Thought you might like to read this letter to the editor ~ ever notice how some people just seem to know how to write a letter?. This one sure does! This was written by an American woman, but oh how it also applies to the Canada, U.K. and Australia

THIS ONE PACKS A FIRM PUNCH

Here is a woman who should run for President!

Written by a housewife in New York , to her local newspaper. This is one ticked off lady.

'Are we fighting a war on terror or aren't we? Was it or was it not started by Islamic people who brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001 and have continually threatened to do so since?

Were people from all over the world, not brutally murdered that day, in downtown Manhattan , across the Potomac from the nation's capitol and in a field in Pennsylvania?

Did nearly three thousand men, women and children die a horrible, burning or crushing death that day, or didn't they?

And I'm supposed to care that a few Taliban were claiming to be tortured by a justice system of the nation they come from and are fighting against in a brutal insurgency.

I'll start caring when Osama bin Laden turns himself in and repents for incinerating all those innocent people on 9/11.

I'll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle East start caring about the Holy Bible, the mere belief of which is a crime punishable by beheading in Afghanistan

I'll care when these thugs tell the world they are sorry for hacking off Nick Berg's head while Berg screamed through his gurgling slashed throat.

I'll care when the cowardly so-called 'insurgents' in Afghanistan come out and fight like men instead of disrespecting their own religion by hiding in mosques and behind
women and children.

I'll care when the mindless zealots who blows themselves up in search of nirvana care about the innocent children within range of their suicide bombs.

I'll care when the American media stops pretending that their freedom of speech on stories is more important than the lives of the soldiers on the ground or their families waiting at home to hear about them when something happens.

In the meantime, when I hear a story about an AMERICAN soldier roughing up an Insurgent terrorist to obtain information, know this:

I don't care.

When I see a wounded terrorist get shot in the head when he is told not to move because he might be booby-trapped, you can take it to the bank:

I don't care.

When I hear that a prisoner, who was issued a Koran and a prayer mat, and 'fed special' food that is paid for by my tax dollars, is complaining that his holy book is being 'mishandled,' you can absolutely believe in your heart of hearts:

I don't care.

And oh, by the way, I've noticed that sometimes it's spelled 'Koran' and
other times 'Quran.' Well, Jimmy Crack Corn you guessed it,

I don't care!!

If you agree with this viewpoint, pass this on to all your E-mail friends. Sooner or later, it'll get to the people responsible for this ridiculous behavior!

If you don't agree, then by all means hit the delete button. Should you choose the latter, then please don't complain when more atrocities committed by radical Muslims
happen here in our great Country! And may I add:

'Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Soldiers don't have that problem.'

I have another quote that I would like to add, AND.......I hope you forward all this.

One last thought for the day:

Only five defining forces have ever offered to die for you:


1. Jesus Christ


2. The US Soldier.


3. The Canadian Soldier.


4. The British Soldier.


5. The Australian Soldier


One died for your soul, the other 4 for your freedom.

YOU MIGHT WANT TO PASS THIS ON, AS MANY SEEM TO FORGET ALL OF THEM!!

 

We are not fighting a "War on Terrorism"......that's like saying we're fighting a war on strategy, makes no sense, never has.
What we ARE fighting is a war against Islamic fundamentalist guerillas, nothing more.
It's just not politically correct to say so; after all, it might offend Muslims.

 

someone recently said: we are no longer fighting against soldiers; we are fighting against criminals.

I suppose that is why Obama wants to read them their rights.

 

This was found on snopes.com

 

Yup, Erzer, it's an oldie but a goodie. I've seen the same rant before but Deborah's question still begged a response .

 

Absolutely, just wanted to point out the real origin.

 

" We shall conquer the world through terrorism."

direct quote from the founder of Islam.

I guess it dependss on what the definition of the word is is.

roadster with a stick

 

I believe the intent, no I'm not Islamic, but still the intent from back during the founding of Islam 672 CE (common era) by Mohammad was the basis of the following verse in the Quran .

Thus the intent was not necessarily along the lines of what terrorism is today; directly related to what I consider a potential bastardization of the original intent of a religious ideology.

 

remember christianity has killed more people, in the name of religion, than any other religion... are we hypocrites??

