neoconservatism - Politics and War Forum

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neoconservatism
Monday, April 25, 2005 5:51 AM on j-body.org
I was watching this show on the CBC (documentary from UK) about how neoconservatism started in America and how the whole islamic extremist front started. It was called The Power of Nightmares and it talks about 2 philosophys that believe that individualism and liberalism are tearing apart our soceity and we can prevent this by making people believe in a myth to unite them, ex. Cold War threat (for americans) or Western influence (for islamics). This documentary was pretty deep and made you think. There are 3 parts, part 2 is going to be on tonight at 10pm on the CBC. But for those who don't get the CBC, heres a link and you read up on the philosophy and the evolution:

The Power of Nightmares

Take a look and tell me what u think...

Re: neoconservatism
Monday, April 25, 2005 6:46 AM on j-body.org
Jacob B wrote:I was watching this show on the CBC (documentary from UK) about how neoconservatism started in America and how the whole islamic extremist front started. It was called The Power of Nightmares and it talks about 2 philosophys that believe that individualism and liberalism are tearing apart our soceity and we can prevent this by making people believe in a myth to unite them, ex. Cold War threat (for americans) or Western influence (for islamics). This documentary was pretty deep and made you think. There are 3 parts, part 2 is going to be on tonight at 10pm on the CBC. But for those who don't get the CBC, heres a link and you read up on the philosophy and the evolution:

The Power of Nightmares

Take a look and tell me what u think...


I like how whoever made that documentary is trying to demonize Conservatives by comparing the rise of it to the rise of radical Islam. First, How many of its own people have a Communist controlled country murdered. Second, How many of its own people has a Democratic Western country murdered? I cant believe you are honestly trying to tell me there was no Cold War threat for Americans.
Re: neoconservatism
Monday, April 25, 2005 8:51 AM on j-body.org
There was a threat, albeit muted. Cold war politics were basically on 2 levels: the grand scheme of lots of fear and not a lot of action, and the stuff that was being carried on just underneath the radar.

Afghanistan was one of those under the radar instances because it wasn't really important strategically, but politically, yes.

The US, Russia, China, Britain, France all had enough nuclear weapons to bloody obliterate everyone else... Everyone had a gun to the other's temples... While it wasn't exactly the most relaxed time, it was secure because one pulling the trigger would hasten the others doing the same.

Now, Neo-conservatism is not all that different from Radical islam because:
1 It demonises another cause
2 It's only linked to it's root cause by tenuous threads.

to wit:
1. Neo-Conservatism has found it's dragon to slay in Radical islam... handy that...
2. Most republicans that have any kind of real attachment to the traditional Republican party note that there is a whole lot of spending and not a lot of fiscal return. Sure, a lot of their cronies are getting rich and richer, but the country's defecit has quadrupled, and the debt keeps inflating... They realise it's only a short matter of time before inflation rears its head... Just like in the 70's.



Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.


Re: neoconservatism
Tuesday, April 26, 2005 2:59 AM on j-body.org
ne·o·con·ser·va·tism also ne·o-con·ser·va·tism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-kn-sûrv-tzm)
n.
An intellectual and political movement in favor of political, economic, and social conservatism that arose in opposition to the perceived liberalism of the 1960s: “The neo-conservatism of the 1980s is a replay of the New Conservatism of the 1950s, which was itself a replay of the New Era philosophy of the 1920s” (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.).



I love they way they actually slant the actual definition of the word.
Re: neoconservatism
Tuesday, April 26, 2005 3:49 AM on j-body.org
Since we're defining terms....

lib·er·al·ism
n.
A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority.

mrgto wrote:I love they way they actually slant the actual definition of the word.

Re: neoconservatism
Tuesday, April 26, 2005 4:19 AM on j-body.org
Re: neoconservatism
Tuesday, April 26, 2005 5:01 AM on j-body.org
NfamousZ24 wrote:I am a Neo Con Nuff Said


That's nice. Here, have a cookie...


Re: neoconservatism
Tuesday, April 26, 2005 5:28 AM on j-body.org
I would but the Cookie Monster says that I shouldn't





Re: neoconservatism
Tuesday, April 26, 2005 6:36 AM on j-body.org
It's ok... Bush wants you to have the cookie... just don't pay for it until he's out of office



Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.


