@newtboy,

No, it's about law. Warren Jeffries people did all that, on a smaller scale. They weren't their own country, even though they got away with it for decades. Law.

Forgive my lack of familiarity with him, but your telling me he (on a smaller scale than Texas), stopped paying taxes, and instead collecting them. Started up his own legal and justice system. He created his own borders within which the police would not dare set foot because it would be a death sentence for them. And after he'd done all this the US military itself failed to remove him as well?

Or are you meaning not just scale, but severity and all the other rather meaningful extremes of sovereignty that the Taliban and Al Qaida achieved? It's the same then in the sense that me punching you is violent just me killing ten people is violent, but in another sense they are nothing alike...

No, but they couldn't indiscriminately bomb Houston and any large gatherings either....not even if Spencer might be there. The first American civilian they kill will start a war...a real, legitimate war.

Your not embracing the analogy. Spencer's terrorists are still killing American civilians every week, outside of Texas borders. The American military is just corrupt enough that as long as its democrats/republicans dying,(whomever we choose to not be in power) they let it slide because it shows the need for the military to 'protect' the country.

You need to take a harder look at Pakistani politics to see just how powerful Al Qaida and the Taliban's control over the tribal areas has been.

More over, all of the above definitions of state within a state violence and jihad doesn't require war as the response to acts of war. To invade Afghanistan to prevent another 9/11 is dubious at best. Even the Kissinger's of the world wouldn't count the value of that trade off, losing a couple thousand Americans to an attack each decade or so is 'acceptable' loses.
Call it the price of freedom and carry on. The real trick was that if the Taliban and Al Qaida were so tight with Pakistan's military and intelligence services, how concerned should America be that the Pakistani proxies in their tribal regions and Afghanistan are so keen to target Americans. That lead directly to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal being a big enough concern with that pairing that maybe it was time to tell Pakistan they had to end their little dance with terrorists hitting Americans and they had better make a choice who they are going to side with in the Jihad that was already being waged for 2 decades.

@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.

@newtboy
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.

I guess I just don't agree on calling it an invasion from the outset. European Jews had the doors closed to them everywhere the world over, illegal immigration or staying in what would become Nazi occupied Europe were their only options. Palestine was hands down the most attractive option, despite a hostile Arab Palestinian population. The main reason being that the Jewish Palestinian minority were basically a state within a state. The Arab and Jewish populations had both sufficiently failed to integrate already that they were operating as largely segregated and autonomous regions. Thus, Jewish Palestine was both reasonably close to Europe, and very much welcoming to the people leaving. I don't believe that's fair to be marked as an invasion from the outset. I must insist that if we get to insist all actors conduct themselves in their own self interest, that the Jewish immigration from Europe to Palestine could have been entirely peaceful, and if the Arab population had taken a live and let live approach things could have gone swimmingly. Of course humans aren't ideal or moral very often, so both sides fought and tensions arose. By the time WW2 was over it was too late, the dice were cast and another Jewish exodus from Palestine back to Germany wasn't gonna work. Neither were the Jewish people promised a thing from Germany and it would all be on a hope and a prayer. They had a better shot making their own future by standing their ground in Jewish Palestine. Truth be told, I really can't blame the Jewish side for saying enough is enough and we're gonna stand and fight. Neither can I blame the Arab Palestinian's over much as their biggest fight was really just for independence from the British. With the British gone, both the Jewish and Arab residents fought it out over who would control what, which is sadly fairly natural.

The point I DO lay blame is when the civil war took a pause and Israel declared independence on the UN mandated borders. The Arab world(not the Arab Palestinians) jointly refused to accept any Jewish portion of Palestine and swore to drive them into the sea. Worse, they vehemently called for the retreat of all Arab palestinians from the region to make it easier to clear the country out. Of course, they failed to win that fight and it's been a source of great shame and horror ever since. They didn't fail for lack of strength in arms or numbers, but because each neighbouring Arab state cared not a whit for restoring Palestine to the Arab Palestinians but instead each sought to seize a portion of it for themselves, as invaders. Luckily for Israel they exploited those divisions to come out the other side.

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.

But that is all the more the tragedy, as that is very clearly the way the Israeli's started out. They remained peaceful and fled as nation after nation tried to destroy them. The most open place to them in the time probably was Jewish Palestine. For all the atrocities to blame on Israel, I also have empathy for the plight they started from. Even their whole history through today is a tight rope walk were losing any single one of the wars from then till now would have seen the end of Israel as state.

