Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BubbaFred who wrote (51950)	8/1/2004 2:55:25 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

It will be superhot in either case (US stays or leave the region). It will be a question of whether US can afford it. Actually, you should be thinking about whether the US (and other democratic societies throughout the world) can afford NOT TO BE involved in the region.. It's not very likely we're (the world) going to manage to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels for the foreseeable future (certainly not in the developing world where diesel is king), and some 400-500 million muslim young people, currently under 18 years of age, are going to grow up to adulthood and starting acting upon the values that were taught to them... Can we afford to sit back and permit the militants and dictators to brainwash these children? I say we can't.. And I'm also saying that because we failed to take decisive action after 1991 in creating political and economic change in the region, we're paying a much higher price now. But that price will be even higher 4-5 years from now.. And that's a price I don't want any of our young people to have to pay.. While it's tragic that some 700 of our soldiers have died in combat (and thousands of others wounded), ask yourself how you're going to feel when that number approaches in the tens of thousands (and god forbid, hundreds of thousands)?? All the Islamists have to do is sit back and wait for the current regimes to become socially and politically undermined by their religious extremism, so they can replace the current dictatorships with religious tyranny.. We, on the other hand, face the burden of trying to nurture democratic values for people who have never lived under them. People who have been told what to do, told what they can, and cannot, possess, and that their lot in life is "the will of Allah"... That's going to take time, and effort.. as well as blood and treasure.. Hawk