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r3x29yz4a said:
here's where i think diplomacy is better used. work the people, encourage change through them and the government will have no choice. As long as we don't withdraw support as Bush sr. did in 1991.



Again, that assumes that Arabs think like Westerners, and ignores the depth of their hatred for Israel and the West. (i.e., it's well-intentioned but naive in its assumptions)

What you propose has been done in the West Bank and Gaza. The enormous amount of economic assistance and other financial and diplomatic aid.
And again, even with this aid, even with freedom in Gaza, their own government, and 95% autonomy in the West Bank, they're still hell-bent on destroying Israel. They'd rather continue their Islamic jihad on Israel than build an economy and prosper.

And all that financial aid has been funneled off into the personal accounts of Arafat and other PLO leaders. And the rest spent on guns and bombs, instead of businesses and jobs for Palestinians.


What Bush did in 1991 was encourage the Kurds and Shi'ites to rise up against Saddam Hussein, and then had our military sit on the border and let them get slaughtered, possibly as many as 200,000. That really bothered me, Bush Sr should have acted.
But we're seeing now what would have happened in 1991, where we'd have been helplessly watching the Sunnis and Shi'ites slaughter each other.
But Bush Sr didn't cultivate any new mindset among Iraqis or other muslims, to reform their culture or offer them economic assistance to reform their nations.


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r3x29yz4a said:
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WB said:

Once again, rather than adress the issues I've raised, you've diverted the discussion to a personal attack on me.





well you advocate a lot of violence and death and then turn around and say i hate america and want to hug terrorists.



I don't advocate violence. What I said yesterday is that it would be (hypothetically) amusing to watch muslims take over America and behead Reid, Pelosi, Dean, etc., all these "useful idiots" who would have ceased to be useful to muslims beyond that point.
In my hypothetical, it is muslims doing the violence.

Other than that, for many years I've advocated using military force and law enforcement to take common-sense measures to contain a radical-Islamist terrorist/military threat.

And that for muslims in the U.S., clear hatred of the United States, and talk of violence against the United States should be treated accordingly, and that even U.S. citizenship should be revoked for these people, and not become a shield from the law for anti-American individuals and groups to abuse and hide behind.

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r3x29yz4a said:
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WB said:
I'd say that about 50% of the muslim world, give or take, are somewhat friendly toward the U.S., and non-violent. These are the people who are tipping off the U.S. and other nations of the pending terrorist attacks of their more fanatical muslim brethren.



what we need to do is look at those two halves and really study them. understand what causes one to go one way and the other to feel the other way.
much like how the use of FBI profilers such as John Douglas were able to determine what separates a psycopath from a normal person. once we know for certain the causes then we can cut off those causes and prevent terrorist recruitment.
As i've always said our cowboy tactics bush is using play more into bin laden's hands. because bush has made us the enemy bin laden claimed we were and, in fact, given credence to his claims we wanted to invade the middle east and destroy islam.



You assume that we're not studying trends in muslim society.

Which is like assuming we wouldn't know what to do if Russia or China attacked the U.S.
Our military has contingency plans for just about every conceivable threat to the U.S.


Bush's "cowboy" tactics were believed to be neccessary. While Saddam was probably not a threat for a few more years, till U.N. sanctions were removed from his nation and he would have free reign to pursue WMD's (that the Kay report clearly showed he was pursuing and in U.N.-treaty material breach of) invasion could have waited a year or two until the Afghan mission was winding down.
But then U.N. sanctions on Iraq would have been lifted by then, and there would have been no legal international justification for going after Saddam.

I agree that invading Iraq played into the hands of Bin Ladin, and to the fears of many in the muslim world. But the alternative was to leave the path open for a nuclear-armed Iraq, in the absence of U.N. sanctions that were crumbling.

The way U.S. liberation of Iraq was seen in the muslim world, as an invasion/colonization, is largely due to the distortions of Al Jazeera and other Arab media, despite the best intentions of ours to liberate and build democracy in Iraq.
I think at this point long-term commitment of the U.S. to democracy in Iraq can still turn around pan-Arab opinion. It already has to a degree, inspiring a call for democracy across the nations of the Middle East.