Obama tries to apologize for HiroshimaFollow

The difference was we didn't fly a couple of airplanes into his compound in Pakistan, nor did we take him hostage and youtubed his decapitation (which, mind you, would have still been better than random contractor/civilian decapitated and dumped in the desert). If you fail to see that there is a difference, then you're just playing on the whole misguided "all life is sacred" nonsense.

Now, if you had said that their celebrating when they blow up one of our armed forces vehicles is similar, then you'd have been right. That would be a similar standard. However, you decided to describe a tactical military execution as random civilian decapitated on youtube.

Varus, stop being dumb.

My only point was that they saw no difference--the dead, by virtue of being American (or <insert race/creed>) were their enemies. And they celebrated the deaths of their enemies. We can argue all day long about who is more justified in their definition of enemy, but that just seems absurd to me. If they were celebrating the assassination of the president, we'd react the exact same way--calling them barbarians. But, in reality, he is their enemy in a very real way.

When I heard ObL had died, I wasn't overjoyed at his death. Frankly, all I could think about was how differently things would have been if he hadn't been forced to grow up in a hell hole. He was an extremely intelligent and charismatic man--had he been raised in a culture that impressed him with different values, he could have been just as big a source of happiness as he actually was pain. So I take no joy in his death--he was as much the creation of his culture as I am a creation of mine.

And this really comes down to what I said on the last page. We are debating fundamentally different ideologies and berating each other on these grounds. Neither group has any real justification for their view outside of their personal values. My values hold that celebrating death in any form is barbaric, and my emotional reactions to such celebrations are going to be the same. In what way the celebrants feel themselves justified doesn't matter--to me, they just seem insane, because I can't relate to their set of values.

And it's clearly the same way for people who disagree with me--you think it's absurd that I take this position, because you don't feel the same way about celebrating death (that is, you think that celebrations can be justified by the acts of the dead). That seems as crazy to me as my view clearly seems to others.

Economic squalor isn't the only type of terrifying environment you might find yourself in. I would rather have grown up in abject poverty than have been raised with those values.

Not at all. He's the product of his upbringing, which is all my post was about. I frankly wasn't even thinking about his economic status.

To pretend like that's not true is to ignore the root causes of all the problems in the Middle East.

That'd be true if his family hadn't disowned him for his beliefs in 1994.

Nature vs nurture, all life is sacred

No one is truly responsible for their actions

Hitler should be forgiven for his crimes

The whole world should hug and dance together

Africa will be uplifted from abject poverty and all of humanity will sing with one glorious voice

There, now that I've covered where you're going to go from here, can we save the trouble of having to actually read your posts?

Read up on Islam.

Edited, Oct 17th 2011 6:00pm by lolgaxe

Eske Esquire, Godwins prophet.

Alma and possibly Iddigory first please.

Okay, accusations of being idealistic, soft and naive are one thing. But to group me in with ALMA?

It's sad that this actually just made me feel better...