As much blame as one can put on Israel for meeting homemade rockets with professional air strikes, they aren't the only ones to be blaming. Yes, more empathy is needed for the Palestinians than blame. But their are plenty of states, mostly Syria and Iran using the Palestinians as proxies and pawns. So many Arab entities WANT to see dead Palestinians in the news because it plays well for them. I really insist they get as much or more heat than Israel for the tragedy unfolding.

Wall of text warning. No tl;dr. Learn to read dammit (see what I did there?).

@quantumushroom

Unusual post from you there qm. But again you miss the point (what did you expect?).

First off, religion necessarily has an effect on society otherwise no one would care if you adhered or not (i.e. there would be no religious wars, no religious-based hatred etc.). The problem is not that religion enhances your sense of well-being, it's that as a consequence (or side effect if you will) you close yourself off from people of a different religion and from contrary opinions on many different matters: you trade freedom of thought for psychological safety and by doing that you deserve neither. Now, if you're a "religious scientist" type then your either not really religious or not really a scientist. Compartmentalization can only get you so far.

Second, wtf does any of this has to do with liberalism? Your tangent does not intersect my argument at any point. I bet you can't derive for shit. Do you even know what derivation is?

Third, atheism is neutral. Atheism is to theism as amoralism is to moralism. The antonym to moral is not amoral but immoral. In the same way, the antonym to theism is non-theism. A non-theist can be religious, he simply does not believe in a deity or deities. Atheism was a term invented by theists to vilify non-theist and polytheists. It has been adopted by non-religious people like "nigger" has been adopted by African-Americans, as a way of empowerment. It encompasses many views, most of them non-religious. It does not mean atheists cannot suffer from the same delusions as religious people, only that they are less likely because by identifying and refusing to accept the kind of bad thinking that goes on in religious circles, they have inoculated themselves to a point.

Fourth, on the contrary one could say that there have never been a religion without a state. Every religion needs a vector of power to affirm its authority and convert others. The Jews in Pharaonic Egypt formed a state within a state, electing their own leaders and applying the laws of Abraham to their brethren, much like Muslims try to do in western countries by following sharia law and even trying to make it official. I would go so far as to say that religion is the prototype of the state. Look at Buddhism. Not a year after the Buddha died and already sects formed and tried to control the movement he started. The conflicts may not have been overtly violent, but they were power struggles and as such quite far from the detachment from worldly matters taught by the Buddha. All prophets are dictators. Their intentions may be good, but it will always turn sour when they're gone as they, and not their god or teachings, are really what unify their followers. The continuation depends not on the person or the teachings but on the institutions that they or their successors build, just like a state. You could see what I mean if you had read the Leviathan of Hobbes (that's not what he says, but the parallels he makes and his insistence that religion is necessary for the state's well-being goes in this direction). This, to me, argues for anarchism but of course with people like quantumushroom - not to mention the potential for greed and cruelty still in all of us - I would have to say we are not ripe for it just yet. It may well be that a great part of the population will need to be forced to become atheists just to live among an atheist society comfortably, like atheists were once forced to recant their views in religious societies. While it would mean some psychological violence, as long as we stay in a democratic state it would not do more damage than what religion does now and I believe it would benefit humankind in the long run.

@Gallowflak

Nowhere did I say atheists were more rational than the religious. In fact, most rationalists (like Descartes) are religious for various reasons, one which I will explore below. I said that atheists are more reasonable and detached in their understanding of the world. Now, while "reasonable" comes from "reason" it does not mean here that a reasonable person uses more reason than another. It means that a person is more sensible than another. For example, there are no empirically verifiable evidence of a god or gods. Any religious person not mentally ill will agree. They may argue for the acceptance of anecdotal evidence or of natural phenomena as "acts of God", but just saying something doesn't make it so and anecdotal evidence is not verifiable/repeatable by a third-party and thus of very little value. So there doesn't seem to be any evidence for deities, even Pascal admitted that fact in the frickin 17th century, that's why he had to make a wager with non-believers: he tried to say that by betting on an infinite reward you cannot lose (many think that Pascal says the odds are infinite, but that would be empirical. Pascal says that since god is presumably infinite, and that you presumably gain this infinity when you die, you should take the bet since by doing so you lose nothing in this life. Of course the last part I think is false, also the dying part. Only the "god is infinite" has any kind of weight and it is very light). Of course he didn't really understand mathematical infinity and thus didn't realize that doing so meant you only had an infinitesimal chance of winning in return.

