re: ISIS hostage Kayla Mueller confirmed dead by family

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But to say that he's giving ISIS a pass is fricking stupid.

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You implored people to think of the crusades when thinking of ISIS. That's giving them a pass. It's not rhetoric. It is using an outdated standard and time to view them. If the standard was higher back then, it would be the opposite of a pass.

Your use of the term rhetoric is more rhetorical than what I am saying.

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Note, however, that you replaced "Islam," which is what I wrote, with "ISIS," and therein lies the problem. You, like many others, are conflating the two, which is ignorant and dangerous.

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Obama's speech was based on the actions of ISIS, so I used them. He was talking about them, so I base my perception of his statements on them. Blame him if the argument was framed incorrectly, as that only adds to the stupidity of his statements.

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You implored people to think of the crusades when thinking of ISIS. That's giving them a pass. It's not rhetoric. It is using an outdated standard and time to view them. If the standard was higher back then, it would be the opposite of a pass.

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I don't think it's as outdated as you think. ISIS considers what they're doing a Crusade. They are basically conveying the same ideas as the Crusaders back in the day, so what makes this analogy off the charts? Did it happen 1,000 years ago? Yes, but that doesn't mean it's completely irrelevant.

I don't think anyone disagrees that it's not rhetoric and a bit misplaced. But I do think his sentiments are valid.

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It's pretty much unacceptable to allow acts of terrorism upon innocent people to go unanswered or unpunished.

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And let's not get it twisted, It's imperialism and genocide. ISIS exists to murder Christians and take their lands. And when it's put into that black and white context, no. We aren't doing nearly enough to prevent it. People think of the thousands and thousands that have been murdered but don't realize that if there were 20x that amount of Christians there, that's how many would be tortured or dead.

I honestly don't think there have been enough people killed, nor will there be enough, to make us go back and yet again risk a significant amount of American soldiers lives.

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ISIS exists to murder anyone not in support of their beliefs and take their lands.

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FTFY - they kill anyone that they don't agree with

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You implored people to think of the crusades when thinking of ISIS. That's giving them a pass.

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I didn't implore shite. I simply said that Islamist extremists are similar to Christian extremists in that they're fricking extremists. Yes, Christianity has come a long way. Islam hasn't. That's probably more a function of geo-political forces than the religions themselves.

There are many historians who believe that Islam was far, far closer to modern day Christianity in terms of its openness and willingness to accept differing view points than Christianity was during the Crusades, but the Mongolians absolutely decimated the Middle East. In fact, taking the literal translation of decimated, they did far worse. You can trace the modern state of the Middle East all the way back to the sacking of Baghdad.

All this to say: your continued belief that Obama, and now me (conflating me with Obama), is giving ISIS a pass is not at all the case. Such condemnation is rhetoric used to denigrate Obama.

And frankly, I don't give a shite. Denigrate the guy. I didn't vote for him and I don't particularly like him as a president.

But my argument stands: comparing what ISIS is doing to what Christians did a thousand years ago is illustrative of the point - that the acts of ISIS are not the acts of Islam and that faith can be twisted, even within "our own" faith. Who gives a damn that it was a thousand years ago? It still shows that faith can be used to manipulate.

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It is using an outdated standard and time to view them

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Again, no one is saying that ISIS should be given a pass just because Christians did some bad shite a long time ago, so this argument you are making is flawed from the outset.

But to combat this point, the entire reason we study history is to provide context for our current world. If we cannot look to the Crusades and see a time in Christianity's history when extremism ran far more than rampant than it does today within Islam for the purpose of understanding that faith can be used to manipulate, then we cannot look to any events in the past for context of anything in our current society.

The use of the Crusades is not to provide a "standard" at all. We don't look to history to show the standards of how we should live today. If we did, we'd still have slavery, despotism, rampant poverty, serfdom, or a whole slew of other crazy shite that the world has seen in different locations throughout history. Rather, the comparison to the Crusades is simply to show that extremism can creep into every faith and that we should not blame the entirety of Islam for actions of a small sect within it.

Of course, this is probably more motivated by geopolitical concerns than moral concerns, but the President has to think in such ways.

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And yeah, if she went to Syria as an activist, she pretty much deserved it. Sorry. Zero sympathy.

You're a living, breathing piece of shite.

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Kayla Mueller was working along the Turkish-Syrian border with a group from Doctors Without Borders. She was in the middle of one of the largest, most dangerous refugee problems in the world in a place where hundreds of thousands have been sentenced to a life wandering through a wasteland of a civil war that has destroyed Syria.

She wasn’t there for a big salary, media attention or the pursuit of celebrity.

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Im sorry, she knew what she was getting into...just like all the other idiots that go over there trying to help. Stay the frick out of that part of the world unless you have a death wish. You want to to humanitarian work, go work at a soup kitchen.

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There are plenty of Americans dying that need help. Just like there are plenty of homeless, hungry Americans that need help.

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And there are plenty of outlets for Americans to get help. Syrian families in a war zone... not so much. I tend to agree with your thinking more so with US tax dollars being spent on foreign aid but I dont judge or assign a value to what an individual chooses to do to contribute to the aid of fellow humans

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But for some reason people would rather run off and do for the rest of the world, that HATES us by the way, than help out here at home. And it makes no sense to me.

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Maybe because she takes her Christian faith seriously. Even if the people she was helping did not like Americans(not saying thats the case) try reading Matthew 5:44 If you were one of the families or children she helped in Syria then it would might make more sense to you. I think she represents the best of humanity.

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I doubt it. Those sharing my sentiment just haven't been as vocal, yet

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You do, do you?

That's interesting.

I think of it as a similar situation as the Irish cop that got shot. He put himself in that situation just like she did. I don't have a problem with their stupidity, and don't feel bad because they are idiots.

Play with fire and you get burned