dingdingding
You win the internet comment of the day,strugatsky.
A radical muslim wants to kill you. A moderate muslim wants a radical muslim to kill you.
That's why they contribute so much money to those muslim "charities". They're funnelling money to the radicals.
I've often thought that if we had nuked Iran back in 1979, a lot of terrorism would have been prevented.
Islam Delenda Est.

We have been fighting Islam for a few hundred years and it never changes. It modernizes but it is still Islam we are fighting. I am not an Islamophobe, I have friends who follow that cult and most are in the Middle East. Religion is nothing but a one cult or another, just depends on which you follow for you to determine who is right and who is wrong. Islam is the current bad guy as they are trying to form the Caliphate to the detriment of others. It is not compatible with our western culture and morals. Again not complaining, just stating facts. We seem to like our cult and dislike the other, however, personally, I like ours over theirs.

There is absolutely no Muslim that will deny the primacy of the Koran - all of it, including the jihad, which is a central pillar of the theocracy. Many will deviate from their core beliefs, but when called upon by a charismatic leader, many will get back into the line and return to the hardcore. Your example of a hydra is a perfect description - out of a body of many peaceful Muslims will always come out enough to continue the jihad. Islam has an ingenious way of dealing with this issue - the "peaceful" ones are simply considered as being in an early stage of development, so they are accepted by the hardcore, true believers, with an understanding that eventually many will graduate to the "true" Islam. Turkey is a good example - after three generations of secular government and integration into the modern world, it switched back to fundamentalism practically overnight. Because to oppose fundamentalism is to oppose the Koran and Sharia. Within their world, their beliefs are very logical and clear. There is nothing to interpret. Although Muslims like to muddy the waters for the Westerners by proclaiming supposedly different "Islams", with examples of peaceful societies like you brought up, those are intentional half-trues and lies for Western consumption.

By " we" I had thought I was addressing ARI. So I'll ask another question (and attempt to answer it) Why does the terrorist sacrifice his own life to kill others? Because he believes he is pleasing Allah. Who told him that? His religious leader. And where did he get that information? From the Koran, written by Muhanned some 1600 years ago,allegedly by a visit from Allah. In the Koran the Muslim is instructed to engage in Jihad, a battle in which they they have fought since then.

Shift forward to today and read Ilan Berman's book "Iran's Deadly Ambition", which is to rule the world.Iran recruits the terrorist, trains him, funds him and directs him. Had we listened to Elan Journo, in his 2009 book "Winning the Unwinnable War", things would have been far different now.

James Wright

I have dealt with Sufi Muslims, who are damn near pacifist, and I worked with Turks, who until recently were pretty secular, having learned from the Ottoman experience that the idea of a caliphate doesn't work well. The Turkish military I discussed religion with were always nervous that there seemed to be an extremist element that was like the hydra, very hard to kill. They felt it was their duty to keep faith with Kemal Ataturk's admonition that it was their duty to prevent Turkey from becoming an extremist theocracy. Erdogan has almost singlehandedly stripped them of that ability.

I'm interested in this claim: " those who have no ownership stake take no ownership care. "
I think about the times I've rented cars, tools, or living space. I feel like I take good care of it because theoretically I would be responsible for damages, and I would feel like a criminal allowing to be damaged just b/c I think the owner won't catch me. I wonder if it's only people with at least some criminal inclination who treat their stuff differently from others'. I also wonder if the poor (not the same as criminal) would tend to trash their own stuff and treat other people's stuff no better.

Could it be that these terror breeding hot spots are all highly over populated and very few have any form of industry, agriculture or jobs to offer all the people. Rich in oil simply means that the chosen few are ridiculously wealthy while the rest suffer. Genocide is a simple means by which these kings, emperors and the princes get to reduce their populations and still keep all of their money. I honestly believe these bastards are happy to see their own people dead or gone.

This is a powerful point. It's better to seek the causes of wealth. Poverty is just the lack of wealth.

It seems to me that you are proving yourself wrong. You're saying that capitalism and prosperity are the answers to terrorism and then you (correctly) state that terrorism is not caused by poverty, I would add that the Russians have brought prosperity to Afghanistan in the early '70's and we all know the result.

Could it be that the Left / Progressives are touchy-feely bullshit artists, while the Islamist are very rational people? Granted, their rationality is within their twisted world, but it is rational if one accepts their premises.

