Fighting means dying

[Art Eatman]

Welch is a bad example, Ezekiel.  He wanders around with pretty much the same folks at each charade.  The bin Ladenites have equal numbers in city after city, town after town.  

The Christian weirdlies run their mouths, yeah; but they don't shoot or do the IED thing in countries all over the world.  Nor do the Jews, etc., etc., etc.  For this particular era, it's the militant Jihadist Islamics who are the primary cause of pointless deaths.

I just get fed up with the unending double standard applied against the good guys.  We're supposed to either ignore or find excuses for mullahs teaching, "The Jews will eat your babies!" in the madrassahs, as was done prior to the UN vote on Israel, which contributed greatly to the exodus of Arabs from Israel.  (That same BS is still being said...)  Palestinians delighted in going into Israeli schools and shooting whomever was available, but we're supposed to ignore that because "their land was stolen".  More BS.

And on and on and on.  

Hell, people don't even have a clue as to why the CIA worked the Shah vs. Mossadegh deal; they just call the US dirty names about that--and I'm talking about US citizens, here.  

I ain't gonna write a book, but if I did I might well call it, "Hell, I was there:  Version II".  I'm no Elmer Keith, but I know how he felt...People keep re-writing history, and I know better.

Art

[De Selby]

Art,

Have to disagree, unsurprisingly.

The Christian weirdlies run their mouths, yeah; but they don't shoot or do the IED thing in countries all over the world.  Nor do the Jews, etc., etc., etc.  For this particular era, it's the militant Jihadist Islamics who are the primary cause of pointless deaths.

There is no doubt that it is a problem, but it's completely untrue to say militant Islamists are the primary cause of death.

Serb militants single-handedly outkilled every single Muslim terrorist organization in the world in just a couple of years.  Likewise, Russian raids on Chechnya have outkilled virtually all religious fanatics, of all stripes, worldwide.  The Rwandans, with the aid of Priests and Nuns (seriously...there are already convictiosn on the books) killed about 800,000.

Yes, Bin Laden and his ilk are a serious threat to innocent people everywhere, but it's just plain incorrect to accuse militant Islamists like him of being "the primary cause of pointless deaths."  The fact of the matter is, they have been out-killed by a longshot by non-Muslim, non-Islam related conflict.

(That same BS is still being said...)  Palestinians delighted in going into Israeli schools and shooting whomever was available, but we're supposed to ignore that because "their land was stolen".  More BS.

May I suggest to you the esteemed Israeli historian, Benny Morris's The Birth of The Palestinian Refugee Problem.
  Those claims aren't BS, they're the accepted position by most historians today.  I think Morris's book pretty much put the nail in the coffin on claims that the Arabs just packed up and left out of spite. 

Hell, people don't even have a clue as to why the CIA worked the Shah vs. Mossadegh deal; they just call the US dirty names about that--and I'm talking about US citizens, here. 

My question to you is: Do you recognize property rights universally? I saw your previous comment about the need to control oil.  What I'm interested in knowing is, do you believe that the people who live in the oil-producing regions have a natural right to dispose of their property as they wish?  Or do you not recognize anything like natural rights or any other species of property right?

What's your take on intervention in foreign governments, to control resources, against the will of the people living there from a rights perspective?