Ralph Peters today in USA today

[i386]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

Interesting piece with harsh realities. If I understand correctly, the author says in order to achieve victory, Iraq will sustain collateral damage like they haven't seen yet. That is, for lack of a better term, the real inconvenient truth. Forget the liberal view for a moment. I don't think President Bush and his administration are willing to put down enough firepower to bring about victory the way the author suggests in this "global economy". I'd even venture to say the majority of Americans are not willing to go that far for victory either. Before the last election when the right ruled all, what was stopping the US from totally obliterating any resistance? A march to the sea if you will. I am not Bush bashing, just asking a (unloaded) question. But would it work? Damn right it would. But at what cost? I'm glad I'm sitting at home comfortably at my computer instead of having to make that kind of decision. Hats off to those required to carry out the orders as they'll never be the same after.

 

[stevieray]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

In a strictly editorial commentary, may I open with my 2 favorite passages from the Peters article:

This is the warfare of the Old Testament, of the book of Joshua, an ineradicable pattern of human behavior.

And:

Men are once more killing to please an angry god...

I think what's going to have to happen for the world to have any hope at all is the huge scientific breakthrough that once and for all can absolutely disprove all the misguided ideas of any existence of a higher power.

Really, if the religion of those that call us infidels is wrong, then every other religion must be wrong, too. They believe in it as strongly - if not stronger - than anybody else.

Think about why religion came about. It had to be a few smart individuals rationalizing things about the physical universe that they could not otherwise explain to the less smart. Then throw in the arrogance of the smart ones thinking that they were such great creatures that their lives here on earth simply cannot be all there was - there must have been some great reason they were born & that they must still exist in some form when their earthly bodies died off. And as a bonus, capitalizing on fear of the unknown was a hell of a way to control the less smart ones & coerce untold funds from them. Put it all down in an official-looking book & voila.

Well, that worked fine for thousands of years. With the onset of scientific knowledge, little by little, one by one, we figured out the real reasons for many of the physical things that were before unexplainable. We have actually learned way more in the last 50 years than in all the time before. Extrapolate into the future, and I'm sure we will figure much more out - probably to the point of how EVERYTHING works. What we will not be able to figure out - ever - is WHY.

That is where the philosophies of religion take over - and the basic tenets of all of them are strikingly similar if you strip away the superficial differences. There would be little or nothing to fight over.

Problem is...religion - especially in this country - is BIG business. There is much more to be gained by keeping it going than could ever be gained by rationally explaining it away.

Until all religion can be disproved in one way or another, we are just going to have to live with the war & killing & strife that comes with it.

End of rant.

 

[OldMercsRule]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

Very Good Stevieray, You are an intense thinker, (I do know the drill and share your pain). Trouble with your solution is belief: period. They, (the true believers), just will not believe your "proof" no matter how well done. True belief TRUMPS any PROOF! Have you ever pondered why things are what they are? Many cosmoligists, physicists et al that are quite ackomplished over the last 150 years are deeply religious, and become more so as they figure things out and postulate theories to explain our universe. Could the beauty we see at night with a clear sky come from random chaos? I as a Christian, and havin' studied science n' thermodynamics: think not, (but it is both an opinion and a belief). Has Darwin's theory been proven? No! In fact it takes more faith to believe in Darwin's theory then in "intelligant design" theory or belief however you choose to characterize it, IMHO. Has any species been proven to turn into another species? NO! I am a "Cafateria Christian", and many of your points resonate with me too. I do not read the bible literally and many of my bible thumpin' buds take issue with me. I luv to remind them that there is someone that will sort things out: and it's not them. Islam must modernize from within as have most other great religions, (or Col Peters thinks we are in for a real struggle). If we are the end of the food chain, it is too heavy for some, (like me and most others I know) to take. I do respect your views, and as a previous agnostic I had similar questions n' conflicts. Respectfully JR

 

[jinx]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

For the life of me I cannot remember who said it, or their exact words, but it went something like this:

Mankind will always point their fingers at one another until something comes from another world that we can all point our fingers to.

Jinx

PS edit: I once heard a mathematician describe God as someone who knew the answer to the square root of a negative number.

 

[BoatBuoy]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

For the life of me I cannot remember who said it, or their exact words, but it went something like this:

Mankind will always point their fingers at one another until something comes from another world that we can all point our fingers to.

Jinx

Tom Cruise in "War of the Worlds"?

 

[stevieray]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

Murky,
I don't see where Christianity has modernized as much as everybody would like to think. There are way too many of those "seventh-century" beliefs you like to speak of still hanging around, stifling progress & repressing ideas for me to see otherwise.