 

Yes but it's OK because it's us j/k

 

I can't remember where I first saw this quote but it might apply here.

"The measure of one's humanity is the ability to care".

 

You just make that up ? or do you have real numbers?

Mohammed's preferred method of conversion was to lay seige to a city and allow the inhabitants to convert or die. Prior to that he made his living basically as a desert pirate terrorising travelers and caravans for tribute.
Terror was his method, his strategy, and his main weapon.

Please do not glorify the beginings of Islam by quoting prose and making statements that are not factual.

It is a violent faith that enslaves its women, injects faith into it's court judgements and has little respect or tolerance for the infidels who do not believe.

Despite many Muslims that try to practice what we would call a more civilized form of it, it's origin and base is brutal, bloody terrorism.

Mohammed based his beliefs on the old Testament and Abraham, accused the Jews and Christians of misinterpreting it and claimed the truth would be revealed by him, the prophet of Allah. Having convinced the idolitrius Medina Arabs to believe his message, they expanded their theocratic state by coercion and force of arms. Eventually coercing the Meccans to give up their city by seige, he and his followers expanded their power by political and military means throughout the region. Within a hundred years of his death, they had converted ie; conquered, all of the Middkle East, India and Northern Africa. Then Spain, Portugal, southern France, all Palestinian lands that were once Christian, Jewish and Parsi.

They did not do this by persuasion, convincing argument or influence. They did it by force of sword. I suppose Christians and Jews, who stood their ground, drew blood in defending themselves. Is that the killing to which you referred? Perhaps the early European attempts to regain the holy land taken by the Moors is what you suggested. Most historians will tell you that the Crusades were about Real Estate, not religion.

I'm sorry Erzer, but it is via Terrorism that the Arab Horde took the Mediteranian and Middle East areas. Not by peaceful conversion of faith.

Or poetic prose.


franc

 

No need to be "sorry" this is what civilized people do, they converse.

But lets not forget that any form of armed conflict can be viewed as a terrorist based on the perception at the time one reviews it. When we look back to the great Roman Empire, their acts of war terrorized many yet it is overlooked as being terrorism. I guess we could view it as a fine line between war and terrorism but what exactly is the criteria to judge a cross over from terrorism to the ultimate of war...

While I'd like to continue, I have to be on my way to work.

 

Erzer good question but you answered it yourself, or perhaps it could be the side from which one reviews it.

 

I think the difference between war, and terrorism, is partly the degree to which brutality is used, the intent, ie to go so far outside the boundaries to ensure a half hearted response, if one at all, and also by who starts it. The German blitzkrieg was terrorism, in my view, the invasion of Nanking, and perhaps our bombing of Dresden, and most certainly many of the campaigns by the cavalry during the Indian wars. Probably not Hiroshima, although way outside the bounds was in fact probably necessary given the circumstances. The Islamic mess we're in now would in my view be the result of terrorism. But my defending myself by use of any weapon is in my view completely acceptable.

 

Has nobody noticed Pakistani people are finally stepping to the plate against the Taliban? Or the efforts we and our allies have succeeded over the last eight years to marginalize these bad apples?

The whole point of war is to limit your attacks to your enemy. Not from a humanitarian standpoint, but a practical one. The more our attacks slop over into this general population, the less friendly they are to us. We don't want to look like the Iranians, meddling in many Arab countries' internal politics.

We need the fence-sitters to join us. They have more than domestic security interests at hand. Their leaders want to show they have regular governments and regular policies so they can further their legitimate business interests, domestically and internationally.

The bad apples who bomb places can also embezzle or defraud their valued Islamic banking facilities. Rumor from some of my former students is that a few have already. That would explain why so many of their treasury types were coming to the IRS a few years back to learn about stopping money laundering, among other things.

Also we must watch out against over-generalization. "The entire Muslim world" being against us doesn't wash as the "entire Muslim world" doesn't agree on anything any more than the "entire Christian world".

This cautious coalition-building sound namby pamby and weak? Just a logical extension of bipartisan policies in the region stemming from Bush 41's response to the Kuwait invasion.

 

Franc, you are exactly right about just how Islam "converted" non-believers (been doing some research, have you ?). Regardless of what its more peaceful practioners like to stress, it IS a violent religion. The Koran, Hadith & Summa's are chock full of passages (100's in fact) that point this out. Remember too that all Muslims have a vested interest in suicide if it kills infidels - it provides a direct path to heaven for the killer AND his family.

