Re: Protest in Afghanistan after Quran burning
And even after 7 days the situation has not calmed down. Well done NATO.
NATO's moral liability for this is not open-ended. beyond a reasonable and proportionate response, the blame lies entirely on the rampaging hooligans. and this behavior has gone way beyond proportionate by any measure.
Re: Protest in Afghanistan after Quran burning
Oh no. Just like Sept 11th is not the responsibility of the taliban 
Re: Protest in Afghanistan after Quran burning
again, i agree. it's just amusing to see muslims who otherwise support murdering cartoonists and apostates suddenly become more liberal than dennis kucinich when it comes to civil liberties in the US. conservative muslims and the ACLU make bizarre bedfellows - but at least the ACLU is consistent and principled.
as US citizens we should oppose any deviation from ultra high standards of conduct but assigning false equivalence erodes credibility. even a grave deviation from those standards is rarely anything close to the level of "the most barbaric of regimes". if you take the most high profile US wartime transgressions (guantanamo, abu ghraib, the mahmudiya killings, burnt korans, peeing on taliban soldiers, etc.) and try to assign a counterpart transgression by even normal armies in that part of the world (forget about "the most barbaric of regimes")...the counterpart to each of these would be orders of magnitude worse and more heinous.
i certainly didn't say we should ignore or accept american transgressions or crimes. my limited point was that we should keep things in perspective and not draw false equivalence between entities at opposite ends of the human rights spectrum. as bad as guantanamo might be, i would rather spend a year as an enemy combatant at guantanamo than a single day as an enemy combatant in ISI custody or at the Papa II interrogation facility in kashmir in the 1990s.
in this context, "barbarian" refers to a point on the human rights spectrum. again you are wading into false equivalance. this is not a point of debate. if one party's torture is sleep deprivation and waterboarding...and the other party's torture is drilling kneecaps and cutting off fingers, they are not equally barbaric. if one party's detention yields a few accidental deaths...and the other party's detention yields large scale extrajudicial execution, they are not equally barbaric. you get the point.
Point taken.
However, there is something still very unsettling about a scaling one form of torture as being any less barbaric then another.
Ideally, all forms of torture should be barbaric.
Language is very important. Dont we risk enabling those who partake in torture, regardless of severity, by indulging in such scales?
How many times have we seen US politicians resorting to such comparisons to justify torture? Well water boarding is no longer torture, because Saddam would have skinned you alive... At the very least, if it doesn't justify the act, it at least disarms the opponents of torture by portraying them as being unpatriotic by drawing any comparison in the first place. So by attacking a false equivalence as being false in this case, creates an environment where there is no longer any room for drawing any sort of equivallence.
False equivalence may be inaccurate, but they do serve some practical purpose. In refusing to see any distinction between sleep deprivation and drills to the knees, we create an environment in which all forms of torture, regardless of severity are deemed barbaric and hence reprehensible.
I think holding US values to a higher degree, requires that we refuse to not see an equivalence.
Re: Protest in Afghanistan after Quran burning
What exactly is a “Half hearted” Muslim?
And what is the address of the individual tasked the solemn duty of defining who is or isnt half Hearted, because I would really like to get in touch with their PR department.
Re: Protest in Afghanistan after Quran burning
1-800-MULLAH
Re: Protest in Afghanistan after Quran burning
1-800-MULLAH
The line is busy... :)
Re: Protest in Afghanistan after Quran burning
Keep trying. You after all wanted to speak to the PR section.
Re: Protest in Afghanistan after Quran burning
The line is busy... :)
this line is maintained by taliban whose chief engineer knows only morse code .:D
Re: Protest in Afghanistan after Quran burning
Keep trying. You after all wanted to speak to the PR section.
Your probably the one manning it.
Re: Protest in Afghanistan after Quran burning
in this context the enemy happens to be muslim. i drew comparisons not only to the enemy but also more generally to armies in that part of the world, including india.
learn how to read.
don't backtrack now, you want to label muslims as enemies don't be scared don't start to stutter and choke. You set your position now what i will say is at least the muslims have the balls to stand up to western imperialism and look for alternatives. You on the other hand are complete opposite you are defending the british and now america colonialists openly calling for the systems which conquered and humiliated your forefathers on Indian subcontinent what does that make you?
the african americans call people like that uncle toms.
