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Yup! I spent time in the Middle East too and what I find funny is that while we are best friends with Saudi Arabia which is NOT a democracy, where all that s*** goes on and Pakistan which is a Muslim military dicatorship and NOT part of the NPT (neither is the other majopr nuclear power in the area – India) that A: Pakistan developed nuclear weapons and B: Sold much of their nuclear technology to North Korea so why didn’t we bring Pakistan “freedom and democracy” like we are so good at doing in Iran?
We do nothing except talk about dropping nuclear bnombs on Iran who has never done anything to us (like Iraq) although we have screwed with Iran on more than a few occasions.
Is it any wonder North Korea wanted their own nuclear weapons? Is anyone really surprised that with the US shouting about using nuclear weapons that we have just started what may be the very last arms race this tiny planet will see?
Incidentally North Korea has said all along that they would not develop nuclear weapons if the US promsied not to attack them and live up to the treaty that they signed years ago but no, the US has literally forced them into a corner.
And Iran is enriching uranium which they are fully entitled to do as part of the NPT which they are a member of and we want to bomb the crap out of them?
Meantime little ole Izrael has HUNDREDS of nuclear weapons, they are not members of the NPT and nobody says nothing about their threats to bomb.
All I can see is thast if we attack Iran, my friends with their boots on the ground in Iraq who are already more exhausted than you could possible imagine and Israel will suffer the most, the retaliation against Israel will be brutal.
And who in their right mind is going to go into Iran after a nuclear attack to get the oil in Iran if it’s one big radiation filled wasteland?
One screwed up world we live in
There is a lot of truth to what you have said, how ever I have not heard of many people shouting out nuke these people. I guess what I was trying to get at is that there are two sides to this story. In the 90’s the U.S. put its head in the sand and did nothing. While many events were point to what was going to happen in 911. Coby towers, bombing of embassys, U.S.S. Cole and many other events that went unreported. (I personally stayed in the Coby towers compound and left the week before the bombing took place where we lost many Americans in that story)This all took place from the stand point of radical Islam and again if we look at the gringo definition of radical you need to look at the middle east and see their picuture in the dictionary.
Yeah, I misspoke when I said that the US helped create radical Islam, it was late and I think that must have been the tequila talking. I do think that our actions are playing right into their hands though.
It seems to me that the west simply must find a way to come to terms with Islam, both extreme and moderate. The sad truth is that they hold all the cards. They have the oil. They have the Middle East media. And they have the capacity to inflict great damage upon us with little loss to themselves. Remember, too, that these folks are still (rightly) p***** off about the Crusades. They have very, very long memories, and they’re most unlikely to forgive and forget our recent transgressions.
What’s more, the agressor always defines the terms of the conflict. Today’s enemies are fighting a different war than we are. Right now, we’re confronted with a small, widely dispersed and very ill-defined enemy whose goals, strategies and tactics are foreign to us and whom we presume to confront with platoons, companies and batallions of uniformed, highly organized troops. We can’t even identify who sets the roadside explosives that kill our troops and destroy our materiel. And all our laser weapons and night vision technology is no match for whatever it is they’ll slip into the U.S. in some unmarked, uninspected shipping container because we’re addressing the wrong issues.
I will argue that the west has been involved in World War III since the first widespread terrorist attacks of the 1970s (recall Northern Ireland, the Achille Lauro, the bombing of the Rome airport, numerous airplane hijackings, etc, etc, etc) but we have yet to come to terms with who and what the enemy is and how to deal with them. But for as long as we plan (albeit very successfully) for a war against a conventional force and ignore the real enemy, we will only become more vulnerable.
Being out of the line of fire is one of the benefits of being in a place that’s at peace with the world and which has little that anybody’d want.
And yet we still fund them through our dependency on their oil. So much for the 3 decade old argument that alternative energy sources are too costly.
Wow! That brought back a flood of memories… As a former member of Her Royal Majesty’s Royal Marine Commandos (the ‘original’ Green Berets :-)) – I do indeed remember Northern Ireland.
