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How do you maintain the moral status of Western countries not playing an active role in supporting Islamic Fundamentalist activities today?

This is going to take a little bit of context.  Though this may seem off-topic, I assure you it isn't:

---

 

In general, is it better or worse- for your own self- to have dangerous people loose in the world?  It's obviously worse, for me, which means that it benefits me if and when they are mitigated (at least as the negation of a threat, if not a "value" per se (I can clarify that, if necessary)). 

 

However, the benefit I gain from that does not translate into the overall soundness of any particular action, in and of itself; it must be weighed against the costs- for me- which it requires.  Concretely, while some arsonist in India would threaten my own pursuit of professionally programming (he could blow up a factory or something, which would exert countless miniscule effects on me), it wouldn't make any sense to put everything else on hold in order to try to catch him; essentially sacrificing my pursuits for the sake of my pursuits.

In the words of Robert Heinlein, "there aint no such thing as a free lunch" (TANSTAAFL).  In more applicable terms there is no such thing as a value, the pursuit of which is without a cost.  

 

Hence, for any given evaluation of anything, you have to look at the BIG picture (the biggest picture you can personally put together) in order to really and truly know what it's worth.  The principle alluded to there is called "objectivity". 

 

And in Objectivism, "moral" and "objectively good for you" mean the same thing.  So if you figure out how one applies to any given thing, you automatically know how the other does.

 

Now, as far as war itself goes (good guys versus bad guys, pure and simple), that's a fairly straightforward application; the morality of any given war depends on how dangerous the bad guys are versus hard it would be to take them out.  And no; those factors are not always the same thing (see Covert Ops).

 

Using one threat to fight another is clearly good, but giving them better weapons is evil; in any specific case, we would have to weigh the danger one poses today against what another could pose tomorrow, as well as the relative difficulty of incapacitating either. 

 

Off the top of my head, those are four different factors to compare- each of which represents the sum of its own complicated assessment (such as how "difficult" a war could be, which cannot be accurately surmised off the top of anyone's head).

 

Where collateral damage is concerned, the complexity of an objective evaluation increases exponentially (and to be honest, I would consider it prudent in such cases to err on the side of mercy).

 

Now, to address your question more directly:

If an innocent person went to America and executed every single government worker (whether that be current or ex Presidents or whoever) that supported and was involved in, e.g., selling weapons to Saudi Arabia (which according to the State Department together with Iran is the world's number one supporter of Islamic terrorism worldwide) or otherwise supporting such regimes - if he did that, would he have a right to do so, Yes or No?

 

As an extension of the reasoning above, whether he has that "right" means the same thing- from an Objectivist perspective- as whether it could ever be objectively necessary to enable his own pursuit of his own happiness.  Generally speaking: no.

 

Sure, American leaders have undeniably made evil (self-destructive) decisions before- frequently, and with widespread approval.  And yes, there certainly are borderline cases where a third-world citizen could execute an American leader out of self-interest, but that's all they are; borderline cases.

 

Despite the genuine evils of America's leaders and despite those rights of our own which they infringe on, generally speaking the most selfish thing a citizen of the third-world could ever do would be to get the Hell in here!

 

Does that still strike you as wishy-washy?

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Good points HD.

 

Careful about your use of the term "mercy".  It normally means "unfair" or "unreasoned" leniency.  I think you mean to use the term "justice" which is applicable in the case when speaking of innocents. 

 

Your conclusion alludes to immigration.  The Objectivist position is consistent with essentially open borders (except for criminals, terrorists, etc.), and thus there would be no reason (hypothetically) for foreign citizens to try to abandon their tyrannical irrational regime and move to an Objectivist America

https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2008-spring/immigration-individual-rights/

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Careful about your use of the term "mercy". 

Yes; that wasn't the best word to use (and thank you for noticing!), but I'm still at a loss to define exactly what I was trying to convey there.

It's not quite "justice" either, because that's an extension of the Law of Identity; that rational people should be treated as such, and dangerous people as such, in the same way and for the same reasons that poison should be treated as poison (instead of food).  Where collateral damage is concerned, that's already assumed.*

 

What I was thinking of, when I mentioned 'erring on the side of mercy', was the idea that IF an arbitrary assumption must be made about any concrete application of justice, then it's better to make the least-destructive assumption; innocence over guilt, et cetera.

