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Thus you have the extreme environmentalists (who've gotten rid of nuclear power in Germany), and the third world revolutionaries (who've actually convinced people that little Israel is the greatest threat to world peace) running amok. More germane to the present discussion, though, are the authoritarian "liberals" who've put in place the sort of hate speech laws that would make Harvard envious. Case in point:

• In France Le Pen was convicted of "racism" simply for saying immigrants are taking over the country
• In Sweden a Christian minister was sued for saying homesexuality is a cancer
• In Canada (now spiritually, if not geographically, in the European orbit) a man was convicted of spreading anti-Islamic "hate literature" and had to undergo Islamic indoctrination
• Nazi propoganda and symbols are banned while Communists and Islamists are untouched and even win elections

These new political speech regulations I hope with every atom of my body will be struck down as blatantly unconstitutional (though who knows which way the unprincipled, lawless, "living constitution" liberals on the court will turn), but if not it would mean the U.S. is becoming more like Europe- a semi-feudal society where left-wing technocrats implement social engineering on a passive society.

Actually, the latest Israeli offensive, and the fence/wall, has been rather successful at stopping attacks. The last major suicide attack in Israel, for instance, was 'revenge' for something Israel did six months prior.

You see it in newspapers here and there -- Israel has practically won the second "Intifada". Check here. Newer updates are at the bottom, including links to LA Times and BBC stories.

What about the can opener? They're even more evil than (evil) nail clippers! Couldn't someone use a can opener to force your way into the reinforced cockpit and hijack the plane?

I mean it's not as though there are more effective ways to identify potential terrorists or anything....

Even if I accept your point, it's all well and good, BUT, when such a culture tries to forcibly impose itself on another... That's a problem.

Look up some articles on Militant Islam.

all reports indicate they are decades away from producing Nukes

Huh? All reports indicate that they are a few months to a couple of years away from producing nukes.

Sigh. I think it's a good war. But that's based on knowing a hell of a lot more stuff than I can put into a posting.

But just because I'll fail is no excuse not to try:

1. Saddam IS so oppressive that we should go in and liberate the country. I know we're all too damn cynical these days to use words like "liberate" but that's the damn reality. Our grandparents weren't too sophisticated to believe that you can liberate a country, but were too damn "smart".

2. The middle east is a fucking hell hole. Saudi Arabia has 1/4 of all of the world's oil and for them it's fucking free, on tap. But the Saudi princes claim to be descendants of Sheikh Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab the founder of an Islamist cult that teaches it is the duty of his followers to invade the entire earth, subjugate all infidels and convert by the sword. Guess what the Saudis spend their oil money on? Spreading the good word. That's why oil matters. The Saudis are our enemies, but whenever they raise the price of oil a little our economy completely tanks. We need enough independent sources of oil that we are no longer reliant on our enemies and can put them in their place.

3. In other ways I'll say it again, "the middle east is a fucking hell hole." It's very hard to describe what you'll read if you read Arab newspapers.

It's a constant stream of what, to western eyes, looks like nonsensical hatred and lies about the west, about Americans and about Isralies. Their sense of history is SO screwed, and they really don't consider non-mulsims to be human beings worthy of survival. I hate to bring up the big old German Fuerer again, but he is a hero over there - every now and then you can find an article moaning that it's too bad he didn't get to finish the holocaust.

Anyway the problem is this. Remember Soviet newpapers? They printed nothing but propaganda too, but there's a difference. No one believed Soviet propaganda, not even the folks back in Russia. They were too well educated and Soviet propaganda was dry, it didn't stir up passion.

Arab's are different. They are very poorly educated when they are educated at all (50% illiteracy) and their propaganda is pure passion. The mob wants blood and lots of it.

Despite all the oil, the regular people in the Arab world are very poor, mostly because they're governments are archaic and becase they've rejected everything the rest of the world has learned over the past couple of hundred years - it's absolutely beneath their dignity to learn anything from us non-muslim trash.

But their newspapers have a ready excuse for every failure. It's a conspiracy. They believe that the Jews (and to a lesser but significant extent, the Americans and other westerners) have stolen them blind. It can be funny. When a poorly constructed radio tower in Afganistan blows over in the wind, the authorities say Massad (Israeli intelligence) must have destroyed it. When the date crop in Saudi Arabia doesn't bring good money on the world market, it must be because the Israelis (who's crop is 1/100th the size) must have spitefully undercut their price.

The place is drowning in ignorance, foolishness, oppression, misery and unimaginable violence.

Oh the violence... I'll get to that in a second, but I want to finish my point.

* The people there are living in a closed society. It's not changing from within. They're stuck.

* They're under terrible oppression.

* Because of Militant Islam, the Suadis, Al Qa'eda etc. they're a danger to us. We need to mess with their society so that, in the eyes of 100 million Militant Mulsims and 400 million Militant Muslim sympathizers around the world, modernity, with 3 squares a day, freedom, tolerance, prosparity and peace look better than destroying all infidels for Allah. I know it sounds crazy, but they don't all believe that right now.

We need to shoehorn a good example into the middle east as soon as possible.

I don't know as much about Korea. On thing I keep hearing is that we can't fight on two fronts at once, so Korea gets a temporary pass.

I should write more but I've got to go...

Rocky J. Squirrel

Here's a very old article on why we are attacking Iraq.

The original is no longer available for free on Strategic Forcasting's web site (it costs $120/year to join these days and it's worth it if your rich). So here's a link to a usenet posting of it post

After eight months of searching I've only turned up four sane Arabs. Since I've included all of their web sites this will give you an unrealistic view that of the sanity of Arab society, but these have to go on any list of the best web sites on the Middle east.
Other good sites:
http://www.memri.org/index.html
(best selection of translations from the Arab press)

http://www.mideastweb.org/LessonofIraq.htm
(other articles by Mahamad Mosaad)
http://www.mideastweb.org/arabpeacenow.htm
http://www.mideastweb.org/Arabpeace.htm
http://www.mideastweb.org/nothinghappened.htm
http://www.mideastweb.org/onlythem.htm

http://www.danielpipes.org

http://www.amarji.org/index.htm

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/articles.php3?ty pe=1
(this should be their translations of the arab press)

Tarek Heggy (Egyptian writer)
http://www.heggy.org
turn down your sound card before
going there

Ali Salem (an Egyptian writer and playwrite).
My favorite articles so far are at
http://www.meforum.org/pf.php?id=130 ,
http://sol.spaceports.com/~melinks/site2/ali_salem .html and
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/terrorism/july-dec0 1/playwright_11-27.html

You can also look up Arab newspapers with english translations on Google Web Directory under newspapers. There's one fake Saudi newspaper to look out for. The editor lives and writes in California if that tells you anything.

The conventional view of historians is that the US has historically supported Israel because there is a huge Zionist block vote in this country. Truman made some remarks to that effect - he said there were lots of Jewish votes and damn few Arab ones. (Falling into the classic trap of equating Judaism with Zionism, when the two are actually quite distinct - Judaism is not intrinsically tied to killing people for their land, after all).

However, this guy is claiming that the earlier poster is right, that Truman initiated his policies based on his Judeo-Christian beliefs.

Anyway, I find it interesting that the post that initiated this debate is missing. Anti-Zionist posts, and posts that criticise Israel's continuing campaign of international terrorism, seem to get edited out of Slashdot rather frequently.