Very sobering and thought provoking.
I offer no excuses for my silence; in a world gone crazy, the temptation to make such utterances is oftentimes overpowering. I cast no stones, for those very thoughts have crossed my mind if not my lips. Does that make it right to say such things? No. Does it mean that if given the chance we would act on it? Speaking for myself, No again.
It is our way of venting at the engulfing unfairness of planes being flown into buildings and nightly beheadings on the 6 o'clock news. It's the same way I bitch about inept management in my workplace. I may scream out against favoritism and ineptitude of all management, when in actuality I mean only a fraction of offenders within the ranks.
I DO NOT lump an entire group of people into a category; the terrorists we are talking about here are Muslim (and they make that fact abundantly clear), and not all Muslims are terrorists. BUT: the very silence you damn us for is echoing loudly in the Muslim community wholesale. If they do not ascribe to the deplorable actions of a renegade few, then let them voice their disapproval. The silence is deafening, save for a brave few.
Better yet, let the peacable Muslims root out the evil among themselves; they are in a unique position to do so, but I haven't seen that happening. It is widely reported there are over 200 terrorist cells already within the borders of this great nation. I doubt they are existing in a vacuum, but I hear of no mosques turning over members of Al Qaeda, Hizbollah or Hamas. And yet we report crimes on a daily basis because we want the perpetrator to be caught and peace to prevail, even if the one who committed it is blond-haired, blue-eyed and a "Christian."
I do not view all Muslims as the enemy, and I doubt few here do. When we categorize an entire religion or race as "evil" we run the risk of echoing the damnable rhetoric of Hitler. I have an uncle who gave his life to help ensure the rest of the world did not fall into the clutches of Nazism. I do not want to lose any more of my precious family to a similar cause.
Do we, as law-abiding US citizens deserve to live in fear of what the next terrorist group is going to threaten or even carry out against this great nation just because we are a free people? Why do the terrorists hate us so much? Is it because we have taken our freedom to the extreme? Freedom to drink, so we drink 1 or 2 or 10 and then get behind the wheel and leave a mother to mourn the son we mowed down in our excess. Freedom of access, so we download porn to our computers and leave our families in ruins. Is this why they hate us? They see our freedom taken to extreme because we fail to see that with freedom comes responsibility.
So I guess what I'm saying is... there must be a balance to everything. We cannot afford to live in a vacuum of ignorance, and yet we cannot judge with a harsher standard than that which we want for ourselves.
Excellent post! You said just about everything I have felt. Very, very good response.
One of TODAY'S TOONS in that thread noted
to a questioner . . .
why God, haven't you sent us cures for AIDS, cancer etc.
God's reply, I did, you aborted them.
I don't know that a culture that murders to many unborns and cheers so much corruption and treason in high places deserves a great deal from God.
Indeed, it may just deserve plenty from the satanic values and even satan himself so worshipped in such a plethora of ways.
liberallyconservative, your post says it all for those of us who are very much against any wholesale targeting of Muslims, but are very much for the utter destruction of all terrorists and those who harbor and help them no matter where they are in the world.
I too have been going round and round over your rather cogently stated post, Nothing Man. Let me state that I don't advocate terrorism or the tools of terror. I am frustrated in the extreme when I suggest that Mecca be nuked in response to a nuclear incident here. Same goes for "detention camps" or bombing mosques, et al. We must not be responsible for such atrocities.
However, let me be clear: Anybody who comes after me and mine will be met with well trained, focused, deadly force of the highest order. I will not shoot to wound, but rather to stop any attack, instantly.
Further, speaking as a veteran teacher of world history, do not deceive yourself, this is NOT a religion of peace. The origins of the initial spread of Islam (rather than the contents in the English version of the Quiran) speak to that rather clearly. Deeds not words are what count. Christ gave his life under the most horrific circumstances imaginable for the sins of man. What deeds does Allah call upon his sons to perform? Rhetorical question, obviously. I have no answers. I have only my faith. That is enough. We must protect ourselves. Allah is not another name for God, it is the name of another God. The Lord God of all creation will handle that situation in the long run as well as the spawn of that pagan diety and those who fail to receive Christ as saviour.
I think we were/are heading there. Not just this thread, but the other threads as well. Lots of posts to "nuke them all".