Should we declare war against ISIL or any of the terrorist groups

[ayin jade]

 

http://mariomurilloministries.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/federal-government-lists-evangelical-christianity-as-a-top-terrorist-threat/

guess who is above ISIS on the U.S. terrorist list

 

is there a government website that confirms that they view christians as the top threat?

 

 

This link cites the studies and provides links to the homeland security studies.

 

http://christiannews.net/2012/07/04/christians-deemed-terrorists-in-study-funded-by-department-of-homeland-security/

[ayin jade]

 

 

http://mariomurilloministries.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/federal-government-lists-evangelical-christianity-as-a-top-terrorist-threat/

guess who is above ISIS on the U.S. terrorist list

 

is there a government website that confirms that they view christians as the top threat?

 

 

This link cites the studies and provides links to the homeland security studies.

 

http://christiannews.net/2012/07/04/christians-deemed-terrorists-in-study-funded-by-department-of-homeland-security/

 

 

I found a youtube link that has homeland security stating so (only since I cant listen to it I cant be sure what it says lol). I will pm anyone who is interested the link. 

[other one]

 

 

I just read this in the news:

 

 

 

 

Just last week, a post on a top jihadi forum urged American Muslims who can't reach the battlefront to wage "an aggressive and sustained campaign of lone-wolf attacks" locally, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. As well, there are worries that fighters with U.S. passports will return home to carry out attacks in America or with airplanes headed to the U.S.

 

 

I am curious. How should america address this at home? Its not only foreign born muslims who are a thread. How do we deal with american born, american citizen muslims who are a threat? How can we stop the violence before it happens without attacking isis in the middle east?

Cancel their passports and don't let them back in the country.

 

 

What about those within this country already who are sympathetic to isis?

That's a whole different thing........   I don't want to create any kind of thought police.   We have enough of that in our school system as it is....

 

In a free society that is most difficult to do......   if we do away with them for wanting to do away with us, then they might do away with me for wanting to do away with them.....

 

but the action of them going to Syria or Iraq is not thought, but do.

 

The ones here we will have to deal with like we already are.....   and the general public watching is one of the best ways to keep an eye on it..

 

It doesn't appear to me that our present administration really wants to do anything about it...    The American people have always had to be seriously prodded to want to go into something like a global war.....    I think that is on the way.   The federal government isn't protecting us so we must be watchful and do it ourselves.

[Guest LadyC]

ok, it links to scribd and start.... scribd refers to start. i'm skimming over the start document, profiles of perpetrators of terrorism. it doesn't include evangelical christians. it does include extremes of both left and right wing ideology, and includes some religious groups (including islam) such as 'covenant, sword and arm of the lord' group. never heard of them, but that organization has been identified apparently as an extremist group that has already committed crimes. there's nothing to indicate christians (evangelical or not) in general are considered security threats. in fact, the report is prefaced with disclaimers to the contrary:

 

First, at no point has any START study defined persons "suspicious of centralized federal 

authority" and "reverent of individual liberty" as terrorists. Instead, we assigned ideological 

classifications only to groups that have already carried out completed or attempted terrorist 

attacks. 

 

Full definitions for these can be found in the PPT-US codebook, available on the 'Data and 

Analysis' tab of the PPT-US Dataverse page at http://ter.ps/zm. Again, it is critical to remember 

that these definitions are applied to organizations already identified as perpetrators of terrorist 

violence in the GTD. They are in no way used to define 'terrorists' themselves, either groups or 

individuals. 

 

Finally, it is important to note that because the analysis in our report relied on ideology data 

from PPT-US, a group-level dataset, attacks are linked to ideologies when a specific group is 

attributed responsibility for an attack. This means that Tables 1-7 in our report are based only 

on those cases where we are reasonably certain of the group or organization responsible for the 

attack.

 

so i'm still not seeing any definitive claim from a government agency that evangelical christians are the number one terrorist threat (or even any terrorist threat at all).

[coheir]

coheir, that's definitely closer. but what i'm looking for is something that is actually from the government itself. we don't know where joe miller obtained this email, so we can't verify it's authenticity. also, just because an army commander sent it out doesn't mean that it came from the top of the government. in fact, if this was something that was being impressed upon all troops in the military and had come from the top, we'd have heard about it from more than one senator. since a large percentage of our military is conservative, they'd be squealing like stuck pigs if this is a command that is wide-spread. 

