[quote]pushharder wrote:
No problem with your lack of worry. Others in history have been just like you. It’s no big deal.[/quote]
Yeah, I was wondering when good old Neville would make his appearance.
I love it how in your worldview, everyone who isn’t a reactionary fear-monger must be an advocate of appeasing the enemy. It really is one of your more endearing traits.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
You don’t do yourself any favors with Pitttbulll-type tomfoolery. [/quote]
Gnaw that bone. Gnaw it.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Gnaw that bone. Gnaw it.[/quote]
Take it away then. Don’t do this stuff to yourself. It makes you look bad not the gnawer.[/quote]
Oh, I don’t know about that.
I will leave it to the rest of the forum to decide:
Who looks worse, the man with the bone or the man who gnaws it?
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Yeah, I was wondering when good old Neville would make his appearance…appeasing the enemy…
[/quote]
You missed the point. It’s not just about appeasing the enemy; it’s about appeasing the enemy based on a willful ignorance that they’re not really bad guys, just misunderstood. In fact, they’re just like the Christians in America…really…they’re kinda like the Cleaver family but they just speak in Farsi.
[/quote]
Yes, that has been my argument from the start. Brilliantly encapsulated.
Hey, Push, this has been fun but I gotta call it quits for tonight.
Hurry up and get your ass over to Japan so we can eat huge quantities of meat, ogle cute Japanese girls, and not talk about Politics and World Issues at all.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
Raise your hand if you doubt Iran is going to get a bomb. I think them getting a bomb is a foregone conclusion. My problem with the administration is that they are arrogant enough to believe they can simply talk them out of it like reasonable people. Iran ain’t reasonable. They’d get a bomb regardless. It just should be made as hard a process as possible. [/quote]
I won’t raise my hand, because I agree with your premise: if Iran is convinced that they need nuclear weapons, and they have the funds and the technology to develop or obtain them, then they will have nuclear weapons. Just like Israel.
Now, if you had said, “raise your hand if you’re not worried about Iran having nuclear weapons”, then up my hand would go. Yeah, they’re Moozlums, and yeah, they sometimes say unkind things about Murica, and yeah, they have had unsavory friends throughout the years. But I remain unconvinced that this translates into a clear and present danger to the United States.
Listen, I live less than three hundred miles from the North Korean border. The North Koreans actually have nuclear weapons, and they actually have delivery systems that could rain nuclear fire down on top of my head if they wanted to, AND they have a legitimate, seething hatred for the country in which I live. You want to talk about insane? Kim Jong Un is as crazy as a mountain of guano.
Do you know how worried I am about a North Korean nuclear attack on Japan, which is several orders of magnitude more likely than an Iranian nuclear attack on the U.S. mainland?
Not at all.
A probability that is orders of magnitude higher than an infinitesimal probability is not worth worrying about, and anyway, as Axl Rose once put it, “worryin’s a waste of my time”.[/quote]
I am not really worried about them directly targeting the U.S. Israel seems more realistic. And I am more worried about the ensuing arms race in the ME and a powder keg with more potent powder. I thing large scale war is imminent, with nukes it becomes a much more worrisome proposition.
It’s the raised stakes that worry me. It’s frighteningly biblical.[/quote]
It’s only “frighteningly biblical” because one of the protagonists happens to have been in the Bible. If it were India and Pakistan we were talking about, a democratic, nuclear-armed country bordered by a country full of Muslims who hate it enough to illegally obtain nuclear weapons as a deterrent against possible aggression over a contested piece of land (Kashmir), we would shrug, because the thought of a bunch of Indians getting incinerated in a mushroom cloud somehow just doesn’t tug on our heartstrings as much as the thought of it being a bunch of Israelis.
And let’s be honest here. Are we really making such a fuss because we’re worried that our friends the Israelis (who by the way have enough nuclear weapons to reduce every major population centre in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia to ash) might get hurt, or could it be because a nuclear-armed Iran might be a smidge more complicated to deal with when it comes time to effect “regime change” and strategic “liberation” of the second-largest petroleum reserve in the world?
