Letters to the Editor
Scientician
Published Letters: 525 Editor's Choice: 1
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Shooter242:
[Read the article: Attacks on civilians, torture and lawless detentions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here], and it is a Democrat Congress that keeps us there while we hope for a peaceful resolution that doesn't involve a white flag on our part.
Are you forgetting the bill passed by congress which required withdrawal which the Republican president vetoed, and failed to override that veto because virtually no Republican members of congress would vote to override in favour of a legally compelled withdrawal?
Also it is a "Democratic" Congress, not a "Democrat Congress" - shall we stoop to "RepubliCON party" or other childish epithets?
Meanwhile, perhaps you can point out the last American riot over a cartoon, stoning of a woman, or carburnings as sport? Can you find us a religious civil war in the good old US of A? Are there any American suicide bombers lying about? No? Well, I'd say there is quite a difference between Muslims and Americans after all. Besides the awkward comparison of a Religion and a country, that is.
No, there are few American suicide bombers. However there are a fair number of self-professed Christians willing to blow things up and kill civilians even if they don't kill themselves. Does it make it somehow more morally excusable in your mind that they don't kill themselves in their vile acts? If anything, that a bomber is willing to die as part of pursuing their cause is, if anything, slightly less vile than bombing innocents from afar.
In any case, it is a bizarre distinction to rest your feelings of moral superiority. "Yes, we Christians blow people up, but we don't kill ourselves while we do it, so there, dirty Muslims!"
As to a "religious civil war" how much do you want to bet I can't dig up quotes from the Falwell/Robertson crowd that show they believe they are in just such a war against atheists, humanists and secularists? People like Coulter, Malkin and other nuts have been known to advocate rounding up atheists and George H.W. Bush once opined seriously that atheists are not Americans. To this day, it is easier to get elected to high office as an open homosexual than it is as an atheist.
There's a reason the left occasionally uses the phrase the "American Taliban" because that's what these people are.
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Goldenboy:
[Read the article: Attacks on civilians, torture and lawless detentions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]20% of Muslims in America would not or could not give an unfavorable opinion of al Qaeda when polled, with an additional 5% actually giving a favorable opinion.
I addressed these points patiently when you raised them the other day. Now I will do what I almost never do, lose my patience and use a pejorative: You sir, are a deceitful bigot, intent on manipulating statistics to support positions not upheld by the data.
I notice you are actually lying to exaggerate the numbers, as it was 19% that refused or did not know their opinion on Al Qaeda, but I guess 20% sounds bigger so you just added 1%.
Why don't you address the 24% of Americans who think it is acceptable to intentionally target civilians for political aims? That is exactly what Al Qaeda does as a matter of course. Or the substantially higher number of catholics who actively support torture.
You might just have to accept that Muslims are just like Americans and people everywhere are susceptible to violent extremism if these trends are not aggressively countered. In America these days, such sentiments are encouraged more than condemned. US Muslims don't need some extremist cleric to teach them to use violence to attain political aims, they can learn it in Fox News every night.
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PAUL ROSENBURG:
[Read the article: Attacks on civilians, torture and lawless detentions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Shooter's even more wrong than that.
http://www.pollingreport.com/politics.htm
USA Today/Gallup Poll. Feb. 9-11, 2007. N=1,006 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.
"Between now and the 2008 political conventions, there will be discussion about the qualifications of presidential candidates -- their education, age, religion, race, and so on. If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be [see below], would you vote for that person?" Trend includes slight variation in wording.
A homosexual Yes - 55, No - 43
An Atheist Yes - 45, No - 53
for comparison from the same poll:
Black Yes - 95, No - 4
It also polled on if the candidate was catholic, jewish, married three times, mormon, hispanic, a woman. Atheists got the lowest scores.
Remember, this is asking for someone from your own party already, and a majority of Americans would not vote for an Atheist who was otherwise well qualified.
Or so they say...I think Republicans would vote for their nominee over any Democrat even if he came out before the Election as a gay atheist as long as he supported torture, no trials for accused terrorists, and more government eavesdropping.
He also doesn't know the difference between a noun and an adjective. Or how to use the name of America's oldest political party properly. Home schooled I guess.