As to Crossfreak's comment, I have no hard & fast numbers to prove otherwise but Christianity has its bloody past, too & not just the Crusades. The Inquistion comes to mind (remember that the last auto-da-fe occurred in Mexico in the 1860's) not to mention various other heretical purges & battles, wars fought for no other reason than to force one branch or demonination on one country or another, etc. Spanish bishops baptising New World Indian children just to kill them immediately afterward (bashing their heads against rocks was the prefered method); the list of atrocities done in the name of the Christian God is quite lengthly.
To this point though, at least as of today & the recent past, Christianity has settled down & no longer converts folks via the sword. Let's hope it stays that way!
Religion is man-made & man-controlled with its own agendas & power struggles created by man.
As if we somehow know the mind of a god........folly.
That's my biggest beef against religion: not that there might be a supreme being somewhere but that we swear we have all the answers when in reality we have none. Anyone who can come forward & tell me that he/she KNOWS EXACTLY what one god or another is thinking doesn't know squat because he/she is no more or less smarter than I am & I sure as heck don't know either! And this is the problem with Islam today!
The fundamentalists swear they have the answer & the answer is the forceful conversion or the death of infidels.
Back to Deb's posting: this is also why I have no serious issues with torture. This isn't a conventional war we're fighting today; many of the methods we use are necessary to gain information, we have no other choice. That's the one side: the other side of this coin is that it puts us in a position of lowering ourselves to their standards when we should try to maintain the higher moral ground because we are a moral people.
Then again, we didn't fly airplanes loaded with innocent people into buildings.
And I'll NEVER forget that day!!!!

 

Exactly, but also at a specific time in history. To the victor goes the spoils, but also the right to potentially determine how history will be written.

 

Kurts,

Thanks for the praise. I know I often come accross as a dumb savage but my major in college was world history. My minors were political science and ancient religions. Never taught a day of class. A letter from my draft board got in the way.

Inquisition, Salem witch trials, religious purges in Mexico, none hold a candle to the Mayan's sacrifice of a human every five minutes during the height of their empires. The Incas were not much better. All to please the gods.
Christianity doesn't even come close.
We know more about Christian killings because it was recorded by the western civilzations that commited the acts. And as you have pointed out, history is written by the victors.

Who speaks for God? There is the rub. One must take all prophets with a bit of skeptisism. Weird how they must speak in riddles. I guess it makes fitting their predictions to future events more malliable and likely.

What ever the source of gospel, I can't imagine the equivocation involved in accepting a command from my Lord that forces pain, suffering or death upon another human. That perversion has to come from an evil that resides in all of us. The choice to accept or reject such motivations must be a singular and personal one. Each and every time.

I for one cannot understand the ease with which some succumb to a choice that logicaly cannot be equated with what is good for the human community. To harm or kill another in the name of religion makes no sense. And yet, mankind has done it since the first ape stood upright with like minded friends and took his neighbor's property. Inventing God's purpose as the reason may quell the guilt in one's basic soul but, civilized man has, sadly, made it an acceptable art.

There is a hole in the sky over Manhattan where 3,000 lives evaporated because someone's God told them to scare us into fearful submission. I won't forget it either. And I won't go into that fearful submission.

I hope, yes to God, that our leaders won't take us there.


roadster with a stick

 

Convincing analysis from a Good Heart, Franc. Thank you.

I suspect that it would be easy to opt for the path of terror, as the fundamentals of promulgating the Islamic faith and realizing salvation are historically obtained via terror, as you point out. The consequences of choosing a less violent view are not so hot, either.

The cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami pleads strongly that Iranian demonstrators, "based upon Islamic Law, whoever confronts the Islamic State ... should be convicted as mohareb [one who wages war against god] ... They should be punished ruthlessly and savagely. I want the judiciary to ... punish rioters firmly and without any mercy to teach everyone a lesson."

In contrast, the poor soul that might reject Jesus as his Savior can simply go about his business. He is theorized to go to Hell one day, but he is allowed to retain custody of his head and his finger tips in the meantime.

Different strokes, I suppose.