Hacker News Reader

Comment by hvs | Hacker News Reader

I'm not one to defend either the government of the United States or its toadies, but the argument that "this guy disrespected my beliefs so I should start killing innocent civilians" is, in my opinion, horseshit. Anyone who goes that way has deeply troubling issues that cannot be explained away by pointing to some uniformed dick on a power trip.

View on HN

What a shortcut Hvs. That's not at all what Jdietrich said. He is just trying to say that this sort of grilling can be more difficult to endure if you ARE a Muslim, and that's a fact no? I think we all agree that terrorism must be fought, but like any problem you fight it better once you understand its motivations. Fighting is not always done with physical or mental violence either. Sometimes, the best way to fight something like terrorism is to understand that the phenomenon doesn't reside with the perpetrator only but also with the provocateur.

What I mean here is that maybe US forces need to learn to be a bit more unpredictable and attack Terrorism in a less frontal manner to succeed. Just like the IRA did in Ireland with the Brits. Imagine what kind of violence could come from Americans if they were greeted by foreign customs officers abroad with angry screams like: "So you believe in Jesus!?!?" for several hours in a room with a mirror.

Not to mention the main reasons Al Qaeda doesn't like us seems to be to our support of Israel and our lack of action on global warming. I'm sure they don't like the way we treat Muslims in the airport, but it doesn't seem to be a big source of terror attacks.

What evidence do you have please? Seriously, there are just so many conjectures here. What Al Quaeda fundamentally likes or dislikes for instance, may have nothing to do with the actual reason pushing a young suicide bomber to accept the task. Many known cases of westerners becoming terrorists show a personal history of extreme religious views, which this sort of customs treatment can only serve to exacerbate, no?

bin Laden has been fairly clear on this point: he doesn't think the United States should be involved in the affairs of Muslim nations. He thinks its an outrage that US troops are stationed in the same country as Mecca. There are other offenses on his list, to be sure, but this is the big one.

Sounds quite similar to this viewpoint: "In politics as in religion, my tenets are few and simple....meddling as little as possible in [other nations'] affairs where our own are not involved." — George Washington

our lack of action on global warming

That's an odd assertion. So is the "support for Israel" assertion, given that al Qaeda kills plenty of Muslims too, who they feel aren't up to snuff. At least the Israel argument is widely repeated - but al Qaeda as climate change activists?

I thought the global warming comment was a bit odd too. From a quick Google it seems that Bin Laden does indeed have something to say about global warming. It was on Fox News, so must be true:

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/01/29/bin-laden-blames-glo...

The one thing that the climate change researchers don't need is Osama Bin Laden on their side. That makes an already ugly controversy even uglier.

"Not to mention the main reasons Al Qaeda doesn't like us seems to be to our support of Israel and our lack of action on global warming. I'm sure they don't like the way we treat Muslims in the airport, but it doesn't seem to be a big source of terror attacks."

They don't like us because of our lack of action on global warming? HAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAH.

It sounds like they are catering to the lefties in the US. The group that they can win over and use as a tool to infiltrate the US (The left hates the US military and Christianity..).

It's not a source of terror attacks because it's damn near impossible to get anything into the airports.

That gross simplification robs the original post of its point. Yes, I agree with what you said. Yes, I agree with what the parent said.

The question is not whether two wrongs make a right, but whether the first wrong will provoke someone to commit the second wrong. The argument may be 'horseshit' as a moral justification according to nearly everyone, but a small proportion of any oppressed group is likely to see it differently.

We should not condone violence against civilians, but we also should not condone the oppression of any group, and we should recognise that oppression can lead to violence, without saying that oppression is a justification for violence.

How about the argument: "this country disrespected my religion and killed a dozen of my relatives back in the old country, and stuck my friend's cousin in Guantanamo since 2002"? Not that I'm defending terrorism: it sucks. It sucks even more when committed by my country.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com