Edward Snowden was a BOB

[dexeron]

[Samurai]

Hey, hey, hey. The Middle East might be largely our fault, but there were several European powers involved in screwing up Africa!

[dexeron]

Well, I figured: while we're oversimplifying everything, let's go whole hog! :)

[Phantomgrift]

I'm really curious where Desp got his "Sociopaths work on Wall Street" statistic.

And no Desp, Dex didn't "cover" anything. Desp dismissed the works of an accredited authority on the subject, and dwindled it down to "Arabs are pissed because of Colonialism".

At least he got the "oversimplification" part right.

Sociopaths usually don't tend to last long in major corporations. Now, there is indeed a trend for anti-social disorder sufferers to do well in CEO style settings, wherein they will engage in back-stabbing, self-fulfilling roles to service themselves... They just do it in a corporate environment instead of a physical blood-in-the-street environment. But that doesn't automatically mean that Wall Street or any other business venture is full of potential psychopaths.

Of course, it's all the West's fault. I mean, the long-standing leadership of places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and the like had nothing to do with it whatsoever. They were completely taken in by the smooth-tongued lies of the Great Satans who came to them in the dead of night to rape their countries and plow their women for oil...

[Phantomgrift]

Also, before we get to far into the weeds of "OMG! Colonialism destroyed the Middle East and it's all our fault!", you still have to contend with the cultural aspects of a society that creates headlines like this:

http://nytimes.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
5 Jul 2013
The New York Times
By ROD NORDLAND and HABIB ZAHORI
Bomb Blasts Kill 6 Children In Afghanistan

Little girls killed by a IED set up alongside a well, specifically designed to target them.
Why? Because OH FUCK! Girls Getting An Education! FUCK THAT NOISE!

And a female police officer gunned down in a drive-by assassination for daring to do something with her life.
This is not a fundamental problem of "The Terrorists would have never attacked us if not for Western meddling".
This is a direct representation of a culture that for every person trying to progress their country forward, has three people behind him, stubbornly trying to drag them kicking and screaming back into the Dark Ages. It is a fundamental flaw hard-wired into their culture that most Americans can't even fully fathom. Hell, the only reason I even know what I do is because I was required to learn about it per my duties and job requirements. Prior to that, I only had the base understanding that comes from reading things like National Geographic.

Spending time with the people on both sides while in Guantanamo did wonders for me.
There were the Middle-Eastern linguists I worked with. People that had fled their home-countries because of fucktards like the detainees. People who couldn't live in their homelands because they dared to think differently. They were cool as shit... (And incidentally, threw the best damn cookouts on the beach every weekend. Fucking shit was awesome.) And the detainees? Backward-minded, annoying little shits that hated the West, but also hated their own countrymen who dared to deviate from the strictest and most absurd twistings of Koranic law they'd dreamed up and determined to be "Just So."

So to witness that firsthand, and then see guys like Dex or Desp, sitting atop their intellectual ivory tower, about how it all boils down to the evils of Western influence? It would be laughable if it wasn't so damn sad.

Hell, I've been to Bahrain, I've been to Dubai, I've seen these places and the differences that separate the people there. What's Desp seen? A bunch of novel-minded writings proclaiming how great things would be if we just went back to a more simplistic and anarchistic society.

Ha.

Desp, you speak of how unruly elements in your perfect dream society wouldn't function.
Would you care for me to give you a history of why guerrilla tactics are so effective as a long-term war of attrition versus full military assault?
The idea is not to overthrow the current regime, it's end-goal is to demoralize, harass and demotivate the target until they decide to either over-react in a way that the people would find appalling, or to simply pack it in and move on to someplace less costly in terms of lives and equipment.

The two main reasons the U.S. even succeeded on a front in Iraq is because one, we did go the full-hammer method and systematically destroyed the Taliban. The other reason is because the Iraqi people got tired of insurgents who were willing to blow up hundreds of their own countrymen, just to get at a few "legitimate' targets.... Or in the case of the news reports above, they were tired of dealing with people who would resort to killing women and children for their "cause". So they begin to work against the insurgents as well.

But guerrilla campaigns are frightfully effective for a handful of weaker forces in the face of a ruling regime.

But what would I know, I'm not an noble and enlightened liberal-hearted hippie like you and Dex.

[Despanan]

[dexeron]

[Phantomgrift]

No Dex, it's because I don't have the time to sit here and draft up a complete history of the Middle East.

And Desp, you're still missing one of the fundamental flaws in your argument.
There are those in the Middle East who want to see their countries succeed without the influence of the West. This is fine, this is a normal response to decades of colonialism. The ones that I'm referencing? The ones who murder women and children for the sake of trying to learn? This is not a factor of anti-western sentiment. It's a critical factor of extremism in the face of their religious views and how it affects their society.

That's the part I think you tend to overlook and/or ignore. Either that or you really are not aware of how deeply ingrained into Middle Eastern society their religious culture is that has nothing to do with Western society at all. In short, yes, for every enlightened and disgruntled member of Middle Eastern culture that dislikes the West, there are indeed those who are, for all intents and purposes, backwards heathens.

In my time at GTMO, I encountered members of the Taliban who were actively believers in people using voodoo against them, and our biggest gripe was from the guys who wanted us Americans to use our magic weather controlling powers to get rid of the storms that had knocked out their reception to prevent them from watching the World Cup.

Forgive me if I don't think that they all have unmitigated rage against the West because of old feelings of butt-hurt from Colonialism.
Forgive me if I think that some of them really are backwards nomads.

Also, Dex... Any time I call you something, I'm being a facetious jackass.

[Phantomgrift]

Oh yeah, Desp... I would engage in guerrilla warfare against you because I'm not exactly cool with your idea of governorship and would see any type of sweeping change of our current institution as the critical lynchpin for saying "Fuck it" to doing anything other than what I felt would protect me and my own.

Considering the population of the U.S., I get the feeling that I'm not the only one in America that shares this sentiment.

[Agent]

its not the first time youve said you wanted to kill him phant