And just think of what will happen if we are foolish enough (which it looks like we are) to attack Iran.
After the “success” in Iraq, Iran will be be another “cakewalk,” after all it only has three times as many people as Iraq and far better equipped armed forces than Iraq.
Scott Oliver
Well lets not get down on our self’s too much now.
It might seem to the naked eye that we are not making a dent in the radical Islams crusade. This is not true, that is why arabs are found in many confilcts around the world such as Darfur and Somalia. They know that Iraq is making a dent in their campaign and are trying to find new areas to take over and creat home bases. The more countries that they can spread and impose shria law is what they want. Why do you think the fataws from Mecca are asking for all Americans to convert to Islam or the Osama has asked as well. This is their goal! If you don’t think so look at areas in Africa and Chechna.
The thought process as well that the oil proceeds are the main source of income for these radicals is also a little off cilter. It is well know that many of the moneys have come from organizations around the world and in the United States.Some good reading about how the radicals operate is a book called “My Jihad”, this was written from a person from California that converted to Islam. He fought against the Russians in Cheznia and Afgahnastan, the book describes how money from California was funding the Islamic rebels fight.
The problem is, Scott, that for as long as we fail to build bridges to Islam we remain utterly vulnerable. The west can build all the fences it wishes, install all the metal detectors there are, invent all the bomb-sniffers imaginable and the human mind will think up something else. Put up a fence and they’ll discover tunneling. Make the airports all secure and they’ll blow up dams. Guard all the dams and they’ll release bioagents in our cities.
And the problem is further exacerbated by the fact that it takes so few of them and so few resources to mount an attack and so many resources to guard against one. Just keep thinking 19:3,000; that’s the ratio of their losses to ours on September 11, 2001, and it fails to account for the longterm effects of many thousands more who breathed lungful after lungful of asbestos and other carcinogenic materials.
Much as I wish it were otherwise, I just don’t think we can kill them all. How will we know? And until then, what do we do? Another tank batallion? Another hundred thousand troops? What?
Or maybe it’s time for a different approach.
I do agree with you in building bridges with Islam, How ever I also belive it has to be two ways. Islam has to build bridges with us as well.
A good example is respect for societys and cultures. In Saudi Arabia where mecca is they are persucating Christains and Jews daily. You can’t stand on a street corner and talk about Jeaus Christ, or build a christian church on the soil of Mecca.
In the United States as well as most of the rest of the world we invite cultures. How ever many Islamic people are pushing too hard and not respecting rights. For example: In Minnesota Somali Muslims are protesting transporting Liquer. So if you are a person that just came back from Paris with wine and you need a taxi cab to go home. You will not be able to get into the cab with your wine! (If you need references go to http://www.startribune.com and do a search.)
The airport commision came up with a solution, put colored lights on the cabs of the people that will transport people with alchol. This made the Muslim population upset because they viewed it as discrimation. In a one months time over 77 people were turned away from Muslim cab drivers. My question is what about the rights of the passanger and is it not discrimination for not transporting them. By not respeciting the passanger does this sever bridges with the Muslim community.This example is just one, we have had private companys,goverment, schools pressured and sued for not supplying prayer rooms for Muslim members.
The Majority of the Muslim Somlians came with the help of christian organizations supporting the imigration because of their war torn country. Literaly a Luthern church organization was the leading contributor to supplying the method of imigration for these people. Which Somalia is now under sharia law.
So where is the olive branch that the Islamic community is offering? Why is it that when a major event such as 911 we see pictures of Muslims dancing in the street? When the U.S. went into Afghanastan you didn’t see New Yorkers having partys and dancing in the street.
Yes I do belive building bridges is important, but it has to come from both sides of the river. I guess if the Islamic community wants to try they can start with changing the minds of the Islamic leaders of Meca and stop the anti western fatawas. Instead they can learn on how to create peace and send out fatawas that would help create bridges.
