CameronPoe wrote:
I don't think anyone sensible thinks Islam poses any kind of serious threat to a) the United States of America or b) Western civilization. Cave-dwelling militant extremists and the odd screwball here and there are not going to pose a serious threat to us. Especially not to the USA who must be something of the order of about 10,000 miles away from the middle east. Scaremongering like this is what prompted Germans in 1930s Germany to start thinking it was OK to gas Jews to death. Several years later they realised the error of their ways. Let's not be the ones who did the gassing and realise later on what monsters we were.
"Preview of Life under Islamic Law" - If people honestly believe the miniscule percentages of muslims in their respective countries are capable of peeling back millennia of western civilisation then they've got problems.
Unfortunately these extremists, as small in number as they are, control the governments of Iran, Libya, Sudan, and Syria among others. Although none can directly challenge the military might of the U.S., these extremists aren't really ones for conventional warfare anyway. Take Iran, for example. We all know Ahmadinejad has threatened the U.S. in the past, but currently lacks the capability to act on it. But, judging from what we've seen from such extremists in the Middle east recently, how threatened would you feel if/when Iran has the capability of deploying a nuclear weapon in the U.S. or another Western nation? And if Iran, or any other of those aforementioned countries, had that capability, do you honestly think they wouldn't act on it?
Additionally, this situation is completely different from the scaremongering in the 1930s. Jews weren't threatening and suicide bombing Germans, it was a matter of bigotry. Jews didn't have the ability, or weren't working towards the ability, to wipe out a massive number of Germans or a German city in a single attack without having to launch a formal conventional invasion. If you honestly think there isn't a threat, then you are delusional. If we don't remove these
extremists, especially from positions of power, soon, it is more likely that we will be second-guessing ourselves as a U.S. or other Western city goes up in flames than it is us looking back at ourselves as monsters for removing that threat.
Last edited by Fancy_Pollux (2006-08-16 08:21:05)