 

I'm not sure what the fitting term for that is?

 

*Assuming, of course, that we're referring to some halfway-logical concept of "collateral damage".  I have no doubt that at least twenty of the people alive on the planet Earth would apply it to contraception or vaccines. . .

 

Your conclusion alludes to immigration.

Thank you for noticing that, as well.  B)  

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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HD:

 

Perhaps "conservative use" of force when the effects/outcome and the justness of that outcome cannot be prejudged or predicted with sufficient certainty is what you are looking for. 

 

and by "conservative" I mean a level of force up to but no more than what is absolutely necessary given what IS known.

Edited by StrictlyLogical
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  • 2 weeks later...

This is going to take a little bit of context.  Though this may seem off-topic, I assure you it isn't:

---

 

In general, is it better or worse- for your own self- to have dangerous people loose in the world?  It's obviously worse, for me, which means that it benefits me if and when they are mitigated (at least as the negation of a threat, if not a "value" per se (I can clarify that, if necessary)). 

 

However, the benefit I gain from that does not translate into the overall soundness of any particular action, in and of itself; it must be weighed against the costs- for me- which it requires.  Concretely, while some arsonist in India would threaten my own pursuit of professionally programming (he could blow up a factory or something, which would exert countless miniscule effects on me), it wouldn't make any sense to put everything else on hold in order to try to catch him; essentially sacrificing my pursuits for the sake of my pursuits.

In the words of Robert Heinlein, "there aint no such thing as a free lunch" (TANSTAAFL).  In more applicable terms there is no such thing as a value, the pursuit of which is without a cost.  

 

Hence, for any given evaluation of anything, you have to look at the BIG picture (the biggest picture you can personally put together) in order to really and truly know what it's worth.  The principle alluded to there is called "objectivity". 

 

And in Objectivism, "moral" and "objectively good for you" mean the same thing.  So if you figure out how one applies to any given thing, you automatically know how the other does.

 

Now, as far as war itself goes (good guys versus bad guys, pure and simple), that's a fairly straightforward application; the morality of any given war depends on how dangerous the bad guys are versus hard it would be to take them out.  And no; those factors are not always the same thing (see Covert Ops).

 

Using one threat to fight another is clearly good, but giving them better weapons is evil; in any specific case, we would have to weigh the danger one poses today against what another could pose tomorrow, as well as the relative difficulty of incapacitating either. 

 

Off the top of my head, those are four different factors to compare- each of which represents the sum of its own complicated assessment (such as how "difficult" a war could be, which cannot be accurately surmised off the top of anyone's head).

 

Where collateral damage is concerned, the complexity of an objective evaluation increases exponentially (and to be honest, I would consider it prudent in such cases to err on the side of mercy).

 

Now, to address your question more directly:

 

As an extension of the reasoning above, whether he has that "right" means the same thing- from an Objectivist perspective- as whether it could ever be objectively necessary to enable his own pursuit of his own happiness.  Generally speaking: no.

 

Sure, American leaders have undeniably made evil (self-destructive) decisions before- frequently, and with widespread approval.  And yes, there certainly are borderline cases where a third-world citizen could execute an American leader out of self-interest, but that's all they are; borderline cases.

 

Despite the genuine evils of America's leaders and despite those rights of our own which they infringe on, generally speaking the most selfish thing a citizen of the third-world could ever do would be to get the Hell in here!

 

Does that still strike you as wishy-washy?

 

Well, first of all, thanks for trying to answer my question.

 

So you seem to be saying "No" due to circumstantial reasons, but also "Yes" in "borderline cases" (whatever those would be).

 

I think "to have a right to do this or that" has to be distinguished from "being right to do this or that". The former is defined by principle, the latter by circumstances:

 

For example, America and any other free country on principle had/has a right to overthrow the Iraqi government, because a dictator has no sovereignty anyway. This doesn't mean it was/is morally right to do so given the circumstances, since other countries are much more important to overthrow (like Iran and Saudi Arabia) to actually fight the ideology.

