for another day, since it's been fought out in these forums before,.. but that's exactly my point: There has been no vehement fight from the Muslim moderates towards the Fundamentalists, because the book itself plainly favours the bad guys. And the moderates know it. Which SHOULD be a huge concern to us, in the west. Political correctness is blinding policy-makers to it, because it's terrible to think that something so 'targeting' may be required in our thoughts, it runs contrary to everything we have ever fought for, and learned, and gone so far as died defending: individual freedom and liberty, free from discrimination and prejudice.

I have indeed fought for, bled for, and nearly died defending the values I just mentioned... but a result of that was a desire to question the force I was fighting.

I believe aspects of those values to be our greatest weakness, in that ANYONE can appeal to the institutions that have made us who we are, and in doing so, gain the power to deny those very freedoms.
I firmly believe those values are our most powerful weapon in combating the challenges we are confronted with in Fundamentalist Islam. I'm also and not sure we have misread Islam itself.

If you can find a passage of the Quran that contradicts fundamentalist beliefs, I promise you it is from the earliest writings of Mohammed, which were superceded by increasingly violent writings within the book later on.

Like I said, I don't claim to have the answers... but I do think we have failed to understand the scope of the threat we are facing. How we deal with that threat... well that's something this whole thread was originally about.

^My question to bravo (darn you whale) is what do you honestly think should be happening? What do you expect these Muslims to be doing in retaliation to the extremists?

Edited by __sneaky__ - 21 November 2010 at 6:00pm

brihard wrote: But those are a relative handful out of a population that exceeds a billion, and who largely are utterly disconnected from radicalism. Why should they feel a need to repudiate the actions of radicals? To try to claim that this is akin to you or I repudiating something done by someone in our regiment is absurd; a very small military element cannot be held as analogous to an entire religion. Why should someone born in Indonesia who is Muslim feel any compunction to speak up against people from Yemen who commit terrorist acts? Because they happen to claim that they are part of the same religion? Most people would simply shake their head and carry on with their day, never presuming that we would impose on them amoral obligation to repudiate something they're in no way responsible for or involved in. How far do you expect normal, peaceful law abiding Muslims to go in order to satisfy your thirst for them to stand out as different from radicals? Personally, I recognize violent radicalism as very much anomalous among Islam. If the numbers were in any way substantial we would already have lost and you and I would likely already be dead. I DO recognize the potential dangers of Muslim ghettoization which, coupled with lower socioeconomic status, is leading to the sorts of unrest being seen in France. That's a discussion for another day though.

I do not expect Muslims in Indonesia to protest the actions of Yemenis. I expect them to protest the actions of their own countrymen that is perpetrated in the name of their common faith. The same as I expect an American Muslim to express outrage at a gathering of fundamentalist American Muslims advocating death who (like it or not) represent them to the non-Muslim majority. The same as I expect a Catholic to express outrage over the scandals of Clergymen, the same as I expect outrage from non-jihadis over the destruction of the WTC, while jubilation roared through the rest of the muslim world on 9/11.

You say my comparison of your regiment to a much larger entity is absurd? If a few members of your regiment committed an act that was completely disgracful, and claimed to do it as an act of preservation for the nation... do you not think you and the rest of your unit would do it's utmost not only to ensure the rest of you were not viewed in the same light, but to punish and distance yourself from that group? Is it possible that your Chain of Command (with your support) would seek discipline harder and more vigorously than any others, as the teachers and leaders of the regiment? Even going so far as advocating a harsher punishment than anyone else might ever seek, so as to ensure that never happened again? That is the sort of reaction we would expect, no? And would not the rest of the military wash it's hands of it's association with that group of people? Then is the comparison that absurd? A Muslim terrorist cutting off the head of a jewish child in the name of Islam should be received with condemnation and disgust, by members of that religion, whom that member was representing when he committed the act. The leaders, with popular support, should publicly condemn and denounce that act, and seek harsh justice to discourage that from ever happening again.

Somehow they are completely off-base comparisons?

Ghetto-ization is apart from this discussion (which, quite frankly, has begun to lose it's focus anyway) agreed.

I intentionally left the "objectivity" part of your answer out of my response, as I'm too close to the conflict right now to formulate a response that doesn't sound angry about your assumption.

Because there are not enough police to police every opening in an open society, either the Muslim world begins to really restrain, inhibit and denounce its own extremists or the West is going to do it for them. And the West will do it in a rough, crude way by simply shutting them out, denying them visas and making every Muslim in its midst guilty until proven innocent. And because I think that would be a disaster, it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. It takes a village.

Why this doesn't seem reasonable to anyone is beyond me.

This is the crux at what I've been trying to get at, and why I have my suspicions of the moderates in Islam. And it is precisely because there is no CoC, Pope, or College of Imams in Islam that there must be grassroots shows of support for western efforts to destroy Jihadists, because no one is going to do it for them. There are religious leaders in the Muslim communities who should be responsible for reflecting their beliefs, and leading their congregations in the fight against terror. And there will be a point where there is no more room for waffling on this.

As for your mention of Russell Williams... you were not required to stand up against it- the organization did it for you. You were free to shake your head, and be on your way, because Generals and PAO's began working around the clock to distance the rest of the CF, myself and you included, from something that could cast a stain on the rest of us.

I liked how you told me my comparison was absurd, and then presented a real precedent that was exactly what I was thinking of.

And therein lies the basis for the beginning of this discussion in the first place... what to do about it?

I maintain my position of: "I don't know what the answer is."

I also maintain my position of "Muslims need to get their act together, and begin condemning Jihadists, or risk a total reaction from the west. If that happens, we will not need to resort to taking further measures."

We can agree to disagree on this.

Bravo2ZERO wrote: "Muslims

Edited by agentwhale007 - 21 November 2010 at 9:03pm

brihard wrote: I don't think it's nearly so simple as he seems to describe, but the basic premise has some credibility to it. Subject a population to enough crap

Edited by agentwhale007 - 21 November 2010 at 10:25pm