Re: neoconservatism
Tuesday, April 26, 2005 7:14 AM on j-body.org
But I don't want a Cookie that an Illigeal Immigrant cooked





Re: neoconservatism
Tuesday, April 26, 2005 11:40 AM on j-body.org
The threat of the soviet union to the US was there but it wasn't as severe as everyone thought, according to this, after the signing of the nuclear treaty the US and USSR were required to lower their nuclear arsenal supply, but the neoconservatism still believed there was a threat and that the russians were secretly developing weapons and hiding them and also that they developed ways to hide their military from satellites, but CIA said none of this was true. Also the soviet union collapsed because their economy was corrupt and some american pressure.

Re: neoconservatism
Tuesday, April 26, 2005 12:41 PM on j-body.org
But we are to Belive everything that the CIA says They said that Iraq Has WMD's.

I still belived the Had in the past, Maybe not right before the war. We don't know if any was sent to Syria.

I still belive that Saddam wanted to have WMD

And if he wasn't so Stubboned and allowed us free reign to look for them then we wouldn't have doubts.

Plus I am not going to say that their isn't more underlying reasons to take out a country in the middle of the Arab world to make an example out of him.

But I also say he is quilty of supporting Terrorist. I am not saying Al Queda but Hezballah and others that attacked Isreal. So that alone was against our threat eighter you are with us or are you against us.

Hey Libya is getting smarter and so is Syria/Lebanon



Re: neoconservatism
Wednesday, April 27, 2005 8:55 AM on j-body.org
well said ^^^^
Re: neoconservatism
Wednesday, April 27, 2005 11:19 AM on j-body.org
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter...


Goodbye Callisto & Skaði, Hello Ishara:
2022 Kia Stinger GT2 AWD
The only thing every single person from every single walk of life on earth can truly say
they have in common is that their country is run by a bunch of fargin iceholes.
Re: neoconservatism
Wednesday, April 27, 2005 7:42 PM on j-body.org
NfamousZ24 wrote:But we are to Belive everything that the CIA says They said that Iraq Has WMD's.


<a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2004/isg-final-report/">No, they didn't. </a> They put a proviso on the intel they had recieved from British sources, who had recieved it unqualified from Russia. Russian President Putin relayed the same intel, again unqualified (Russia had no assets in Iraq pre-war) to Pres. Bush.

Quote:

I still belived the Had in the past, Maybe not right before the war. We don't know if any was sent to Syria.


<a href="http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/">If none were produced</a>, then it would stand to reason that <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,154574,00.html">none went to Syria</a>

Quote:

I still belive that Saddam wanted to have WMD


TED NUGENT would own WMD's if it were even hinted at in the constitution. There are over 160 countries that want Nuclear capability (yet only one that has the capability that will not create WMDs. HINT HINT)

Quote:

And if he wasn't so Stubboned and allowed us free reign to look for them then we wouldn't have doubts.


60 days pre-invasion, Iraq had allowed unfettered and open access to all facilities, as well as complied with the UN disclosure order, and produced documentation of all it's WMD (CBRN) capabilities.

Quote:

Plus I am not going to say that their isn't more underlying reasons to take out a country in the middle of the Arab world to make an example out of him.


The same reasons hold up in at least a dozen other nations with far less to be gained after successful invasion.

Quote:

But I also say he is quilty of supporting Terrorist. I am not saying Al Queda but Hezballah and others that attacked Isreal. So that alone was against our threat eighter you are with us or are you against us.


Isreal is not the USA... Isreal is hardly guiltless in their dealings with Palestinians... Hezbollah (as a group) has never focused on and attacked Americans, they're strictly against Isreali invasion of Lebanon, and by extraction, the oppression of Palestinians.

Again, what part of Israel's problems mandate a US response? What's next? Chechnya?

Quote:

Hey Libya is getting smarter and so is Syria/Lebanon

Wow... you really don't know sh!t about Syria and Lebanon do you? Lebanese HATE SYRIANS. Think of how you'd like it if Russians invaded your country, let you keep a puppet government, but forced the government to do Moscow's bidding... That's the idea, just substitute Syria for Russia and Lebanon for the USA.

Libya is no longer sponsoring terrorism as a state... Terrorism DOESN'T PAY. Oil pays... Ever notice there was an embargo on Syrian oil (except if you are China... they don't really care about embargos).



Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.


Re: neoconservatism
Thursday, April 28, 2005 4:14 AM on j-body.org
[quote=Keeper of the Light™]One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter...