As for the great scientific minds - as great as they think they are & the closer they get to figuring it all out, they run into that philosophical wall - WHY. They realize they are never going to know that & fall back onto the familiar.

I think it is entirely possible that all of "creation" is a huge accident - a coincidence of biblical proportion, if you will. Intelligent design holds no water with me - if it was that intelligent, it wouldn't all be so f***ed up! I see the pictures of the bald kids suffering thru chemo for uncurable cancers & ones horribly disfigured from birth just to die before they can learn anything - let alone about some god - and I have to say no intelligent designer could ever let that kind of thing happen.

Just some more critical thinkin'.

 

[crunch]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

Before this degenerates into a religious discussion, I’d like to address i386... he has some very good points.

If I understand correctly, the author says in order to achieve victory, Iraq will sustain collateral damage like they haven't seen yet.

I don’t think the Author was strictly talking about Iraq... Iraq is a very minor( although large in our tunnel vision eyes) part of the whole problem. I believe he was speaking about the War on Terror in general. With the crack down currently going on in Bagdad, the introduction of more force, and the realization by the Iraqi government that their lives are at stake if they don’t gain control of their Capital... things are looking up.

Al Sadr has fled to Iran, the militias have moved into the country. (Where the Tribal Chiefs want no part of them) and they just struck an oil deal that will eventually make everyone rich. By all means the game isn’t over there, but things are finally looking better.

I don't think President Bush and his administration are willing to put down enough firepower to bring about victory the way the author suggests in this "global economy". I'd even venture to say the majority of Americans are not willing to go that far for victory either.

At this point no Administration would... Democrat or Republican.... But let an other 9/11 happen with Nukes instead of conventional.... well, all bets are off. Right now the American public would be horrified at any large scale civilian casualties, in any country.... but let some terrorist kill 10 thousand to a million Americans in an attack... what ever country supplied the weapon would be dust, the American Public would demand it.

Right now we are playing “paddy-cake” with Iran and their nuclear ambitions... we have moved some soft resolutions through the UN, twisted arms where we could, held some talks, and are starting on the second round of UN sanction proposals, all to Iran’s continued belligerent defiance.... and move troops to their border, closed that border with Iraq...... moved the second Battle group into striking distance, and are going to “talk” to Syria and Iran in a “regional” conference.

Can anyone see the writing on the wall?

 

[Haut Medoc]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

Stevieray: Very Good!....
I said somewhere that the rules get made up as ya go.....
Those of Arabic decent got tired of the Jewss hoggin' up God & thus Mohaamad was born/created.....
Alll religion is hogwash.....
It is rules made by men for men to try to be nice to one another....
Or justification to kill of those who are 'unbelievers'....
The fact that people in the modern day world subscribe to such shiite baffles me.....
Yet the 'righteous' persist that theirs is the 'one, true belief.....PFFFFFFFFFFFT!:%

 

[crunch]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

Haut, this has to end!!!!

What is it?.... three times in the last two weeks we agree?

I'm off to the Doctor, I might need some Med's.

 

[treedancer]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

Very good article, and I think that a great deal of thought went into it; I have a couple of issues though. Issue one= <<The Cold War was a battle of ideas. Iraq isn't>>

Maybe I’m wrong but I count at least four different ideas on how the government should be run. The Kurds have their idea, the Shia, and the Sunni, plus Democracy.

And this part I can agree with part of it. Will have to bear with me a little bit, while I get into the remnants of the Ottoman Empire again.

<<Their motivations make them far more implacable, and even crueler, than yesteryear's ideological opponents.>>=I believe that Mustafa Kemal Attaturk ran into even crueler and larger boulders in his path to uniting and bringing modern day Turkey into the twentieth century.

His full name was Mustafa Kemal the name the Ataturk surname, meaning the father of Turks, was given to him by the Turkish people in accordance with the reforms he introduced to create a modern Turkish country.

In 1923 before he acquired the name Attaturk he started a campaign to Westernize Turkey, he did this at the expense of traditional Islamic law. His goal was to bring religion into submission to civil authority. At the time that was a handful, as at the time Turkey was run by religious Sultanates and Caliphates.he managed to abolish both between 1922 and 1924.He manage to get the education system off of the ground as well as give the women the right to vote, something that is unheard of in the Muslim world of the fundamentals that we are fighting even today. This is just a synopsis of his story, if anybody wants some heavy reading get a book on his life, he must have had leadership buy the boatload to get that ship off the ground. I can hear it now, common tree lets get to the point, OK here is my point, somewhere out there is a budding Attaturk, we may be fighting him now, but he is there somewhere. Our job is to try to identify him, and promote him, it will be hard to get him off of the ground, but it can be done. If we don’t we will be entangled in that area for decades.

