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Pariah said:
The problem with dubbing what I propose America should do as "horrible" is that you have very scattered defintions of what's considered as such. For example, you think "murder" and "killing" are the exact same thing.



I'm sorry for thinking genocide is horrible. I guess my perception is just warped.

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So what's the difference? Why should the fact that you think you're right count for anything if they share the exact same conviction?



The end to their means is much different then the end to mine.



What difference does that make, objectively?

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In the bigger picture the whole situation is just two cultures reacting to each other. Take an objective point of view and you'll see that the only undeniable effect this conflict has had is the loss of millions of innocent lives (in both sides).



Actually, that's an intrinsically ignorant POV. In only viewing us as two countries fighting against eachother, you generalize all wars and refuse to look at the intent of either culture and analyze how unique one is from the other.



You're thinking two small. I never said "two countries", I said "two cultures". Two different worlds that see the other one as something strange and impossible to understand. Or, in some cases, they arrogantly think they can understand them and mistake their natural fear of the unknown for valid reason to attack.

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I suppose this means that you feel the history between America and Chile is just a intercultural reaction devoid of any real meaning?



I don't see how you could get that from what I wrote.

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You said it yourself, you do whatever you have to do to protect your own interests. Well, the result is that many nations, like mine, have been damaged irreparably by your influence. How is that not a virus? Considering your perspective (in that particular case), is like trying to look through the eyes of a cancer eating through your body. It's also protecting its interests. It also thinks it's right.



I'm sure you wouldn't have minded the domino effect taking place in your country, but I can't say that I'd feel very comfortable living not too far away from such a nation. That brand of government is just another disease more refined than the Mid Eastern governments.



See? You're going back to your own perspective. How is what you think relevant to what I wrote up there? I'm saying that from our perspective your influence is negative, and even if you want to minimize the effect a 20 year dictatorship has on a society, you can't deny that. Again: how is that not a virus?

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What I’m saying Mxy is that if those innocent casualties want to jump the gun and become terrorists, it’s not my fault.



It's directly your fault. It follows a chain of events that may or may not be caused by you, but speaking in inmediate terms it's still your fault. You're part of a viscious cirlce and what traps you in it is your own arrogance.

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By your very reasoning, America should’ve been traumatized enough by the WTC to have gotten as irrational as that 8 year old and just nuked the entire Middle East by now, and yet it hasn’t happened.



It hasn't happened yet, but you're obviously traumatized enough to seriously suggest it... Oh, and bomb a few little countries while you're giving it some thought.

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You say we live in fear and yet we haven’t lashed out the way one of your caliber thinking would predict. If we really weren’t any better than the Middle Easterners, we wouldn’t have given them enough respect to actually take them to war instead of bomb them back to Allah.



So instead you're taking them to war, then bombing them back to Allah.

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If anything, our responses have been inferior to what we should be dealing out.



Statements like that evidence the kind of resentment you deny having. Obviously it manifests in a different way than it does in them, because we're talking about different cultures, but the end result is exactly the same.

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You see Mxy, the terrorist attacks aren’t going to stop even if we did cease our siege of the Middle East. So it wouldn’t be very bright to just ‘turn the other cheek.’ That eight year old would definitely suffer as a casualty, but your suggestion that we should allow ourselves to be killed for the sake of those innocents (who’re probably going to grow up to fanatics in the future) is both unpractical and suspiciously retarded. I’m sure you didn’t care when Hezbollah kept bombing Israel even after Israel pulled out of Gaza, but they sure as hell cared when Lebanon’s powers ended up killing their citizens.

I’m rather confused as to how you’d think there would be any sort of peace if we stopped fighting. I guess you just forgot to take into mind the chicken and the egg. i.e. You refuse to analyze my culture in pursuit of only empathizing with another that opposes mine.



I'm not suggesting you stop defending yourself: that would actually be as retarded as you suggest (though nowhere near as idiotic as wiping out an entire culture). I can see how what I wrote could give that impression, but that's not what I meant. Obviously the terrorists need to be found and stopped, but if you really want to solve the problem, at the same time you should be taking a more civilized approach and reach out the innocent people of the ME. As I said before, even if they're innocent and don't deserve any sort of punishment, the problem does begin with them, or their general mood to be more precise. Instead what do you do? You ostracize them, you insult their culture, you call them "scum" on the basis of their ethnicity (not even their culture!). You take it out on the little guy and that translates on the big guy getting more pissed. Inversely, if the little guy calms down the big guy will eventually disappear. For example, if our hypothetical 8 year old kid wasn't just a "tough shit" "they brought it on themselves" scenario but an actual tragedy you showed remorse about, when a terrorist comes by and makes him an offers he probably wouldn't say yes. Of course that terrorist still exists and of course he needs to be punished, but without the motivation his kind would die out.

Maybe you consider this far-fetched, but wouldn't it be worth trying? Weren't you taught that there's nothing more sacred than life? Isn't a civilized approach worth it for the possibility that it might help stop more death and the eventual genocide?

Gonna go see 300. More later.