@enoch,

neo-conservatives
I've said in a couple other threads if I was American I'd have(very sadly mind you) voted for Hillary. Not sure, but that should really lay the neo-con thing to bed right there. Doesn't mean I won't agree with them if they notice the sky looks rather blue...

the MCA of 2006 and the NDAA of 2012
I don't base or form my morality around American law, so when and how it's deemed lawful or not for an American president to order something doesn't change my opinion one inch on whether the act is good or bad. Sure, it deducts a lot of points when a President breaks laws so that factors in, but if it's legal for a president to shoot babies we're all still gonna call it immoral anyways, right?

you find that it is the region,the actual soil that a person is on that makes the difference between legal prosecution..and assassination.
Between act of war, or peace time legal prosecution with proper due process.

this is EXACTLY what happened with afghanistan in regards to osama bin laden.
and BOTH times,the US state department could not provide conclusive evidence that either bin laden,or awlaki had actually perpetrated a terrorist act.

Sorry, but regarding Bin Laden that's a lie. The US state department held a trial and convicted Bin Laden already back in the 90s. The Taliban refused to extradite him then, and demanded they be shown evidence. They were shown the evidence and declared that they saw nothing unIslamic in his actions. Clinton spent his entire presidency back and forth with them, even getting a unanimous order from the UN security council demanding Bin Laden's extradition.

Smugly claiming that the US refused to provide any evidence to the Taliban because they were being bullies is ignoring reality. after spending several years getting jerked around by the Taliban claiming each new act of war launched from their territory wasn't their fault nor bin Laden's fault left a less patient president after 9/11...

now,is hannity guilty of incitement?
should he be held accountable for those shot dead?
by YOUR logic,yes..yes he should.
Can't say I'm very familiar with Hannity because I avoid Fox news at all costs.
Did he praise the killings afterwards and declare the shooter a hero like Anwar?
Did he council before hand in his books that killing those people was moral or just or religiously blessed like Anwar did?
Did he personally meet with and council/mentor the shooter before hand at some point as well, like Anwar did?

I have to ask just so we really are comparing apples to apples and all. If the answers are yes(and from Fox I suppose I can't completely rule that out just out of hand), then yeah, he's as guilty as Anwar.

now what if hannity had taken off to find refuge in yemen?
do we send a drone?

If he goes to Yemen we just laugh at our good fortune that he decided to kill himself for us.

To your point, if he finds a similar independent state to continue promoting and coordinating attacks as part of an effective terrorist unit killing new civilians every week then yes, bombs away.

Now if either he or Anwar remained in the US you arrest them and follow all due process. Oh, and to again shake the neo-con cloud you don't get to torture them by calling it enhanced interrogation, it's still a war crime and you should lock yourself up in a cell next door.

My whole thing is that setting up a state within a state and waging war shouldn't just be a get out of jail free card under international law. Either the 'host' state is responsible for the actions or it is not. If responsible, then like in Afghanistan it initiated the war by launching the first attacks. If not responsible, then it's declared the state within a state to be sovereign, and other states should be able to launch a war against the parasitic state, as has been happening with Obama's drones in tribal Pakistan.

Trying split up addressing your points and enoch's here, forgive me if things bleed over between a bit.

Large terrorist networks like Al Qaida were and still are using your definitions against your country. They operated with impunity and effectively as their own autonomous state within the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The question is whether acts of war launched from that region then are classed as an act of the Afghan or Pakistani state. If they are, then Afghanistan and Pakistan are to be held to account as states launching the act of war. If they are not, then they have for intents and purposes yielded the sovereignty of that territory to a new independent state waging it's own independent war.

The jihadists are trying to hard to live in an international loophole where they are operating with the autonomy of a state right up until another nation state wants to wage war back against them and then suddenly they are just citizens of the larger state they are technically within the borders of.

