[This message has been edited by doombug]
Wow! Bomb London, and watch how quickly the anti-American roaches scurry to the podium.
Nothing original, though. Same tired, low risk, blame-it-on-America stuff.
It's easy to be a pacifist and nonchalant about such happenings when you're living a cozy life untouched by violence. After all, you can't see the wahhabists learning and practicing the craft of bomb making; you can't see the pre-plotted maps identifying as targets those cities you may have visited, were born in, or are resident of; you can't see the faces of men seated in circles cursing to death anyone deemed an infidel, or anyone too soft in their interpretation of the Quran.
Many of these Air-America liberals would SUV their way towards the Mexican and Canadian borders if the terrorists ever made a meaningful "landing" on our turf.
"...economically well off countries that lack civil liberties have spawned relatively many terrorists. Poor countries with a tradition of protecting civil liberties are unlikely to spawn terrorists."
(Source: http://www.flashpoints.info/issue_briefings/Terrorism%20&%20Political%20Violence/Terrorism_main.htm)
Well-off and bored idealists from Saudi Arabia who intentionally target innocents seem to have inspired the well-off and bored (AND myopic) idealists in the West. Our proud bunch of idealists even mimic the disconnectedness that the terrorist feels towards his own homeland. They are "above" being patriots, and increasingly defend the militants' lashing out at the West (specifically Israel and the U.S.; though, the UK appears to have now been officially indoctrinated as well).
If you have any hint of sympathy for those tepid, devout Muslims who suddenly resort to terrorism to right some wrong, consider the following snippet from the book, "An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror," co-written by Assistant Defense Secretary Richard Perle, and author David Frum. It describes a single example of what festers in the minds of many young--and often affluent--males in some of these Mid. East countries:
"Frustration may also go far to explain the militant's hatred of the West. In Islamic culture, as Bernard Lewis reminds us, Satan is perceived as a tempter--and the United States is the greatest Satan because it is the greatest tempter. 'There are two kinds of internet cafe in the Middle East,' reports one of The Guardian's correspondents: 'Those where you sit with your back to the wall, and those where you don't. The importance of these seating arrangements should not be underestimated: having your back to the wall means nobody can look over your shoulder to check what you are up to. In other words, it is a discreet way of signaling that the cafe has a laid-back attitude towards pornography.' Some cafes discreetly erect partitions between the computer screens; when Yemen banned such devices in June 2002, half the Internet cafes in the capital city went bankrupt overnight. The most pornography-friendly cafe the journalist visited was in Beirut; it was operated by supporters of Hezbollah. Imagine the emotions with which a devout, frustrated, young man would slink out of such a place afterward: shame for himself, fury at the anonymous Westerners who had tempted him, contempt for the civilization that created the filth he had enjoyed, envy of the society in which the filth was freely available in the privacy of one's own bedroom."
What fragile egos. "You made me spank my monkey; now I cut off your head!"
As for the "enlightened" critics of the war, the authors note:
"Americans waged war to overthrow a menace to the United States and the world and to offer freedom to a suffering people, just as Americans have previously brought freedom to many of the same people who thought Iraqis unworthy of it. A distinguised French scholar of Islamic affairs, Gilles Kepel, delivered a lecture in Teheran shortly after U.S. and coalition forces liberated Iraq. In the question-and-answer session that followed, a young woman rose. 'We Iranians have only one friend,' she said. Kepel waited for her to thank the French government for its support. She continued: 'It is the Americans. They liberated you French in 1945. Why do you oppose their liberating US now?'"
As for those achievements bragged about in a prior post that somehow gave rise to the wealth of knowledge in the West:
"Despite its colossal oil wealth and the lavishly funded universities in the Persian Gulf, the Arab world produces virtually zero scientific papers and patents. A 2002 United Nations report on the condition of the Arab world observed that the nations that constitute the Arab League, total population more than three hundred million, annually translate 330 books, one-fifth the number translated by Greece, population less than eleven million.... One-third of the students at Saudi universities are enrolled in Islamic studies."
On dissent:
"We may be so eager to protect the right to dissent that we lose sight of the difference between dissent and subversion; so determined to defend the right of privacy that we refuse to acknowledge even the most blatant warnings of danger."
Coincidently: Should the authorities have ignored similar warnings when they arrested/detained those Pakistani-Americans in Lodi, California, recently? I doubt such arrests would have gone over very well--or even been orchestrated--had they taken place just a two-hour drive west, in the nation of San Francisco.
