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Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bela_ghoulashi who wrote (6715)	4/10/2004 10:10:15 AM
From: Chas.	Respond to of 15987

radical Islamic fundamentalist terrorist crazies are a festering boil on the backside of humanity.... they want us and the civilized world to come down to their level to even the playing field........ whilst we are busy everyday living our lives as providers, educators, parents, mentors, etc.... they are busy everyday, jobless, planning how to bring something down or how to convince a 12, 14 or 16 year old that it is better to visit Allah and his 70 virgins than to go to the library or a friends house to listen to some jams or just be a teenager.... the leaders of the Arab world are miserable abject failures with one possible exception, Abdullah of Jordan is trying to bring his people into the 21st century but he remains a Monarchy.... We, the USA, and the rest of the civilized world are between a rock and a hard place........ try to remove the festering boil or putting up with it hoping it goes away... the Bush administration is bent on removing the boil.... regards from chuck on the right.....

To: bela_ghoulashi who wrote (6715)	4/10/2004 1:19:52 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 15987

The moderate modernists, where ever the hell they are, are not notably covering themselves in glory on any forum, pulpit, or stage. We have to fight it with a multi-front effort, militarily, economically, and culturally (this means emphazing moderate and peaceful conduct of religious activities). Militarily means to confront, intimidate, and/or destroy those elements which would seek to create social intolerance, and militant religious domination over the political system. Moderate and modernist control requires social stability and mutual security for all parties involved, with an understanding that violent political activities aimed at dominating or intimidating rivals will be met with counter-force. Economically we have to empower the average Iraqi to permit them to possess a stake in the economic and political success of the governing systems. Which means we have to dilute and decentralize the control over the means of production from the hands of the current power elite and tribal clan leadership. Because economic power translates readily into political power, those who hold it will not have an interest in giving it up willingly, nor sharing it with the previous dispossessed segments of society. And on that note, I read an interesting article today in the Washington Times about micro-credit operations within Afghanistan (couldn't find it on their website). It stated the Bush administration's support for micro-credit lending operations aimed at empowering small entrepreneurs (primarily women) to improve and expand their businesses. An amazing 97% of all loans have been successfully repaid. This is one of the long-term, and extraordinarily important, policies that need to be expanded throughout the undeveloped world. And it needs to be combined with the development and restructuring of legal sytems focused on granting and protecting individual property rights, not just for the rich and powerful, but also for the poor (and extremely scarce, middle class). Culturally speaking, I'm not out to wage some kind of religious war with Muslims. There exists plenty of extremism in all religions. But culturally, I believe we have created a system which DEMANDS that all religious practice remain within a strictly peaceful framework, denouncing violence or intimidation of rival faiths. This is something that we have to demostrate, as well as instill over the long term, into the minds of muslim (and other faiths as well) throughout the world. We have to be in this for the long-run, and the consequences of permitting the militants to dominate the cultural battles for hearts and minds of muslim youth is just as grievous as they are for thinking this is just a battle against Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is just a symptom of the disease pervading the region. It must be fought, of course, but the primary focus is to heal the patient itself (the mid-east) to good health. Hawk