When the Bush admin pushed back hard, the Afghanistan government refused(more on this in my reply to Enoch) while the Pakistani government extremely begrudgingly agreed to at least pretend they weren't friendly with them in back channels anymore. Thus act of war met with war in Afghanistan, and yes, I would insist a war that Afghanistan initiated and NOT GW.

As for Saudi Arabia, they are more responsible for Jihadi ideology and funding than any other state, and yes the west largely has ignored it so long as they sold their oil and then used the money to buy back top of the line American made military hardware. I have to say I think it's a bit shortsighted to have made Saudi Arabia number 3 on the global military budget charts... You won't find my hypocritically trying to defend them, they are the ones sending most of the money into Pakistan's mountains to build the madrasa's that don't seem to teach anything after how to fire and assemble your AK.

Reports are today that we've threatened military action with China over their sand islands (they replied "unless Washington plans to wage a large-scale war in the South China Sea, any other approaches to prevent Chinese access to the islands will be foolish. Tillerson had better bone up on nuclear power strategies if he wants to force a big nuclear power to withdraw from its own territories, If Trump's diplomatic team shapes future Sino-US ties as it is doing now, the two sides had better prepare for a military clash."), Iran, and ....wait for it....Mexico.
The AP reports to have read the transcript of a phone conversation between Presidents Nieto and Trump where Trump threatened "You've got a bunch of bad hombres down there. You aren't doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn't, so I might just send them down to take care of it."
So, in short order we're poised to start 3 new wars, one with a nuclear super power, one in the middle east, and one on our southern border.
And alienated Australia.

Seems like a lot more than pissing in the soup already, he's flavoring it with broken glass and jagged metal Krusty O's.

For all I know, the Syrian secessionists (if that's what the original local revolutionists should be called) are all gone and the fighters of today are nearly all foreign invaders

Given that both the government and ISIS armies both specifically targeted them first they likely are all gone. If you go back to Al Jazeera's coverage of the early Russian offensives, their airstrikes and attacks were ignoring the ISIS held territory and only hitting the moderate/legitimate rebels. Similarly, pretty much all reports of the ISIS foreign fighters coming in were that they never pretended to support the rebels, but merely replaced them demanding obedience or death.

@radx

The foreign element is fighting both sides of the war. The strongest fighting force on the 'rebel' side is ISIS and the strongest fighting force overall is the Russians fighting for Assad. If foreign support makes the rebels illegitimate doesn't it do the same for Assad?

Buckle up Buckaroo ... we are entering unchartered territory. As much as I don't want to think it, I don't see it being any kind of pretty ...

To me, they were 100% acceptable, and *almost* entirely out of uncanny valley territory.

Two possible sources for my tolerance are lots of time spent playing video games, and a highly introverted nature. Would be interesting to see survey results to see if there is any positive correlation between those or other factors and being generally easier to impress / satisfy with CG movie effects.

From now on, whenever we come across undefined territories on a map they can just print this on the space ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. It would be awesome.

This scene chilled me perhaps more than most any other scene... aside from perhaps later in the episode involving Dolores which goes a bit into spoiler territory so I won't cover it... but *promote the awesome view of scene.

If they were really separated populations, that might be OK (immigrating to the Jewish held territories), but they weren't. The lived in the same areas for the most part, they just didn't intermingle so much socially (although WAY more than they do today).....but expansionist settlements were and are a major sticking point to resolving the conflict, so even if there was a Jewish territory to migrate to, they wouldn't stay in it, and that's a major problem. The governing body of the area didn't want them, and the immigrants armed themselves and fought that government (and beat it senseless), to me, invaders. Your feelings may differ, I get it, I think we understand each other and disagree...and that's fine.

I don't think the US was as closed as you imply (but certainly not open to everyone), but it was difficult and expensive to get here, so practically it wasn't an option for most, agreed.

Perhaps the Arab League's intent was truly expansion into Palestine, at least they were 'invited' by the government of the territory! ;-) I agree, their lack of cohesion doomed them before they started, and should be a national shame to all involved.

