Republicans Favor Cut'n'Run

[conyat]

<p>

There was a reason why, that even after years of war and hardship, the Iraqi people found the conditions after the statue of Saddam fell to be better than what they were when Saddam was in power.

</p>

<p>Most of the Iraqi people want us gone. Something like 70%. </p>

<p>

what al Qaeda does

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<p>According to Colin Powell, very little of the violence in Iraq is linked to Al Queda. I think the figure he said was about 10%.</p>

<p>And they might not even been doing that had we kept pursuing them instead of putting our efforts into regime change in Iraq.</p>

<hr>

<p>As an aside, all is not quiet on the northern front. Turkey is mobilizing for what may be an invasion into Kurdish Iraq.</p>

[Allmusic]

<p>Fundamentalist Islam is amassed secular Muslims as much as they are amassed against us.</p>

<p>Take a look at Gaza, or Iraq, or Lebanon, for starters, and it is obvious that this internecine violence is Muslims against each other. We are just in the way of their civil wars, with a net result of a lot of dead Americans.</p>

[fundingfather]

<p>

Fundamentalist Islam is amassed secular Muslims as much as they are amassed against us.

we agree

We are just in the way of their civil wars, with a net result of a lot of dead Americans.

This conclusion is contrary to your view that fundamentalist Islam is amassed against us as much as secular Muslims. “Getting out of the way”, sadly, will do nothing to stop them from attacking us.</p>

[conyat]

<p>So what’s stopping them from attacking us now? Why would they just be content to fight us in Iraq?</p>

<p>And what stopped them between 1993-2001?</p>

[fundingfather]

<p>

According to Colin Powell, very little of the violence in Iraq is linked to Al Queda. I think the figure he said was about 10%.

Powell has been out of the loop for over two years. The general consensus is that al Qaeda is the underlying accelerant behind the sectarian violence. Remove the accelerant and enforce a cooling off period between the Shia and the Sunnis and things, with time, will return to a normal peaceful coexistence. </p>

<p>The notion that the Shia and Sunni have been out for each other’s blood forever is nonsense. There has always been some tension between them - just as there is between blacks and whites in the US. But, prior to the bombing of the Shia shrine, the two sects had been far more integrated and inter-married than the two races in the US. </p>

<p>One can argue the point of whether al Qaeda was in Iraq before the war or not. However, that is now totally irrelevant - they are there now and have decalred Iraq to be the central battle ground. So how people can rationalize that going after al Qaeda in Afghanistan is a good thing but going after them in Iraq (where the stakes are infinitely higher) is a bad thing is totally illogical.</p>

[fundingfather]

<p>

So what’s stopping them from attacking us now? Why would they just be content to fight us in Iraq?

being on the offense - and also using anti-terror techniques that the Dems want to dismantle.

And what stopped them between 1993-2001?

Have you really forgotten that nothing stopped them - except for a lucky search by a border guard at the Canadian border. But other than that, they have been pretty much attacking without a response throughout the period. That was Bob Kerrey’s point - al Qaeda declared war on us for years before we woke up and recognized it on 9/11. Unfortunately, many have now slumbered off back to the world of blissful denial.</p>

[weenie]

<p>Just to clarify regarding Post #16 – I never suggested we ignore the terrorists. I do not believe that at all. I think there is something between lashing out blindy and ignoring.</p>

[weenie]

<p>I thought Fareed Zakaria did an outstanding job shedding some light on the causes behind Islamic terrorism in his recent Newsweek article, “True or False: We are losing the war against radical Islam.” (Incidentally, he believes that is false.) If you have time, read the article.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19389332/site/newsweek/[/url]”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19389332/site/newsweek/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Here were just a few of the points:</p>

<p>

Rather than speaking of a single worldwide movement—which absurdly lumps together Chechen separatists in Russia, Pakistani-backed militants in India, Shiite warlords in Lebanon and Sunni jihadists in Egypt—we should be emphasizing that all these groups are distinct, with differing agendas, enemies and friends. That robs them of their claim to represent Islam. It describes them as they often are—small local gangs of misfits, hoping to attract attention through nihilism and barbarism.

</p>

<p>

The current issue of Britain’s Prospect magazine has a deeply illuminating profile of the main suicide bomber in the 7/7 London subway attacks, Mohammed Siddique Khan, who at first glance appeared to be a well-integrated, middle-class Briton. The author, Shiv Malik, spent months in the Leeds suburb where Khan grew up, talked to his relatives and pieced together his past. Khan was not driven to become a suicide bomber by poverty, racism or the Iraq War. His is the story of a young man who found he could not be part of the traditional Pakistani-immigrant community of his parents. He had no memories of their Pakistani life. He spoke their language, Urdu, poorly. He rejected an arranged marriage in favor of a love match. And yet, he was also out of place in modern British culture. Khan was slowly seduced by the simple, powerful and total world view of Wahhabi Islam, conveniently provided in easy-to-read English pamphlets (doubtless funded with Saudi money). The ideology fulfilled a young man’s desire for protest and rebellion and at the same time gave him a powerful sense of identity. By 1999—before the Iraq War, before 9/11—he was ready to be a terrorist.</p>

<p>Britain, the United States and most other countries have not found it easy to address the root causes of jihad. But clearly, they relate to the alienation, humiliation and disempowerment caused by the pace of change in the modern world—economic change, migration from Third World to First World, movement from the countryside to the city. The only durable solution to these ongoing disruptions is for these people to see themselves—and, most important, the societies they come from and still identify with—as masters of the modern world and not as victims. How to open up and modernize the Muslim world is a long, hard and complex challenge. But surely one key is to be seen by these societies and peoples as partners and friends, not as bullies and enemies. That is one battle we are not yet winning.

</p>

<p>Perhaps Islamic jihadists simply have the same insane sociopathic glue as the Jim Jones (Guyana) cult or a huge Bloods gang. I don’t know.</p>

[fundingfather]

<p>good article.</p>

[THXZPI636]

<p>

And what stopped them between 1993-2001?

</p>

<p>Seemingly nothing:</p>

<p>2000, our warship, the USS Cole, was attacked by Muslim extremists.</p>

<p>In 1998, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by Muslim extremists, killing 212 people and wounding thousands.</p>

<p>In 1996, Muslim extremists exploded a truck bomb outside an Air Force housing complex in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 and injuring hundreds more.</p>

<p>In 1995, five Americans were killed in a car bomb explosion executed by Muslim extremists.</p>

<p>In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed by Muslim extremists, killing six and injuring thousands.</p>

<p>Also in 1993, Muslim extremists plotted to assassinate former U.S. President George Bush. (Intriguingly, the word “assassin” comes from a Muslim sect active in the 11th to 13th centuries known as “the Assassins” for their religious practice of murdering infidels.)

Well, I guess we better attack China. After all, on Bush’s watch, they shot down one of our planes. For instance.

No they didn’t</p>

<p>What we really need is not anti-terrorism, it’s counter-terrorism.</p>

<p>636</p>

[mommusic]

<p>I guess we should have attacked Saudi Arabia–after all, it’s where the 9/11 gang was mostly from. But the Saudi oil was already in our pockets, unlike the Iraqi. I believe if the Bush gang had wanted to manufacture reasons to attack Saudi Arabia, they would have.</p>