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

To: mightylakers who wrote (95578)	4/22/2003 1:36:58 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

When the young boys and girls chanting down to the America, while eating in McDonald, dancing rock n roll, you know that it is not about culture. I was talking about AL-Qaida, not all of the Arab "young boys and girls". The fact that these boys and girls are "seduced" but these things is one thing that many members of Al-Qaida hate. However I do agree that culture is only a secondary reason. When you know the same Bin Laden and his fighters were once fought side by side with the Americans And the US and the USSR under Stalin both fought the Nazis. The enemy of my enemy is my friend (but not forever). It’s all about feeling of unfairly treated, invaded, and occupied. The occupation that OBL was most concerned about (US soldiers in Saudi) wasn't a real occupation. Ask yourself what would you do if your land was taken away, your country was occupied and your love ones were slaughtered. The Palestinians had been pushed around and abused by other Arabs for some time before Israel took over. Then Israel abuses them and the US supports Israel for years but OBL does nothing. And OBL didn't get too upset about bullies either at least as long as the bullies where Arabs who have "unfairly treated, invaded, and occupied" and slaughtered each other more then Israel or the US have done to them. Tim

To: mightylakers who wrote (95578)	4/22/2003 2:36:22 PM
From: Clarksterh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

ML - When the young boys and girls chanting down to the America, while eating in McDonald, dancing rock n roll, you know that it is not about culture. I think we'll all agree it isn't only about culture. But undoubtedly there is a strong cultural aspect - witness all the hype by the muslim extremists about the 'immoral' Americans. Ask yourself what would you do if your land was taken away, your country was occupied and your love ones were slaughtered. Ask your self what would be your reaction if you have a big fat bozo who can roll down your street, kick anybody’s door as he wants and beat the hell out anyone he dislikes? Ok, have we rolled down any street, ... ? Answer no. In fact we are more temperate than most countries - it is just that we have more power so that we do whatever we do more effectively. Moral question - does a more powerful entity have an obligation to step more lightly than a less powerful one? An analogy that would often be a better one is "Do swaggering but not very successful men get along with successful men who could beat the **** out of them if they chose to." Answer: no, they do not. They are resentful and sullen. It is an ordinary part of human nature - sadly. It's about hurt pride. And even more sadly, in multiple sociology studies of individuals, that attitude is inversely correlated with future success. People do considerably better if they assume more of the problems are of their own making. Plenty of countries have done a lot better under similar or tougher conditions - Japan, S. Korea, ... . Yet another aspect of human nature is that people want an agency to blame for things - and the biggest entity often gets the blame. To bad that the Soviet Union imploded since now there is only one 'big bully' to blame. Example: You, Joe Q Unhappy, are ruled by a dictator - it must be the fault of the US since they have a treaty with the dictator and in addition the US could 'fix it' if they wanted to. (Of course the US could, but probably not without treading on soverneighty, or appearing to be morally high-handed, or hurting significant numbers of people - and any of these results would just further the 'evil' reputation of the US) BTW - This is very pertinent since I doubt that short of utterly emasculating ourselves (e.g. backing out of all world affairs) we could make people happy. The best we can do is be honest about our motives, our results and generally try to live and let live. Nice debate - now where is Ramsey with his 'its all about fate' and thus 'nobody can be immoral except the US'. (To stick him in a cubbyhole -g-) Clark