 

So my question was really about having a right. You and others here give all sorts of reasons why it should not be right to do what my question asks, reasons that seem plausible to me. But my interest is more about matters of principle, of the actual self-esteem to be claimed by the governments in question. This can only be answered by whether people - on principle - actually have a right to attack the governments in question, because only this shows how those governments are actually to be evaluated.

 

So your answers about whether it would be right or not are quite okay, but I think putting too much effort on answering that way actually evades the really interesting question whether they actually have a right.

 

But may I take it then that your "borderline case" (whatever that may be) says "Yes, they do have a right"?

Edited by DiscoveryJoy
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I think the issue of collateral damage in war can be better understood by looking at a comparable concrete involving individuals, because on the whole the principle is the same.

Imagine we have an armed terrorist in a public place who takes three hostages. He holds one of the hostages in front of him as a human shield and places the other two on either side of him. You happen to be carrying a gun yourself. As you draw your weapon, the terrorist sees you. You know he won't hesitate to shoot and kill you, and probably others. However, the only available shot to the terrorist is through the civilian (in this instance you have a high caliber weapon that will allow you to kill the terrorist by shooting through the civilian).

What is the right decision?

It's clear that if you are to act in a self-interested manner, you need to take the shot. Your priority is self-defense against an armed maniac who will kill you and other innocent people around you. It is a tragedy that the civilian will die in this instance once you shoot through him, but it is the only way to save your own life and those of the other civilians around you. This is the same principle that governs civilian casualties in a war. Civilians in Imperial Japan unfortunately had to die when the U.S. went into neutralize the armed threat.

A few things other principles and scenarios in this analogy are worthy of note:

1) The blood of the civilian is squarely and solely on the hands of the terrorist. Even though you pulled the trigger of the weapon that killed him, his death is not your fault. The terrorist forced your hand by coercing you and bears responsibility for the death of this innocent. Because the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary measures for the U.S. to take to neutralize the threat of imperial Japan (a land invasion would have been costly for the lives of American troops, so that decision would have been immoral for government when the bomb remained an effective option), and because the Japanese forced the hand of President Truman by attacking the United States, the blood of those killed in those bombings is on the hands of the Japanese emperor.

2) In our scenario, you probably have time for just one shot before the terrorist is able to fire a shot at you. Because you would be unlikely to hit and would almost certainly die if you missed (and perhaps even if you hit), it would be immoral to shoot to wound the terrorist's exposed leg rather than taking the shot to kill through the civilian. For the same reason, it would be immoral for the United States to have gone out of their way to avoid civilian casualties to the detriment of its ability to win the war.

3) In our scenario, the terrorist has three hostages. Since only one of them must be killed in order to kill the terrorist, it would also be immoral to kill all three regardless. For the same reason, it would be immoral for the United States to have gratuitously bombed Japanese cities after the Emperor offered his surrender. In this instance, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the one civilian right in front of the terrorist, and the other two civilians are the rest of Japan. Civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to die for the U.S. to neutralize a violent, oppressive and irrational government, but once the Japanese surrendered, the U.S. properly did not cause any unnecessary civilian deaths.

I hope this analogy is at least a bit helpful or thought provoking when considering foreign policy issues. Thinking about things more in this way helped convince me to support the strong foreign policies of Dr. Peikoff and Dr. Brook instead of the non-interventionism of Ron Paul and other libertarians.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I think "to have a right to do this or that" has to be distinguished from "being right to do this or that". The former is defined by principle, the latter by circumstances:

I'd like to examine that distinction in greater detail.  Ayn Rand defined "having a right" along these lines:

 

"A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.

A moral principle is "'a fundamental, primary, or general truth [about morality], on which other truths [about morality] depend.'"

 

"There is only one fundamental right: a man’s right to his own life. . .  which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life."

Which is exactly reducible to "the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a man for living as Man qua Man" (living selfishly, thriving, take your pick).

 

"The concept of a 'right' pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men."

Wherever she mentions such a freedom to act, I read it as the freedom to choose (since forcing someone to perform such an action, without their consent, would also be coercive).

 

Altogether, I take this to mean:

 

A 'right' is a moral generalization which specifies a decision necessary for Human life.

