Gerald Welch - [shared photo]
Muhammad Rasheed - I'll bet if they waterboarded him for a few weeks he'd change his mind.
Gerald Welch - I'll bet if that was your daughter jumping off the top floor, you'd change yours.
Muhammad Rasheed - No, I wouldn't. I would consider what he's talking about torture. That would be one of the goals of the attack after-all.
But the idea that he doesn't consider waterboarding to be torture is dumb.
Muhammad Rasheed - "Torture is the act of deliberately inflicting severe physical or psychological pain and possibly injury to a person (or animal), usually to one who is physically restrained or otherwise under the torturer's control or custody and unable to defend against what is being done to them."
Waterboarding fits the definition in every possible way. I consider Limbaugh's message poorly-worded nonsense.
Michael Hodges - Sorry, Jerry, but no. I know we've both spent time overseas, and without knowing yours, some of my time was there. This isn't "Islam" but rather, radical Islam, which is as deplorable as radical Christianity in terms of decency and human consideration.
About 85-90 percent of the folks I saw over there were just people wanting to get on with things and live their lives. I saw beautiful farms and talked to farmers, exchanging ideas and knowledge as a farmer from here the same way as I can speak as a soldier from here and chat with military personnel from around the world, because we speak the same language. I saw desolate places with desperate people who were grateful for our presence, and I saw wealthy neighbourhoods where I was spit on.
We were attacked, and when we pushed in elsewhere, whatever the reason, we were both welcomed and attacked, depending upon who was encountered.
None of that justifies torture. Leaving aside that torture has been demonstrated to yield little of value (I'm sure you and I have seen some of the same documentation), there is this:
If we resort to terroristic tactics, we make our honor forfeit, become just more scum fighting with scum.
Muhammad Rasheed - Michael Hodges wrote: "Sorry, Jerry, but no. I know we've both spent time overseas, and without knowing yours, some of my time was there. This isn't "Islam" but rather, radical Islam, which is as deplorable as radical Christianity in terms of decency and human consideration."
I would very seriously like to think that when Jerry said that I'd change my mind, he WASN'T talking about being a Muslim, but about agreeing with Limbaugh's retarded point.
Michael Hodges - That may well be; but I prefer to address larger points when I feel it is applicable, finer points when that matters in the scope of causality, viewpoints, reasons, perceptions, etc.
At the moment "torture" may be the finer point; but those justifying it are either grossly ignorant, grossly filled with hatred, or have been inundated with perceptions of Islam based on more than a decade of high-profile MEDIA-spew regarding something in which our country is involved. I have to question whether the same justifications for torture would be bandied about were this, say, the Sandanistas of yesteryear.
People tend not to think in terms of application; rather, in terms of enemies and whether an enemy's perceived status as a combatant justifies actions. This isn't Western thinking, but human nature.
At the moment Islam is perceived as "the enemy" -- thus, my inclusion and phrasing.
Gerald Welch - On lunch Mo, but yeah, Limbaugh's point.
I made a blog post talking about BIBGIV
Brutal in Battle
Gracious in Victory.
Gerald Welch - http://jerrywelch.blogspot.com/2010/07/bibgiv.html?m=1
Muhammad Rasheed - The attitude in this blog post is 1/2 the reason for the world's problems, and a huge reason for the blowback we experience from terrorist militias.
Muhammad Rasheed - smh
Gerald Welch - Do you think that other countries will be nice when they invade your borders?
Muhammad Rasheed - The one thing that stands out when discussing issues with you and other like minds, is where your rhetoric begins in history. No matter what the topic -- this one, or the israel/palestine conflict -- you ALWAYS ignore the bullshit instigated FIRST by the side you are backing, and pretend that the defensive rage from the enemy is where the whole thing began.
I have a SERIOUS PROBLEM with that asshole "we are going to do whatever the fuck we want to other people, and if they DARE get mad at us for it we will BRUTALLY CRUSH THEM!!!" attitude.
Leave. People. The. Fuck. Alone.