 

and since my daughter and son-in-law are military and really want to see a regime change in our government, i'd have heard about it the day such an order was issued.

 

i'm sorry, i'm not trying to make it sound like you've failed... i just would like to see definitive proof that our government has issued such a declaration. again, i know that they don't like evangelical christians, and i know they have launched a perceived war against us by way of denigrating us in the press and stuff, but that's not the same as issuing a declaration that we're a bigger threat to national security than terrorism.

I was able to find this on youtube

it is not the US government though it is Faith and Freedom discussing the title below worth 11 minutes

Pentagon Recants Labeling Christians "Domestic Terrorists"

I think the government has removed the word Christian now; they list beliefs like if you oppose abortion you need to be watched

and other beliefs that may be related to Christianity but not the actual word anymore.

I believe Faith and Freedom are on our side too.

and the other side also youtube

The Fingerprints of US right-wing Christian Terrorism

[Qnts2]

In the U.S., it is not against the law to have sympathy, or beliefs which coincide for an enemy. During WW2, there were Americas who were also neo-nazis in thought. It was not against the law to have a belief which was neo-nazi.

 

What was against the law was to aid or abet the enemy. So a person could be neo-nazi, as long as they did not aid the Nazi's or fight with the Nazi's. That comes into effect when the U.S. declared war against Germany. So, to find someone as committing treason, the U.S. must first declare war. Then, if anyone leaves to for the enemy, they have committed treason, and if they try to return, they are arrested and tried for treason. If a person donates money to the enemy (ISIS), they are guilty of aiding the enemy and have committed a treasonous act.

 

If they take independent action on U.S. soil, they are a terrorist and face conviction of the crime of terror.  

 

Those are my thoughts. Now, I have to ask a question? Has the U.S. defined what makes a person a terrorist on U.S. soil?

 

I found the following in an internet search.

 

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/terrorism/terrorism-definition

 

18 U.S. Code § 2331 - Definitions

18 U.S.C. § 2331 defines "international terrorism" and "domestic terrorism" for purposes of Chapter 113B of the Code, entitled "Terrorism”:

"International terrorism" means activities with the following three characteristics:

• Involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
• Appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
• Occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S., or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum.*

 

 

"Domestic terrorism" means activities with the following three characteristics:

• Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
• Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and
• Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.

18 U.S.C. § 2332b defines the term "federal crime of terrorism" as an offense that:

• Is calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct; and
• Is a violation of one of several listed statutes, including § 930© (relating to killing or attempted killing during an attack on a federal facility with a dangerous weapon); and § 1114 (relating to killing or attempted killing of officers and employees of the U.S.).

* FISA defines "international terrorism" in a nearly identical way, replacing "primarily" outside the U.S. with "totally" outside the U.S. 50 U.S.C. § 1801©.

[Burning_Ember]

oh, and about the about most liberal people volunteering.... that's great, i guess volunteerism is  a bipartisan thing. why do i say that? because i'm a conservative, and i've been very active in the community for helping those in need, both as a volunteer with other conservative organizations and churches and on my own. nothing gives me more pleasure than to help feed someone who is hungry, or to give clothes to someone who is homeless and has been wearing the same clothes for weeks.

 

but i disagree with the many (both conservative and liberal people) who sponsor hungry children in foreign nations. there is so much poverty and hunger on our own streets, we should be taking care of those in our own back yard first. when every american has a roof over their head and three square meals a day, THEN it's time to donate to people overseas. 

 

and you think only liberals care about the innocents in iraq and syria? go spend some time on a marine corp base. i've spent LOTS of time on bases. a large percentage of marines have very conservative mindsets... and yet they are the ones who were angry about not being allowed to finish the work they were doing helping the citizens of iraq. the difference is that conservatives and liberals have different ideas on who the innocents in war torn places are. liberals tend to think the bad guys are the ones who need protecting. conservatives believe the citizens, the by-standers, are the victims that need our help. 

