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

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (112940)	8/26/2003 5:50:27 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

You are in a battle of hearts and minds and unfortunately for you, most of your weapons are useless in that fight. Your noocular armed and propelled submarines can't even see what's going on behind a wall in downtown Baghdad, let alone do anything about it. USS Raygun has got really fast aircraft with big bombs and little bombs too, but they can't do much. Neither can a Predator drone see a guy with a handgun who is prepared to die for his superstitious beliefs and tribal affiliations. Absolutely correct, to a degree. You forget our other weapons, Mq, which are a lot more powerful than their measly pop guns--freedom, short skirts, beer, action-packed movies, J Lo's butt, freedom, values that allow everyone from a Austrian body-builder immigrant to the Rockefellers to "be somebody," pizza, freedom, Westerns, good wine, Louis Armstrong, the emancipation of women in a real sense, CDMA, freedom, etc. The clash as Samuel Huntington pointed out is one between cultures. On the one hand, the Islamic culture as exhibited in the ME offers piety, death for martyrs, misogyny, rigidity, sharia, no technical advances, corruption, dictators, a tribe instead of a state, etc. What a dismal treat. On the other hand, we offer freedom and values that enhance opportunities for everyone. No bed of roses, either, but there is no contest between the two cultures, in my view. Which culture and whose values do you think are going to prevail? Whose culture is life-affirming instead of mud-stuck at a dead end, dreaming of past glories? They'll eventually come around--their females and their youth will make them. The idiots will do a lot of damage in the interim, but we'll survive it because our values are superior. The chimpoid is ultimately rational.