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?

[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?

[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.

[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.

[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.