Gerald Welch - I get that, you've said that. But put us aside for a moment. Do you think if the Soviets were invading your country they would help rebuild when they are through? The Nazis?
I think that IF we have to go to war, then we should decide to win. Anything else is seen as weakness.
BTW, why don't you have a problem with Iraq's borders or Jordan or Syria? The same Mandate that created Israel created the rest of them.
Muhammad Rasheed - Gerald Welch wrote: " I get that, you've said that. But put us aside for a moment."
No.
Leave people the FUCK!!!! alone. Stop fucking up the fucking world, you ASSHOLES!!!!!
Muhammad Rasheed - LEAVE PEOPLE IN PEACE!!!!!
Muhammad Rasheed - Stop fucking pretending you are the good guys and meddling in peoples' shit for FUCKING MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Muhammad Rasheed - FUCKING ASSHOLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Gerald Welch - Wow, touchy...
Muhammad Rasheed – Every time I SEE one of these fucking posts I want to nuke America, Europe, and your fucking precious ass Israel.
Gerald Welch - What happened to your post about listening? You don't seem to want to hear the other side, going straight for vile name calling.
Didn't you call that giving up on debate at some time in the past?
Muhammad Rasheed - Fuck you assholes.
Muhammad Rasheed - Gerald I've listened to bullshit colonialists racist ass posts for fucking YEARS. It has not changed.
Muhammad Rasheed - I. Hate. White people.
Muhammad Rasheed - NO ONE is more evil.
Gerald Welch - Arab women have more freedom in Israel than they do any of the Arab nations.
Gerald Welch - Wow. Really?
Muhammad Rasheed - And your blog 100% proves it.
Muhammad Rasheed - Fucking assholes.
Gerald Welch - That's about as racist as it gets.
Muhammad Rasheed - No. INVADING AND KILLING PEOPLE IS AS RACIST AS IT GETS, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Gerald Welch - I'm giving you one more chance to calm down.;
Muhammad Rasheed - #dontShoot
Muhammad Rasheed - ASSHOLES!!!!!!!!!!!!
Gerald Welch - Buh bye. Nice knowing you.
Gerald Welch - Sorry, I don't deal with racists.
Muhammad Rasheed - You approve of the racist powers in the world, Jer.
Muhammad Rasheed - You wrote a whole blog post that Amen's it.
Gerald Welch - You can read into it what you want, but you lost it this time, Mo.
Muhammad Rasheed - Fuck yeah, I lost it! lol
Gerald Welch - We've disagreed in the past, but I've never seen you lose it like today.
Gerald Welch - Didn't you just post to some other guy about listening? And in the past you've said that the person who just starts calling names has already lost?
Gerald Welch - Then this...
Gerald Welch - Sorry Mo, we ended this peacefully.
Muhammad Rasheed - Gerald Welch wrote: “You can read into it what you want…”
I don’t have to read into it; that’s your modus operandi. Your rhetoric always begins well after the side you are backing has committed its great wrong (that you NEVER see), and focuses on the other side’s desperate defense, while pretending they were the aggressors all along. You do that on every single topic, and it comes across like a special psychosis. In addition… in a peculiar item I find unique to you, Jer… you try to twist EVERY argument into a defense of Israel. With you, somehow ALL roads lead to Israel, like it’s the only topic worth talking about, and of course, your rhetoric also begins after the great wrong that was done to the natives, and you treat their defense of their land from these greedy euro-invaders, as if they started all the trouble.
All of this has been consistent behavior with you, and you have yet to explain any of it. I've listened, and listened, and listened, but this is the place you approach it from.
Gerald Welch - Um, no, you just came in here cussing and name calling. Let it go, Mo.
Muhammad Rasheed - I'm calm now.
Muhammad Rasheed - Let's talk.
Muhammad Rasheed - Please explain this behavior.
Muhammad Rasheed - No more misdirection.
Muhammad Rasheed - Why???
Gerald Welch - As I said in my PM, we're cleaning house tonight. I'd love to speak with you on the phone sometime. It would take any unnecessary misreading from either side.