 

your hatred of conservatives is glaringly obvious every time you post BE.... no matter what the topic, you have this thing for painting us as the enemy. as the callous, cold-hearted, blood thirsty killers. i can assure you, we aren't.

 

 

ok, having looked up the wisconsin sikh temple massacre. it was committed by wade michael page. he was a suicidal maniac. he was also a white supremacist.

 

conservatives are not white supremacists. 

in fact, most racism today comes from the left and is directed at white americans.

 

timothy mcveigh was also a suicidal maniac and a blood-thirsty white supremacist. he served a tour in iraq. he decapitated an iraqi soldier and celebrated. then he tried to join the special forces but was found to be psychologically unstable. he later claimed he had a microchip in his butt and that the government was tracking his every move. the guy was insane. and he was an anarchist who peddled anti-government literature.

 

eric rudolph claims to be a conservative christian... and yet he is anti-semitic. can't be both, IMO. he is part of a racist organization that hates anyone that isn't white and of european or german descent. he claims to NOT be an anarchist, and yet his bombing of clinics was, in his own words, retaliation against the government for not banning abortion. that was after having already perpetrated the bombing at the 1996 olympics in an attempt to embarrass and humiliate the american government. in spite of his claims, he is an anarchist. his motivation for every crime he committed was his hatred for the government.

 

these people you use as examples are no more conservative than the westboro baptist church is christian.

Remember how you said sane conservatives don't commit terrorism? Sane liberals don't either. If Being liberal made you a terrorist then Canada would be under a far greater domestic terrorism threat than America, but the opposite is true.

 

 

 

I posed the question as to why people join militia/terrorist groups, shiloh talking about why liberals are terrorist sympathizers. That doesn't really further the discussion. Keeping the subject on why people would join such an organization does.

 

Well not just terrorist sympathizers, but terrorist enablers, as well.  Actually what I said speaks to exactly the issue of why people join terrorist "militias."  My point was that liberals tend to argue that the reason people join organizations like that is because they feel oppressed and disadvantaged and join such organizations in order to express their rage and frustration.

 

My point was that liberals always trying to understand the terrorists, as if terrorists have rationale worth understanding, as if terrorism has something rational behind it.  It only shows how naive liberals are about this issue.

 

The only real long term solution is to create stability in Iraq and Syria so that ISIS doesn't have a power vacuum to take advantage of. As for Iraq, that power vacuum was formed when Saddam was removed from power. One huge step in the right direction would be to apply as much pressure as possible to make sure both Sunni and Shia Muslims are allowed to be in government. Another would be to get as many other governments in the area to focus on improving quality of life, security, and anti-terrorism measures. A ground war would be one of the worst options.

 

 

See, the Obama administration didn't make sure there was a SOF agreement and that is what has led to current unrest and the rise in ISIS.  It is liberal policies by a far Left administration that led to beheadings of two Americans and one Brit and the slaughter of so many innocent people including many children.  

 

The power vacuum was not the result of getting rid of Hussein.  You are wrong.  The power vacuum is the fault of the Obama administration.   A couple of years ago, Obama was trumpeting how he took every American out of Iraq and now we have a huge vacuum left by this president who continuously ignored for over one year all of the intelligence briefings that told the president what was going on and what was about to happen.  Now that things have turned sour because he left no American forces in Iraq, he wants to blame everything on Bush.   The truth is that Obama let ISIS happen.  We have a huge crisis on our hands and it is directly tied to THIS administration.    ISIS didn't come into existence after the ousting of Hussein.  ISIS began to form after all American forces were taken out of Iraq in 2011.  With the SOF agreement in place, ISIS may never have come to be what it is now..  It may not have existed at all.

 

Obama ignored the intell he was getting for over a year and now  we have ISIS.  We are past talking about stabilizing Iraq and Syria.  We are looking at that option in the rear view mirror. We could have talked about stabilizing Iraq and Syria a year ago, but that window is now closed and we have a 30,000 man army fully equipped with American made armor and artillery and other weapons reeking murder, terrorism, genocide and chaos all over the place over there. 

