Living in ISIS: Scary

[Ispil]

The irony of all of this is that, historically, all of this was a very long time coming. I mean, people tend to forget that the Islamic faith comes in a variety of sects- currently the governments of Iraq, Iran, and most (if not all) other Islamic government are Shia. As for how they came into power- it was after the power vacuum created by the collapse of Timur's empire- of which he, to keep stability, enforced an incredibly strict form of Sunni Islam and killed all opposition (he killed about 11 million people in his conquests, by the way). When the Safavids appeared, their Shia beliefs spread like wildfire to a group long under the oppression of Timur's now-collapsed empire. The Safavids managed to conquer all of Iran and Iraq and hold it together with their Shia faith. It makes historic sense that, in a state of weakness of the Shia governments, that a Sunni uprising was bound to take place- the particular nature of their radicalism could be seen as an almost directly related to Timur's structure of the religion in the same region some 600 years ago. Don't blame the religion- blame history.

[AceDawg45]

Something I just thought of while reading all of your comments:
The reason everyday Muslims are hated for no reason is because of 9/11. It was a cheap shot taken at 2900 lives. That event changed a lot for USA, whether it be airport security or just regular security.

BUT, what most people forget is that something similar happened 70 years ago: Pearl Harbor. 2,500 people died, and it was also a cheap shot at us.

When you ask someone if they know what 9/11 is, they will tell you they not only know what it is, but they will also tell you the full stories about the towers, the pentagon, and United 93, and even who the leader of the attacker was: Bin Laden.
You ask someone about Pearl Harbor, there's a chance they will tell you either they don't know, or they will tell you that the Japanese bombed us in Pearl Harbor. Some people I know don't even know where that is, or even the year it happened. If they are knowledgeable, they will tell you that Pearl Harbor was 1942, Hawaii, the Japanese attacked us, and then most deaths were on the USS Arizona, maybe.

I feel like I am sounding like an asshole who is making a competition out of it, but I am not. I am saying that something similar happened that was just as cheap and cruel 70 years ago, and nobody really cares about that. You say something about 9/11 that isn't a sob story, and people think you are okay with the people dying.

[Disch]

@AceDawg45: That's an unfair comparison.

Pearl Harbor wasn't a terrorist attack. It was a strategic military action. We were lending aid to the allies and were about to actively enter the war ourselves. We had a lot of armed forces in Pearl Harbor in preparation.

Japan saw an opportunity to squash the forces before we unleashed them, and they took it.

It wasn't a "we hate America so let's blow up heavily occupied civilian buildings" like 9/11 was -- it was more of "we are in a war in which America is our enemy so let's attack a nearby military establishment to reduce their forces."



And... if you recall... our reaction to Pearl Harbor was even worse than our reaction to 9/11. We rounded up Japanese-Americans, even those who were in the states for generations, and forced them into camps at gunpoint. It was horrific. We didn't do anything even close to that for Muslims in a post 9/11 America.


EDIT:

AND... if you want to count civilian casualties in military attacks in this debacle... I don't think anything comes close to the American nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[AceDawg45]

Well, thank you Disch for correcting me (not trying to sound sarcastic). I don't know a whole lot on the subject, but I just love debating, and will say whatever I can to hold a good argument.

But you won this one, it seems....


The reason I thank you for correcting me, is because, well, I knew it wasn't a terrorist attack, but I had no idea on how we reacted. So, I'm glad you brought that up, for it will help me in a future debate club topic we'll do, which is WW2.


As for the actual subject of ISIS, US started the bombings on them, which is... not really good news, but, well... Its news, I guess. According to the news, a NEW group has risen up too. Apparently they're "more dangerous than ISIS", and are called the Khorasan Group. Well, if anybody else remembers they said that about Taliban. And Al Qaeda. And ISIS. And any other newly formed group. No matter what they call themselves, they will be "more dangerous' than whatever group is currently in the news.

[Disch]

but I had no idea on how we reacted.

Read up on "Japanese Internment Camps". It's a truly horrible page in US history.

[Computergeek01]

The Japanese internment camps were admittedly horrible because of the paranoid shotgun approach we took with "relocating" people. We did manage to keep families together and follow international laws that were established about how to treat civilians. Considering what literally everyone else was doing at the time we kind of come out of that time period smelling like roses. I'm not trying to say what was done is right, far from that, but looking at the other world leaders reactions to this type of situation shows you how people thought about each other at the time and shows you how much worse it could have been.

If you want horror stories, then read up on Unit 731.

[Cheraphy]

I don't think anything comes close to the American nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I've read a few times that we dropped pamphlets telling civilians to GTFO before we dropped bombs.

[Disch]

Computergeek01 wrote:

If you want horror stories, then read up on Unit 731.

Yeah that's pretty fucked.

Then there was the whole Holocaust thing which was kind of the worst thing ever. The WWII Axis was pretty much horrible.

I've read a few times that we dropped pamphlets telling civilians to GTFO before we dropped bombs.

Even so, they still resulted in ~150,000 deaths.