YIKES! OK, I'll just say that I, in no way, support Daesh or any of their actions, not almost, not nearly, just not. I can sympathize with a few of their complaints, but that's as far as it goes. The Syrian resistance is in no way tied to Daesh, as you mentioned they are fighting each other. I don't get how you go from support of the resistance to 'near yes' to supporting Daesh, especially if you support the Syrian resistance. Huh?

@newtboy

you said:
Call it what you will. To me, massive illegal immigration with the goal of territorial control is invasion...no matter why they invaded. Invaders always have a reason.
Hence my making the distinction between Arab and Jewish controlled Palestine. Officially the British were still ruling over Palestine, but in most practical ways, Palestine was already divided before the mass immigration started. There was essentially Jewish Palestine and Arab Palestine, and the normal conflicts between close neighbours with different religion were already significant before the illegal immigration. Of all the places for Jewish Europeans to flee to, the land already in the possession and control of welcoming Jewish Palestinians hardly stinks of invasion to me.

Sorry, I know I tried to refocus on what they should have done and immediately leapt off the rails myself.

You said:
should have fought the Nazis, not the mostly blameless (for the atrocities) Palestinians
A majority of them that made it into Britain and America did just that. In fact, so many fought against the Nazis that when the civil war in Palestine came to a head and WW2 veteran Jewish soldiers started showing up it's counted part of the Arab narrative as 'western' support and part of the unfair military advantage that made Israel the mighty power and the Arab league army the underdogs.

You said:
The U.S. was open...if they could get here.
No, nothing was open. As pictures of the camps spread, doors started opening but that was very much after the fact. Leading up to and during WW2 immigration numbers were very restricted to jewish people. There simply was absolutely no legal immigration option for thousands and thousands of Jewish Europeans.

You said:
neighbors and allies try to secure their borders that are being crossed by invaders
You misunderstand my statement on the Arab League member's intentions. They had NO intention of defending their neighbouring Arab Palestinian's land. Sure, publicly they declared a joint effort to liberate Palestine. Each member nation though was stating that as code for liberate a portion of Palestine by making it a part of themselves. Israel was able to take the best equipped and trained Jordanian army out of the battle without a single shot fired by agreeing with them to simply abandon the portion of Palestine that Jordan proceeded to make a part of itself. The other Arab states made similar bids militarily, refusing to co-ordinate their assaults because each wanted to declare the ground gained their own. As they each rushed their offensives and attacked individually Israel had the time to plant 100% of their forces in the path of each of them.

You asked:
Should I think you call Turkey an invader of Daesh, and you a supporter of Daesh?
In the sense that you are asking, it's a near yes. The original Syrian resistance is a group I really do support, and the Kurdish fighters have largely been on their same side and I support their efforts there as well. Daesh was much more interested in killing the 'legitimate' resistance than Assad and Putin's forces. Similarly, the Russians have made it a firm practice to exclusively attack the 'legitimate' resistance and doing their best to largely not bother attacking Daesh unless forced to. The main reason being that once Daesh is all that's left, the scorched earth fix becomes all the more easily justified, and the actual rebels pose a much more real and legitimate alternative to Assad's government than Daesh.

Call it what you will. To me, massive illegal immigration with the goal of territorial control is invasion...no matter why they invaded. Invaders always have a reason.

The Jewish population didn't want to be mixed, nor did the Arabs by then from my readings, so there was no chance of peaceful coexistence.

Wait...what?! So...after the Nazis were gone it was too late to go home?!? How do you figure? Many if not most of them were still in Europe then.
They didn't need a promise, they needed to return to their properties, then demand reparations. They weren't promised anything by Palestine either....right?

They should have said that when the Nazis showed up, not after they were defeated...and should have fought the Nazis, not the mostly blameless (for the atrocities) Palestinians.

Again, civil wars are between native populations, not immigrants. Immigrants fighting natives is called invasion. Period.

HA!!!!! So, when neighbors and allies try to secure their borders that are being crossed by invaders, you call THEM invaders, but not the immigrant army. WTF, man?