 

Now, for all of the bad things that American leaders have done, in terms of their actual evil (and detriment to Human life) I would only rate the very worst of them as equivalent to petty crooks; they're not the cause of very much at all, they're only a symptom.

President Obama, for example, had stopped efforts to construct the Keystone oil pipeline at one point, which made gasoline that much more expensive and made it that much harder for every single Man in America to truly live (I don't know if it was ever built, or not).  Why?  Because of all of the 'environmentalists' who used the tundra as an excuse to further their own desires to escape from their own consciousness.  So in the grand scheme of things, while Obama was the final step of a long process (which long predates environmentalism) he can't be punished as some diabolical mastermind because he's not.

Neither was Bush (do you think he could follow a plot?), nor Clinton, nor all of the countless underlings between them and the people enforcing these decisions.  The very worst of them are comparable to thugs who've been trained to beat people up on command (and not even very competent ones, at that).

 

So the question you're asking is whether living morally requires the freedom to assassinate crooks like that.

 

If you believe so then I would like to hear why.

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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So the question you're asking is whether living morally requires the freedom to assassinate crooks like that.

Actually, I no longer believe that's quite accurate.

 

What you're really asking is whether someone who merely enables the actions of evil men also shares in their guilt.  Since 'guilt' in this context refers to the propensity for the conscious destruction of others, I would say yes- to the degree that they played both a voluntary and necessary role in whatever crimes.

For example, if someone sells a gun to someone who uses it to slaughter their classmates, the salesman can only be held responsible for any of it if:

  1. He knew what his customer intended to do with it
  2. His own Life did not depend on his cooperation (he wasn't coerced)
  3. His cooperation was necessary in order for the crimes to be carried out

Now, those are all tricky to assess for any given situation (like evaluating a war).  For example, if this customer walks into the gun store with an AK-47 under his jacket and asks for enough ammo to slaughter his classmates, I think any rational person could infer 1 but could 2 really be categorized one way or another?  Suppose further that he already had several clips; which of his subsequent actions would not have been possible without a few more and which were already inevitable, by that point?

So any answers to for such questions will always rest on somewhat 'fuzzy' inductive grounds.  However, they are answerable, and anywhere those criteria are clearly met I absolutely believe that an individual shares that degree of guilt for the another's crime.

That principle, which applies perfectly well to individuals (I believe; I'm not sure what Rand has said about it), is not directly translatable to a government because a government is a large group of individuals who usually share multiple webs of guilt.  Furthermore, every government is in some way a product of its citizens (if only through their acceptance) and can't be reasoned about separately from them.

 

If a businessman is arrested for tax evasion, for example, that's a violation of his rights.  The cops who arrest him aren't really responsible for it (except to some small extent) because of the penalties imposed on any who act against their orders; they are effectively acting under coercion, too, and the blame for that specific crime must extend to those who gave the orders.  But the giver of such orders isn't fully responsible; they only enforce the laws that have been written.  The legislators who write the laws aren't entirely accountable, either, because they only create specific implementations of the ideals of most Americans; the very victims of such crimes.

No evaluation of a government's actions can be attributed to a single person (not even a monarch or a dictator); such actions are primarily caused by countless citizens, each exerting such a trivial effect that most of them are incapable of seeing it.

---

 

Yes, American leaders share the guilt for some of the people they've armed- and the American people share the guilt for electing them.  Just as the bloodshed of those dictators was enabled by the American government, that enabling was enabled by the American people.

Yes, you have the right to punish any individual for the extent of their guilt in that (according to the criteria above) and I think you would be justified in exacting a tiny little vengeance on almost everyone alive on Earth (as long as this did not exceed their actual guilt).

 

I would really just like to stress- why?

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Yes, American leaders share the guilt for some of the people they've armed- and the American people share the guilt for electing them.  Just as the bloodshed of those dictators was enabled by the American government, that enabling was enabled by the American people.

Yes, you have the right to punish any individual for the extent of their guilt in that (according to the criteria above) and I think you would be justified in exacting a tiny little vengeance on almost everyone alive on Earth (as long as this did not exceed their actual guilt).

 

I would really just like to stress- why?

 

Thank you, this, indeed, gets much closer to answering my question.

