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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (43109)	9/10/2002 9:45:38 PM
From: jcky	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

AQ is the symptom, ZP. The problem is the Islamist Culture that breeds and supports it. You want to cut out the visable Cancer. Others believe that it needs radical surgery. And exactly how does the US 'cut' out the Islamist culture considering 1.3 billion people around the world practice Islam? The cancer analogy is a poor example because cutting out a cancer does not address the underlying pathology. It does not address the root cause and is also a short term solution. What makes far more sense is to prevent cancer rather than to cut it or cure it. An ounce of prevention is far more desirable than a pound of cure. And pointing to the Islamist culture as the root cause of al-Qaida still does not explain why so many educated citizens from modern, pro-western, democratic nations perceive a heavy-handed, hypocritical US foreign policy as a contributing factor to the cancer.

To: LindyBill who wrote (43109)	9/10/2002 10:15:58 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

The problem is the Islamist Culture that breeds and supports it...The action you prefer will kill the snakes that come out of the nest. I want to have us get rid of the nest. There remains the serious problem of how we can accomplish this. Defeating armies and overturning governments won't accomplish the objective: the enemy is not an army or a Government, but an ideology. Can you make people stop believing in a religion by defeating their armies and overturning their governments? Will their belief become less fervent or radical if they are invaded and occupied? Not likely. Wading into the ME and thrashing around with a big stick exposes us to a situation very similar to that which undid the Russians in Afghanistan. We do not want to occupy a large and hostile region. We do not want to try to create new Governments that we will be responsible for preserving. We want to protect ourselves, and that is the objective we have to keep in mind. Will a series of invasions and occupations make us more or less vulnerable to terrorist attack? That is the question we need to answer. My own suspicion is that the Islamists would be only too happy to see us wade in and start punching the tar baby.

To: LindyBill who wrote (43109)	9/11/2002 4:27:54 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 281500

Actually Lindy, it's not Islam that is the problem. It's superstition and alpha male dominance hierarchies [which go way back to our chimpoid antecedents]. Whether it's David Koresh, Jim Jones, Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, Bill Clinton, George II, Osama, Khomeini, The Inquisition, Aztec Priests or the Hale Bopp Space Ship Nike fan club members, the outcome is the same - the top monkey gets the girls and the money and we end up with lots of dead people. Democracy seems to hold the very worst in check, though Hitler filtered his way through the electorate with bluff, bluster, bullying and then brutality. The old idea, which once was taken a bit more seriously in the USA, of separating religion and government, is not a bad idea. The USA is rabidly superstitious, with that hypocrite Clinton clutching his bible as he enjoyed female attention to his gonads in the cloisters. Thank goodness for forgiveness, which covers a multitude of sins [though not Osama's]. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth [any day now!] Mqurice