Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "However, as I've stated before, the US is in a fight against hateful ideals, and those ideals aren't going to go away by ignoring them. ... That's where this battle ultimately has to be waged, IMO.. with information and a bit of positive propaganda targeting the hypocrisy of Islamic fundamentalists."
I suppose that the word you're looking for is "idea" rather than "ideal". The problem is that the "hateful ideas" that the Arabs have about us include such things as (1) The US wants to steal their oil. (2) The US doesn't care how many Arabs it kills or what kind of conditions the Arabs live under, or anything else about the Arabs. (3) US foreign policy is run by a combination of Israelis, Jews, and Arab hating Christians.
None of these ideas are being refuted by our presence in Iraq. Instead, they're being intensified.
I don't know if you noticed it, but did you see that 6 Americans were wounded in a car bomb attack today? That's getting a bit close for comfort. You'd think with only 140,000 Americans in country that it wouldn't be that hard to keep them in places where they are more or less immune to car bombs.
Re: "And where certain clerics cross the line and call for violence and waging Jihad, I have no problem with arranging for bad things to happen to them."
I have no problem with that at all.
My problem with the invasion of Iraq, as with the sanctions against Iraq, and with Israeli policy in Palestine all amounts to the same thing. In each case it is / was collective punishment, and collective punishment is ineffective, except when it is carried out in a near genocidal manner (which is not possible for us at the current time).
Killing a cleric who incites violence against us is not "collective punishment". It's a very precisely directed use of force. Collective punishment, by contrast, pisses off all the innocent people who are punished, and they tend to react by desiring to do the punisher damage.
When the Israelis kill a Hamas leader with a targeted killing it is a good thing. When they kill a bunch of bystanders it makes the one killing ineffective, in terms of their alleged long term goal of pacification.
Re: "They're gunning for us Bilow. We're the US and we are the most powerful nation on the face of the planet. And we stand in the way of their subjugating the entire region, let alone the world, to their brand of Islamic militancy."
Jesus weeps! A few Islamic nut cases have convinced you that the US is in danger of being "subjugated" to the will of militant Islam. What kind of a nation of wimps do you think we are??? You are the last man I'd have liked to have around me back in 1942. You'd have been going on and on about how the Japanese were planning to march right across the Midwest into Washington DC, LOL.
No, the threat that Islamic militancy could possibly "subjugate" (YOUR WORD!!!) the "entire region, let alone the world" is only in your own mind, and a few Islamic nut cases.
The facts on the ground are simple. There have only been a few countries taken over by Islamic fundamentalists, and not a single one of them has invaded anybody. It was Iraq, a secular Baathist state that started the war with Iran, not the Islamic republic of Saudi Arabia, or Iran.
If these Islamic militants are so fearful, then why is it that they've never invaded another country? The only near example I can think of is Afghanistan, but they did not invade that country. They were invited in by the locals, and then overstayed their welcome. I don't see anyone inviting in the Islamic Militants now, except Iraq.
Re: "It's coming Bilow... No amount of "containment" will prevent it. Nor will ignoring it."
I agree. It is coming. If we continue with an Israeli foreign policy, eventually we'll end up with the result of Israel's foreign policy. The Islamic nut cases will set off nuclear weapons in our country.
And with Bush's loser foreign policy, this is inevitable.
The problem is that invading Iraq did not reduce the problem. Instead, it magnified it. It's only a matter of time before Islamic terrorists get their hands on extremely effective weapons. So far, all they've come up with was box knives. And spreading hate for the US throughout the middle east only insures that the US will be a target for those weapons.
These are nut case extremists. Even if the US did a complete draft and full military buildup as in WW2, and sent 10 million soldiers to occupy every Arab / Moslem country from Morocco to India, the result would not improve. Instead, we would just piss off even more Arabs, and more of them would sign up for suicide bombings against us.
Where you are failing in your reasoning is in failing to appreciate the fact that we do not have to be a part of the Old World (Rumsfeld's term) power struggle. We do not have to get involved in 2000 year-old pissing matches.
We have borders with Canada and Mexico that have not seen war in 150 years. These are the quietest borders on the planet. We do not have to take part in the blood-fest that the rest of the planet loves to keep going for decades.
Up to now, it has been possible for us to "intervene" in other people's pissing matches without having any great damage to our own country. We were able to kill millions of Vietnamese without them sending a single suicide bomber over here, as far as I know. But the Arabs are not like the Vietnamese. If we stay involved with the Arabs in an occupation in Iraq, they will eventually send the suicide bombers over here in mass.
You think the WTC was bad? We had lousy security and we paid for it. They got lucky.
But what's worse is that our country is wide open for more of the same. Unlike Israel, we have many thousands of miles of borders too long to be effectively patrolled. Unlike Israel, our infrastructure is spread out all over in difficult to defend lines. Unlike Israel, our population is not used to carrying guns around in order to shoot terrorists. Unlike Israel, two losers in a car can terrorize our nation's capital. Unlike Israel, we don't have a book written by God telling us that we should continue with a useless pissing match. Unlike Israel, we'd pullout of the Middle East.
You keep comparing this conflict to WW2. But unlike WW2, and like Vietnam, this conflict has split this nation apart. The fact that we do not have the political will to continue the hopeless task of democratizing the Arabs will only be obvious when it becomes obvious that our task is no more possible than our earlier attempt at democratizing the Vietnamese.
-- Carl |
