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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (54348)	10/24/2002 2:35:11 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "And where exactly are we supposed to "retreat" to?? Northern Idaho??" There is no reason to retreat anywhere. You're setting up what is known as a "straw man" argument. Here, let me set one up for you: So, you think we should kill all the Moslems? Re: "And the last thing we can do is show fear or cowardice in the face of Islamic militantism. Islamic militants, or just the Arab culture at large, lives by a different moral code than the West. They don't peceive a value like "weakness is strength"." They do live by a different moral code than we do. But that is why we don't want to get into a terror war with them. They'll win. Plenty of other nations have shown "weakness" (your words, I would describe it as "intelligence") to the Islamics. The result is that they are terror free. Nor has Iceland or Canada lost any territory to them, LOL. Or are you suggesting that Canada was forced to retreat to Calgary just like you're suggesting that the US would have to retreat to Northern Idaho? Re: "But they will accept our values if they are perceived as stronger than the alternatives being offered by the West." This doesn't work very well in the West. If it did, the Communists would have converted us all when they showed so much strength. And since you already stated that they have a different moral code than we do, why should we believe that it will work there? The history of the region is that the Palestinians have kept fighting despite many decades of Israeli demonstration of strength, so I think you're basically full of it. Israel already tried your technique, the result was that not only did it fail, but the fact is that Israel has the worst Islamic terror problem in the world. Russia tried the same thing, and they got the same result -- 700 people held as hostages in their f'ing capital city. Re: "And you know something. I'm not ashamed of our values. I think they are worth fighting for, and worth spreading." You sell our values short. Our values spread without anyone needing to fight for it. Our values are the natural values preferred by everyone. Re: "Especially when the alternative is "martyrdom" and hatred against anything that smells like democratic values or secularism." This is a false dichotomy. You're reducing the US' alternatives to only two alternatives. The fact is that most countries have no problem with Islamic terrorists because most countries don't stick their nose into Middle Eastern politics. Most countries haven't "surrendered", they simply are not involved. As far as your call for secularism, it's the religious Christian nut cases in the US that has combined with the religious Jewish nut cases in Israel to influence the US to get involved fighting the religious Moslem nut cases. What I'm calling for is a secular divestment from the religious wars these idiots are promulgating. -- Carl