DER RANT AUF KLAUS, PART III. 48 What *I* want to know is, if we are serious about not letting 9--11 happen again, what are we doing to defuse the hatred millions and millions of people feel for the US -- are we trying to understand that hatred and see if there is anything unethical we are doing that we could stop doing, or are we so smug that we are sure we are doing nothing wrong and therefore we should not change anything we are doing to contribute to this hatred? "There is nothing that the US and its allies can do to mollify Islamist terrorists. Their fundamental objection is not to this or that policy; it is to the very existence of a modern, secular West, whose leading champion is the United States. Since appeasement won’t work, the West must seek victory. But how? The obvious, if ambitious, answer lies in transforming the Middle East, the breeding ground of this particular brand of savagery. And this is precisely what the Bush administration has set out to do." The West can never breathe easy as long as such criminal regimes remain in control of such vast resources. And it's not just our enemies that represent a problem. So do our ostensible friends, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, whose citizens seem to make up the bulk of al Qaeda's recruits. There is only one solution to this problem, and it is called liberal democracy. Spreading freedom in the Arab world is no easy task, of course, but if democracy could take root in eastern Europe, east Asia and Latin America, there is no theoretical reason why it shouldn't work in the Middle East. (Max Boot 5/20/2003; Weekly Standard) 49 Radical Islam is fueled by demagogues like Bin Laden, but its dry tinder is the inequities that we support as we prop up illegitimate, undemocratic regimes that while not tolerating dissent (Saudi Arabia, Egypt...) in their own lands are happy to profit spectacularly from us(Saudi princes...) Exploited by bin laden’s ilk, fueled by anti-Western brainwashing supported by Saudi financed madrassas. Egypt profits only in the form of aid; otherwise, it is desperately poor. 49.1 as we extract their natural resources. The petroleum resources of the Arabian Peninsula were originally discovered and developed by western, mainly American, companies. Additionally, these resources would be worthless without a market for them. As the preeminent global industrial and economic engine, the United States in particular and the West in general can be credited for the development of the demand for these resources which would otherwise have no value. Of course, the companies which originally invested heavily to develop these resources watched their invested oil production infrastructure vanish as it was nationalized by the Saudi "government." We pay for every drop of oil extracted from the Saudi oil fields. Your statement implies that we steal this oil. 
Er, we meant DUCK.(Photo Courtesy Duckforamerica, er that's Deanforamerica.com)
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Our policies about democracy, dissent, and anti-terrorism are utterly inconsistent, Jethro -- because they are not the prime reasons for our actions.
What then are the primary reasons for our actions?
"Middle Eastern regimes, especially clerical Iran's, will no doubt challenge America's place in Iraq, especially if American efforts to establish liberal democracy are seen to be serious. Under the Bush administration, the restoration of American awe in the Middle East is now inextricably linked to the expansion of liberal values. This point may be lost on European intellectuals, who more often than not see the root causes for the war in some "imperialist" grab for oil or in an Israel-first, Jewish-American conspiracy. It may be lost in certain American quarters, who likewise are distinctly uncomfortable juxtaposing the words "liberal" and "Bush."
(Reuel Marc Gerecht; Weekly Standard; 5/12/2003)
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So I will sing kumbaya, do my job as best I can, and hope like hell my son and my daughters' boyfriends won't be drafted to go to war
This is not likely since the services greatly prefer an all volunteer force.
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against a people that has no plans to do us any harm
No, the people don’t but the regime did. It was the regime that was targeted (with extreme success heretofore never seen), not the Iraqi population.
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, all because our president is a frightened, vindictive insecure man
And the EVIDENCE for these claims?
Bush "received a bachelor's degree from Yale University in 1968, then served as an F-102 fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard. President Bush received a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1975." He then left the insular world of academics and rejoined the real world.
