Before te US got there, how many people did Saddam kill because they didn't like him.

While Islamists may be a correct term, you make quite the generalization here in labeling all islamists as terrorists. The terrorists represent the minority of Islam, and they certainly don't represent the ideals of the majority of the Islamic people. If that were the case, we'd be fighting quite a few more people in Iraq then we currently are.

I agree with phoenix here. This is a war we can not win by force of arms. Yes, we can make the impact of the enemy less, but it will not be wiped out. In order to win such a war both a war of guns and a war of idealogy(probably including economics) must be waged. I, however, have no idea how to wage the latter.

In the domestic policy arena Bill Clinton was very influential and motivated. But when it came to foreign policy, he tried to stay out of it as much as possible and not ruffle any feathers.

I agree that good and evil are mostly relative terms that are used to stir the spirit of those someone is speaking to and make the speaker seem more credible. However, this relativity does not justify inactivity(I don't think kirby was insinuating that though?)

That marine likes to paint liberals as "naive", yet he's the one who still believes in a cartoon view of "good" and "evil". Maybe he should stop watching Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and enter the real world.

The simple fact is the terrorists attack America because America has done as much as it can in the last 50 years to instigate it. You don't see terrorists attacking Norway or the Netherlands, do you? Possibly because their foreign policies do not place themselves on pedestals above the rest of the world.

Bad news, friend, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. They didn't murder thousands of innocent civilians.

But they DID have weapons of mass destruction... Oh... well... that's right.... they didn't.... Well... Dang.

Where'd he mention Iraq? The subject was terrorists.

Where is a letter from an Iraqi kid who lost his family in a bombing raid as collateral damage?

Interesting letter...but I've seen other letters from other soldiers with completely different viewpoints so you'll have to forgive me if I don't put that much more value on what he has to say than anyone else.

Jaiph, I think the point of posting the letter was to represent a certain viewpoint, but not the viewpoint of Marines or soldiers.




Leave the soldiers alone. A soldier is supposed to follow orders. Sometimes the orders they get are quite unpleasant, so soldiers have to think what they are doing is absolutely right to be able to deal with killing someone. I have no qualms with a Marine who thinks it's okay for us to be in Iraq. It's the people stateside who don't see any fighting and don't have to actually kill people that share the same views that make me mad.

Why exactly would a Marine in Iraq have a 'better perspective' than anyone else? Yes, he'd be more informed about the specifics of the military operations (which he probably couldn't tell us anyway), but as for the politics of the situtation he is in exactly the same situtation as us.
If anything, the soldiers in Iraq are the worst people to ask about the Iraq situation as they are already going to biased and have less all-round education on the situation on both sides. Their job is to fight, and die. That's what they do, and they do it fairly well. They are soldiers. They are not politicians, they are not sociologists, they are not scientists, they are not philosophers, they are not political analyists. They're not supposed to fill any of those roles, so asking them about those things is absolutely pointless.

Do you have one to post?

Didn't think so.

Dude, that didn't make sense.

Also, aren't these wars illegal? As in, against international laws and against the constitution? Funny, because pro-Bush supporters attack me constantly in here and say I'm the sort of guy the constitution protects America against. The cognitive dissonance in you guys must be amazing. Respec.

Second, how come he gets away with all that? Isn't that insane? If any other guy did what he did, illegally and without reason having thousands of people killed, you'd call him a terrorist. Or maybe enemy of the state or something. At the very least a dangerous element that should be disarmed, as written in "the constitution". Yet you refer to him as mister President...

How is that acceptable?

How is it possible that you vote for a guy who says he's waging a war on terrorism, yet had and has INSANELY questionable relationships, and he burned the bridges to the many solid friends America did have. Still, you missed that part, and the title Enduring Freedom just seemed so magical to you. And when he ends his speeches with God bless America, the little American flags still shoot up.

Can you honestly say that those Arab kids who were jumping up and down in the streets with joy on 9/11 were/are any less rational than you are now?

Who here can honestly say 'that guy over there is a terrorist, and this guy over here is the good guy'? I think the borders between the two sides, between 'Terrorists' and 'Heroes' have faded and disappeared years ago. There's just the unprecedented lack of reasoning.

Why is it so hard to recognize, that in four years time the state of the entire world has deteriorated immensely? Look at 'before' - 'after'. The crises which have grown in these four years across the globe are too many and too huge to be summed up.

And still, you voted Bush. You have no excuse.