We had a similar situation in London a few years ago where a Jewish neighborhood complained vociferously about the construction of a shopping mall nearby because they were working on a Saturday.
As in Rome, do as the Romans so.
Muslims & Jews in Britain – everyone one of us – should respect the tradition and culture of the country we live in. Yes! We can be tolerant and respect the differences of others but if we are accustomed to working on Saturdays and you are not, tough titty.
And yes! Speaking the local language should be mandatory for citizenship as far as I am concerned.
Scott, I’m not historian enough to know all the details, but what I do know is that within the Christian community, those bridges got built despite the Protestant Reformation. Sure, the Catholic church hated it, but somehow they came to terms with the separatists and vice versa. We need to re-think our strategies. We need to re-think them not because we’re the good guys or because they’re the good guys but because our very existence might depend upon it.
Too, we need to be sensitive to the unique (to us) feelings of the Islamic world.Imagine, for a moment, that you are a devout Roman Catholic. Imagine, too, that there is a standing army garrisoned about the Vatican, arguably the holiest of sites in Roman Catholicism. And then imagine that that garrison is Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard. You and every other Catholic worth the label would be unalterably, professionally, hysterical to the core of your marrow, and you would advocate anything it would take to be rid of them. The Muslim world perceives our presence (and Israel’s) in the Middle East, on holy ground, in virtually the same way. Why does their angst surprise you?
And, speaking of Somali cabbies, are you also advocating that Catholic doctors in Catholic hospitals be required to perform abortions? They’re legal. They’re an accepted practice in the community. And yet the community is sensitive to Catholic sensitivities and exempts them. Would you change that? If not, why would you insist upon Muslim taxi drivers transporting alcohol?
Edited on Oct 12, 2006 14:19
Edited on Oct 12, 2006 14:23
Oh! And I have a friend who’s a recovering alcoholic. He won’t handle your alcohol either. What’s your take on that?
David usually you are right on point, but I take exception to your examples. An abortion is generally planned in advance and the woman having one would make an appointment with an appropriate specialist. If a woman was brought into an emergency room and needed an abortion to save her life a doctor would be required to perform it regardless of religious belief. And the alcoholic friend of yours probably won’t be working in a bar or liquor store and would not take a job requiring him to handle alcohol. Where are all the moderates? It’s always a small amount of extremists that upset the apple cart. There was a time when “we” behaved in a very similar way, think the crusades, the colonisation of the Americas etc…We had our dark ages but then experienced the Renaissance and enlightenment periods. Most Islamic countries are 500 years behind. When we stop letting superstitions, national identities etc dictate how we view other people and have the realization we are all cut from the same fabric all came from and will return to the same place, perhaps then there will be some peace. Gandhi made the comment that as the Muslims and Hindu bodies were all burned after a battle there was no distinguishing one from the other. As good as America is, it is just as bad…..
Holy Cow, you guys — you really made me want to get the hell out of here (the US) sooner than next week. I, too, am completely disgusted with our country, the people who run it such as Hogzilla Hastert and the Mark Foley Pervert, an illegal war that will go on for the next 8 years, not to mention a prez who used to stick firecrackers up the behinds of frogs and is a pathological liar on top of everything else. Don’t even get me started on those other sociopaths — Rummy and Cheney. This is one scary place to live with all the fear mongering, terror threats, loss of civil rights, loss of personal freedom, the list just goes on and on and on and it was only after spending a good amount of time in Costa Rica away from the constant disinformation, black propaganda, and the fear mongering did I realize how brainwashed we all are. This is no way to live. No wonder we have 50 million-plus people on psychiatric drugs, some of whom go completely whacko and shoot up schools and workplaces, and the answer to the problem is just numb more people out so they don’t care that they’re essentially living in a war zone. Republican, Democrat, what’s the difference — an honest politican is an oxymoron. Every day I fear I won’t get out of this asylum without walls before they close the damn borders for some trumped up reason.
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