Hard Questions: How We Counter Terrorism

You're probably too clever for me to be able to argue with. But that doesn't matter to me. Because it doesn't really matter what either of us believe, it only matters what we do. And when I look at the world, I don't see it is the people who win the arguments who win. It is the people who can sway others with emotion, the countries that can better tell their own story, the civilizations that can build something that other people want and the militaries that can deploy technologies that dominate that win. And above all, I'm someone who loves humanity. For what it is. So it doesn't matter to me even if your arguments are right. Because I'm more concerned about what's necessary. I have strong opinions, born of my own experience, based on logic and emotion.

Maybe I have been duped by the MSM, the AI of tech corporations and swindled on a hopeless dream of being a "somebody" / a tech founder / a snowflake whatever, in a consumerist society that needs to worship individualism and the purchase of status, or relief from fear, to drive the economy. I've certainly been duped by my friends and enemies, so, surely, the government, big corporations and the media, with their infinitely better resources, can probably dupe me too.

But I'm fine with that. Because all that really matters to me is how I live my life. I figure most people are living in a delusion anyway. Of one form or another. SO the question is not "do I have the truth?" the question, for me, is "Is my perspective useful?" Does it work for me? Does it help me achieve my goals? Whatever they might be.

And I think I'm good at that, or at least I try to be.

But on the topics you broach I'll give you my clear opinion: our societies, that have something to offer ( freedom, justice, prosperity, equality, harmony ( maybe democracy if you like that sort of thing ) ), are better than the societies that don't have such things to offer. As far as I'm concerned, any violence from people emanating from such places against our own is wrong. Prima facie wrong. Mainly, I think, because, if they were to win, they would offer nothing. So we must win, because we can offer something. So all our wars, against them, are justified to me. I see it as their problem. If their societies didn't suck, if they had devleoped themselves, protected themselves from manipulation and outside influence, then they'd be in a better place. But instead, they didn't keep their houses in order, and they became these breeding grounds for bad things, bad ideas. And I see no problem with wiping them out. If we have to. Just like the human body will kill its own cells if it diseased, I believe we should not hesitate to cut off those parts of our human civilization that are toxic. An extreme view to utter, but not to practice. I'm not saying that makes it okay. I'm saying it's okay, because that's what we say is okay. We have to protect what's good. What's good is certainly not what's perfect. But we have to get down in the dirt, and do bad things, to protect the good.

Maybe you say that's extreme, and you pretend I'm bad, and I don't expect you or many others to agree with me. I got that you would see it differently. But I would just see that as the comforting delusions people adopt to tell themselves they're good and righteous.

I want you to imagine if you have a family, and you are on a camping trip in the forest, far from any outside help. And a group of bandits tries to attack your camp. What kind of family person are you, who would refuse to do anything necessary to protect the good that was their family? I say, that you'd be in the wrong, if you refused to do anything "wrong" to protect your family.

So that's how I see humanity. Essentially good. Worth protecting. But protecting it, and developing our civilization, is not going to be pretty. Look at China. So much achieved. But so much horror and bloodshed to get there. To me that's all there is. The development of the human civilization and the forward march to a better future. There will be blood. But I believe it's worth it. Other people don't. That's fine. To me, their "noble mindsets" are the fruits of the peacetime they now enjoy because of the thousands of years of bloodshed that have brought our civilization to where we can enjoy peace.

TL;DR - I enjoy peace and love as much as the next human. I just think it's fine to do anything we need to protect that and keep moving forward as a species. Yes, it's a war mindset. Yes, the "terrorism is a threat" narrative gets a lot of mileage. But who cares? Nothing is guaranteed in this world. As far as I am concerned, humanity is always at war. If it's not terrorism, it's disease, it's planetary annihiliation. Until we are a multiplanetary species, who can upload our brains into new bodies whenever we like, until we've cured death, we're always going to be at war. So we're on that road. We can't take any chances. We ought not to waste any time. See the threats. Stamp them out. Protect what's good. Excise the diseased parts. Nothing else matters. We do not have the luxury of fanciful meditations, except from the security of an armchair, a secure perch provided by the blood of people who fought and died to bring you to the brief respite from endless horror we currently enjoy. Humanity has a long way to go, and it's not going to be pretty, but I believe we'll get there. You just have to be prepared to get dirty along the way. Get down in the dirt, and muck it out. To save and protect what's good.

You probably care more for argument and logic and facts and finely stated opinions than all of this emotive, rhetoric. But to me, it's not that. It's very plainly how I see things. So, thanks for giving me this chance to express it here. I feel internet conversations are useless, but they give me a chance to know my own thoughts better.

Why would they ban these people? Why not shadow ban them, shadow ban the entire thread, and then turn over those IP addresses to the FBI or NSA, who could then prosecute the targets with prejudice?

Why does FB think they can solve the world's problems by shuffling electrons around the internet? Some problems have to be solved in meatspace.

Because dead people can't sell clicks, but stories about dead people sell a lot of clicks. So let them die, just keep the evidence out of Zuck's money-making machine.

I mean, I like Singapore, but I'm not a fan of having one party that runs everything, the draconian drug laws and wide application of the death penalty. It's also worth pointing out that large numbers of the wealthy have left HK (and been replaced by transplants from China) and a similar trend has been happening in SG for decades

It's this kind of sloppy thinking that makes a rational discussion of this topic (and many other controversial topics) so hard. I wrote "intentionally target noncombatant civilians" and you essentially ignored this.

There is a huge difference whether you kill someone intentionally or non-intentionally as a side effect, or at least that's what the majority of people who seriously think about this topic agree upon. Intentional killings of noncombatant civilians by US army members are considered crimes or war crime, depending on the circumstances. They are often prosecuted. But I've already mentioned legal grey zones such as drone strikes in which the killing of innocent bystanders is not intended but taken into account.

> Of course, they [the Taleban] are defending their own place,

But they are often classified as terrorists, hence the example. Just to make this clear as well, the example is a bit ill-conceived in retrospective, since there is no doubt that Taleban as an organization are terrorists - they bomb cilivians in cities all the time. Of course, the definition of a terrorist organization is more complicated than just "they always intentionally kill civilians".