Don't kid yourselves - there is no "Radical Islam" that needs to be contained. There is only one Islam, and it is completely and utterly incompatible with the Western Civilization. One thousand years of history have shown that either Islam has to be physically isolated or destroyed. Or it will destroy everything in its path. There are no "humane" or "civilized" solutions - either they die or we die.

Terrorism is a cultural phenomenon, growing out of a deep-seated, fanatic belief system. Because the aspects of the education element that instills the idea of terrorism, the culture that breeds terrorists has to be changed.

Islamic terrorists have been suppressed in some Middle Eastern countries by inflicting state terror on them. Saddam Hussein was very effective at containing radical elements with cruel, brutal measures. As a law-based society with a belief in individual freedom, that route isn't open to us.

A military solution would require genocide, the reduction of radical society to the point of extinction. Anything short of that will not eliminate the terrorists, unlike a conventional military victory where damaging the enemy state enough to end the conflict is sufficient. Again, we're not going to do that unless the threat is perceived as existential to our nation, and no other choice is left to us.

What we have to do is make the radical belief system illegal, starting in our own country. Monitoring and shutting down mosques that teach violent overthrow of our government is legitimate. Carrying out cyberwarfare against internet sites that try to radicalize young people is legitimate.

There are about 30 Muslim camps in our country that claim to teach self defense, but we know that many of them are nothing but terrorist training sites. Shutting down these systems should be a priority.

After we've started the culture war here, we can look at foreign locations that endanger our national interests and go after them. Economic forcing is an effective tool to make other nations take action to strangle the radical culture. The Saudis claim to be softening the strict Wahabist sect that dominates their culture. We must force them to speed up the process. Once the extremists are reduced to an ineffectual state, action against them becomes a law enforcement problem, more easily handled.

Poverty and crime are not "caused."

Like poverty, crime has no 'cause.' It is the ground state, the default, the lack-of-something. In metaphysics, we say that "nothing is not a special kind of something." So, too, in ethics, is poverty not a different kind of productivity.

In The Economy of Cities, Jane Jacobs wrote: “To seek 'causes' of poverty in this way is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes.”

See my essay on "The Roots of Poverty" here:
http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...

"It is a common fallacy to say that crime is caused by poverty. Crimes are committed by individuals who fail to think."
Failing to think may independently cause crime and poverty.

Civil War?

Yes. This has made the rounds before - this connection to engineers. I'm an engineer. I could probably add to the conversation over a beer...haha.

Then again...Pol Pot went after the engineers...

Engineers of Jihad: The Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education by
Diego Gambetta & Steffen Hertog
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/106...
"In Engineers of Jihad, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog uncover two unexpected facts, which they imaginatively leverage to narrow that gap: they find that a disproportionate share of Islamist radicals come from an engineering background, and that Islamist and right-wing extremism have more in common than either does with left-wing extremism, in which engineers are absent while social scientists and humanities students are prominent."

Who is "we"? Where I work, we have people who served several tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Do you know that "we" have troops in Kyrgyzstan right now? Whether and to what extent terrorism has a military solution is still an open question.

Personally, I advocate for prosperity as a weapon of war. The United States State Department has never been an information source for reality, reason, and rights, which are the pre-conditions to prosperity, which is the antidote to terrorism, especially religious fundamentalism. The USA government in Washington DC never stood up for capitalism against communism, and suffered Viet Nam as a consequence. The Iran Hostage Crisis was another consequence of that broader lack of principles.

That said, however, realize that in American history both leftwing terrorists and rightwing terrorists have struck in the midst of our own prosperity and abundance and open markets in times of more apparent reason. The Wall Street Bombing of September 16, 1920, and the Oklahoma City Bombing of April 19, 1995, are just two examples.

It is a common fallacy to say that crime is caused by poverty. Crimes are committed by individuals who fail to think. There is no way to prevent that. However, it is also true that people generally do not kill for what they can buy or die for what they can sell.

"In Nelly Hanna's biography of Isma'il Abu Taqiyya, Making Big Money in 1600 (American University of Cairo Press, 1998) she tells of how he expanded his home to meet the needs of his large and successful family." -- "A Man's Home is His Market" here: http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...

Capitalism largely ended war. Though the years 1814-1914 were marked by minor military conflicts such as the Crimean War and the Boer Wars, the time also was hallmarked by the Six Weeks' War, as different from the Seven Years' War and the Hundred Years' War...