Karnal wrote on Mar 14^th, 2016 at 9:00pm:

I am not an illegal immigrant or a country shopper, PB. In your stupid and dishonest way you now try to conflate legal and illegal immigrants. It tells us just how stupid and dishonest you really are.


Have another shite sandwich. Have two. You know you want to.  Miam miam and all that.

freediver wrote on Mar 14^th, 2016 at 8:40pm:


Did you recall all those people demanding we didn't go and illegally invade and destroy a sovereign nation based on lies in the first place? There were quite a lot you know. John's question is perfectly valid - if the powers that be and their useful idiots ignored the groundswell of opposition to the invasion, why should their opinion regarding the occupation suddenly matter? 

Mr Hammer wrote on Mar 16^th, 2016 at 9:35am:


The apologists will tell you what ISIS believe isn't Islam.

That's a bit like a white trash bogan with a Ned Kelly neck tattoo calling an inner city hipster un Australia.

They're both Australian, just different.

polite_gandalf wrote on Mar 16^th, 2016 at 9:54am:
If you don't have the belief system you don't have the organisation. This belief system is a branch of Islam. The organisation developed around these beliefs. It's just a fact. Sorry.

Mr Hammer wrote on Mar 16^th, 2016 at 10:00am:


Its a rather simple formula which you haven't addressed:
before US invasion = no ISIS, after US invasion = ISIS. You can fall back on arguments like "the belief system is a branch of Islam", but in specific relation to the question in the OP, its neither here nor there. Simply dismissing the issue on the basis that muslims  are simply "ISIS prone" anyway doesn't necessarily absolve the US of the role they played in its creation. To put it in your terms, it can be argued that both Islam and the US shared responsibility for its creation. 

Now to the issue at hand, you either argue that its pure coincidence that such an organisation only emerged after the invasion, or you accept that there is some causal relationship. If its the former, you need to present some counter-argument for why my previous point about how the invasion at the very least helped create the conditions for ISIS to emerge is invalid. But if you do entertain the latter (and I frankly can't understand how any sane person wouldn't), then your outright dismissal of the very idea in the OP and elsewhere becomes contradictory.

polite_gandalf wrote on Mar 16^th, 2016 at 11:05am:
I'll ask you a question. Why does the blame always lie somewhere else when something bad comes out of Islam? Al Qaeda ( America ) Osama Bin Laden (America) Twin Towers (America) ISIS (America). It's a familiar pattern. America puts their nose in but they are constructions from Islamic people.

Mr Hammer wrote on Mar 16^th, 2016 at 10:00am:


No, Amerika has "made" all sorts of genocidal resistance movements over the years. The Khmer Rouge is one - the result of US attacks on Cambodia. The support of multiple military coups are another - the Shah of Iran, Suharto, Pinochet - these regimes tortured and killed millions. They were backed, funded and armed by Uncle. Kissenger formally recognized the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia. It took the newly liberated nation of Vietnam to depose Pol Pot. Uncle looked the other way.

The Muselman does not have a monopoly on killing. The belief system that justifies these sorts of atrocities is nothing more than the defence of power. In WWII, the Soviet Army set up machine guns behind the front lines to kill its own soldiers who retreated. The message was clear: fight or die. Countless regimes in the last century alone have had similar policies, and many have been sponsored by Amerika. Today, Uncle supports the most barbaric regime of all: Saudi Arabia. The reason Islamic fundamentalist extremism has spread is Saudi funding, facilitated by all that oil Uncle's friends pipe out and ship off to the four corners of the globe. By backing the House of Saud, the US has inadvertently enabled Wahabist propaganda to flow out of the Saudi desert and into places as far afield as Pakistan and Indonesia.

Who's fault is this? As Obama says, it's complicated.

Mr Hammer wrote on Mar 16^th, 2016 at 1:15pm:


The Khmer Rouge is the result of the vacuum that occurred when the US bombed Cambodia. Of course the US didn't "create" the Khmer Rouge, their actions precipitated it. Whenever a country or a people are under attack, armed movements form to defend them.

This is precisely how ISIS came about in Syria and Iraq - they gained support by defending Sunni Muslims. The "belief systems" of such resistance movements depend on their leaders' ambitions. ISIS use the millennial idea of the caliphate. The Khmer Rouge decided to reset time: Year Zero. Sure, such belief systems define how we view them, but they are not the cause. Such ideas emerge along the way, victory by victory.

Sure, ISIS is a Muslim problem. I would not say the Khmer Rouge was a communist problem - no reading of Marx could support this. I'd say Fascism is a nationalist problem: an excess of nationalism will inevitably lead to such views.

I don't think the same can be said of ISIS and Islam. The views of ISIS are a contorted form of fundamentalist dogma. They are what you get, I think, when you descend into warring tribalism. They are not entirely different from fascist thinking: strong leaders, clear gender roles, an obsession with military power and the use of extremist violence to enforce the law.

Such views can be countered using Islamic thought, and predominantly are. Where Islam comes into it is the Islamic admonition to defend fellow Muslims. This is how all Islamic extremism has spread in recent times, from the Mujahidin in Afghanistan to the conflict in Kashmir to Israel/Palestine. I.e, they come from war, and Muslims are recruited to fight.

It is only recently that the defence of fellow Muslims has been turned into an expansionist crusade; the call to create a new caliphate.