Freedom fighters usually don't attack civilians.
Re: neoconservatism
Thursday, April 28, 2005 8:40 AM on j-body.org
If crime fighters fight crime... C'mon Keeper... you know the Carlin Joke...

Martyrs for a cause is a better way of saying it.



Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.


Re: neoconservatism
Thursday, April 28, 2005 8:50 AM on j-body.org
Tell that to Custer, GTO


Goodbye Callisto & Skaði, Hello Ishara:
2022 Kia Stinger GT2 AWD
The only thing every single person from every single walk of life on earth can truly say
they have in common is that their country is run by a bunch of fargin iceholes.
Re: neoconservatism
Thursday, April 28, 2005 9:03 AM on j-body.org
the islam extremist are mad that muslims are being brought into a western lifestyle, they blame America now... but before in Egypt (where it started) they thought the problem was the president Sadat so they assinated him thinking that the people would rise up and topple the regime. But the people did not do this, so the extremists figured that the people had become so corrupt and that it was ok to kill them too, so they started killing them more and more to show the people that they should adopt a new lifestyle, but the governments just captured the extremists and put them in jail. Then they were let out to go fight in Afghanistan and they gained their victory.
Re: neoconservatism
Thursday, April 28, 2005 10:24 AM on j-body.org
well being a republican / semi conservative i had to comment.



think of it this way whether Iraq had wmd or not. we the new world (mainly America) are at war with these Muslim extremists.

when two group are at war there has to be a battle ground. wouldn't you rather the battle ground be over there instead of over here. instead of terrorist trying to break down a defensive wall [(security) that democrats think is the best idea] they're trying to take over Iraq. so instead of their main focus being on America's homeland its on Iraq, plus all these Iraqi children are getting to read real history books not ones dictated by Saddam. Women can become doctors. Roosevelt said it be we "America" have a duty to the world being the largest super power. When did liberals stop caring about innocent people outside of the US or same with Canada.



after 9/11 i read the Koran to see what these "Muslims" are all about. Islam is actually a very respectable religion. the actual teaching are respectable but majority of Muslims are wackos. Jihad is a term meaning my struggle. Its the 5th pillar of Islam. my struggle applies to many different things. One main thing is under Jihad a Muslim is supposed to defend their faith. DEFEND their faith. What most people call the Crusades Muslims call Jihad. now anyone who knows about the crusades knows that all 3 Crusades were mainly the Christians "last line of defense" against the widely expanding Muslims. Muslims were conquering ever thing at one point so Christians tried to defend their home lands. It actually started when the Muslims captured about 8 (i believe English officials) Christians and the first crusade started to free them, but then turned into defending land. The 2nd and 3rd crusades were kinda failures compared to the first but from the third we get a famous name Lord Lion Heart. anyways back on topic. Muslims were on the offensive they were not defending even their religion. They were trying to conquer the world. The word jihad is very wrongly used. Even today, America is not at war with Muslims? but majority believe we are. Just like a black person dosn't get a job because he dosn't qualify for it but starts playing a race card. Im just sick of it and for the true Muslims (who actually practice their teachings properly) i feel sorry for you people


wow i kinda got off topic..........

Anyway dont believe the CBC theyre just as bad as MSNBC in America. So biased it make me want to puke


________________________________________________________________

Click My Sig For My Website
Re: neoconservatism
Thursday, April 28, 2005 10:42 AM on j-body.org
Jacob: Egypt was not the genesis of a modern mid-east. Ironically, most of the nations got to that point at about the same pace because of the spoils of the oil industry. Islam wasz never considered to be a radical religion until recently (about the late 60's, certainly by the Munich olympics in 72 IIRC).

Tom:
Extremists are not JUST Islamic. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were Christian, and fundamentalist (racially).

Islam is not the enemy. Religion is not the enemy either.

The enemy is inequity, poverty, hate and stupidity. Conquer those, and you'll lick fundamentalism in the process.

BTW, go back further if you want to find the genesis of the crusades... Christians were purging muslims from Jerusalem.. which is one of their holy cities (IIRC 3rd most holy behind Mecca, and another (it's in Iraq... I'm working.. sue me... )). They were defending their faith, and winning converts in Turkey, northern Africa and eastern Europe and the Balkans.



Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.



