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

To: Sig who wrote (112235)	8/21/2003 3:25:23 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Sig; Re: "Carl, remember the game is "Eliminate Terrorism" , which happens to reside mostly in the ME. No one could have thought we were going to make friends with that effort." No, the only way to "eliminate terrorism" is to make friends. As long as the populations of Arab countries resent the US (for supporting Israel), those populations will harbor terrorists who will plot against us (and the Israelis). We can make Arab leaders and governments support the war on terror (by threatening to kill them), but the fact is that they are as impotent in stopping terrorists from freely operating out of their own territory as we are at stopping terrorists from operating out of Iraq, or the Israelis are at stopping terrorists from operating out of the Occupied Territories. The administration's policy is bankrupt, as is proved by the escalating terror attacks against us. Re: "Making friends is secondary, and without invading Iraq there was no chance to change those peoples opiinions of the US ..." The problem is that since the war the opinion of the average Iraqi person towards us has gone downhill. Many people now look back on the days of Saddam as being ones of peace and prosperity. Re: "We best recognize that by elections, voting, social security, minimum wages, poverty prevention programs, and retirement benefits." We cancelled the elections that we earlier announced. We reduced the amount of help to the Iraqi people from the government. There are very few people employed in Iraq now, I doubt they care much about minimum wages. People in Iraq now feel poorer than they ever were under Saddam. As far as retirement benefits, I doubt that Iraq has anything functioning now. All these things, plus the problems with security, power, water, and the danger of being shot by trigger-happy US soldiers, are stuff that we brought to Iraq. The Iraqi people are, quite naturally, pissed at us. -- Carl