Muhammad Rasheed - I can't call the U.S., my company phone is blocked from international transactions.
Muhammad Rasheed - It actually wasn't like that when I first arrived, but they changed phone companies in Feb 2013 and left that part off of the new plan.
Gerald Welch - We will talk later. Promise.
Michael Hodges - Interesting. On all counts.
Muhammad Rasheed - "Interesting?" I went crazy in this thread.
I don't really hate white people, there's just certain items that make me FURIOUS, that have my temper on a hair trigger lately, arguing over those high-profile racist news items. Jerry's inability to stay on topic, thinking everyone is out to get his precious Israel, as well as his penchant for only starting history after his side initiated the wrong in the first place, was particularly button pushing.
What I would like is to probe to the bottom of this mindset, and discover the root cause of the mentality so that I can finally understand it. I have no illusions about fixing it, but at least would appreciate the why.
Gerald Welch - This is not a sickness, Mo, it's an opinion. Will be back to this topic Monday.
Bruce Edwards - Peace love harmony. Oops wrong post.....
Michael Hodges - Yes, Mr. Rasheed -- "Interesting." I meant precisely that word, my reasons being my own.
On one count "interesting" because while I have not always agreed with your posts in the past, you generally make A point. In that regard I try to mull them over, because while I need not accept your views and opinions concerning right, wrong, politics, social mores, et cetera, I would be remiss to not CONSIDER them.
On another count "interesting" because while I never like to see anyone angry to the point of "losing it" I have certainly been there and done that. And the ONE very telling lesson I've learned in that arena is that for all a man may say when he's feeling more civilized, when one loses it we get to see at least some of the truth of a man -- and I say that with myself wholly included.
I have been to dark places and felt dark feelings, and in moments of anger (whether justified or self-righteous) I have said things. I felt ashamed afterward, I felt repentant afterward -- but for all that, I was forced to confront things within myself and to ultimately resolve to track down the truth of my own beliefs, opinions and stances.
As you say -- perhaps you do not actually hate white people. By the same token I do not hate black people, but I live in a part of the country where I am confronted with the very worst of the stereotypical behaviours daily. I live in a place where blacks who live at the edge of poverty and who possess telling criminal records accuse other blacks of "actin' all white" when they do well in school, when they pursue college, when they speak out against welfare programs.
So I would be deluding myself if I denied it lends to a certain unwanted prejudice. I suspect this is the same effect you've experienced in your anti-white declaration, your momentary lapse of reason. Whether we like it or not we each and every one DO build prejudices. These are based on judgments rendered in the face of personal experiences as we come to view and know them.
I, too, wish America would back off from the rest of the world, pursue a more isolationist policy -- not only our "invasions" and "policing" but our foreign aid as well. I wish we took a Spartan view of our territories and holdings: "We will trade, but if you try to take we will fucking END you, zero negotiation."
Let the chips fall where they may. What an adventurous world that would be, eh?
I believe terrorism is a touchy area. One man's terrorist is another man's Freedom Fighter, entirely dependent upon whether one agrees with the politics and the proceedings. I stand WHOLLY by what I posted above regarding how one tells the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. It's all well and good to be willing to sacrifice one's life in the pursuit of a cause, and even admirable. It's even acceptable in the face of War to take the lives of the enemy. Where things get a mite tetchy is when one is willing to sacrifice the lives of others in pursuit of one's own cause, whether they agree or not.
I'm all for beheadings as a show of force and intent. I think that should have been done instead of something so barbaric as torture. BOOM -- over and done with, c'est-ne pas?
Of course that isn't true; but it IS the kind of thinking we get when we judge an entire system by the worst of what it has to offer. Once we go down that road religion is for killing and pillaging, science is about the war machine and altruism is a false pretense for the purpose of misdirection and moral sleight-of-hand.
I am white and not only can I not help that I was born to it, I own precisely NO guilt or regret over the matter, nor will I be pressured to do so. I am American, despite that I do not agree with many of my government's pursuits and actions, but aside from attempting to instigate revolution my power lies solely in my single vote, and in conversations just like this one.