EDIT: Should I think you call Turkey an invader of Daesh, and you a supporter of Daesh? They were in the same boat as the Jews, being ostracized and destroyed around the globe, until they came together in an area where a small portion of the natives gave them support and the majorities ignored their rise to power, they grasped territories and power, formed their separate nation, and since then have simply 'defended' themselves from the aggressive natives....right? Um....no.

No...far from the most open place, Palestine was openly hostile to them, but incapable of stopping the invasion. The U.S. was open...if they could get here. There was no separate Jewish Palestine then. I have sympathy for the European Jews until the day they tried to become a separate nation by force. Since that day, they've been the aggressive invaders doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to them without the gas chambers.

Perhaps you don't know that >90% of rockets are fired at expansionist settlements in Palestine, not Israel, met with exponentially more force against civilians. (And before you balk, there's no such thing as an Israeli civilian, they are all, 100%, military....by law).

Neighbors and allies fighting invaders of their allies are absolutely not more at fault than the invaders for the continuing tragedy...not that I support their rhetoric or actions.
The single cause of the conflict is foreign invaders taking territory by force and constant expansion ever since. Their continuing inhumanity towards the natives is another topic, morality.

Agreed, that was an exercise doomed to failure at the outset. Good call.
Well, only a death sentence for about 6 years of that, to pick a nit...but point taken. I don't have a good answer to that, perhaps Russia? I don't think they should have just waited to be killed, which was likely for those that stayed in Germany, and later most of Europe. That only goes for until 1945 though, after the war, they had little to flee from, and many good reasons to stay in Europe, specifically Germany, where they had a great case to make for a large industrialized territory in Europe as reparations. That's what I wish had been the outcome, and where I believe Israel belongs. IMO, it would probably have been better for everyone in both the short and long term.
I admit that perhaps invading Palestine slowly was their best viable option before the war ended.....I just think it's helpful to be perfectly honest that that's what happened and not play some game about it and pretend they hold the moral high ground on that part of the issue. There's plenty of atrocities to blame on the Palestinian response, but also empathy for a displaced and, today, a decimated people still suffering horrifically, mostly for 'sins' of their grandfather's, namely the sin of fighting invaders stubbornly.

No, I did not know that...but it further supports my point that Palestine was the wrong place for them to go. If the locals were already doing their utmost legally to halt the invasion in the 30's, it was clear the immigrants were not welcome...except by the 11%. My Texas-California comparison stands, and the theory they were trying to 'escape' the anti-Jewish sentiment of Europe also evaporates if it existed in Palestine too, more so if it existed there before the Nazis began their war against the Jews, which you seem to indicate it did.
Edit: they were right to be worried. How about a settlement where Israel pays Palestine for the stolen territory now?
It makes sense that they would do that...and again you're wrong about the immigration numbers, they were rising precipitously in the 20's and 30's. I would not be surprised to find that this set of rules was in response to the massive immigration already occurring, or that it only applied to immigrants. That would be perfectly reasonable, and is the case today in many countries....in fact, isn't that the case in Israel today, but reversed? The Israeli treatment of the Palestinians has consistently been exponentially worse than the treatment they receive from Palestinians. As I understand it, non Jewish people can't vote in Israel, among many other rights lost.
Thank you for coming around to the fact that they were immigrants, not refugees. It's an important distinction....not that any nation is REQUIRED to accept refugees, but none of them accept uncontrolled massive illegal immigration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)
I admit I was wrong about the 8% figure, I got the columns crossed, recalculating, it was about 11% in 22, 17% in 31, and 32% in 47. That still sounds like a pretty huge influx by my standards, almost tripling the per capita population in 25 years (and more than tripling the actual population) compared to others in the region, mostly by imigration.