So I guess your wandering what the big picture of Saturn is doing here? Well it is in answer to the big bang theory,how could a big explosion cause all that Hmmm? :$


This photo released by NASA Thursday, March 1, 2007, shows an image of the planet Saturn obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Jan. 19, 2007, as the planet's shadow stretches completely across the rings. The view is a mosaic of 36 images taken over the course of about 2.5 hours, as Cassini scanned across the entire main ring system. (AP Photo/NASA, JPL)

 

[crunch]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

Good point Tree, but when you are up to your.... well, you get my point?

It would be great if some charismatic leader would step forward, make him/her self known to the Radical segment and bring them to sweetness and light so we can all live together in greater harmony..... what do YOU think the chances are?

As for your pic of Saturn being proof of a God.... pour milk in your coffee after you stirred it in the morning .... you will see the same pattern.

 

[OldMercsRule]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

Murky,
I don't see where Christianity has modernized as much as everybody would like to think. There are way too many of those "seventh-century" beliefs you like to speak of still hanging around, stifling progress & repressing ideas for me to see otherwise.

As for the great scientific minds - as great as they think they are & the closer they get to figuring it all out, they run into that philosophical wall - WHY. They realize they are never going to know that & fall back onto the familiar.

I think it is entirely possible that all of "creation" is a huge accident - a coincidence of biblical proportion, if you will. Intelligent design holds no water with me - if it was that intelligent, it wouldn't all be so f***ed up! I see the pictures of the bald kids suffering thru chemo for uncurable cancers & ones horribly disfigured from birth just to die before they can learn anything - let alone about some god - and I have to say no intelligent designer could ever let that kind of thing happen.

Just some more critical thinkin'.

Hey Stevieray, Believe or not my own 'critical thinkin' brought me to Christianity, (born again), when my oldest daughter was 8, after being raised Lutheran but never quite makeing the connection from an agnostic much of my life until I did some serious thinkin' havin' three kids n' all. I just don't think random chaos could possibly produce the wonders we see at night in a clear sky and the marvels of life we see here on this planet. The order of all things came from somewhere, (IMHO): Stevieray, and it works amazingly well, (I luv cosmology). The fact that things are not perfect is also the design it's called: "free agency". The 'cafiteria' part of my belief is how I reconsile a 4000 year old book and a 1700 year update "inspired by God but: written by imperfect men". I don't think others would like this discussion so I will leave it here, but Christianity has in fact modernized, Where do you and I get our rights as stated in a document a little over 200 years back? Why was slavery ended in the Western world? Some things ta ponder my friend. But as I said for me it's a done deal as it is my belief. Respectfully JR

 

[treedancer]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

Quote crunch


As for your pic of Saturn being proof of a God.... pour milk in your coffee after you stirred it in the morning .... you will see the same pattern.


Yes you right on the stirring of the coffee crunch, but what initiated the movement of the coffee. Hm.. Looks like an outside force to me (your hand)

Will most likely not comment any more on religion, not much chance in getting you to change your mind, and I know you will not change mine, so I will not comment any further on this subject, instead will hammer away and try to pound some logic into your head on politics.8)

 

[jinx]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

Tree, Ataturk was a fascinating character. Of all the great 20th Century revolutionary leaders--Lenin, Mao, the Fascists--only Attaturk's accomplishments remain.

Communism collapsed in the USSR and China has moved to a market economy and while the Chinese party still exists it is not the same idealogically. It is now just a control mechanism for the ruling elite.

Everyone knows what happened to the 1000 year Reich.

Mustafa Kemal, however, abolished the Caliphate and founded a secular state that remains to this day. He Romanized the alphabet in a remarkably short time, abandoning Arabic script. He radically changed womens' role in society. He even changed the dress of the modern Turkey banning the fez. (Symbolically important, but I'm ignorant of the details.)

There is today great pressure to undo the secular state that is Turkey from Islamicists. It remains to be seen whether Attaturk's accomplishments will stand for another 90 years, or whether Turkey will abandon secularism.

Jinx

PS: I have no idea what that smiley face is doing in the text..I can't edit it out and I didn't put it there!

 

[stevieray]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

Murky,
I don't see where Christianity has modernized as much as everybody would like to think. There are way too many of those "seventh-century" beliefs you like to speak of still hanging around, stifling progress & repressing ideas for me to see otherwise.

