Originally Posted by
GringoStar
Even though I understand the argument of cultural relativism and the idea that terrorists are just as vicious as our military, only with fewer resources, which results in a cruder, imprecise result. However, I believe Druff is correct in pointing out that drone strikes at least have the intention of killing a specific person or group of people, as opposed to terror attacks, which are becoming increasingly random and less specific.
The factor that has really started to differentiate Islamic terror groups from groups like the IRA or PLO is that they have been attacking people for things as petty as drawing cartoons or, more recently, just driving into crowds in major cities, seemingly to reach the highest body count possible and to make the biggest public display of horror before essentially committing suicide.
This is a very different thing than Catholic terrorism or even genocidal Sikhs. I honestly think all religions are ill-advised and I know there are socio-economic factors at play, but to overlook the fact that ISIS, and the many groups that comprise ISIS and Al-Quada, find legitimacy in some of the strongest underpinnings of the religion (jihad, death to apostates, women owned by father/husband, etc.) is telling and we can't just continue to exoticize Islam as some "religion of peace.'
It is actually quite racist to treat Islam like some pure, untouched culture that, without that provocation of the horrible white man, would be free of this hyper-violent religious turf war. We treat Africa the same way. As a liberal (not a Progressive), I am fucking tired of it. By the way, both Muslims and Africans had slave trades that pre-dated the European slave trade and any historian will tell you that these were much more brutal as well. Sorry, correction, some still have continuing slave trades... and they cite their holy book to justify this, only they don't really need to stretch too hard to make that claim, as no reformation of any slavery claims exists widely in Islam.
This isn't to say that Western culture hasn't committed some of the greatest atrocities in history, but be very careful of the soft bigotry of low expectations, as well as the soft bigotry of broadly assuming the infallibility of people, based primarily on a misplaced sense of guilt.