 

You see, my problem is, then, that you cannot really complain about 9/11, other than just confess that you only have yourself to blame. This makes any self-confident anger against bin Laden & Co completely unjustified. Isn't this just playing into the hands of the Ron Paul types, or even worst, of Noam Chomsky?

Edited by DiscoveryJoy
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You see, my problem is, then, that you cannot really complain about 9/11, other than just confess that you only have yourself to blame.

While most people are partially responsible for such problems, not everyone is; there are a few genuine innocents (which I believe myself to be one of).  Otherwise, though, that's basically correct.

 

This makes any self-confident anger against bin Laden & Co completely unjustified.

Yes and no.

 

In the analogy of the kid with the AK-47, while we may realize that others may have helped him to commit his evils (and while some forms of 'help' may even lessen the degree of evil we attribute to him, for the final result), at the end of the day he was still the one to pull the trigger. 

Unless someone had, say, convinced him that all of his victims were alien invaders (and that he should defend our species from them); unless someone had managed to completely detach his consciousness from reality, he's sort of the 'prime mover' of his own crime*.  So whatever pieces of guilt he may share with others, he will always keep the biggest piece.

*And even if they had convinced him of some monumental lie, he would still be guilty of allowing himself to buy into it, unless he wasn't capable of discerning truth from falsehood on such a scale**.

**Eventually this line of reasoning demands either guilt or some certifiable form of mental illness.

 

So regardless of who else is partially responsible for Bin Laden & co, the vast majority of the responsibility for their actions will still rest squarely on the shoulders of Bin Laden & co. (if we assume that they are not certifiably mentally handicapped).

That said, most of the anger one usually hears expressed about them is largely unjustified, because it's explained as an extension of all of the wrong reasons.

 

Evil men are a threat to you and I- personally- and we are right to condemn them on that basis.  To call them evil for their "intolerance towards other cultures" is to spit on all of your own convictions and principles.

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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  • 2 months later...

 

In the analogy of the kid with the AK-47, while we may realize that others may have helped him to commit his evils (and while some forms of 'help' may even lessen the degree of evil we attribute to him, for the final result), at the end of the day he was still the one to pull the trigger. 

Unless someone had, say, convinced him that all of his victims were alien invaders (and that he should defend our species from them); unless someone had managed to completely detach his consciousness from reality, he's sort of the 'prime mover' of his own crime*.  So whatever pieces of guilt he may share with others, he will always keep the biggest piece.

*And even if they had convinced him of some monumental lie, he would still be guilty of allowing himself to buy into it, unless he wasn't capable of discerning truth from falsehood on such a scale**.

**Eventually this line of reasoning demands either guilt or some certifiable form of mental illness.

 

So regardless of who else is partially responsible for Bin Laden & co, the vast majority of the responsibility for their actions will still rest squarely on the shoulders of Bin Laden & co. (if we assume that they are not certifiably mentally handicapped).

 

And what about the Saudis sponsoring Terrorism? Are they not equally responsible as Bin Laden? Would you say they are not a prime mover, just because they didn't pull the trigger? Who is the prime mover? Is it only Attila, or also the Witch Doctor? And doesn't Saudi Arabia already perform Attila activity through its sponsorship of Terrorists?

 

And if sponsorship makes you a prime mover, then again, what stops you from putting the West into that prime mover boat, given that it supports Saudi Arabia (knowing that Saudi Arabia will use that money to sponsor Terrorism, they themselves knowing that the Terrorists will use that money for terrorist activity)?

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In other words: If Saudi Arabia could be bombed for sponsoring terrorists, why couldn't the U.S. be bombed for supporting Saudi Arabia?

"terrorism" is a poorly defined tactic of war, not an identification of an ideological movement or group.

Who exactly is Saudi Arabia supporting, that you are objecting to?

  

And what about the Saudis sponsoring Terrorism?

Good talk.
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Good talk.

 

My God, I thought that this was so common knowledge among these circles that it doesn't need any further answering. I thought everybody here is clear that it is the big two: Saudi Arabia and Iran, who are the top states sponsoring terrorism in the world.

 

The Saudis more secretively through channeling money through - internally and abroad - to institutions that preach violence against the West, and to terrorist training facilites etc. - all while in public pretending to be good friends. The name "Bin Laden" in tango with the Saudi Family doesn't ring a bell?