EDIT: Actually, both of the protagonists were in the Bible. The Persians, of course, being the best friends the Israelites ever had. [/quote]
It was a metaphor. Nothing to get excited about or serious. The use of the term ‘biblical’ in this context means simply ‘very dangerous’ or ‘very frightening’ in a way that is or was somewhat predictable.
I wasn’t trying to invite a diatribe against religion. Sure, if everybody in the world thinks the same way, be it a particular religion or an atheism, then we all get along better because we all agree. 7 billion people in the world, there will never be agreement.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Look, I get it, Varq. Your distant personal experience with Christianity has soured you so much against it that decades later you’re willing to sacrifice intellectual honesty on a political forum. It is moronic to take the position that extremist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity are on par in provoking danger in the world in 2015.
Get over yourself, my friend. [/quote]
My personal feelings about one religion or another have nothing to do with the statements I made.
Many fundamentalist Christians support Israel because they believe that doing so might hasten the return of Jesus. This is a fact.
Christians in positions of power in the United States believe that God is on their side. So do mullahs in Iran. This is a fact.
Politicians in every country throughout history have used religion to stir up the superstitious and credulous masses into hating whoever it was convenient to hate at the time. The religion might have been Christianity, Islam, Judaism, the Astarte cult, or the worship of the Great Juju of the Mountain. This is a fact.
I’m sorry if stating these facts hurts your feelings.
[/quote]
And fundamental atheism is responsible for more crimes against humanity than any religion combined in all of history. You have your Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Un, Il, Pot, etc. This is also a fact.
It doesn’t matter much if your superstition is based on religion, or anti-religion. People are capable of incredible evil.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
My personal feelings about one religion or another have nothing to do with the statements I made.
[/quote]
Oh I very seriously doubt that.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
No, I consider the religions themselves pretty equivalent in intrinsic “dangerousness”.
[/quote]
Monumentally, Pittttbulllishly ignorant.
Sorry, pal. I’m not giving you a pass. This is plain dumb. And I know you’re smart enough to know it’s dumb.
[/quote]
Because the old respectful etiquette of of not dragging personal beefs from thread to thread is apparently dead. What you say one time may be brought up forever and ever so long as it suites the purpose of tearing an individual down, rather than forwarding a current discussion. Let’s face it, the good ol’ days of being able to have a heated discussion in one place and have it remain there and not dragged like old luggage from thread to thread is gone. The thoughtful respectful people who were capable of that have left. Pretty much, you and I are left of the old guard. Why are we still here? Hell, I don’t know I still like it. It’s just different now.
I have been involved in several forums in life, this is still one of the best.
Digital assholes are everywhere.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Hey, Push, this has been fun but I gotta call it quits for tonight.
Hurry up and get your ass over to Japan so we can eat huge quantities of meat, ogle cute Japanese girls, and not talk about Politics and World Issues at all.[/quote]
Isn’t meat in Japan super expensive? I would like to try my hand as some blow-fish sashimi. Definitely cannot get that in America.
[quote]pat wrote:
Because the old respectful etiquette of of not dragging personal beefs from thread to thread is apparently dead. What you say one time may be brought up forever and ever so long as it suites the purpose of tearing an individual down, rather than forwarding a current discussion. Let’s face it, the good ol’ days of being able to have a heated discussion in one place and have it remain there and not dragged like old luggage from thread to thread is gone. The thoughtful respectful people who were capable of that have left. Pretty much, you and I are left of the old guard. Why are we still here? Hell, I don’t know I still like it. It’s just different now.
I have been involved in several forums in life, this is still one of the best.
Digital assholes are everywhere. [/quote]
I’m just following along in this thread, hoping to learn something, but I must point out that Push is notorious for dragging around old luggage.
[quote]pat wrote:
The Russians depended and protected their world image. The Iranians don’t give a damn. They use image to achieve a certain goal, when reached, they do vile shit and then when they need something they act somewhat nice again.
Further the Russians cared if they died, the Iranians don’t. MAD isn’t as much of a deterrent to Iran, also.
[/quote]
Can you support any of these claims by pointing to things that were done or said by actual Iranians?
Specifically, the parts where you claim the Iranians don’t care that they die and that they don’t care about their image.