The Losing Game

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

When 9-11 when down my first analysis of the affair was to compare Christian fundamentalism with Muslim fundamentalism. Kamikaze Muslim fundamentalists were clearly willing to die for the freedom of their own people. What about Christian fundamentalists? They seem to only be willing for others to die for the freedom of fundamentalist action. As we can see by the recent deaths of the hit men who carried out the assassination of bin Laden, the whole affair is a lose-lose situation for both sides. Let's face it: fundamentalism is for losers.

William Casey saw warfare in economic terms. In his time the bigger economy prevailed. Perhaps he would seek out the bigger economy that was propping up the Taliban and al-Qaeda. He would trace their funding through Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to find that his own policies have pitted the US against the US. Two factions of religious bigotry supplied by petro-dollars butt heads with each other in a race to the bottom. Which will be the biggest loser?


(BTW, my observations on Christian fundamentalist cowardice predated my learning about Air Force policies of promoting dominionism and protecting their pilots from enemy capture.)

Comments

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Huh, what? No I don't want no ham... wait, what, who are you and why are you in my bedroom?

Crassness

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Yeah, OBL made a remark immediately after 9/11 the 'strong-men' on the 4 planes had no idea what was really planned (i.e. suicide missions). Pretty telling, and of course, and he wanted all their unused money for the project returned to his bank accounts too.

[zeitgeistic.livejournal.com]

This, and even the pawns they sent over to "die for their beliefs" had the sole mission of taking out as many unwilling American people with them as possible.

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree with this. They weren't fighting for freedom; they were aggressively fighting for the expansion of Islam.

In their eyes...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

... that constitutes freedom, just as wage slavery is seen as freedom in the US.

Re: In their eyes...

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

I'm not really getting the analogy there. And the assertion that waging an expansive jihad to extend Islam's influence over others is comparable to fighting for one's own freedom just doesn't hold up imo.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately Christians are just willing to do that for Christianity. Just ask Uganda which is bringing Christian love to its gays right now, and don't forget to ask Azerbaijan why a genocide almost 100 years ago justifies expelling 1 million people in the 1990s. While you're at it, also look up the Taiping Rebellion, the last Crusade.

In the Christian tradition...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

... you are only free when you worship Jesus in your heart as your lord and savior. It is all relative.

Re: In the Christian tradition...

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

That is the notion that you are free from sin. It isn't the same thing as being free from any number of other things - government oppression, an abusive relationship, physical bondage, or anything else that limits a person's independence.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Let's see...

19 hijackers < 2700+ victims

Looks like as willing as they were to die for their beliefs they were more than willing to take over 100 others with each of them.

Maybe your "analysis" needs some work.

not bad flame bait, though.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Yes we should figure out which one is better. This is important. -.-;

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

So if Christians were violent, you'd call them terrorists kamikazes, probably crazy, and definitely unworthy of their professed ideals. That Christians are not violent apparently doesn't show non-violence, but cowardice.

So which path should Christians take to not earn your derision? Or do you just look down on them for being Christian?

[sammipunk.livejournal.com]

Not violent? Did you forget Oslo? Wow.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

I was going off of the premise stated by sophia_sadek, that fundamentalists are non-violent cowards. The point is that she has determined that Christians are Bad People(tm) and is borrowing 9/11 to prove that they're just weaker-willed than their Muslim counterparts. Since I was attempting to show bad reasoning, not bad facts, I don't see how Oslo is relevant.

I did not mean to imply...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

... that Christian fundamentalists are not violent. It is the form that their violence takes that differs from their Muslim brethren. Christian fundamentalists have no qualms about dropping a half ton of explosives on the heads of women and children, as long as there is someone to rescue them if they get shot down.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

One problem here, as with anything, is that "Christian" means different things to different people. To some, it means anyone who was validly baptized in the name of the Trinity and confesses the Creed (in this context I use the Apostles' Creed myself, for various reasons I won't get into unless you really want me to). To others it narrowly means only those who have been "born again." To others, apparently, it means "credulous sky-daddy-worshipping racist, sexist, homophobic idiots." Fundamentalism is likewise a loaded term that can mean many different things, though I speak of "Fundamentalist Christians" myself.

Also:

>>As we can see by the recent deaths of the hit men who carried out the assassination of bin Laden, the whole affair is a lose-lose situation for both sides. Let's face it: fundamentalism is for losers.

Really? Seriously? Hit men? Assassination? Do you even know if they were Christians, let alone Fundamentalists?

See userpic for details.

I did not mean...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

... to imply that the hit men were themselves fundamentalists. Most of the people who supported the original military operations against the Taliban were fundamentalists including those at the top.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Well, they were hit men and assassins. That's about the only bit that the OP got right.

[oportet.livejournal.com]

In my opinion, self-preservation is a positive quality. Maybe selfish, far from cowardly.

Who will last the longest - a guy strapped with a bomb - or a guy holding a poster with an aborted baby on it? I'll go with the latter this round.

The guy with the bomb...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

... gets 70 virgins in the after-death. The guy with the poster gets no action in life nor in the after-death.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Ok, let's stop right with the second sentence. Kamikaze Muslim fundamentalists took 30 years to discover that one can use hijacked plans as kamikazes. If they were so hellbound on suicide, they would have done that far earlier against say, Israel. Which would have had major problems in the 1970s from such attacks at the same time as it had its own Vietnam in Lebanon.

Second, suicide is a sin in Islam just as it is in Christianity. Suicide bombing was invented by the LTTE and I assure you the Tamil Tigers are not a Muslim group. Its adoption by a narrow stratum of Islamists is one reason those movements have taken a steep nosedive in popularity in the Muslim world. Just like everybody else, Muslims don't want to be blown up by suicide bombers.

Third, Christian terrorists are far from cowards. In Armenia their lot ensured 1 million Azeris cleared from Azeri soil, in Lebanon the Christians added Sabra and Shatila to the list of Christian slaughters of Muslims in the region. India's not just got Commie terrorists it's also got Christian ones in Nagaland and Tripuri. Most crucially the second bloodiest war after WWII was a Christian crusade in China that is the most glaringly forgotten religious war of the modern era. Christian terrorists tend to be more organized than their Muslim counterparts, which is one reason that the Lord's Resistance Army is much more deadly than Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Fourth, the idea that fanatics are cowards is a dangerous and stupid idea. That's how one dismisses a movement as a bunch of yokels and dies from being worked to death behind barbed wire.

I do not debit...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

... the Phalange for their atrocity in Sabra and Shatila as much as I do Israeli intelligence for misleading them on the culprits behind the assassination of their leader. They were deceived into thinking that Bashir Gemayel had been bumped off by Palestinians.

The cowardly fanatics are the ones who drop bombs from a safe altitude on a defenseless population.

Re: I do not debit...

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, those are sensible fanatics.