Know thy enemy

First, let me begin by assuring you I am no terrorist sympathizer.

I do, however, have an uncanny ability to place myself in other peoples shoes, to understand them. It is after all the first step in defeating an enemy, to understand them.

It is my goal here, to open the eyes of at least a few to the reasoning of Martyrdom.


To you, who live in the free world.
Chances are, you have a job, or at least have some means of income to feed and clothe yourself. You have a family, perhaps even a wife and children. Above all, you have friends to turn to when times are rough, who can keep you within the limits of sanity.
You have vacations, or if you're like me, at least you have weekends to unwind.

Now, lets take your life and transform it to match theirs.
Your country has just been invaded. The invasion has left you without a job.
You have no income, and no means of feeding yourself short of taking what you want from those who can feed themselves.
Your friends, either imprisoned or dead, are not there.
Your family, dead, imprisoned, fighting, or on their death bed.
You have no-one to turn to, your entire world has been viciously destroyed, and there is no hope in sight.
There is quite frankly, nothing left... no reason to live, no reason to hope...
no reason... other than revenge.

You cannot tell me for one instant that you would not be desperate for revenge in these circumstances.
The problem is, you have no possible means of standing toe to toe with such a powerful army as the one who took your country. Your rifle is no match for the rockets and missiles they can unleash on you without ever seeing your face.

You cannot leave the country (or whats left of it), no neighboring country is willing to open the borders to such chaos.

Then a group contacts you. They give you the one last desperate means of taking the revenge you have been so desperate to attain. You could care less what their motives are, you just want your revenge.

And so, with nothing left to live for, and only revenge on your mind, you get as close as you can to those who killed your friends and family, and you take them down with you.



Yes, Martyrdom is disgusting. It's almost unthinkable what someone who has been forced outside of sanity will do to end it all. But it's there, whether you like it or not. You cannot simply say, it's disgusting, and pretend that they were simply "evil people"... no, they were like us once... they we're simply pushed too far.

The answer is not as simple as "withdraw" or "fight harder"... if you withdraw, they still want their revenge... if you fight harder, you push even more people to the point of insanity.

Whatever the solution to Martyrdom is, it will take you understanding what is going on in their heads to pull it off.

The mistake has been made, the Martyrs are here now.
The last thing we should be doing is creating more of them.

The people who do these attacks were never like "us". If they were they would have been popping "allah vests" in their OWN country's when the despots were running the rape rooms, mass killing's and other horror's their 'leaders" were causing... Or realising their backwards belief's are not compatable with the year 2000, and join the rest of the civilised world... It's called FREEDOM, being able to stand on your own two feet and reach for what you want, how you want, when you want... Not what the "leaders" tell you to do or suffer the wrath...

reply to post by Oneshot1


If the Op's post isn't the most balanced, reasonable, sane post with regard to the content of said post on here the last 12 mths, I'll go he...

Succinctly written, to the point, and beautifully argued...

Nuff said

Originally posted by johnsky

Your country has just been invaded. The invasion has left you without a job.
You have no income, and no means of feeding yourself short of taking what you want from those who can feed themselves.
Your friends, either imprisoned or dead, are not there.
Your family, dead, imprisoned, fighting, or on their death bed.
You have no-one to turn to, your entire world has been viciously destroyed, and there is no hope in sight.
There is quite frankly, nothing left... no reason to live, no reason to hope...
no reason... other than revenge.

Such a sad story. It sounds really good.
In reality though, the vast majority of suicide bombers are brought in from other countries. Thus negating your premise.

In-country bombers are frequently co-opted by kidnapping their family and forcing the individual to do kill himself by threatening to kill all his family members.

You cannot leave the country (or whats left of it), no neighboring country is willing to open the borders to such chaos.

Which country is that? Iraq has millions of refugees in various countries, as does Afghanistan, etc.

Then a group contacts you. They give you the one last desperate means of taking the revenge you have been so desperate to attain. You could care less what their motives are, you just want your revenge

And so, with nothing left to live for, and only revenge on your mind, you get as close as you can to those who killed your friends and family, and you take them down with you.

The majority are recruited by their teachers at the madrassa they were sent to by their parents, in countries that have not been "invaded" by anyone, ie; Saudi, Lybia, Pakistan, Syria, etc..

Their motives have been shown to be less about revenge, and more about enforcing their religious views. That is why the large part of these attacks are against other muslims who worship differently than they do. Not against invaders of a country.

There is revenge and there is teaching your new generation of kids like here in the UK to be extremists and they have not even been through everything as the first post describes.