 

Iran clearly outspoken about its hatred of the West and with no reason or even possibility to make this any big secret ever since the 1979 hostage crisis.

Edited by DiscoveryJoy
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My God, I thought that this was so common knowledge among these circles that it doesn't need any further answering. I thought everybody here is clear that it is the big two: Saudi Arabia and Iran, who are the top states sponsoring terrorism in the world.

 

The Saudis more secretively through channeling money through - internally and abroad - to institutions that preach violence against the West, and to terrorist training facilites etc. - all while in public pretending to be good friends. The name "Bin Laden" in tango with the Saudi Family doesn't ring a bell?

The Bin Laden family are not terrorists, they're a prominent Arab family with business interests across the Middle East. Osama bin Laden has been disowned by his family, and officially stripped of his Saudi citizenship, as soon as he became hostile to the United States in the early 90s. I've seen no evidence that the Saudi government has provided him with financial assistance since that time.

 

So, "my God, no", the argument "the name Bin Laden is associated with the name Al Saud, therefor Saudi Arabia supports terrorists" doesn't hold any water with me (I'm not in any circles), because I don't get my news and political analysis from Jon Stewart. I need facts to actually understand situations, and I don't treat vague associations between people with the same last name as facts.

 

Do you have any facts proving that the Saudi government has been funding Osama Bin Laden's anti-American terrorist activities? Something other than "it's common knowledge because people on the Internet and the fake news have repeated it about 5 million times without ever bothering to offer proof"?

Edited by Nicky
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The Bin Laden family are not terrorists, they're a prominent Arab family with business interests across the Middle East. Osama bin Laden has been disowned by his family, and officially stripped of his Saudi citizenship, as soon as he became hostile to the United States in the early 90s. I've seen no evidence that the Saudi government has provided him with financial assistance since that time.

 

So, "my God, no", the argument "the name Bin Laden is associated with the name Al Saud, therefor Saudi Arabia supports terrorists" doesn't hold any water with me (I'm not in any circles), because I don't get my news and political analysis from Jon Stewart. I need facts to actually understand situations, and I don't treat vague associations between people with the same last name as facts.

 

Do you have any facts proving that the Saudi government has been funding Osama Bin Laden's anti-American terrorist activities? Something other than "it's common knowledge because people on the Internet and the fake news have repeated it about 5 million times without ever bothering to offer proof"?

 

Aren't the Saudis providing financial support for the spread of the Islamic totalitarian ideology?

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The Bin Laden family are not terrorists, they're a prominent Arab family with business interests across the Middle East. Osama bin Laden has been disowned by his family, and officially stripped of his Saudi citizenship, as soon as he became hostile to the United States in the early 90s. I've seen no evidence that the Saudi government has provided him with financial assistance since that time.

 

So, "my God, no", the argument "the name Bin Laden is associated with the name Al Saud, therefor Saudi Arabia supports terrorists" doesn't hold any water with me (I'm not in any circles), because I don't get my news and political analysis from Jon Stewart. I need facts to actually understand situations, and I don't treat vague associations between people with the same last name as facts.

 

Do you have any facts proving that the Saudi government has been funding Osama Bin Laden's anti-American terrorist activities? Something other than "it's common knowledge because people on the Internet and the fake news have repeated it about 5 million times without ever bothering to offer proof"?

 

Saudi Arabia - along with Iran - is among the top countries supporting Islamic Jihadism, one way or another:

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/242073

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/05/wikileaks-cables-saudi-terrorist-funding

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-yousaf-butt-/saudi-wahhabism-islam-terrorism_b_6501916.html

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Saudi Arabia - along with Iran - is among the top countries supporting Islamic Jihadism, one way or another:

Jihad isn't terrorism. But I'll assume you just don't know what jihad means, and you meant to say that they're supporting terrorism.
Those are some long walls of text you're linking to.

I'm not gonna take the time to read those links, because I don't believe you read them either. I think you're just posting links to text that would take hours to sift through in an attempt to avoid an open, honest conversation.