The byproduct of Saudi-funded Islamic education throughout the Middle East:
"A Tunisian intellectual, Afif Al-Akhdar, has warned that 'the Saudi curriculum brainwashes the pupil of any suspect rationality that might infect him...[and] sows among the children the seeds of the culture of hatred for the Jews and the Christians.' Wherever the Saudi infrastructure of incitement reaches, from Indonesia to Indiana [note: Islamic Society of North America, a national umbrella of Islamic charities, is based in Indiana], it inculcates 'contempt for the rational, for women, and for non-Muslims; yearning for the Caliphate state [a ruling, Islamic, super-state]; liberating Palestine to the last grain of earth; and regaining Andalusia [territory formerly conquered by the Moors] and establishing an Islamic regime in France within the next 50 years.'"
The Patriot Act:
"Critics often describe the Patriot Act enacted after 9/11 as if it were coauthored by Joseph Stalin and Tomas de Torquemada, but those same critics are notably vague when it comes time to describe what the law actually does. No wonder: If they ever offered details, their audience would be startled by how reasonable the law is--and how lax the critics would wish the law to be."
We Americans: We're such evil imperialists. We crave Iraq's oil (though we could have more easily taken the crude of Chavez), and slaughter the innocent masses with glee (maybe a Dresden-style leveling of Baghdad would have been more humane)
Islamic militancy: At times, a little rough around the edges. But, at heart, a tame and benevolent force for eventual peace throughout the world. If you think it's nothing more than a few isolated pockets, then don a pair of red-blocker lens before viewing this map to avoid being disappointed:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/003897.php
Apparently, there's nothing in Greenland to convert but ice.
Here are a few comments to consider for those fond of bashing Israel--and, for those who think they're on the mark when they shout "The Palestinians were there first!!":
"While much is made of aid to Israel over the years, most Americans are unaware that, since 1993, the US has poured $900 million into the PLO’s coffers in a futile effort to bring about some semblance of peace based on the Oslo agreement. Funding the PLO has proved to be a very bad investment."
http://www.anxietycenter.com/islam/islam_israel.htm
"From a purely historical point of view, Israel is most certainly the ancient homeland of the Jews, a people and a faith that preceded Christianity and Islam by more than a millennium. Jews walked the streets of Jerusalem a thousand years before the birth of Jesus and fifteen hundred years before the prophet Mohammed.
"The irony is that Jews have survived because they were forced out of Israel centuries ago, living in a Diaspora that, depending on the time and place, varied between levels of tolerance and persecution. Those who 'returned' following WWII did so because they no longer had a homeland in Europe."
http://www.anxietycenter.com/islam/islam_israel.htm
"There are 1,974,181,000 Christians worldwide. There are 1,155,109,000 Muslims worldwide. There are 14,313,000 Jews worldwide. If peace for Israel must be imposed by war than it is a war the Israelis have struggled to avoid. It is a war, however, the Islamists have declared 'holy.'"
http://www.anxietycenter.com/islam/islam_israel.htm
"The late Ayatollah Khomeini whose Islamic revolution overthrew the Shah of Iran is a saint to millions of Moslems around the world. This is what he said of Jihad: 'It means the conquest of non-Muslim territory. The domination of Koranic Law from one end of the earth to the other is…the final goal…of this war of conquest.'"
http://www.anxietycenter.com/islam/endlessjihad.htm
"For all those loathsome liberals, intellectuals, and Hollywood types who want to blame the attack on America, this is what syndicated columnist, Charles Krauthammer, had to say, "America conducted three wars in the 1990s. The Gulf War saved the Kuwaiti people from Saddam. American intervention in the Balkans saved Bosnia. And then we saved Kosovo from Serbia. What do these three military campaigns have in common? In every one we saved a Muslim people. And then there was Somalia, a military operation of unadulterated altruism. Its sole purpose was to save the starving people of Somalia. Muslims all."
http://www.anxietycenter.com/islam/endlessjihad.htm
"Why should Islam be subject to presumption of respect because it’s a religion? Liberals bar the most benign expressions of religion by little America. Only a religion that is highly correlated with fascistic attacks on the US demands their respect and protection."
http://www.anxietycenter.com/warning/main.htm
Peace out!
[Disclaimer: I be agnostic, apolitical, and non-Jewish. Oh, and I don't have any cute yellow ribbons or flags pasted on my rear bumper. The off-topic comments mentioned above were unleashed only because of the pungent odor of America-bashing I whiffed upon entering the forum]