There are still chips on many Black people's shoulders over the white man's slavery when that happened years ago, just the thought of it makes them become anti-western or white and when the White man makes a mistake, they will riot loot and maybe kill more to please them selves. ( I don't care if people see it as racist remarks because experience tells me this has happened.)

Sometimes it's mentalities that make the crowd and the preaching of hate and the stories are passed down. People are gaining revenge in what the media tells them, they have not even been to war them selves and yet they will follow what ever is happening across the world.

Many British people despise the Germans because of the world war 2, but the invasion was not on Britain but in Poland, this is the in built mentality of generations passing down history. The Germans today are no way like that any more.

So the enemy as described does not have to come from these experiences but can be just be followed by an example or a written text that describes the killing of oppressors or infidels to their interpretation.

They may not kill but the silent war on Christianity is happening and many are getting their way in the west to ban Crosses, Alcohol religious assemblies in schools and many other Christian reminders that contradict their faiths.

In putting up with it we accept their intolerance as for every cross in a cemetery that is being banned for the dead, many crosses will never be put up in their own countries, so the locust eats but never pollinates.








[edit on 1-1-2008 by The time lord]

Firstly, let me digress.

Can I make a variance in the tale for every single person out there who happens to have a slightly different story? No. The fact that some of you pick the post apart because it doesn't fit "everyone" just raises further questions about you.

Yes, the groups who give the people what they need to exact their revenge have motives, most of them religious... but clearly you did not read my words.

I stated that they care not of their motives, they simply want their revenge, and these groups are giving them what they need to exact it.


You can quote news stories that vary from my post all you want. There will forever be exceptions to the rule. Any attempts to point out the obvious is redundant, and quite frankly, ignorant.

If you should like, I might suggest you stand toe to toe with someone who wants to exact their revenge, and ask them what is going through their head. I feel the results may be beneficial for the rest of us.

The whole pretext of the contrived ‘911 - Attack’ is fairly obvious when you see the ripple effect following our own ‘7-7 Attack’ here in the UK and the terror campaign currently being waged by the British government against all its helpless citizens, in its war on terror pretext!

I don’t fear Al-Qaeda why would I? I didn’t recruit and then cut them looses when it suited the bigger game plan. No, I truly fear those that don’t value any life, 911 victims, 7-7 victims, soldiers and innocent civilians in all the ‘Victors’ wars that we have record of and are apparently acting only to preserve my own safety and well being.

Well you know what; I don’t give them the right to determine who they make my enemy or who they deem to be a ‘terrorist’. Bush, Blair(uk), Brown(uk) are suits who have zero thoughts about the cannon fodder (anyone reading this).

We should not be letting any of these vermin into positions of power indeed we need to redefine what power they are allowed and that includes the funding (taxes) to allow them to act as agressors.

I don’t consider that I have a meaningful vote in the UK because they (just like the US – May be Ron Paul aside ;o)) all wear the same suits and say the same things then, follow the words up with the same cross party actions. I’ll next vote when I have the ‘NONE OF THE ABOVE’ option but I'm not holding my breath.

War on Drugs, War on Poverty, War on Cancer. Is it just me or as soon as I hear the words War on ?????? I look to who's saying it and feel like placing those that utter the words in that High Security Tropical Island facility in a country that starts with the letter C..a

Originally posted by johnsky
First, let me begin by assuring you I am no terrorist sympathizer.

Tis a sad day when you have to begin your posts....have we really gone back 60 years? Should I avoid women in the street for fear of being given a white feather?

replyto post by johnsky

Know thy enemy . . First, let me begin by assuring you I am no terrorist sympathizer. I do, however, have an uncanny ability to place myself in other peoples shoes, to understand them. It is after all the first step in defeating an enemy, to understand them. It is my goal here, to open the eyes of at least a few to the reasoning of Martyrdom.

Empathy. I also share your ability to empathize with others, Mr J/Sky, especially the down-trodden. The dispossessed. The left behind. We have a country full of those people. You do not have to go abroad to find them. A half million part-time homeless, mentally ill, disabled. And etc.

Now, lets take your life and transform it to match theirs. Your country has just been invaded. The invasion has left you without a job. You have no income, and no means of feeding yourself short of taking what you want from those who can feed themselves. Your friends, either imprisoned or dead, are not there. Your family, dead, imprisoned, fighting, or on their death bed. You have no-one to turn to, your entire world has been viciously destroyed, and there is no hope in sight. There is quite frankly, nothing left... no reason to live, no reason to hope...no reason... other than revenge.

