Orlando Terror Attacks

You may be right going by your username I would bet your knowledge of military affairs is a great deal more in depth than mine, however I would just address this part.

I think most westerners greatly underestimate the shere numbers of people who support ISIS and Al Qaeda. In fact Isaac Cohen gave a great interview about this, he said that because we didn’t intervene in Syria and allowed the Shia regime in Iraq to wholesale slaughter Sunni’s, the Sunni populations of Syria and Iraq overwhelmingly support ISIS, not all even for religious reasons, but because their choice is either be killed by shia deathsquads or join ISIS or Al Nusra, the only game in town.
Now Sunni’s are a minority in Iraq but they are the majority in Syria and make up 90% of the Muslim world.

ISIS have popped up in Libya, Chechnya, Pakistan, Somalia, Nigeria. They are having thousands of new recruits join everyday. All one needs to do is look at Arab twitter after these sorts of attacks and you have Clerics with 5 million twitter followers praising the “glorious actions”.
All our presence does is seemingly make it worse, both through our faults and in large part, through absolutely no fault of our own. We intervene we make everyone hate us, we don’t intervene in Syria the Sunni population hates us. It is a no win.

I think many of these folks support ISIS and AQ for the exact reasons you mentioned. Their current choices are 1) die or 2) join. I don’t doubt there is support, even high #'s/%, for ISIS & AQ, but I think the lack of choices really skews the data. If these same people had a viable 3rd option I’d be surprised if said 3rd option didn’t have a significant if not a majority of support.

I see nothing wrong with this kind of anger. I mean it. I’m fucking mad, too. I completely understand your feelings here.

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Even with the sheer amount of ammo he would have needed to carry? Seems like he had to be ultra fit(he wasn’t).

He was shooting for hours

Yeah, this is the part that I don’t get. People would have had to stand around getting shot for a while. I’ve heard that people thought it was part of the music, at least initially. I’ll be curious to see how many rounds he fired and how long it took.

UGH. I can’t imagine the horror of being in a club with 100+ shot/dead people. This is one of those events where I just have to turn the news off for a few days and spend time with the family to regain some faith in humanity.

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Why Islamists are winning and the West is losing in short:

Muslims believe they’re part of something bigger, Westerners do not. This shooter wasn’t some lonely isolated dude, he had an education, circle of friends, an attractive ex wife and a lucrative enough career to purchase a home. However he believed upholding and practising (or should I say spraying?) the teachings of Islam Trumped all of that.

Compare that to modern day Westerners - how many feel they’re apart of something bigger?

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12?!?!? fuck. Doing the morbid math. 10% accuracy, 12 hits per person, 100 people would be 12 thousand rounds, WTF? Okay maybe that estimate is 80% high or something. Maybe he was a really good shot and most people didn’t get near that many bullets, maybe 2-5 thousand rounds? That’s still a ridiculous number of rounds and would take forever for 1 person to shoot with any sort of aiming. Has anything in the news said anything about more shooters?

I don’t think it’s lack of conviction… I know many soldiers/citizens who wholeheartedly believe in this country. In fact, I’d suspect the number of patriotic American’s rivals fanatical terrorists 5 or 10 to 1 (hopefully much more). What sets them apart is the fact that they’re willing to stoop to monstrously low levels to “win”. They believe the ends justify the means… they believe that their atrocities will be forgiven… they are fanatical and delusional.

American’s know that winning at all costs (i.e. Hiroshima) doesn’t exactly mean winning… things like colateral damage must be taken into account (the only the reason the middle east hasn’t been wiped off the map). In a word, character, honor, and general “goodness” is the reason we’re “losing”.

What exactly are we “losing”?

I don’t think that is true, I think they are winning because they are motivated and attack soft targets in the west. Globally they are recruiting well and winning because most of the Muslim world hates the west after our recent trips abroad. Al Qaeda did 911 to get us to invade muslim lands, they knew it would turn the muslim world against us.

Since this is a thread for people to voice their grief, discuss the details as they unfold, I’m going to avoid turning into this one big argumentative thread.

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Our way of life, which is going about our lives without having to worry about being shot for not believing in Islam. The shooter never missed any of his victims, because all of them were infidels.

When the San Bernardino shooting happened, the neighbor who saw all sorts of shady behavior didn’t report it to law enforcement out of fear of being labeled an Islamophobist. We have begun the journey of losing who we are as Americans, when we are more worried about offending people than doing the right thing, which can save lives.

Most Muslims aren’t terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslims.

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People need to stop offering prayers and condolences, because those don’t stop terrorists, actions do. The FBI took this guy off the watch list, they didn’t even screen him further when he pursued purchasing guns.

Maybe a guy touting Jihad should not be allowed to hold a job with a gun.

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It’s as if law enforcement deliberately chooses not to be vigilant about this shit.

You honestly feel this is happening in the United States?

I guess I just don’t understand this mentality. This is a heinous act without question and I’m a strong advocate for seeking out and killing any and all members of ISIS and other terrorist organizations, but I don’t feel unsafe in the United States as it relates to Muslim radicalism. The attacks have significant shock value, but they are few and far between. I fear for my safety considerably more when I go see the Orioles play in Charm City than from a possible terror attack.

I’m not discounting the sentiment, but I do not understand it.

True.

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I think we should be very cautious here Max. This is a very fine line that would be easily crossed.

The FBI fucked up on this one, but I think this type of kneejerk reaction is how we ended up with the Patriot Act, for example. If I’m not mistaken this piece of shit was an American, correct? I don’t think it would be wise to weaken Due Process or let the government get their foot in the door as it relates to further weakening of the 2nd for the sake of temporary security.

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There was a witness interviewed (I think on ABC) that said there was another attacker barricading the doors to keep them inside. I’ll try to find the video if its around.

Edit: Found it.

Everything.

When you think twice about going to a rock concert / night club on a Saturday evening, you’re losing.

When you take off your shoes at the airport and pass through the TSA scanner.

When your daughter/sister/wife/mother is reluctant to go to the swimming pool by herself because two Arab-looking men called her a “whore”.

When you share memes on Facebook about God and Jesus but don’t want to share something about Mohammad because, who knows.

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I don’t, but I understand what you’re saying. .

Agreed, but that is us giving up “everything” not the extremists taking it. We have given up freedom for security by choice, imo.

Sure.

Sure, but again I believe that’s a choice we consciously make.

To me, it just doesn’t make sense, but my outlook is obviously different. I haven’t looked in a while, but something like 40k people are killed annually in non-suicide related homicides. That’s already a relatively small number compared to the population. Something like 30 per year on average over the past 15 or so years (excluding 9/11) will die annually related to terrorism within the United States. So to me, the fear is misplaced and results in the things you pointed out; having to take your shoes off at the airport while being scanned by a fat slob with an IQ of about 52, or going through security at the 9/11 memorial, which is outrageous, or having your phone records spied on by government employees.

To me, there is a disconnect. This isn’t Jordan, our risk level is just not that high on an individual or even aggregate level and that’s with our shit border security.