 

Now we are in a place where a ground war is the ONLY option for us, in concert with massive air power.   The problem is too far out of hand for any other option to be successful.  ISIS needs to be crushed with massive, merciless ferocity until every member of ISIS is dead.   We should make sure that ISIS is nothing but a greasy spot on the side of the road.  We also need to step how we are going to combat ISIS over here.   If they were in Australia planning to behead random Aussies, they are over here planning the same for the US.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/09/AR2007020901917.html

 

When Saddam got tossed out it destabilized the entire region. I can cite military and intelligence experts on this all day. Their experience and background is a lot more solid than your opinion on this. If you want ISIS to go away, you have to end up taking away the circumstances by which they exist. It does not require "sympathizing", it requires understanding that virtually all conflicts of this nature we've seen in the past have not been solved exclusively through overwhelming military force, but require political/diplomatic solutions, along with something that creates long term stability. If military force was the way to bring peace and stability to the middle east, it would be safer now than in say 1999, because there's been plenty of military intervention in the last decade or so that has made things much less safe.

 

 

What do you think would happen if someone outlawed The Bible in America?

 

I rather doubt a single head would be cut off...

 

Probably not, America has more guns instead of swords. There are militia's in America that would likely start shooting people if there were serious infringements of the 1st amendment.

 

 

 

 

The most liberal people I know do things like work/volunteer for charity organizations that sign you up do donate to alleviate poverty by sponsoring kids in foreign countries, or are animal rights activists who engage in peaceful protest/political action, or try to convince people to go vegan, or hold events donating towards doctors without borders, or work on donations for humanitarian aid for people in Syria or Iraq or Palestine or another area with high poverty and high rates of conflict. They tend to be the biggest hippies/peaceniks I've seen in my life.

 

 

Ive seen a lot of die hard conservatives do the same thing. 

 

Yep. Because helping others is a human characteristic, not a political ideology. People tend to donate/volunteer to organizations which reflect their beliefs. 

[Guest LadyC]

Remember how you said sane conservatives don't commit terrorism? Sane liberals don't either. If Being liberal made you a terrorist then Canada would be under a far greater domestic terrorism threat than America, but the opposite is true.

 

 

touche. ok so sane liberals don't either.

 

but facts are, sane liberals do tend to view the enemy as the victim, and sympathize more with terrorists than with americans.

[Burning_Ember]

 

Remember how you said sane conservatives don't commit terrorism? Sane liberals don't either. If Being liberal made you a terrorist then Canada would be under a far greater domestic terrorism threat than America, but the opposite is true.

 

 

touche. ok so sane liberals don't either.

 

but facts are, sane liberals do tend to view the enemy as the victim, and sympathize more with terrorists than with americans.

 

Liberals sympathize with the victims of the conflict, not people who shoot people. Liberals would like the least number of people to be killed in a conflict, the easiest way to do that is often to not cause more military conflict with more military intervention.

 

Liberals don't like ISIS or Al-Queda any more than any conservative does. There's simply a difference of opinion on how to deal with it. For example...

 

Usama Bin Laden WANTED America to invade after 9/11. If you go over his tapes, he celebrated the fact that America was spending trillions of dollars in war in the middle east. He wanted America to fight in the middle east because it's much easier to organize and recruit fighters for conflict in Afghanistan/Iraq. That is their home turf. They understand better how to exploit local geography, terrain, guerrilla tactics, culture, and politics than America does in that region. Sending soldiers to fight in the middle east is quite literally exactly what Al-Queda (and now ISIS wants for many different reasons. From their perspective;

 

1) If your enemy is a across the ocean, you get them to come to you so you can fight them on your terms. The best way to deal with that might be to not walk into the trap your enemy wants you to walk into. Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires for a reason. Iraq likely requires more force to secure now than it did after the fall of Saddam, which was already a big strain on the military at it's peak.

 

2) Military intervention and civilian casualties are the single biggest recruiting tool those terrorist groups have. There have been several specific cases of villages that had been convinced to fight on the American side, at which point a special forces operation with faulty intelligence or a drone strike kills innocent civilians. Those village won't side with America for generations to come. The best way to avoid that is to simply not kill civilians which means being way more careful about how military force gets used, if at all.

