Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How the Arab World Came Apart

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 341 posts

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#331

Post by John23832 »

tmptmp wrote: post #318
John23832 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, comments and thinking like yours are the reason there is no progress. In conflict between group X and group Y, if you ask X it's because Y does (insert list of offenses here). The same from the opposing side. Nobody wants to acknowledge that both sides have issues, and if they work towards fixing said issues the world will be a better place. Your whole diatribe about "liberals/leftist/Islamist" is the exact same…

>>If you understand what Islam is, and what a muslim is, this statement makes no sense. If you mean to say that "Islam and Muslims are the same" I beg to differ. Islam is a religion not person and Muslims are persons. Let me clarify, Islam is a religion/ideology whereas Muslim is a person who is either practicing Islam (religion/ideology) or who is labeled as Muslim because he/she is born within a family who practice…

Muslims are people who practice the religion of Islam.

Religions (for those who practice them) are ideals that are intrinsically woven into peoples lives.

So by saying you should attack Islam (with no qualifiers to that statement), you are indeed saying you should attack Muslims.

I'm not going to address the second part of your statement, other than to say that the war in Iraq was illegal, wrong, and counter-productive. It, 9/11, and US sponsored creation of the terrorist boogieman are largely the root that modern islamophobia, and on the flip side modern terrorist cells, have sprung from.

Just admit that you don't like muslims and go on about your day.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#332

Post by 6stringmerc »

webXL wrote: post #306
6stringmerc wrote: post #227

How did it come apart? Almost exactly like Dick Cheney thought it would 20 years before cheering for the invasion. From an episode of Meet The Press in 2014[1]: CHUCK TODD: All right, let me ask you a couple of quick questions. I want to play for you an interesting clip of you 20 years ago about Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Take a look. DICK CHENEY (ON TAPE): That's a very volatile part of the world. And if you take down…

Eerie he's so prescient there. If only youtube was a thing then we could have all been sending this around. To give backers of the war the benefit of the doubt, a whole lot of shit changed after that video. Hindsight is 20/20 and we can't back test strategies like the stock market. It would be nice if we could.

Hoping this is phrased well by me, but I'm fairly certain some brief dives into historical tales of power dynamics will show that deposing an entrenched "Strong Man" leader results in a power vacuum, which can be filled by another of the same tactic, or, in the case of the region in discussion, a quagmire of sorts. I know an Army Captain (since Middle School), Psy Ops I'm pretty sure, and his experience on the ground in Iraq was that the local populations had no conception of how to function without the Strong Man. Essentially, for most all of their lives, the process was "Saddam says this, we do this," so concepts of self-governance were extremely foreign and somewhat troubling. Anecdote for sure, just hope it fits with our subject!

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#333

Post by Retric »

oblio wrote: post #330
Retric wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And global worming does not explain any specific daily temperature. The point is there are hundreds of years of history to do comparative analysis and thousands of locations to consider. I would suggest reading the literature instead of trying to point to a counter example. PS: Bavaria is only nominally 51 Cathlic vs the average of 30 for the entire country. Further, you can break things down to a much lower level. h…

Ok, then: Ireland, Baden-Wurtemberg, Austria, Lombardy. Max Weber was a smart guy, but he died 100 years ago. I hope we have better things to correlate with prosperity than just one strain of a particular religion.

Over the last several hundred years Ireland has had massive economic issues. This may have little to do with religion but I don't think it supports whatever point your trying to make.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#334

Post by kobayashi »

gotchange wrote: post #323
kobayashi wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is not the fault of the countries in the Eastern part of the Arabic speaking world that they're surrounded by reactionary forces in the region like the oil sheikhdoms or nationalist-led Israel that they would do everything they can to undermine the then-nascent democratic experiments to protect their interests and save their thrones but this is the topic of another article. Woh, woh, woh, what on Earth does Israe…

Are you really denying that the Israeli govt had nothing to do with supporting the military takeover in Egypt back in 2013 and then the military-led regime that took shape after that whether internally or abroad? If so, I don't see that there's any point of arguing over facts like these. It's OK to have reservations about the democratic experiments in the region but if you could call "Talibani vs Barazani" a democrac…

>Are you really denying that the Israeli govt had nothing to do with supporting the military takeover in Egypt back in 2013 and then the military-led regime that took shape after that whether internally or abroad?

Yes. That's a ridiculous assertion. To think that Israel (population: 7 million) has the power, influence, or will to "undermine the then-nascent democratic experiments" of a country like Egypt (population: 82 million), is ludicrous enough. To assert such a ludicrous statement as fact, without any supporting evidence is a wild conspiracy theory.

