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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (24465)	5/27/2003 10:45:36 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 25898

The distinction between U.S.imperialism and Bin Laden's guerrilla resistance is a matter of scale, not of passion. Oh... I thought it was the political and economic agenda.. The only thing imperialistic about the US is it's belief that the only form of truly legitimate government is one that is accountable to its people through a democratic vote. Bin Laden wished to collect power to himself and select religious leaders in order to dictate what form of government people would live under.. the law of Sharia.. Opposing him was to oppose Allah.... and to be counted as an infidel. The US can HARDLY be accused of being an imperialistic power in the traditional sense of historical experience. It has been the United States that has forced the break-up of the colonial powers and the granting of independence to their former possessions. Were we an imperial power, we would have colonized all of Europe and Japan after the war.. In fact, the last imperialistic war the US fought was the Spanish-American war, where we sought to defeat and seize Spain's possessions in the Caribbean and the Philipines. Hawk

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (24465)	5/29/2003 8:31:37 PM
From: LPS5	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

The distinction between U.S.imperialism and Bin Laden's guerrilla resistance is a matter of scale, not of passion. Well, that's one way of looking at it - not only that scale is the issue (there's no definition of imperialism that so qualifies it), but that Bin Laden's efforts are "resisting" anything in particular. Another way is that the U.S. is resisting the theocratic imperialism of a former ally. Still another is that all human beings are competitive, vicious animals...whether driven by the enticements of material wealth or superstition...and that collisions of this sort are inevitable. How many ways of looking at this same question do you think there are under Sharia? ;-) The U.S. government is orders-of-magnitude more effective at terrorizing...populations than Bin Laden could ever hope to be. Even though that's an opinion stated as fact - and a viewpoint easily adopted tens or hundreds of miles away from anything that would ever be considered a probable terrorist target - I tend to agree. And at this juncture, even though there's no absolute stoppage of those who'd attack civilians here at home, I think that's something to be somewhat thankful for. LPS5