 

3) Usama wanted to draw America into a war to bankrupt America. If you look into his tapes, he talked a LOT about how much money America was spending and how it was affecting the economy, etc etc. If you spend trillions of dollars fighting wars over 13 years, that money does not go to social programs, healthcare, infrastructure, tax cuts, R&D, or balancing the budget. It instead gets dumped into the war machine where it does not get spent on America, but on fighting one of the longest wars across the ocean to an overall negative effect.

 

If I understand why those terrorist groups engage in the strategy they use, it doesn't mean I sympathize with them. It means I'd rather win by not walking into their traps.

[Guest shiloh357]

 

 

Remember how you said sane conservatives don't commit terrorism? Sane liberals don't either. If Being liberal made you a terrorist then Canada would be under a far greater domestic terrorism threat than America, but the opposite is true.

 

 

touche. ok so sane liberals don't either.

 

but facts are, sane liberals do tend to view the enemy as the victim, and sympathize more with terrorists than with americans.

 

Liberals sympathize with the victims of the conflict, not people who shoot people. Liberals would like the least number of people to be killed in a conflict, the easiest way to do that is often to not cause more military conflict with more military intervention.

 

Liberals don't like ISIS or Al-Queda any more than any conservative does. There's simply a difference of opinion on how to deal with it. For example...

 

 

If it were up to Liberals, we would do nothing.  Terrorists would strike and we would just take it on the chin.  Liberals enable terrorism.  They create a safe environment for terrorists to operate in.  Their answer is to just let innocent people die.

 

 

Usama Bin Laden WANTED America to invade after 9/11. If you go over his tapes, he celebrated the fact that America was spending trillions of dollars in war in the middle east. He wanted America to fight in the middle east because it's much easier to organize and recruit fighters for conflict in Afghanistan/Iraq. That is their home turf. They understand better how to exploit local geography, terrain, guerrilla tactics, culture, and politics than America does in that region. Sending soldiers to fight in the middle east is quite literally exactly what Al-Queda (and now ISIS wants for many different reasons. From their perspective;

 

and that didn't work out too well for them.  They lost far more fighters than we did.  They expected us to come marching down the road in formation.  They didn't take into account our overwhelming air power which decimated them.  Many of them never got to exploit the terrain or geography.

 

 

 

 

 

1) If your enemy is a across the ocean, you get them to come to you so you can fight them on your terms. The best way to deal with that might be to not walk into the trap your enemy wants you to walk into. Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires for a reason. Iraq likely requires more force to secure now than it did after the fall of Saddam, which was already a big strain on the military at it's peak.

 

But we didn't fight them on their terms.   You really don't know what you are talking about, BE.  We did pretty much what they never expected.  We learned from the mistakes made by the Russians back in the 80's.

 

 

2) Military intervention and civilian casualties are the single biggest recruiting tool those terrorist groups have. There have been several specific cases of villages that had been convinced to fight on the American side, at which point a special forces operation with faulty intelligence or a drone strike kills innocent civilians. Those village won't side with America for generations to come. The best way to avoid that is to simply not kill civilians which means being way more careful about how military force gets used, if at all.

 

Here's a dose of reality for you, BE.  There is no such thing as a sanitary war.  Civilians get killed in war all of the time.   The only time any raises a fuss over civilian casualties is if the US or Israel causes them.  Civilians are being murdered at the hands of ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and in Syria all of the time.  No one cares about them.  Liberals have a very selective moral outrage when it comes to civilian casualties.   So don't tell me the Liberals care about the deaths of civilians until I see the same moral outrage expressed at Muslims when they kill innocent Muslims/Arabs.

 

 

3) Usama wanted to draw America into a war to bankrupt America. If you look into his tapes, he talked a LOT about how much money America was spending and how it was affecting the economy, etc etc. If you spend trillions of dollars fighting wars over 13 years, that money does not go to social programs, healthcare, infrastructure, tax cuts, R&D, or balancing the budget. It instead gets dumped into the war machine where it does not get spent on America, but on fighting one of the longest wars across the ocean to an overall negative effect.

 

If I understand why those terrorist groups engage in the strategy they use, it doesn't mean I sympathize with them. It means I'd rather win by not walking into their traps.

 

 

Liberals, over the last 6 years, have done more to bankrupt America than fighting Osama Bin Laden could have ever done.  Liberalism is what's wrong with America.