More Workplace Violence

[DC Tom]

Could you not make that same argument for ISIS?

 

Not quite...but calling the Crusades "defensive" is only partially accurate, as well. It's probably accurate to compare the two, though, as campaigns that began as defensive campaigns, but became an offensive nation-building campaigns.

 

Regardless, Jindal is right. The Knights Templar and Order of St. John aren't quite the threat that radicalized Muslims are. The comparison is accurate, but useless in anything other than a historical sense. And idiotic, considering that WE, the United States, had ****-all to do with the Crusades to begin with - most of the insitutions responsible don't even exist any more.

[FireChan]

Explain how ISIS is fighting a defensive war.

If you view ISIS as the spiritual successor of JTJ (which it is), then they have been fighting against invaders since at least 2003, if not all the way back to the Soviet Afghan War.

 

I'm not necessarily "on board" with that argument, but I think it could be made.

 

Not quite...but calling the Crusades "defensive" is only partially accurate, as well. It's probably accurate to compare the two, though, as campaigns that began as defensive campaigns, but became an offensive nation-building campaigns.

 

Regardless, Jindal is right. The Knights Templar and Order of St. John aren't quite the threat that radicalized Muslims are. The comparison is accurate, but useless in anything other than a historical sense. And idiotic, considering that WE, the United States, had ****-all to do with the Crusades to begin with - most of the insitutions responsible don't even exist any more.

I never understood the US taking on the "guilt" of things that Europeans did.

[Chef Jim]

Explain how ISIS is fighting a defensive war.

 

They're not but they think they are.

[TakeYouToTasker]

 

Not quite...but calling the Crusades "defensive" is only partially accurate, as well.

I'd say it's far more than partially accurate.

[DC Tom]

I'd say it's far more than partially accurate.

 

Yeah...but you would be wrong.

[TakeYouToTasker]

 

Yeah...but you would be wrong.

Unlikely.

[LeviF]

I'd say it's far more than partially accurate.

 

 

 

Yeah...but you would be wrong.

 

 

Unlikely.

 

 

Hold on, guys, we haven't put the cookie in the middle yet.

[B-Man]

What is noteworthy in Obama’s comments is not his attempt to establish a false equivalency between Christian and Islamic violence,

 

but that he has undermined his oft-repeated claim that ISIS and its cadre of supporters are unrepresentative of their faith

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[DC Tom]

Unlikely.

 

More likely than me being wrong on a point of military history.

 

The First Crusade initiated with a request to the Pope from the Byzantine emperor for volunteers to help defend Byzantine empire from invasion by Seljuk Turks. That turned in to the reconquest of the Levant from the Fatimids and the creation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

 

While it's easy to argue that defending Byzantium from the Seljuks to the east is, in fact, defensive, it's much more difficult to argue that turning south to attack a completely different entity to establish a new kingdom is anything but offensive.

What is noteworthy in Obama’s comments is not his attempt to establish a false equivalency between Christian and Islamic violence,

 

but that he has undermined his oft-repeated claim that ISIS and its cadre of supporters are unrepresentative of their faith.

 

They are unrepresentative of the Islamic faith. Islamic ethics include mercy to an enemy. And while Arabic and tribal ideas of mercy might conflict with Western ideas, there is nowhere that Islam supports the wanton cruelty of burning a prisoner alive in a cage and running him over with a bulldozer for nothing more than public spectacle.

[TakeYouToTasker]

 

More likely than me being wrong on a point of military history.

 

The First Crusade initiated with a request to the Pope from the Byzantine emperor for volunteers to help defend Byzantine empire from invasion by Seljuk Turks. That turned in to the reconquest of the Levant from the Fatimids and the creation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

 

While it's easy to argue that defending Byzantium from the Seljuks to the east is, in fact, defensive, it's much more difficult to argue that turning south to attack a completely different entity to establish a new kingdom is anything but offensive.

 

They are unrepresentative of the Islamic faith. Islamic ethics include mercy to an enemy. And while Arabic and tribal ideas of mercy might conflict with Western ideas, there is nowhere that Islam supports the wanton cruelty of burning a prisoner alive in a cage and running him over with a bulldozer for nothing more than public spectacle.

The Crusades began in defense of Spain, and proceeded working to retake former Christian lands conquered by the armies of Islam. Those concepts are defensive.

 

I don't disagree about the southern turn, however, which I why I say mostly defensive, rather than entirely defensive.

Edited February 6, 2015 by TakeYouToTasker

[DC Tom]

The Crusades began in defense of Spain, and proceeded working to retake former Christian lands conquered by the armies of Islam. Those concepts are defensive.

 

Ah, I see the problem. You don't even know what the Crusades are; you're confusing them with the Reconquista. There is no creditable historian or school of history that considers the Crusades to have begun in 718 in Iberia.

 

And reconquest of territory held for 400 years is not defensive. To claim that is to argue that a Mexican invasion of California today would be defensive.

[B-Man]

They are unrepresentative of the Islamic faith.