He is a pragmatist who does not get lost in the nuances of moral argument. He has a clarity not often found in the White House (or contemporaneously at Number 10 Downing Street in Tony Blair – not seen since the Roosevelt/Churchill alignment with the possible exception of the Reagan/Thatcher era). But he is a pragmatist dealing with concrete reality in a real and dangerous world. A gun to the head tends to clarify the mind.
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who is making unprecedented numbers of people around the world fear and hate us.
According to what data?
"Let them hate us, so long as they fear us."
Napoleon
Jed
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I am NOT against war -- I am against war when it is not the best course of action.
What was the "best course?"
I hope I would have signed up as my father did in WWII.
?
But
I don't believe the rest of the world is stupid or morally inferior.
Arabs stupid? No. Ignorant, uninformed and uneducated? Yes. One of Islam’s deficiencies is that it never experienced an Enlightenment or a Reformation.
It has been petrified into a form of medieval nihilism which the Islamists desire to impose upon the entire globe.
I am frightened by the increasingly concentrated ownership of the nation's mass media by a handful of mega-corporations -- e.g., Fox, AOL TimeWarner -- and the resultant loss of divergent, dissenting voices. Indeed, I have more faith in the average American than I believe most of the Bush crowd does. I believe that if you let US citizens have rich divergent information from multiple perspectives on what constitutes truth that most will come to very fair and compassionate and brave conclusions. I believe Bush and his folks exploit this sense of fairness to suit goals that often make no sense. I supported the war in Afghanistan but firmly believe the war against Iraq was for no coherently defended rationally that ever came from this administration.
Regarding the putative loss of diversity in the news media, I see little evidence that Chomsky’s "spectrum of debate" has narrowed. Quite the contrary for anyone with the modicum of motivation required to turn on a computer and type
www.google.com. The presently continuous, 24/7/365 availability of information spanning a spectrum of debate far wider than that imagined by Noam clearly evidences the contrary. Never before has the flow of information been more impossible to control and never before has information been as available as it is today. I’ve read Manufacturing Consent, Deterring Democracy and Necessary Illusions. I’ve read umpteen of Chomsky’s essays and listened to umpteen of his lectures on tape. As for his "propaganda model", which he always refers to as a model, I’m not buying it. Anyone employing the scientific method can accumulate a body of "evidence" to support whatever thesis they wish to support. Noam similarly labors over newspapers and magazines to extract those data points that support his "propaganda model." He is his own little propaganda machine dedicated to self aggrandizement and hatred of the United States. Notice that he never misses an opportunity to profit by his latest condemnation of capitalism; how many books does he have rehashing the same tired "model?" Yeah, the United States is a "terrorist superpower." Right Noam. Controlling information is like trying to nail jelly to the wall.
I know of no more outstanding example of the blind leading the blind than the Left’s visceral hatred for the President. This blind hatred in turn has blinded the Left to the revolutionary official US policy shift toward the Arab world – the active promotion of liberal democracy throughout the region; this based upon the belief that liberal democratic societies are poor breeding grounds for Neofascist (read Islamofascist) terror.
Liberal democratization is understood to be the death knell of militant Islamic extremism. This policy shift, one might expect, should be music to the ears of true liberals the world over. Instead, so-called self-described "liberals" (read: socialists) see, as if viewing the world stage through some fashion of carnival fun-house mirror, a sinister cabal with Machiavellian intent.
This blind hatred of anything, or anyone, Bush, has short-circuited their ability to see or think clearly, evidenced by their propensity toward a rabid foaming-at-the-mouth, spittle-sputtering promulgation of fictions, factoids and paranoid conspiracy theories.
I KNOW that you are much smarter than THIS.
I supported the war in Afghanistan but firmly believe the war against Iraq was for no coherently defended rationally that ever came from this administration.
Take a trip to "Ground Zero."
While you are busy singing Kumbaya, there are likely many Afghans, Iraqis and Iranians busy singing America the Beautiful.
posted by Klaus (mit mein vicious Hund, Helmut) 06/26/03E-Mail Us, Schnell, Und Ve Vill Post Your Reply. Hier!
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