All this IMHO of course :/

I had a letter about soldiers in Iraq getting scared because lack of leadership and basically just freaking out. One of my friends sent it in an e-mail to me so I dont really put too much faith in it being more than an email hoax...............

It's probably not internationally legal, but it is constitutional. Congress handed power to go to war to the President twice. Whither that power was used as a last resort or not is open for debate.

And those people are ***es

Public opinion determines who's a good guy and who's a bad guy. The American people in general see Bush as a good guy.

Not much has changed. The only difference is there is no longer a facade that opposing nations hold up. The new guy in office doesn't do what they want him to do so there is no reason for them to pretend anymore. The US however has gained some political support from Middle Eastern governments. Several Middle Eastern countries supported the war in Iraq on either the grounds that Saddam was a threat to their country or he wasn't a "good muslim."

Mort: US soldiers have a better perspective than any of us. We are spoon feed whatever the media deems news-worthy. And since Americans have a morbid fascination with death and crime, that is what we are given. A US soldier may see only a small part of the entire war, but at least they are actually seeing a reality instead of looking through a polarized lense(Now that I think about it, you could use the flaw of sensationalism to help support communist ideals).

Perespectives change when you are getting shot at daily.



Like what? The only real thing I can think of US support for Israel. Other than that, these countries are victims of globalizaion and it's not merely the US's fault.

Gonna disagree with you. They have a better perspective of their little slice of the world, but only their commanders (I mean, top brass and the people directly under them) have a better perspective than us, in my opinion.

I haven't read the thread, but my AP English teacher was reading an email she got from a marine-friend of hers in Iraq, and she printed it out and highlighted where his superiors edited and added things. About half of the email was edited, be it censorship or things they added.

It wasn't hard though. Half of the email was all marine bad-@55, "We popped in on these iraqi terrorists and invited ourselves to a barbeque, and then captured and killed half of their friends," and the other half was "And we walk down the streets of a newly liberated city, and the first thing the marines do is get out of the tanks and jeeps, and give candy to all the iraqi children who come running up. We run down the streets with them on our backs, and play with them, establishing a sense of security and freedom that everyone can enjoy."

Polar opposites in the same letter. Pretty interesting to read, actually.

Sounds like the only people who can say anything, you ask me...

What if you're both? As for the marine letter, well he could be saying that just so he can keep his morale up.

I never said at all that they were all terrorists, I related the fact that (most, if not all of)the terrorists are islamists. Stop trying to nit pick, and bug off.

And Avenger, I said "thousands, if not millions", plus, that's really besides the point. The main idea I was trying to get across was the negative aspects of what's resulted from us.

Forgive me, I was unclear in my reply. Your generalizing that the views of the terrorists are those taken by the majority of the Islamic people. I agree completely with your point that the majority of terrorists are Islamics. However, the radical Islam practiced by terrorists is not the same as that practiced by the majority of Muslim people. To imply that is to insult the religion of Islam itself.

And for future reference, telling someone to "bug off" just because you think they are misunderstanding you certainly isn't a good way to convince anyone in an argument.

Exactly! That is a huge part of the reason. The Europeans came in and forced the Palestinians, fellow Muslims, out of their homes to make room for some race that hadn't lived there for centuries, just because they claimed it was their "promised land". Unfortunately, the Middle East is Islamic holy land too! If that wasn't enough, the Israelis couldn't leave well enough alone and started to attack the Palestinians and force them even farther out. Then they started to invade other Muslim nations (including Egypt!), even though they were supposed to stay in the land that the U.N. had given them.

If I were these people, I'd be pretty pissed off by now. I'd also be pretty pissed off at anyone who helped the Israelis. *cough*U.S.*cough*

Now if funding the Israelis wasn't enough, the U.S. just doesn't seem to be able to leave the region alone. After 9/11 (an act performed by a really extreme group, so I'm just going to leave it alone) we go in to Afghanistan, and for some reason, instead of just looking for Al Qaeda, we feel the need to make changes to their culture just because it isn't the same as ours. (Yes, that statement is refutable, but whatever for now). Then, when everyone is good and riled up, we find a "connection" to Iraq and invade there, completely changing everything so it's more like ours. AGAIN

So put that way, do these people still have no reason to be pissed off? Even if the Taliban was repressive, or if Saddam was a dictator, we need to leave them alone! Just because a culture is not the exact same as ours doesn't mean it's wrong.

Remember, multiculturalism is recognizing and celebrating the differences between cultures, not assimilating every culture into one global mass.