 

You really kind of missed the point there Tom. It is not that ISIS is representative of Islam, but that the President using Christian examples of "terrorism" as a counterpoint, implies that ISIS is Islamic terrorism..................pretty easy to see.

 

 

 

 

Until fairly recently, historically speaking, Muslims used to brag about being the winners of the Crusades, not the victims of it. That is if they talked about them at all.

 

“The Crusades could more accurately be described as a limited, belated and, in the last analysis, ineff ectual re­sponse to the jihad–a failed attempt to recover by a Christian holy war what had been lost to a Muslim holy war,” writes Bernard Lewis, the greatest living historian of Islam in the English language (and perhaps any language).

 

Historian Thomas Madden puts it more directly, “Now put this down in your notebook, because it will be on the test: The cru­sades were in every way a defensive war. They were the West’s belated response to the Muslim conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

[DC Tom]

 

You really kind of missed the point there Tom. It is not that ISIS is representative of Islam, but that the President using Christian examples of "terrorism" as a counterpoint, implies that ISIS is Islamic terrorism..................pretty easy to see.

 

 

I did miss that point, you're right.

 

It's like Pats fan arguing "We don't cheat...and besides, everyone does it." Okay...which is it?

 

 

 

 

Until fairly recently, historically speaking, Muslims used to brag about being the winners of the Crusades, not the victims of it. That is if they talked about them at all.

 

“The Crusades could more accurately be described as a limited, belated and, in the last analysis, ineff ectual re­sponse to the jihad–a failed attempt to recover by a Christian holy war what had been lost to a Muslim holy war,” writes Bernard Lewis, the greatest living historian of Islam in the English language (and perhaps any language).

 

Historian Thomas Madden puts it more directly, “Now put this down in your notebook, because it will be on the test: The cru­sades were in every way a defensive war. They were the West’s belated response to the Muslim conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world.”

 

That logic is horseshit. "We're not being aggressive, we're just defending ourselves belatedly?" So then what war ISN'T a defensive war by that definition? The Japanese weren't attacking China in 1894, they were just belatedly defending themselves from the Mongol invasion of 1274?

[LeviF]

 

That logic is horseshit. "We're not being aggressive, we're just defending ourselves belatedly?" So then what war ISN'T a defensive war by that definition? The Japanese weren't attacking China in 1894, they were just belatedly defending themselves from the Mongol invasion of 1274?

 

 

Not to mention Hitler attacked, like, nobody.

[FireChan]

 

I did miss that point, you're right.

 

It's like Pats fan arguing "We don't cheat...and besides, everyone does it." Okay...which is it?

 

 

 

 

That logic is horseshit. "We're not being aggressive, we're just defending ourselves belatedly?" So then what war ISN'T a defensive war by that definition? The Japanese weren't attacking China in 1894, they were just belatedly defending themselves from the Mongol invasion of 1274?

Every war is defensive, we're all just retaliating from Cain killing Abel.

[B-Man]

 

 

 

 

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[Rob's House]

 

The favorite move of many on this board (not just you), "the question is crap so I ignore." Most of the time these same people push for direct answers to their own "crap" questions.

 

You refuse to comment on what, if any, thoughts you have about fixing the problem. Instead, lets talk about Obama. Fair enough but lets not pretend that isn't what is going on.

I'm not interested in discussing how I would fix the middle east. If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting that anytime one has a discussion and someone asks a tangential question that others are then obligated to answer. Does that mean I can't criticise the EJ Manuel pick unless I'm willing to also discuss and provide a solution at the QB position going forward? Because those are two different conversations.

[B-Man]

If the President wanted to argue comparative religious development, says Jeff Dunetz, that might have been useful:

 

The President wasted what could have been a valuable lesson. If he had gone on to say, “Yes Christianity had done horrible things but it learned and evolved, and now Islam must do the same thing,” it would have been a brilliant and relevant lesson. Instead he seemed to excuse the violence by radical Muslims today because of the violence of Christians six to ten centuries ago. …

 

If the President had started with the Christian massacres and ended with saying, they moderated and now teach peace, and now Islam should do the same he would have made a magnificent point.

Instead he made a political point that is being ridiculed on both sides of the aisle.

 

.

 

[What a Tuel]

Regardless of whether the Crusades were defensive or not, they were predated by another religious war, and another before that etc etc

 

Is that the stance we are taking in these modern days? Continue the trend of religious violence? Or are we going to evolve at some point? I know, I know, it's improbable.

 

 

 

If he had gone on to say, “Yes Christianity had done horrible things but it learned and evolved, and now Islam must do the same thing,” it would have been a brilliant and relevant lesson. Instead he seemed to excuse the violence by radical Muslims today because of the violence of Christians six to ten centuries ago. …

 

I would have accepted this argument. Instead he tried to justify atrocities by saying "It's just how the world turns guys, it just happens, even by us"

Edited February 7, 2015 by What a Tuel

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Maybe further Workplace Violence® can be averted if the Syrian Jihadists Insurgents Rebels Freedom Fighters Community Organizers were subject to an expanded NICS background investigation before the US Government provided them with firearms free of charge that American Citizens are forbidden from purchasing