RE: The Iraq war was extropian? Re: [Iraq] The real reason for the war

From: Paul Grant (shade999@optonline.net)
Date: Sun Jun 15 2003 - 02:06:10 MDT

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    -----Original Message-----
    From: owner-extropians@extropy.org [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]
    On Behalf Of Spudboy100@aol.com
    Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2003 1:12 PM
    To: extropians@extropy.org
    Subject: Re: The Iraq war was extropian? Re: [Iraq] The real reason for
    the war

    Shade opined:
    <<First, thats one fundamentalist party leader (of which there
    are many); Second, that are moderate "fundamentalist" party
    leaders that don't agree with him and declared his jihad to
    be wrong... Ergo my point that equating fundamentalism and an
    American body count is not a valid 1-to-1 mapping...>>

    1) Islam, by its nature is a fundamentalist religion. The closest thing
    to progressive Islam, are the Sufi's who practice a kind of ecstatic
    "Pentacostalist" dancing rituals.

    > hardly. most practicing muslims are sunni; and sunni's are permitted
    (encouraged and required) to read
    and interpret the koran to the best of their abilities. And while
    fatwah's are binding in the sense that they
    represent the current consensus in regards to the correct interpretation
    of a surrah or hadith, there are in fact
    several schools of interpretation... each muslim has his or her own
    preference for which school of thought most
    closely parallels his or her particular interpretation of the
    religion... And if that isn't progressive, than Christianity
    and Judiasm are as much a fundamentalist religion as Islam is, and thus,
    fundamentalism as you choose to define it
    is pretty much irrelevant.
     
    2) Before this administration came to power, the Islamists, who seem to
    be in charge of things in Islam nowadays; have advocated attacks against
    the United States. In fact, the war against the US is a war against US
    ideas, and culture, because the Islamists view it as undermining the
    faith of their people by corruption.
     
    > Or it could be because the movement towards secularism (which is
    endorsed by many a US-mideast puppet regime), has resulted in large
    quantities of poor, uneducated people.
    Remember, an informal condition for muslim-predominant states to be
    friends of the US is that they suppress religious-based political
    parties; that in and of itself
    is a problem, since a particularly well-informed westerner pointed out,
    that the koran is not only a faith, but a code of laws (Shuria). The US
    is in effect, denying
    muslim states the ability to follow their faith. This conflict between
    the western ideal of separation of church and state as holy, and that of
    predominantly muslim states
    wanting to enact an Islamic government is one that must be addressed,
    preferably by the US butting out, or even more simply, following the
    spirit of a democracy.

    The current example is the violence between Iranian students and the
    vigilante's now attempting to break up demonstrations in Tehran, unto
    this very hour. You can also view, if you care to, OSB's declaration of
    war against "Crusaders and Jews" that was published on the web, in 1998.
    Before that was the attacks on westerners by the Muslim Brotherhood in
    Egypt, starting in the early 1960's, as a means of purifying the
    perceived corruption of the Gamal Abdul Nasser regime, with its cozy
    relationship with the Soviets, and Europeans.
     
    >Well, as an Egyptian, I can tell you that the system is very much
    corrupt, even unto this day.
    And although I have left the faith a long time ago, I would very willing
    support an islam-based
     state. The code of laws is *that* fair, and certes, an improvement
    over the current situation.
     
    You may heave brickbats at America (those politicians sure do love dat
    old debbil oil, and love to be advisors to the Wahabbi kingdom), but the
    chief responsibility of how Muslims behave, lies within themselves.
    Making the US jump through hoops to placate the Islamic (read Islamist)
    world appears merely encourage more violent and intolerant behavior from
    Islam. Remember the quote from Osama regarding how people like the
    stronger horse?
     
    >In short, leave the middle east. Stop meddling in their affairs. In
    fact, I would suggest something as radical as wacking the CIA's budget
    :)
    That should keep you out of trouble :) Probably help out a lot of
    non-muslim/mid-east countries too...

    To get back to the Thread Topic, I am not sure everything should be
    defined as Extropian or not. Was the Great Revolution of 1688 in
    Britain, Extropian? How about the 1832 creation of the Third Republic in
    France? Its not like apples and oranges, its like apples and LVAD's.
     
    >Sorry for the divergence, I felt that there were alot of points that
    needed to be addressed (or rather, challenged).

    Finally, if no nerve gas or biotoxins can be found in Iraq, or found
    that they have been sent to Syria (for example) then we have been
    subjected to a Wag The Dog lie from Bush. I suspect that Bush is hiding
    the fact that Syria took the stuff in question, as a means to cajole the
    Syrians into joining the team. I could be wrong, but its just a hunch.
    In this case, a lie is still a lie, even if its for a "good" reason. If
    these allegations are proven true, Bush should no longer be given carte
    blanche on foreign policy. Because if they lied, then every claim now
    needs to be scrutinized, because if he's going to lie once, he's going
    to lie again.
     
    >Personally, I think he should be impeached and tried before a war
    crimes tribunal,
    preferably staffed by countries he's "helped" under his current foreign
    policy..
     
    omard-out
     

    PS> I'm sorry I won't be able to respond if you feel a further need to
    respond;
    I will be traveling shortly, and my internet connectivity (or rather,
    ability to respond)
    will be very much non-existent. If you would like, I would be happy to
    continue to answer
    any questions you may have offlist, but the
    answers/responses/conversation will be at
    least a month in coming. Obviously feel free to discuss amongst
    yourselves :)



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