Re: Protest in Afghanistan after Quran burning
Muslims kill each other in massive wars too you know.
Re: Protest in Afghanistan after Quran burning
don't backtrack now, you want to label muslims as enemies don't be scared don't start to stutter and choke.
don't flatter yourself. muslims are simply not important enough to be targeted as an enemy on the basis of being muslim. the enemy label comes when you misbehave. i'm not sure why you are so desperate to be labeled an enemy.
[quote]
You set your position now what i will say is at least the muslims have the balls to stand up to western imperialism and look for alternatives. You on the other hand are complete opposite you are defending the british and now america colonialists openly calling for the systems which conquered and humiliated your forefathers on Indian subcontinent what does that make you?
the african americans call people like that uncle toms.
[/QUOTE]
i have no idea what you are babbling about. we were discussing the contrasting approach to human rights and civil liberties. if you want to discuss imperialism, just remember that muslims are not imperialistic today only because they are weak and powerless. when they had the capability, they were ruthless imperialists of the worst kind. impotence is not a virtue to brag about.
Re: Protest in Afghanistan after Quran burning
Point taken.
However, there is something still very unsettling about a scaling one form of torture as being any less barbaric then another. Ideally, all forms of torture should be barbaric.
Language is very important. Dont we risk enabling those who partake in torture, regardless of severity, by indulging in such scales? How many times have we seen US politicians resorting to such comparisons to justify torture? Well water boarding is no longer torture, because Saddam would have skinned you alive... At the very least, if it doesn't justify the act, it at least disarms the opponents of torture by portraying them as being unpatriotic by drawing any comparison in the first place. So by attacking a false equivalence as being false in this case, creates an environment where there is no longer any room for drawing any sort of equivallence.
False equivalence may be inaccurate, but they do serve some practical purpose. In refusing to see any distinction between sleep deprivation and drills to the knees, we create an environment in which all forms of torture, regardless of severity are deemed barbaric and hence reprehensible.
I think holding US values to a higher degree, requires that we refuse to not see an equivalence.
this is rather bizarre logic.
we should pretend that our human rights standards are no different from the taliban's or else we risk accepting waterboarding?
i think the false equivalence is far more dangerous and devalues the thousand year gap in standards. internal american dialogue and evolution of our human rights standards should obviously continue. this doesn't require us to afford the enemy and it's apologists an opportunity to elevate themselves and be graced with a comparison they don't deserve. there is no comparison.
Re: Protest in Afghanistan after Quran burning
this is rather bizarre logic.
we should pretend that our human rights standards are no different from the taliban's or else we risk accepting waterboarding?
i think the false equivalence is far more dangerous and devalues the thousand year gap in standards. internal american dialogue and evolution of our human rights standards should obviously continue. this doesn't require us to afford the enemy and it's apologists an opportunity to elevate themselves and be graced with a comparison they don't deserve. there is no comparison.
Good job completely ignoring every point I made. What are you onjecting to exactly?
What American dialogue? Last I checked, Water boarding has been accepted as "enhanced interrogation."
In fact, if anything, Human rights standards have deteriorated further, not improved. Or is the murder of US citizens in foreign countries without even the basic standard of due process a step up in your book?
I hope that thousand year gap was a joke. Slavery and all its inequities only ended in the mid 1800's. Or do you believe that throwing people into the hulls of ships bound together by chains is an example of American standard...
My point is
We should avoid categorizing torture.Torture is torture. To categorize torture risks legitimizing it.
Internal dialogue is internal dialogue. How it impacts the psyche of "the enemy" is irrelevant. Whether they are elevated or not has no baring on the standards we hold for ourselves.
There is a comparison. The comparison you are making is between a severe form of torture, and what you perceive to be less severe (although you have never been water boarded so you dont REALLY know what the difference is).
Ideally, there should be no comparison, because the US should not torture. The problem is that it does.