If I'm wrong, and if you really did find proof in that wall of text that the Saudi government has been knowingly funding Osama Bin Laden (that's the claim you've made), or any other anti-American terrorist organization, quote the relevant parts ( but only if it's something from the Guardian -don't bother quoting anything from Huffpo, they're habitual liars: nothing they publish has any information value).

Edited by Nicky
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Aren't the Saudis providing financial support for the spread of the Islamic totalitarian ideology?

I don't know what you're asking. Please be more precise in your language. Does "the Saudis" mean the Al Saud family, the Saudi government, or just people who live in Saudi Arabia in general?

And does Islamic totalitarian ideology mean the desire for Islamic rule in general, in Muslim majority countries (including the kind of rule that exists in Saudi Arabia, where society is governed by religious principles, but the government allows and promotes economic and military cooperation with the West), or the desire to establish an Islamic rule hostile to all non-Muslims, especially the West?

Edited by Nicky
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Jihad isn't terrorism. But I'll assume you just don't know what jihad means, and you meant to say that they're supporting terrorism.

Those are some long walls of text you're linking to.

I'm not gonna take the time to read those links, because I don't believe you read them either. I think you're just posting links to text that would take hours to sift through in an attempt to avoid an open, honest conversation.

If I'm wrong, and if you really did find proof in that wall of text that the Saudi government has been knowingly funding Osama Bin Laden (that's the claim you've made), or any other anti-American terrorist organization, quote the relevant parts ( but only if it's something from the Guardian -don't bother quoting anything from Huffpo, they're habitual liars: nothing they publish has any information value).

 

Terrorism isn't even the key evil. Terrorism is just a tactic to achieve evil ends which are much clearer identified when addressing it as Jihad or Islamic Fundamentalism. The term "War on Terror" is rubbish to begin with and should be properly replaced by "War on Islamic Fundamentalism".

As for your socalled "proper meaning" of Jihad, let Jihad decide what it really wants to be once it has been dealt with properly by the West.

 

Well, if you don't want to read them, that's not my problem at all. I've given you the information you asked for. Let those who have eyes see.

Or those who have ears hear and look into it (taken from http://www.peikoff.com/podcasts/page/3/?sort=recent#list): http://13be01ddf3b1d677ded1-f884a1b570187d379829b71385ab845d.r57.cf2.rackcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/2015-19-1.356_E.mp3

It is not my duty to reproduce it all again here for you in this forum in condensed form, just because it would take you "hours" to go through it yourself as an excuse to remain ignorant about the facts. (Ever used Ctrl+F and "Saudi Arabia" in your browser?)

 

As for the others, I think most people here understand very well the role of Saudi Arabia in state sponsored terrorism, so we can close this utterly suprising distraction from the main topic of this thread.

Edited by DiscoveryJoy
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"Jihad" can be used alternately to signify mental struggles. . . like the ones on this forum. . . and physical struggles, like the ones that melt infidels' faces off.

I don't have a clue to what degree Arabia is or isn't supporting terrorism, but I have explained the proper principles therein; all that's left is to apply them (and frankly, I no longer care enough to do so).

Live long and prosper.

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Terrorism isn't even the key evil. Terrorism is just a tactic to achieve evil ends which are much clearer identified when addressing it as Jihad or Islamic Fundamentalism. The term "War on Terror" is rubbish to begin with and should be properly replaced by "War on Islamic Fundamentalism".

Interesting point. I mostly agree. But you're the one who used "terrorism" in your OP, instead of Islamic Fundamentalism, to argue that it's morally legitimate to bomb the United States "because it supports terrorism".

If you still think you can find a way to morally legitimize bombing the United States, for supporting Saudi Arabia, without using the word "terrorism", go ahead. Rephrase your OP, and let's see what we have. How exactly is it justified to bomb the US for cooperating with a US friendly religious regime in a deeply religious Muslim country in which almost everyone wants a religious regime.

As for your socalled "proper meaning" of Jihad

I didn't give a meaning for jihad, all I said was that it's not terrorism. There's not even any point in discussing it, it's too obvious that jihad and terrorism is not the same thing.

Well, if you don't want to read them, that's not my problem at all. I've given you the information you asked for.

Did you read it? The whole thing, all three articles? How long did it take you?
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