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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (128305)	4/3/2004 3:52:28 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "But from the perspective of 2002, and given what was displayed over the past 12 years, it sure as hell seemed that his [Saddam's] sons might have the ability to take over." So you admit that you were deluded back in 2002, but you still want us to trust your judgement now. Don't you think that you'd have more credibility about the threats now if you'd been right in the past about the threats then? Re: "You want reality? Tell me how the belief that one can collect 72 virgins for sacrificing oneself in a suicide bombing came to be, or how you propose we deal with it." (a) Not all the bombers believe these stories. For most, it's probably the kind of malarky that every culture inculcates into its youth. It's the moslem equivalent of "dulce et decorum est pro patri mori". That a few of them are willing to do it is not due to the religion so much as their hatred for your foreign policy. (b) The numbers of suicide bombers is quite small. In fact, even in Palestine, the total numbers are considerably less than the suicide rates in the US. I posted at length on this subject, with the calculations, here: #reply-17310111 (c) By going on and on about horrible the Moslems' ability to produce suicide bombers you illustrate our inability to maintain an occupation of Iraq. You say we're brave enough to stay the course, but your words belie you. Was it Truman who said: "if you can't stand the heat of the fire, stay out of the kitchen"? Well, if you can't take the suicide bombers, stay out of the Middle East. If you want to argue that we should stay involved with Israel in the Middle East, you should be arguing that the suicide bombers aren't any big deal. (d) The number of suicide bombers / murderers we collect is going to be proportional to the amount of crap that we give people. This is true even among our own society, the Moslem religion has nothing to do with it. Our government is fairly kind and gentle to our citizens and yet they regularly go nuts and blow stuff up. Remember the Columbine massacre? The word "berserk" comes to those descended from northern europeans from their own habits. (e) The worst suicide bomber problem isn't even in a Moslem land. Instead, the idea was developed by the Tamil tigers in Sri Lanka: ... The Black Tigers, the LTTE's suicide squad, have carried out at least five times more suicide bombings than any other group. ... journalism.uts.edu.au ... The LTTE is notorious for its suicide bombings. Since the late 1980s, the group has conducted some 200 suicide bombings—far more than any other terrorist group. ... cfrterrorism.org But no matter that the Tamils are big time suiciders, you keep going on and on about the Moslems. What gives with that? Of course we both know the answer. Sri Lanka doesn't have any oil, so the US didn't stick its nose into their business. The Indians did stick their nose into the business and they took their losses. If we kept our nose out of the Middle East, the terror bombers would target Israelis instead of us, and we'd be back to worrying about terminated engineers with guns: armory.com In short, there is a natural human tendency to go berserk and kill lots of people. All the Tamils, Palestinians, etc., are doing is taking advantage of what are natural human inclinations. If they had access to helicopter gunships, they'd be using that, but they don't, yet. Our real problem is not with the suicide bombers, but with what comes after, when the other side gets hold of more effective weapons. What kind of whining will you be doing then? Re: "And what are you going to do when you discover a new reality of one of them packing a WMD into one of our cities?" I've been warning about this for years. If you lie down with dogs (Israel), you're gonna get up with fleas (terrorists). Why do you want fleas? -- Carl P.S. The Palestinians regularly publish "before" pictures of suicide bombers. Here are some "after" photographs, from Sri Lanka: [Gory! Maybe you shouldn't click on this link.] spur.asn.au