Re: neoconservatism
Thursday, April 28, 2005 10:48 AM on j-body.org
I. ORIGIN OF THE CRUSADES

The origin of the Crusades is directly traceable to the moral and political condition of Western Christendom in the eleventh century. At that time Europe was divided into numerous states whose sovereigns were absorbed in tedious and petty territorial disputes while the emperor, in theory the temporal head of Christendom, was wasting his strength in the quarrel over Investitures. The popes alone had maintained a just estimate of Christian unity; they realized to what extent the interests of Europe were threatened by the Byzantine Empire and the Mohammedan tribes, and they alone had a foreign policy whose traditions were formed under Leo IX and Gregory VII. The reform effected in the Church and the papacy through the influence of the monks of Cluny had increased the prestige of the Roman pontiff in the eyes of all Christian nations; hence none but the pope could inaugurate the international movement that culminated in the Crusades. But despite his eminent authority the pope could never have persuaded the Western peoples to arm themselves for the conquest of the Holy Land had not the immemorial relations between Syria and the West favoured his design. Europeans listened to the voice of Urban II because their own inclination and historic traditions impelled them towards the Holy Sepulchre.

From the end of the fifth century there had been no break in their intercourse with the Orient. In the early Christian period colonies of Syrians had introduced the religious ideas, art, and culture of the East into the large cities of Gaul and Italy. The Western Christians in turn journeyed in large numbers to Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, either to visit the Holy Places or to follow the ascetic life among the monks of the Thebaid or Sinai. There is still extant the itinerary of a pilgrimage from Bordeaux to Jerusalem, dated 333; in 385 St. Jerome and St. Paula founded the first Latin monasteries at Bethlehem. Even the Barbarian invasion did not seem to dampen the ardour for pilgrimages to the East. The Itinerary of St. Silvia (Etheria) shows the organization of these expeditions, which were directed by clerics and escorted by armed troops. In the year 600, St. Gregory the Great had a hospice erected in Jerusalem for the accommodation of pilgrims, sent alms to the monks of Mount Sinai ("Vita Gregorii" in "Acta SS.", March 11, 132), and, although the deplorable condition of Eastern Christendom after the Arab invasion rendered this intercourse more difficult, it did not by any means cease.

As early as the eighth century Anglo-Saxons underwent the greatest hardships to visit Jerusalem. The journey of St. Willibald, Bishop of Eichstädt, took seven years (722-29) and furnishes an idea of the varied and severe trials to which pilgrims were subject (Itiner. Latina, 1, 241-283). After their conquest of the West, the Carolingians endeavoured to improve the condition of the Latins settled in the East; in 762 Pepin the Short entered into negotiations with the Caliph of Bagdad. In Rome, on 30 November, 800, the very day on which Leo III invoked the arbitration of Charlemagne, ambassadors from Haroun al-Raschid delivered to the King of the Franks the keys of the Holy Sepulchre, the banner of Jersualem, and some precious relics (Einhard, "Annales", ad an. 800, in "Mon. Germ. Hist.: Script.", I, 187); this was an acknowledgment of the Frankish protectorate over the Christians of Jerusalem. That churches and monasteries were built at Charlemagne's expense is attested by a sort of a census of the monasteries of Jerusalem dated 808 ("Commemoratio de Casis Dei" in "Itiner. Hieros.", I, 209). In 870, at the time of the pilgrimage of Bernard the Monk (Itiner. Hierosol., I, 314), these institutions were still very prosperous, and it has been abundantly proved that alms were sent regularly from the West to the Holy Land. In the tenth century, just when the political and social order of Europe was most troubled, knights, bishops, and abbots, actuated by devotion and a taste for adventure, were wont to visit Jerusalem and pray at the Holy Sepulchre without being molested by the Mohammedans. Suddenly, in 1009, Hakem, the Fatimite Caliph of Egypt, in a fit of madness ordered the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre and all the Christian establishments in Jerusalem. For years thereafter Christians were cruelly persecuted. (See the recital of an eyewitness, Iahja of Antioch, in Schlumberger's "Epopée byzantine", II, 442.) In 1027 the Frankish protectorate was overthrown and replaced by that of the Byzantine emperors, to whose diplomacy was due the reconstruction of the Holy Sepulchre. The Christian quarter was even surrounded by a wall, and some Amalfi merchants, vassals of the Greek emperors, built hospices in Jerusalem for pilgrims, e.g. the Hospital of St. John, cradle of the Order of Hospitallers.

