Hi CobaltBlue; Re: "Of the world's top five religions, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and Sikhs get along just fine."
The primarily Christian, Buddhist and atheist nations managed to kill many times more people just in WW2 than the Moslems did in their whole history. Most of the weapons of mass destruction that Bush is so afraid of were invented by more or less Christian nations and saw their first widespread use against Christians (and the odd Buddhist).
But despite the rather obvious historical facts, I do not blame the Christian and Buddhist nations for the large number of people that they've killed. Instead, these countries have killed more because they got the good stuff first. But to argue that the countries that beat the crap out of each other in WW2 are somehow more inclined to get along with others is stupidity of the sort that led you to cheer our getting into this stupid war in Iraq looking for WMDs that had long been destroyed and that the weapons inspectors could not find.
What you're doing is playing "heads I win, tails you lose" with logic. You're picking and choosing the facts and giving interpretations that go beyond simply ignoring the fire bombing of Dresden, the rape of Nanking, the execution of the Jews, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, or the massacre of the Polish officer corps. Your view of reality is so drenched in self-conceit that you actually think that the peoples with the most violent histories on this planet, the peoples who invented the weapons and then used them, the peoples who forced other nations to kneel before them, the peoples who justified everything they ever did on the basis of right makes right, are the people who are the most peaceful.
Your arguments will do well in the United States. They will do less well in other 1st world countries. But you can be quite sure that the Moslems aren't going to see it your way.
From a practical point of view, why make these illogical arguments? Do you really think that you can convince the Moslems that white is black?
What you really mean to say is something like this: "While it's true that the Western powers invented all the world's WMDs and used them against their enemies with little hesitation, it is also true that their enemies were evildoers that deserved their fate. And the Moslems deserve the same." To go on and on about how peaceful the US is when it has a military budget in excess of the total rest of the world is silly.
If you're going to be self-righteous and convinced of your cause you should at least admit it outright. Half the reason we're stuck in Iraq is because the United States people were so convinced that they could do no wrong (and had never done any wrong) that they thought that just showing up in Iraq would leave the locals in competition with each other to show their love of the United States.
-- Carl |