Your last three paragraphs have virtually nothing to do with the argument at-hand.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#335

Post by tmptmp »

John23832 wrote: post #331
tmptmp wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>If you understand what Islam is, and what a muslim is, this statement makes no sense. If you mean to say that "Islam and Muslims are the same" I beg to differ. Islam is a religion not person and Muslims are persons. Let me clarify, Islam is a religion/ideology whereas Muslim is a person who is either practicing Islam (religion/ideology) or who is labeled as Muslim because he/she is born within a family who practice…

Muslims are people who practice the religion of Islam. Religions (for those who practice them) are ideals that are intrinsically woven into peoples lives. So by saying you should attack Islam (with no qualifiers to that statement), you are indeed saying you should attack Muslims. I'm not going to address the second part of your statement, other than to say that the war in Iraq was illegal, wrong, and counter-producti…

>>So by saying you should attack Islam (with no qualifiers to that statement), you are indeed saying you should attack Muslims.

That is your way of interpreting it.

I never said we should physically attack the Muslim people. I am not against Muslim people, per se. All I am saying is we should attack the vicious ideology of Islam.

If the sentiments of some (potentially radical or not-so-radical) Muslims get hurt due to the thought attacks on the ideology of Islam, so be it. These Muslims should learn to get offended and learn to respect the freedom of expression and learn to respond to such offending expressions in more civilized manners and not by killing people.

You should be telling and encourage these Muslims to learn the fundamentals of free and open society.

If some Muslims are getting offended because some people draw cartoon of their prophet, so be it, these Muslims must learn to live peacefully in a free society even if they get offended by other people.

If some Muslims are getting offended because some people raise the issue of the pedophilia practiced by their prophet Muhammad, so be it, these Muslims must learn to live peacefully in a free society even if they get offended by other people.

The liberals/critical thinkers should not be suppressed just because expression of their thoughts in a peaceful manner hurts the sentiments of some Muslims.

The liberals/critical thinkers have attacked earlier and do attack now also the Christianity/Judaism/Hinduism and our free society never suppresses their thoughts. Islam should not be an exception and hence Islam should not be given special treatment.

Once again let me make it clear that I am not against Muslim people, in fact, I do have many Muslim friends and they are open to such thoughts.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#336

Post by ilostmykeys »

hx87 wrote: post #296
ilostmykeys wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That borders on psychotic. To watch people die and call the destruction aesthetically beautiful is mental illness.

Why would it be mental illness? Does it affect my ability to live my life, or anyone else's to live theirs? After all, I make decisions that carry moral weight based on my moral, not aesthetic compass.

Remember, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and is derived from how we feel about something, not from some objective criteria. It's disturbing to the average person, if not truly mentally ill, to feel that war is beautiful. Do you feel war is beautiful? If not, how can you say that it's beautiful? based on what? There is no objective criteria for beauty. It is a feeling. Remember that.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#337

Post by abalone »

hacker42 wrote: post #328
abalone wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what would be the degree of accepted violence by Christian extremists, historically?[1][2][3][4] Can we even begin to compare it? Subtly narrowing the definition of "violence" to "suicide bombers" alone serves a political agenda. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_slavery [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch…

Back then the inhibition level for violence was much lower than it is today, even in the Middle East. Also the Christian culture went through various changes, i.e. the French revolution and enlightenment, which have never occurred in Islamic cultures. Even the kind of enlightenment in the Golden Age were deeply motivated by religion and were hence inherently unstable and also limited. I am talking about the cultural…

Literally Christians have been the most violent people of the 20th century by orders of magnitude.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#338

Post by clydethefrog »

d23 wrote: post #264

I wish long form, informative articles like this had a way to donate a small amount of money to show appreciation. I don't read any particular news outlet enough to get an exclusive subscription with them, but I'd love to reward them for good individual pieces.

Blendle is exactly like that.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#339

Post by hacker42 »

abalone wrote: post #337
hacker42 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back then the inhibition level for violence was much lower than it is today, even in the Middle East. Also the Christian culture went through various changes, i.e. the French revolution and enlightenment, which have never occurred in Islamic cultures. Even the kind of enlightenment in the Golden Age were deeply motivated by religion and were hence inherently unstable and also limited. I am talking about the cultural…

Literally Christians have been the most violent people of the 20th century by orders of magnitude.

But motivated by greed and (geo)politics, rarely by religion.

The last sentence in my previous comment was not very clear. What I meant to say is that there are many non-Muslim African countries which have suffered from Western exploitation, yet we don't witness the kind of religiously motivated violence as in Islamic countries with comparable histories. This is an indicator for different dispositions caused by different sets of cultural memes.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#340

Post by 7Z7 »

mkaziz wrote: post #253
7Z7 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you. But mortgages exist in lots of Muslim majority countries. Are you really suggesting that Muslims don't take on debt? You can take out a mortgage in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bangladesh, Morocco.. They were the first four I checked.

GP is referring to the fact that interest is forbidden in Islam. However, you can still get interest-based loans in Muslim countries. They're just branded differently.

So GP's point is invalid than, no? Muslims take on debt and business loans regularly.
Post reply on HN