Instead of diminishing, the enthusiasm of Western Christians for the pilgrimage to Jerusalem seemed rather to increase during the eleventh century. Not only princes, bishops, and knights, but even men and women of the humbler classes undertook the holy journey (Radulphus Glaber, IV, vi). Whole armies of pilgrims traversed Europe, and in the valley of the Danube hospices were established where they could replenish their provisions. In 1026 Richard, Abbot of Saint-Vannes, led 700 pilgrims into Palestine at the expense of Richard II, Duke of Normandy. In 1065 over 12,000 Germans who had crossed Europe under the command of Günther, Bishop of Bamberg, while on their way through Palestine had to seek shelter in a ruined fortress, where they defended themselves against a troop of Bedouins (Lambert of Hersfeld, in "Mon. Germ. Hist.: Script.", V, 168). Thus it is evident that at the close of the eleventh century the route to Palestine was familiar enough to Western Christians who looked upon the Holy Sepulchre as the most venerable of relics and were ready to brave any peril in order to visit it. The memory of Charlemagne's protectorate still lived, and a trace of it is to be found in the medieval legend of this emperor's journey to Palestine (Gaston Paris in "Romania", 1880, p. 23).

The rise of the Seljukian Turks, however, compromised the safety of pilgrims and even threatened the independence of the Byzantine Empire and of all Christendom. In 1070 Jerusalem was taken, and in 1091 Diogenes, the Greek emperor, was defeated and made captive at Mantzikert. Asia Minor and all of Syria became the prey of the Turks. Antioch succumbed in 1084, and by 1092 not one of the great metropolitan sees of Asia remained in the possession of the Christians. Although separated from the communion of Rome since the schism of Michael Cærularius (1054), the emperors of Constantinople implored the assistance of the popes; in 1073 letters were exchanged on the subject between Michael VII and Gregory VII. The pope seriously contemplated leading a force of 50,000 men to the East in order to re-establish Christian unity, repulse the Turks, and rescue the Holy Sepulchre. But the idea of the crusade constituted only a part of this magnificent plan. (The letters of Gregory VII are in P.L., CXLVIII, 300, 325, 329, 386; cf. Riant's critical discussion in Archives de l'Orient Latin, I, 56.) The conflict over the Investitures in 1076 compelled the pope to abandon his projects; the Emperors Nicephorus Botaniates and Alexius Comnenus were unfavourable to a religious union with Rome; finally war broke out between the Byzantine Empire and the Normans of the Two Sicilies.

It was Pope Urban II who took up the plans of Gregory VII and gave them more definite shape. A letter from Alexius Comnenus to Robert, Count of Flanders, recorded by the chroniclers, Guibert de Nogent ("Historiens Occidentaux des Croisades", ed. by the Académie des Inscriptions, IV, 13l) and Hugues de Fleury (in "Mon. Germ. Hist.: Script.", IX, 392), seems to imply that the crusade was instigated by the Byzantine emperor, but this has been proved false (Chalandon, Essai sur le règne d'Alexis Comnène, appendix), Alexius having merely sought to enroll five hundred Flemish knights in the imperial army (Anna Comnena, Alexiad., VII, iv). The honour of initiating the crusade has also been attributed to Peter the Hermit, a recluse of Picardy, who, after a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and a vision in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, went to Urban II and was commissioned by him to preach the crusade. However, though eyewitnesses of the crusade mention his preaching, they do not ascribe to him the all-important rôle assigned him later by various chroniclers, e.g. Albert of Aix and especially William of Tyre. (See Hagenmeyer, Peter der Eremite Leipzig, 1879.) The idea of the crusade is chiefly attributed to Pope Urban II (1095), and the motives that actuated him are clearly set forth by his contemporaries: "On beholding the enormous injury that all, clergy or people, brought upon the Christian Faith . . . at the news that the Rumanian provinces had been taken from the Christians by the Turks, moved with compassion and impelled by the love of God, he crossed the mountains and descended into Gaul" (Foucher de Chartres, I, in "Histoire des Crois.", III, 321). Of course it is possible that in order to swell his forces, Alexius Comnenus solicited assistance in the West; however, it was not he but the pope who agitated the great movement which filled the Greeks with anxiety and terror.

from a webpage


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Click My Sig For My Website
Re: neoconservatism
Thursday, April 28, 2005 11:03 AM on j-body.org
Link?



Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.


Re: neoconservatism
Thursday, April 28, 2005 11:03 AM on j-body.org
The Rest of the post?



Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.


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