If any of that bothers you, then I'll remind you that nearly everyone believes in personal sacrifice in pursuit of an idealistic "greater good" -- so long as someone else is doing the sacrificing and footing the bill. When push comes to shove and the fecal matter actually starts flying, we're for ourselves and ours, and only the strongest moral compunctions make it through the smoke, on a very personal level, and even THAT is hazy since in the grand scheme of every bloody thing on the planet we are each and every one pretty sure we're better qualified to judge than those with whom we disagree.
Gerald Welch - And I think that Mo took it as my stated policy only in Iraq/Afghanistan, but it would apply to Germans in WWII. I was just saying (and continue to say) that *IF* we are n war, we need to act like it and get it over as quickly as possible.
That being said, I can agree with both of you that we need fewer international dealings. THAT being said, you can't have it both ways: 1) Gain vast amounts of wealth and influence the international community because of oil2) You can't pay any political attention to the area because of the value of oil.
Muhammad Rasheed - Michael, I found your post to be very considerate, honestly introspective, and I appreciate it. I agree with all points. I find myself touched that it took you so long to respond.
When I was a teenager, my family lived in rural Michigan where we were victims of lower class whites and their violent, stereotypical behaviors as well, just shy of any of us hanging from trees like peculiar fruit. It has served to enable me to put some of the horrible events of American history regarding the interactions of the two races into a startling real personal context as opposed to just abstract events that once happened to others, and I'll admit, it often makes me color your entire racial group with a broad brush indeed.
During my own 'low moments' I feel myself turning into my dad, who was the stereotypical "angry black man" as I was growing up, him being a civil rights sit-in demonstrator from Jackson, Mississippi, with personal memories of his own father passing rifles out to his sons, who instructed them to take up positions at strategic windows within their house to prevent the local KKK from storming in to take away my "uppity" father to inflict dark deeds upon him.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful post; it's actually been very much what I've been struggling to probe for in a serious race-on-race dialog for these last several weeks. I could feel my blood pressure going up from the effort, but your post gives me hope that such a very real dialog between our people is actually possible.
Muhammad Rasheed - @Gerald... Naturally I agree with your general premise, that if you find yourself in a war, you want to do what you need to do to win it and make sure the enemy doesn't come back. But that's not a real conversation when it comes to these topics. The real conversation involves a candid & courageous acknowledgement that we currently find ourselves in a terrible place, an honest root cause analysis to see how we got here, and a theorizing from our head and our heart what could we have done to keep it from happening, what we can do to prevent it from happening again, and how can we go forward and be in a truly better place.
In my opinion, a real discussion into those deeper issues must follow along that path of discourse in order to have any value. Reinforcing negative mindsets to protect inbred ideologies that lead to only more of the problems we currently deal with is fundamentally worthless, and serves only our mutual enemies.
I like being civilized, interacting among those who are civilized, and do not wish to color an entire group by the actions of the low-class savage among them. When the civilized pretend that aspects of history didn't happen in order to protect certain illusions, it threatens civilization itself, and makes society unsafe, ESPECIALLY when those civilized in question are of the privileged class and hold the power of life and death over the majority of citizens.
The civilized must take the responsibility to introspect, recalibrate their thoughts and behaviors back to the standard of the Path of Righteousness, and do not become complacent in fighting for what's right at all costs. Otherwise civilization itself will be lost.
Bruce Edwards - @Muhammad Rasheed... Glad to see you calmed down buddy! So you know I enjoy reading your views. Do not always agree but look forward to your input. Oh and never figured you really hated all white folk....
Gerald Welch - Mo, honestly, when I wrote that blog there were news stories at the time about our soldiers who didn't have bullets for their rifles (BTW, Bush received as much criticism as Obama did for that)The sole premise of that blog was, "If we're going to war, LET'S GO TO WAR" so we can end it as quickly as possible. Also note that I emphasized humanitarian efforts and rebuilding AFTER the war, something at which America excels.
WHY we were there at the time was a totally different question.
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