What I find more outrageous was that the reporter apparently was held captive for 2 years... without anyone (in the public) knowing. Bergdahl was held captive for 5 years and luckily was returned in a controversial exchange. What is going on that we are not able to protect and/or recover our people?
Seems to send a clear message that if you get captured by an extremists group like ISIS, the government won't come running in to save you, nor will the public even know you are missing -- fore the government doesn't want to stir public opinion into favoring some sort of military action. So, in essence -- you are all alone out there, potentially for years, or worse. -- That is outrageous to me.
Anyway my comments were a response to the idea that Diaspora should promote its decentralized platform on the wake of ISIS publicity, which is a really stupid idea. It had nothing to do with government censorship, although I have no problems with governments discouraging murder videos.
A police officer explained this to me. They do this because they want the ability to arrest the people who are recruiting muslims using these videos. The "recruiting" thing is impossible to prove, so ...
These videos are made with one purpose only : to recruit more muslims to their cause. Assuming they know what they're doing, that's exactly what free dissemination of these videos will do (otherwise, after all, there wouldn't be an al qaeda or IS organization in the first place).
I think you can at least agree that using arrests, and even violence (of the police kind, not the IS kind), to prevent that from happening is unambiguously a good thing.
The arguments against these laws are mostly of the "slippery slope" kind, and I agree that these laws are open to abuse. I hate to say it but I also don't see an alternative.
I feel like I'm stating the obvious, but here goes : the US cannot protect every one of it's citizens from every external force. Not abroad, and not in America. Terrorist forces who recruit out of a near-global pool of 1 billion muslims, who effectively have presence everywhere, there's no way. If you think about this for 5 minutes, you'd realize that even a genocidal police state wouldn't be able to do that.
> Seems to send a clear message that if you get captured by an extremists group like ISIS, the government won't come running in to save you, nor will the public even know you are missing -- fore the government doesn't want to stir public opinion into favoring some sort of military action. So, in essence -- you are all alone out there, potentially for years, or worse. -- That is outrageous to me.
That's the message islam wants to spread, yes. Of course, the opposite is true [1]. The US military tried to rescue him (and others) and failed due to lacking intelligence.
[1] http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-us-syria-hosta...
Just want us to be careful here -- you don't have to be a Muslim to be a terrorist -- and not all terrorist's are Muslims.