Digression aside, this means that the natural state of a rational being would be non-theistic. Only non-rational belief (based on logical fallacies or the sentiment of faith) or logical arguments based on non-empirical premises can lead to the existence of a god as part of one's thinking. Thus, while not necessarily non-rational, religious thinking most of the time is. In other cases, when dubious premises are used, we would say that the conclusions are not reasonable, meaning that they do not agree with our raw, unfiltered experiences of the world. This is exactly why many religious persons and theists resort to rationalism, as it lets them bypass primary experience in order to define god a priori as the creator of our experiences by some logical argument with dubious premises. Of course this comes from an empiric viewpoint, but then again rationalists don't have a monopoly on reason even though they let us empiricists have a monopoly on experience: that's where the Kantians enter, but that's a story for another time I'm afraid.

>> ^cracanata:
why is this still a topic?

Because the state-within-a-state that Ahmadinejad and Khameini have built in Iran is a symptom of the same sort of thing. Basiji smashing cars and shops aren't so different from the NSDAP Sturmabteilung smashing jewish shops during the Kristallnacht.

But at least this time they don't have popular support.

>> ^Yehoshua:
First pull out, bulldoze the checkpoints and the walls, open the borders, remove all of the settlements, release all of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, call off any pending assassinations, restore the borders to where they were in '67, then peace?

That would be a good start but this will never be initiated by the Israelis or the Palestinians, the only real power broker that could bring both parties to the table and diplomatic relations would be the US and the EU, without taking the sides of either party.

The US is too pro-Israel and too politically stubborn to stand up to Israel even though bringing this to a finality would resolve alot of middle eastern hostility to America. The Arabs see Israeli pilots in American planes dropping American bombs (even though most GCC states buy arms wholesale from the US themselves a fact under reported in local arab media).

The US should bring forward GCC states to the table as well and enforce their acceptance of Israel as a state. The sheer idiocy imposed in the Middle East against Israel is retarded Kindergarten stuff, simply used to divert public attention away from their own corrupt governments something especially seen in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

UN forces would be needed to arrange security zones and provide disengagement, neither Israel nor Hamas would accept either as a security component in any shape or form. UN Peace keeping forces could be brought in and provide the same middle man entity as it did in the Balkan conflicts. Jerusalem would be best created as a separate state within a state along the lines of the Vatican to prevent religious tensions between both religious groups as there extremist orthodox Jews and Muslims.

With such imposition attacks would be far more rare as the majority of the population would be accepting of these terms and thus these attacks would gain no political or social traction, an unwilling population who sees no benefit and loss of hope through attacks becomes friendly and would oust terrorist themselves, this is not the case clearly now, as IDF bombs them so they support retaliation. Though it would not guarantee it as too much blood has been split, on both sides. But this is what happens when you let a conflict fester for 60 years.

Am surprised you think that hostile actions could only come from Palestine and not Israel. Israel is not exactly saintly when it comes to being rational in its application of force.

Even within Israel and Jewish communities around the world there is large dissent over IDF actions in Gaza as they have seen this happen time and time again and know that such hostile actions coupled with large civilian deaths (a third of which are children) would only create blow back.

The problem with Israel's arsenal of Nukes is that its a secret and was only discovered when an Israeli brought forth information about it. Your claim later on is false I believe, I don't trust any nation with nukes I do not believe one nation or the other is more sensible when it comes to the application of nuclear weapons.

To say Iran would detonate a nuke is to take that situation and not go into the details of what actually occurred, the IAEA has stated time and time again that Iran has no nuclear weapons programs. Iran as a whole is in economic straits and possess none of the technology to actually create a nuclear weapon. Iran's stance and progression and threats towards those means however is simply a symptom of the hypocritical notion that some nations can be trusted with nuclear technology and not others, not to mention the sudden international attention acquisition of nuclear arms creates. Look at how the US rushed to North Korea to placate it to disarm its nuclear programs. But I digress.

However I know full well that the scenario you and I propose will never see the light of day. Because no one gives a shit really.