As for the great scientific minds - as great as they think they are & the closer they get to figuring it all out, they run into that philosophical wall - WHY. They realize they are never going to know that & fall back onto the familiar.

I think it is entirely possible that all of "creation" is a huge accident - a coincidence of biblical proportion, if you will. Intelligent design holds no water with me - if it was that intelligent, it wouldn't all be so f***ed up! I see the pictures of the bald kids suffering thru chemo for uncurable cancers & ones horribly disfigured from birth just to die before they can learn anything - let alone about some god - and I have to say no intelligent designer could ever let that kind of thing happen.

Just some more critical thinkin'.

Hey Stevieray, Believe or not my own 'critical thinkin' brought me to Christianity, (born again), when my oldest daughter was 8, after being raised Lutheran but never quite makeing the connection from an agnostic much of my life until I did some serious thinkin' havin' three kids n' all. I just don't think ramdom chaos could possibly produce the wonders we see at night in a clear sky and the marvels of life we see here on this planet. The order of all things came from somewhere, (IMHO): Stevieray, and it works amazingly well, (I luv cosmology). The fact that things are not perfect is also the design it's called: "free agency". The 'cafiteria' part of my belief is how I reconsile a 4000 year old book and a 1700 year update "inspired by God but: written by imperfect men". I don't think others would like this discussion so I will leave it here, but Christianity has in fact modernized, Where do you and I get our rights as stated in a document a little over 200 years back? Why was slavery ended in the Western world? Some things ta ponder my friend. But as I said for me it's a done deal as it is my belief. Respectfully JR

Do I detect a little emotion & fuzzy feelings drifting into your critical thinkin' there, Murk?

No, seriously, I think that you have the right to believe whatever you want, and I respect that right the same as you respect my right to my beliefs.

There is a lot of good advice for living & some sound common sense principles (well 8 out of 10 ain't bad) in the Christian doctrine. We have adopted most of those into our secular laws - the ones that hold the most common sense, anyway. I mean, not killing, not stealing & not lying are basic building blocks of any civilization that would hope to last any length of time.

What I hope to see disappear are the outdated, obsolete, divisive & destructive principles that are widely held as "law" because they are in the book, too. Either believe all of it or none of it (you're with me or against me - no middle ground) is a statement I have heard in many religious arenas. Take that stuff away & it does carry a lot of good ideas.

 

[stevieray]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

PS: I have no idea what that smiley face is doing in the text..I can't edit it out and I didn't put it there!

Jinx - period on the wrong side of the parenthesis gets you the "frowning patch eye" guy. Switch 'em & he goes away.

 

[treedancer]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

Quote jinx

There is today great pressure to undo the secular state that is Turkey from Islamicists. It remains to be seen whether Attaturk's accomplishments will stand for another 90 years, or whether Turkey will abandon secularism.

Your right there is a lot of pressure today, especially with the desire of the Turkish leaders to get into the EU. In my opinion the quicker that Turkey is allowed into the EU the faster the threat of them becoming fundamentalist disappears.

If there are any on this board that has studied warfare they will be quick to realize that Turkey is one nation that you don’t want to go to war against.

O that smiley it is caused by this ) at the end of the sentence.)

 

[jinx]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

I'm glad it was a typographic error. All this religious talk made me think it was a sign of doom.

Jinx

 

[QC]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

Excellent read guys, both the article and the thread. I have learned a lot about some of you that I didn't realise. A few comments:

1) Not sure why Bush being one of the few guys that understands the importance of staying in Iraq, gets little credit for being that guy . . .

2) To me the Big Bang, Saturn and Creation are all very compatible . . . In fact the Big Bang was not originally embraced by the scientific community because it sounded a lot like . . . eh . . . creation.

3) This is interesting:

a) Alll religion is hogwash.....
b) It is rules made by men for men to try to be nice to one another....
c) Or justification to kill of those who are 'unbelievers'....
d) The fact that people in the modern day world subscribe to such shiite baffles me.....

Not sure how "a" can be true if "b" is. "c" proves the need for "b". "b" answers "d" . . .

 

[BoatBuoy]

Re: Ralph Peters today in USA today

3) This is interesting:

a) Alll religion is hogwash.....
b) It is rules made by men for men to try to be nice to one another....
c) Or justification to kill of those who are 'unbelievers'....
d) The fact that people in the modern day world subscribe to such shiite baffles me.....

Not sure how "a" can be true if "b" is. "c" proves the need for "b". "b" answers "d" . . .

Sounds circular to me.