Imbecile. Belgium is older than Ireland btw. And at least we eat actual food instead of grass and fuck humans.
Is this something that is inherent to their culture would you say?
Dude, I work with many cool Belgians, I visit Brussels on the reg, It's a joke man, seriously. I apologise if through my other aggressive posts in this thread made you see this as an attack on your country, it wasn't.
Also, I'm far from an imbecile, thank you.
I'm sure there are many people that would agree with you, I've yet to meet them, but I'm sure they exist (not meant as sarcasm).
Read. It wasn't a friend. It wasn't family. He spoke about a colleague. A coworker. I bet he hardly knew the dude. Maybe he knew his name maybe he didn't.
And because he thinks it is now personal, it is okay to talk shit on an internet forum. Because now it has affected him. Now he should be able to say whatever he wants to say and get a free pass. Fuck that. What kind of massively egotistical worldview is that?
You don't think it's personal for all sides in this conflict? You don't think that the reason you can't solve the middle East is that it is personal for all of them?
My god, what a ....
Look at my tag line, how long has it said Western Imperialist? Years. What would my reaction be if nobody I knew was killed? The same. ISIS are a probelm, ISIS are NOT muslim, ISIS are not justified and not ok to exist and we all need to stop them together.
I'm not personally insulted. I think he is the very embodiment of why you can't rationally solve these things. I can't stand his behaviour and I won't give him a free pass, but this is not about me. Perhaps we even agree on a lot of things, I don't know him well. But right now he's inciting hate and he thinks he should get away with it because someone whose name he might remember died.
Who's asking for a free pass dude? I'm certainly not, and I
never have here from day one on this forum.
Rationally solve these things? Please tell me how we rationally solve these things because so far my conceptualisation of the problem is this:
- The MENA region is a collection of tinpot dictatorships, theocracies, and failed states all in made up countries designed to keep them pliable to exploitation
- The West currently has hegemony over this exploitation save for the Russo-Iranian sphere which is where the conflict is currently
- The battle for MENA resources is a strategic imperative of the West, Russia, India, and China.
- The Islamic state has filled a vacuum where non-bathist sectarian politics have taken hold in Iraq and pushed into Syria due to competing forces there, not just 'western' forces.
- The Islamic state is exercising sovereignty over significant portions of two made up countries.
- Because they are made up there is no alternative structure to take their place, that is why the Al-Assad dynasty and her supporters will continue in power after peace
- IS now exist as a threat to everybody, which is why everybody is trying to tackle them except of course their bankrollers in Saudi and Turkey.
- IS are a coherent military threat and need to be eliminated.
- Radicalised so called 'muslims' that aren't a coherent threat need to try to be deradicalised and if they become a coherent threat, eliminated
Now those are the realities of the situation as I can see it. The basic scope conditions of this argument is that accepting hegemony over MENA is a strategic imperative for competing powers and that this is a serious legacy issue that will only ever be solved by moving to a post-scarcity word system. In an ideal world we would eliminate ISIS and then get the fuck out of the Middle East permanently. This isn't a possibility however and we all need to live with the fact that we fucked up a lot of shit and will continue to do so collectively as it is in our own strategic interest to take 100 suicide bombings over ten years than to let MENA live in peace so we have to fight them as a more unified force when we want to take their shit.
You may very well have a point that the emotion of the situation led me to present my argument in a less than balanced way, but please don't ever mistake anything I say as coming from a position of geostrategic ignorance.
As a middle easterner that's my concern how to deal with the dictatorship ruling my life. That's my business. Not yours. I'm oppressed, i don't have a democracy? That's my problem. Let me deal with it. My religion is violent? Fine, leave it for me. Just stay the heck out of my country. Educate yourself as to how the middle east and its people have been screwed over by the west + russia forever. If IZ's colleague's death is a personal matter for him i have lost two cousins and A LOT of relatives in a war europe and the US fueled and funded. I lived my childhood in that war. Who did saddam get his weapons from? The same people who invaded iraq later and destabilized the region. Who created al-ghaeda? Who funded taliban? This is on the west, whether you like it or not. As if we didn't already have enough with the dictatorships we were dealing with. And now the ridiculous thing is that these super civilized super humane citizens of the world riding their high horses calling muslims barbarians. As heinous and scary as Daesh's methods are, tell me how they are more dangerous to humanity than are drone strikes that are unmatched in their inhumanity? Even today, how come bombing Raqqa by France is okay in your book? Only to get rid of the mess they created, helped, funded in the first place disregarding the innocent human beings (who are as low in value as a stupid number) who live there?
This is not directed at you specifically, i respect you a lot, and i'm angry, but to me as a middle easterner who doesn't believe in islam, this is all on the west.
Bombing Raqqa is ok? Well, bombing anything isn't really 'ok' but bombing your enemy's capital is pretty 'ok' in strategic terms. What is your alternative, yes we created a mess, yes we're a bunch of assholes, but what is your practical solution to ISIS?
While I can appreciate what you are saying, I think the point some people are trying to make is that YES the West started 90% of the shit, but that there is an aspect of personal responsibility above and beyond what the West has done to MENA. Hell, I'll even go so far as to say that the Iraqi Insurgency was a legitimate force, but blowing yourself up and
specifically targeting civilians is barbaric, when Westerners do it too. Shooting people on the streets of Paris is not understandable and not excusable under any circumstance. People make a choice to take a life and it's nobody's fault but their own, that applies to anybody, You, me, Syrian, American. If you kill somebody that's not involved in a war effort against you, that's morally wrong in anybody's viewpoint. As for arguing that a drone strike is more inhumane that what ISIS does, I'll just have to completely disagree on that.