How exactly did we force a change in their culture. A powerful few were repressing the rest of the country. That's not culture.

Like what? What about the propping up of the Shah of Iran, and the current Saudi Royal Family? What about the CIA sponsored overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mosaddeq (who made the fatal mistake of attempting to use Iranian resources for the benefit of Iranians, rather than the British and Americans)? The government of America has a long, disgusting, history of meddling in the Middle East for its own benefit at the expense of the people who live there.

Sorry, that didn't come out quite right. While we didn't really force a change to their "culture" per se, we did come in and meddle quite a bit. If someone came in and told the U.S. (or England or whatever country you're from) that their way of doing things was wrong and forced you to change it, you'd get pissed off too!

And thank you to Matthew Pate for giving more examples of how the U.S. just can't seem to leave the Middle East alone!

He deliberately said Islamist, not Muslim.
Islamist != Islamic.
The term 'Islamist' refers essentially to fundementalist Muslims, or those that apply Islam to wider politics and culture. It is the view that Islam is not only a religion, but a system that also governs the politicial, economic and social imperatives of the state. The goal of Islamism is to implement conservative Islamic values into government.

The Islamist movement refers specifically to the groups that rose up first in Egypt and then elsewhere in the Middle-East.

Also related are Wahhabism, Khomeinism and the Deobandi Movement.



No, the Middle-East has never existed on its own. This is also a response to Sine's long post about why Arab states brood 'terrorists', which he's posted twice but I haven't had the opportunity to reply to.

Ever since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East has always been dominated by foreign nations, the British, the French, the Americans and the Soviets.
The biggest intruder was the British Empire, and to a much lesser extent the French, in Algeria. Whenever any groups of people opposed British rule, they were financed and funded by America. These people would typically overthrow the government and implement their own. Usually, these were brutal dictatorships, and they were trained, funded and supported by the CIA. These governments were usually extremely corrupt. The Shah's Iran is a famous example. Egypt is a good example of this, as Nasser was ridiculously corrupt. The entire country was basically run by three wealthy Americans. Egypt is very significant as it produced Sayyid Qutb, an important thinker in the Muslim Brotherhood. The violence, the corruption, the misery and brutality that existed in the Middle East was seen to be from Western influences. And it pretty much was. Qutb spoke out, saying that to end this injustice and horror, you must oppose the Western values of greed and materialism. (and also democracy was seen as a corrupting Western value that opposed Islam. this in particular is a very interesting line of argument from Qutb philosophy).

The hatred towards America is not because of America specifically. They do not hate American culture or life or living specifically (although Qutb did write some pieces on this), but rather they hate the American influence on their countries. I personally very much dislike the generalisation of 'terrorist', as there are many many different and occassionally opposing factions and organisations, but I think this point can be made for all Islamist 'terrorists', albeit cautiously. Their hatred is spawned due to the western influences in their countries. They just want you to get the hell out and leave them alone. Because the Middle East has never been simply left alone. Al Queda is slightly different in that they attack America itself, whereas other organisations tend to attack the Middle Eastern governments. But the Al Queda approach makes sense, in that to stop the corruption of the Middle East you go to the root of the problem, rather than attacking the many tentacles of it.



No, they really don't. "Getting shot at" doesn't help you see things clearly at all. You're just going to end up in blind hatred and fury for the enemy. Which is fantastic for a soldier, that's exactly what you're supposed to feel.
But that is far from useful for a politician, or for us for that matter. We as the general population have the ability to get an objective and logical view of the situtation. We can see the arguments from both sides, we have access to BBC News, Fox News, Al Jazeera, CNN, and we can see the world from many different eyes. Soldiers can't, and to some extent, they shouldn't. Objective and relative analysis will make it much more difficult for them to do their job, for them to kill people. Viewing them as 'evil' and all that, that is psychologically beneficial as they do not view the enemy as 'human', and so can kill them without thinking about it.

But we are not soldiers and we do not have to see things like that.



Ho ho ho, nice one there, cussing up the politicans and intellectuals. The sociologists are those that can say the most about Middle Eastern society. The scientists are those that can say the most about nuclear or biological warfare. The political analyists are those that can say the most about the politics that govern the country. We, the general population, have to act as a jack-of-all-trades-but-master-of-none, and have an all-round view of all of these fields, though we don't specialise in any particular one.

Ok, got you now and I can agree with that.



Are you really in any kind of position to say that?