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:	post by ShadowSD at 2006-03-15 09:25:57

PatMeebles said:

You know, I really don't care about elitist europeans who hate us.

You assume I was talking about Europe in particular, I was not. There are reasonable, enlightened people scattered all over the world, of which those who are European are only a fraction, and of which those who are elitist are an even smaller minority. If reasonable people around the world are finding legitimate cause to view the US as just as much as a threat to them as terrorism, I don't want to know what the unreasonable ones are thinking.

Take Iraq, for example. If reasonable people there don't side with us, where will the loyalties of their new military and police force be?

From the AP just a couple hours ago:

"Eleven people — most women and children — were killed when a house was bombed during a U.S. raid north of Baghdad early Wednesday, police and relatives said.

Associated Press photographs showed the bodies of two men, five children and four other covered figures arriving at the hospital accompanied by grief-stricken relatives.

'The killed family was not part of the resistance; they were women and children," Ahmed Khalaf said. 'The Americans have promised us a better life, but we get only death.'"

As stories like this begin to accumulate, reasonable people's opinions do turn against us, and we SHOULD care, because as I originally pointed out, each time everyone inches down the spectrum away from us, neutral people become agitated, agitated people become sympathetic to our enemies, and terrorist sympathizers become terrorist recruits.

PatMeebles said:

They keep talking about oil, but they were the ones who voted against an iraqi invasion because their leaders were bribed with oil.

Even if you take oil out of the equation, they still would have been against overthrowing Saddam Hussein, as would have anyone with the least bit of common sense, because of two key factors: an inevitable civil war that makes the mission unwinnable, and the fact that once you go, you have to win. Those two put together create an inherant paradox, and EVERYONE in the civilized world (aside from the neo-cons) understood this years before we went, including George H.W. Bush, James Baker, and most Republicans. The only reason we created this terrible situation was because everyone was too chickenshit to stand up and say something in the post-9/11 climate.

PatMeebles said:

They talk about tolerance, but they have completely abandoned their immigrant population, and their nihilistic moral relativism has opened the door for islamofascists to take root and create autonomous regions around places like Paris where sharia law is openly enforced.

You'll get no argument from me on this one.

PatMeebles said:

They say we let our poor and helpless die after Katrina yet they don't do anything about a heat wave that killed thousands of elderly.

MRE's (Emergency Food and Water) are something the US military can get to anywhere within 24 hours, whereas combating a heat wave that efficiently is not possible. Had the US Military delivered MRE's to Katrina victims the day after the hurricane, and had some of them still died of heat stroke because of the 100 degree weather, I certainly wouldn't hold our government responsible for that.

Despite the fact that we expect the state to make all reasonable and timely efforts to protect its citizens, there is a limit to how much we can expect the government to take care of us.

PatMeebles said:

They talk about how America destroys people's civil liberties, but places like the Netherlands are debating (at the very least) putting security cameras on every street in order to maintain order, a la England.

Sweet, I can smoke weed and wave to the camera!

Seriously though, is this any worse than the US leading the way in satellite technology that zooms in just as close as those security cameras. At least in the case of the street cameras, people know they're being watched...

PatMeebles said:

The reason I don't think a sectarian civil war will break out is because of your predicitions about Zarqawi. Being stupid and indiscriminately bombing Iraqis and other Middle Eastern peoples is EXACTLY what he's been doing since day 1.

Indeed. But note that I said above that indiscriminate bombing once a civil war begins would backfire, eventually uniting both sides against external forces; however, until a civil war begins, chaos is the best catalyst, and there is no better way to achieve chaos than indiscriminate attacks.

If you don't think a civil war will break out, this was posted just yesterday:

"Baghdad Police Find 65 Bodies in 24 Hours
AP - 5:22 am
Police found at least 65 bodies in Baghdad in the past 24 hours, including 15 men bound and shot in an abandoned minibus, in a gruesome wave of apparent sectarian reprisal attacks, officials said Tuesday."

And then, posted by the AP in just in the last couple of hours:

"Iraq Edges Closer to Open Civil Warfare

Iraqi authorities discovered at least 87 corpses — men shot to death execution-style — as Iraq edged closer to open civil warfare. Some of the bloodshed appeared to be retaliation for a bomb and mortar attack in the Sadr City slum that killed at least 58 people and wounded more than 200 two days earlier."

PatMeebles said:

Al Qaeda may be very patient people, but as intel on them is gathered, we know they've been completely decimated in places all around the world, as early as right after 9/11. Support for terrorism dropped (at least before the cartoon fiasco) according to the PEW research center (run by Madeline Albright, no friend of Bush).

The problem with that is that if you listen to every qualified analyst of the cartoon fiasco, they all say the same thing, that it was not a cause of tension but rather an effect; an indicator that is symbolic of growing animosity between East and West (which as I have pointed out, is just how Al Qaeda has wanted to frame this war from the beginning, as opposed to civilization vs. anarchy, which is the way we must frame it in order to win).

The number of poor, uneducated, young Muslim men in the world with no hope of advancement exceeds the entire population of the United States, and the worse American policies look to them, the more vulnerable all of them become to jihadist recruitment. This effect is so widespread and scattered, it's impossible for any research organization to get an accurate reading of it.

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