You said they stood along side the Nazis " upon the UN mandating a two state solution to the whole mess" (I think you've edited what you originally stated, that they then stood along side the Nazis, and clarified what you meant, that the leaders that turned down the 47 proposal had stood with the Nazis in the past, which I don't disagree with...too bad I erased the quotation for space). The U.N. mandated a two state solution in 74...in 47, they 'mandated' a 3 state solution that took massive territories from the Palestinians and handed it to Jewish immigrants, it turns out the Palestinians should have accepted because they've lost far more since then, but it sounded terrible at the time.

What points? Are these universal points? Can I redeem them for trips to the store by the universe...it owes me some milk.

In 48, when the illegal immigrants became land thieving invaders, the U.N.partition plan was to split the territory 3 ways, and for the U.N. to control Jerusalem. It would be like the U.N. agreeing today with illegal Mexicans in Texas and California that the southern 1/2 of all border states was now a new country because they are now a majority in many areas, with the U.N. taking control of the LA basin....we might say "no thanks" like the Palestinians did...at least I hope so.

The 37 British plan for Partition came before 47.
WIKI-The first proposal for the creation of Jewish and Arab states in the British Mandate of Palestine was made in the Peel Commission report of 1937, with the Mandate continuing to cover only a small area containing Jerusalem. The recommended partition proposal was rejected by the Arab community of Palestine,[8][9] and was accepted by most of the Jewish leadership.

You said they stood with the Nazis when the two state solution was proposed...which was actually 74, but I'll give you leeway and say you meant 47, which is still ridiculous, the Nazis were long gone in 47.

They didn't seize it as payback for the holocaust, but many allies went along, seemingly out of guilt for not stopping it sooner (a valid complaint about the US, but no reason to help take Palestinian territory and hand it away).

Yes, there was Jewish hatred in Europe before the Nazis, that's one reason why they were able to grab so much power, they had a ready made scape goat. Your point?

No, not every Jew in Palestine was a Zionist, but enough of the 11% were that they tripled their presence in 25 years....and far more importantly, today it's near 100%, and they are violent, expansionist, ruthlessly inhuman, and zealous.

I refuse to call it a civil war when one side was made nearly completely of immigrants....that's called an invasion.

I do agree, the inability to assimilate is not 100% the immigrants fault, but it is 100% their responsibility. Refugees, that are not expected to stay, so not expected to assimilate, are kept in camps. These people did not go to camps, so they were, at best, illegal immigrants, and many were coming with the goal of stealing inhabited territory for their own, which makes them invaders. The VAST majority of them came after the war ended, so could not be war refugees. During the war, Jews had an incredibly hard time traveling in Europe.

The few actual refugees there that the axis created were absorbable by the Palestinians. It's their multitudinous militant expansionist friends that continue to immigrate there to this day that are the problem, IMO. I'll continue to call them violent invaders, you've said nothing to convince me otherwise.

Some refugees arrived during the war, but not that many. Before that, Jews were about 8%of the population, so barely "significant".
Invaders came in mass soon afterwards, ignoring local laws and wishes, causing major problems, they didn't assimilate, they grabbed land, then power from the natives, and ended the peaceful coexistence that had lasted centuries before they invaded. The Nazis were long gone when they did this in about 1948, and not a factor at all then, and certainly not in 1974 when the U.N. suggested the two state solution (as you suggest), which might have worked if not for Israel's insistence on not moving or stopping expansionist "settlers" (read invaders) in Palestinian territory and supporting them with the military, and has been supported by Palestinians since the mid 70's (and publicly by their 'leaders' since 82), while Israel and the U.S. veto to this day, (and get upset when it's even mentioned internationally).

When you steal the land and push the locals out, it's not a surprise that their allies and neighbors come to their defense, I hope ours would, and I'm sure the European Jews wish their neighbors had.

It was an invasion by European Jewish people after the war was over (not refugees) with militarily superior allies that helped them and sold/gave them vastly superior weaponry.

Talk about revisionist history BS.

I continue to think them violent invaders, and horrifically racist genocidal ones at that.

Edit: It's anti-Zionist hate mongering, btw. The religion has nothing to do with it.