This scenario may account for some of the martyrs. But the ones you are describing here are local homegrown Iraqis. I am under the impression that many if not most of the suicide bombers are from out of town. Regardless how the martyrs break down, we are faced with two distinct wars in Iraq.

There is the Civil War between rival Iraqi factions largely divided along religious lines, both inter and intra. This is the one we missed in our pre-war planning. If we had dealt with the Iraqi army differently, we might have avoided it. OTOH, due to the lengthy history of Hussein using the minority Sunni to dominate a majority Shia country may have put that goal beyond our grasp. Now we will never know.

Our only strategy (so far) is to remain in Iraq as long as it takes for the Iraqi Army to gain capability to put down the Civil War and the Iraqi Police to become sufficiently trained to keep insurgents out of the country. Sort of a problem we have with our own southern border. Keeping people out is not as easy as it may sound. Wall or no wall.

The foreigners who are coming into Iraq to fight Americans are a different breed. I hesitate to say ‘al Qaeda’ because that is not the only group that resents the US intrusion into the Arab world. I suppose you know that Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian who headed up a smallish insurgent group was murdered by the US Special Ops forces after being captured alive but wounded on June 7, 2006 - say hello Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Bolivia, another US casualty. See Note 1. We could not afford another side-show in Baghdad like the Saddam trial had turned into.

To his everlasting disgrace, Pres. Bush has repeatedly tried to START a War of Religion or a War of Cultures. For him, it means he would always be Commander in Chief who the sycophant AG Alberto Gonzales told him meant he had UNLIMITED power to do anything he deemed necessary to save the country. Read US Con. Art. 2, Section 2. “The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States . . “ He is not GOD nor is he the MAXIMUM RULER of the Country. He is C-in-C of the Armed Forces to avoid the problem “who is in charge here?”

You cannot tell me for one instant that you would not be desperate for revenge in these circumstances. The problem is, you have no possible means of standing toe to toe with such a powerful army as the one who took your country. Your rifle is no match for the rockets and missiles they can unleash on you without ever seeing your face. You cannot leave the country (or what’s left of it), no neighboring country is willing to open the borders to such chaos. Then a group contacts you. They give you the one last desperate means of taking the revenge you have been so desperate to attain. You could care less what their motives are, you just want your revenge. And so, with nothing left to live for, and only revenge on your mind, you get as close as you can to those who killed your friends and family, and you take them down with you.

Arabs enjoy life as much as Euro types. Families do not want to give up their teen age sons or daughters. But when one side has all the advantage in methods of killing and destroying, then the other side is reduced to what I call the WEAPON OF LAST RESORT. The suicide bomber. It has been an Arab tradition even before they became Muslims to make an HONORARIUM or gift to the family of any young man who gave his life in the service of his people. Much the same way we do here with the VA survivors benefits. (GI Insurance pays $250,000 on death). Or social security benefits. It happens that in the Middle East, the stipend was $25,000.00. Saddam often gave that sum to the family but if he did not, then King Hussein of Jordan or some Prince of the Saudi royal family would send the money. But no one was bargaining for money to kill others. Arabs like Americans have hired killers, but they are not paid in public.

Yes, Martyrdom is disgusting. It's almost unthinkable what someone who has been forced outside of sanity will do to end it all.

Well, wait up now, Mr J/Sky. We have the Congressional Medal of Honor for our own young men who charge a machine gun to save their fellow soldiers or Marines. Or fall on a hand grenade. That is why we use YOUNG men in the Army. OLD men will not do that. Young men will. If properly trained and motivated. I speak as a former Army National Guardsman and then an active duty US Air Force enlistee. We do it too. Reward personal sacrifice.


Post Script. And now a gruesome task. When will US KIAs reach the 4,000 mark? Since March 18, 2003, until today, January 8, 2008, is 1,744 days. As of today we have sustained 3,917 KIA. Using those numbers, I forecast that our 4,000 KIA will happen on March, 9, 2008. But no earlier than February 22 or later than April 1. Gruesome. Let’s hope they have not died in vain. For reference, December 7, 1941, to September 2, 1945, is 1,265 days. Have we forgot how to fight a war?

We should remember their sacrifice every time we fill up at the gas pump. Now we know what VP Cheney and the SECRET energy meeting just after the inauguration was all about. Oil.

Note 1. Musab al-Zarqawi was believed to have led al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad, which later became the group called “al Qaeda in Iraq” until his death in June, 2006. Every time our media repeat t his group’s name, al Qaeda gets free advertising whether or not Osama bin Laden has any forces in Iraq. And naive Americans remain confused.

[edit on 1/9/2008 by donwhite]