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To: IngotWeTrust who wrote (76181)	9/12/2001 12:40:58 PM
From: E. Charters	Respond to of 116753

The longest war in America's history was undeclared. For 100 years the French sank American ships and the Americans sank French until the Louisiana purchase. It was terrorism tit for tat and the US gov't never lost its cool, ending the war with a stroke of diplomacy. We are locked in a struggle with an enemy who is powerless to confront us militarily on any field. All they can do is hit and run like rabbits. We may be a dog sleeping in the sun, but we have no cause for real alarm. I have never seen a dog run from a rabbit. Their societies are homogeneous, ancient of history and custom, and have been for many years oocupied by foreign tyrants who were cruel and despotic. They themselves fail to realize that their cruel interpretation of Muslim law was the inhertiance of the Muslim Turks who used the religion as a despotic device of social control. 600 years of religious terrorism has left them a brainwashed and easily led group. They are custom made for demagogues and rabble rousers. Strangely the more educated among them are the terrorists, a small minority in their society with many disparate ideals. One highly successful group the MEK is habited in Iraq and attacks the Iranian power structure. But I would not want to deal with them if they win as they are likely as bad as any communists have ever been. other Muslim factions fight and kill still other anti-American factions for being too soft. The Middle east is famous for 1000's of years for being a hostage taking, petty war, vengeaful cruel place. We have decoded clay tablets from 1500 BC where the Egyptian king pleads to the Babylon court for the return of envoys he sent there 15 years previously! It will never change. The Middle East is built upon shifting sand. Moshe Dayan, at his end rejected by the Israeli leadership, warned that they had sowed the seeds of terror with their intransigence with the Palestinians. Byby failing to come to terms with them the Israelis would one day reap the whirlwind. But we have to face facts, today's conflict would happily rage on without the existence of Israel, as it has for over 5,000 years between states there. We must realize however that we are no small recent contributors to the unrest. Late in this regions history, we ensconced Israel as the dominant power, and for 50 years it has displaced Palestinians. These people had lived there for umpteen thousand years and but with one excuse or another they were given the boot. If that had not been enough, after the first world war we had blithely carved up the states of their world at our whim. We set ourselves up as kingmakers and interferers for the next 40 and more years, ruling and disposing for oil. The CIA trained Saddam Hussein and supported Ayatollah Khomeini. They killed Mossadegh. All for American regional power. Now it is coming home. We went over there and pushed them around. We did not make friends. We bought and sold and killed for power and oil. We did not support self determination and democracy, we supported and trained tyrants. We started terrorism there. We must pay the price. If we had left those feudal states as they were they would still be fighting. But perhaps they would not be fighting us. we would be in a better position. And have found our own oil, as we inevitably shall have to anyway. We are goading the Muslims. Many Arabs support the tyranny in Iraq, if only because it is not a puppet regime or a patriarchy. Most republican Arabs and other middle easterners hate the Saudis and the Sheikdoms. They hate Algeria as a colonialist prop up and Egypt as a despotic nepotism and dictatorship of class. Any Arabic state with a king is hated. Their days are all numbered. So, who do we back? Well, of course the ones with no democracy at all. We have backed all the tyrants. The Sah. Farouk. The rulers of Kuwait. The French in Algeria. Who have we scorned? The democratically elected nationalist, Nasser, Mossadegh, and others. Say what you want but Hussein in Iraq was elected, sort of, and Hussein in Jordan enjoys as much popular support in his country as the army can afford him. The Muslim extremists are a popular front. The believe in self determination. It is their version of American democracy. They do not want our guns, money or dictation. They want their own states. Now, they won't get it. All they will get is corruption, religious dicatation and war. More of the same Turkish absolutism. Do we support democratic activists in those states? Well, they do have them. Nope. They cannot win. Too soft. Nice guys but doomed to fail. So we back the local dicator because he is a killer who can take power and will make a power deal with America. He will harass his own people for his friends' and Amerika's profit. Shame. It may well be true that we cannot take any more of these idealists throwing themselves at fortress Amerika, but what policy and what action to take? We are locked in a military occupation of Israel. Without our aid they would be swimming in the Mediterranean. The terrorists may be blind and crazy, but we have to admit they have reason. If you were asked to leave your home for some Middle Easterners because of some religious tracts and the fact that they had larger gunboats than you had, I bet you would not be that happy a camper. It is plain that Israel must be moderated in their policies. But even if they were it would not end the problem. So at some point we must stand firm. In the end we cannot deny the injustice of it. In the end we cannot deny we must defend ourselves. We must seek a firm and unyielding but just policy of action, resistance and justice in the Middle east. We must leave the door open to eventual settlement with governments there who are a bit more reasonable. I will admit that they are not angels and because they have a stubbed toe, they can kill passers by. We have got ourselves caught with a nest of vipers. we must now find our way out. It will be bitter medicine. The viper, if we look back far enough is the same as we are. We are no more right than he. But we trod in the path and should not wonder that we got bit. My rabbit turned viper in few paragraphs. Well, he is many animals. Taming him will not be easy, if you don't know what animal he is. EC<:-}