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

To: NightOwl who wrote (126071)	3/15/2004 4:14:00 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi NightOwl; Re: "Comparisons to whacko anarchists, or white supremacists indigenous to this country or it's "protectorates" blowing up things in NYC, DC, or OKC, not withstanding, I have seen nothing suggesting that civil institutions of this or any country can handle the OBL form of criminal/terrorism." I see us as a very strong nation with extremely strong civil institutions, institutions that have, over the decades, become stronger. For example, I don't see us putting Moslems into "internment camps", like we did the Japanese-Americans. Re: "As best I can tell we've had at least two generations of Iraqi's, Saudi's, Iranians, etc... already growing up being taught that America is Satan and to be despised. The indoctrination has apparently sunk in sufficiently to bring an effective number of the trainees to our door." This is not true. Americans are well loved throughout the world, at least partly because we have immigrants from all over the world living here. What's not loved is our government, and in particular, the military actions of our government. Our tourists and individuals are not just tolerated, but welcomed all over the world, providing they keep with local customs (just like visitors from all over the world are welcomed here, provided they follow our customs). Your version of the Arab complaint against us is useful only for people who want to define the Arabs as our enemy no matter what our foreign policy is, and therefore our foreign policy must be one of coercion against them. There is an inherent contradiction in this foreign policy. It is treating the Arabs as if they are animals incapable of using reason to guide their actions, while simultaneously believing that one can use force to bring them to reason, LOL. No, the Arabs are just like everyone else on the planet, populated by humans all alike in their differences. They're attacking us because we stuck our noses into their business. The dead in Spain were due to Spain's joining us in Iraq. Note that neither France nor Germany, despite both having large Moslem populations, were the target. No one is targeting us because we're Americans. They're targeting us because we target them. Re: "Given the circumstances post 9/11 and an inability to know things perfectly, I see no basis to criticize the move into Iraq." The evidence that Iraq was not a threat, and that they would be impossible to occupy was so deep and pervasive that our long time allies, France and Germany, as well as every neighboring nation (who would be the ones to know best) refused to give us any support, other than Kuwait, who let us use their territory but didn't lift a finger to help with the occupation. Bush ignored the weight of the evidence and went with a version of reality that ignored everything other than what he wanted to believe. If you can't figure out that Bush was stupid, then you should consider voting for Kerry because Kerry might be "luckier". Re: "As far as I know, Pakistan may have become the permanent refuge for OBL in the absence of that kind of "performance art." He may yet. Heck, for all I know Pakistan is one assassin's bullet away from officially designating OBL the new Minister of Defense. If so I will be well and truly pleased to have the capability to have troops in Iraq." Pakistan has about 6x more people than Iraq, and would require an occupying force around 6x larger. Of course our occupation in Iraq has nowhere near enough troops, so Pakistan is far beyond our capability. But our occupation of Iraq prevents us from even coughing up enough soldiers to do another weak little country like Iraq. By getting us tied down in Iraq, Bush has prevented us from being able to do much anywhere else. We had to pull troops out of Afghanistan to get into Iraq, where in hell would we find troops for Pakistan? What's more, some of the instability in Pakistan is due to unhappiness with the government of Pakistan because of its good relations with us. That unhappiness is partly due to our assistance against the Taliban, but it is also partly due to our wildly unpopular occupation of Iraq. So our invasion of Iraq contributed to increasing the chance of ObL possessing WMDs, while at the same time gutting our military's ability to respond. -- Carl