Isnt all of life like that? People start off doing thier own thing, then they have to learn how to integrate these things. I find its easier to work alone at first because you dont have to worry about what other people want, instead you create it the best way you feel it should work. Its like how when government was created, it started off as kings czars with one man in charge of the rest, stemming from tribes and down to a tribe of monkeys with a dominant male that controls things. Eventually you want more people to help you because you know your program is deficient in some ways, so you start inviting other architects to contribute ideas, after they gain your trust, you start trusting them with parts of the architecture that you can almost ignore what they are doing and let them do it the way they want but still you hold over some control, eventually you start taking user/public opinion as to how things should work, but still since you are the ones who have to do it, you only take it as an opinion. Eventually things change, eventually they become so componentized that any one can structure anything the way they want. Like Themable GUIs, that a user can customize things to the way they want to work with them, eventually these things will be easier to translate from system to system, and dependancy on things being done one way by one person vanish (fade out) and rather then build everything from the ground up, you merely reconfigure things to the way you need them down to their most basic components as necesary and up to their most largest meanings, you dont have to worry about damage because the system will translate them for you. But that is what we all want, but what we currently dont have and will achieve some day when translation becomes better (translation from language to language, like a cpp compiler).
> It's a little give and take, but it's nice to see the "give" this time.
I notice you quoted the word give... I guess alluding to refering to it as "a little not take and take". As they didnt really have anything to "give" but had plenty to take.
> If more people would limit themselves to only getting information from biased sources such as slashdot, peta and the NRA we would be in a far better place.
> That's why we're a Republic so majority rules doesn't fuck over the minority. The majority is quite simply unclued on this issue and Congress should be listening to the experts (aka the Minority) instead of bullshitting the people of this country.
The problem is the majority is not as educated, the majority does not have the information necesary to make a decision (and in many cases the time or interest to study such information). I think there should be fact tests (not opinion or suspicion tests) that make sure people know the facts before being allowed to make a decision. Notice I said not opinions or suspicions, and part of it is that opinions and suspicions could bias a test to exclude people who know the facts but have differing opinions about those facts, for example a opinion test that makes sure you think Israel is innocent before being allowed to help decide foriegn policy.
What may be a cool idea is to have public debates (almost like slashdot), and people read and vote for a poster who they feel is capable of debating for their beliefs and ideas on an issue, but redundant people are removed (based upon who better represents those ideas). And so you end up with a set of debaters who will debate an issue, then an several analysis can be done on how factual and how idealistic both sides are on the nuances of an issue, so that you can correctly chart the good and bad of an idea or belief in an issue, and how viable each good and bad are as well as possible ways to compensate for the bad and how to use the good. You end up with trails that could detail out all the possibilities in an issue. That to me would be awesome, but I doubt our government would set up something such as that.
It can be, or am I mistaken in microsofts anti-competitive practices.
There is not that many viable competitors to Windows these days, a lot of people like linux but it still lacks as a general purpose desktop environment.
Vendor lockin after all means your choices will degrade.
> At the end of the day, if can happily do everything I need to do with one company, why not stick with them? From Windows on the desk top to Exchange & SQL on the back end.
Because at some point it goes from being about whether you should stick with them, to whether they should stick with you. And I mean that in several ways. Like prices, quality of support, quality of products. When you have less choices they have more.
> Where 'Going The Microsoft Way' is a good thing is skill sets.
But you would be foolish to think the Microsoft way is the only way (which I'm not saying you are), and to not be constantly exploring your options and trying to leave your options open.
> So you can end up running your entier company from within the Outlook Interface, with different web pages hosted within the Outlook UI. Take it off-line, sync to a local MSDE database and everything is available on the road.
It sounds nice, but doesnt sound exactly secure.
> In my experience, it all comes down to trade offs. Yes I will be locked in to using Microsoft for ever, yes they can jack the price up, but at the end of the day I've probably better off because development has been quicker/easer/less painful.
But again, at what trade off will there be for security? If you run your business off of outlook, then your business is centered on outlook and how secure your system is. The best thing to have is a way out, dont put yourself in the situation where if things go wrong your ship is sunk with no chance for rescue. Just remember the Code Red Worm cost aproximately $2.6 billion and you want to depend on Microsoft.
Not only that, but also they assume that someone who programs in an object oriented language like Java for example, really wants to access a shared library in another language. Java developers as an example tend to use object oriented programming in a particular manner that most Java developers are used to, while if a libray is written in C or C++ or Objective-C or Python or VB or JSCript will likely not be in a condition in which Java programmers would like to do it. Plus they dont seem to mention the fact that there is still issues between the way libraries work and how one language will access a library of another language, there would definetly be restrictions in that. So even then their arguement about language lockin is pointless unless they alter the language itself making it incompatible with the original language.
Dont forget abortion doctors who get killed by christians. It was even mentioned on TV about hate groups, and how they had a web site with lists of doctors and information about them who do abortions, basicly terrorizing abortion doctors.
The name may sound funny, but its not in any way wrong. They do forge the news, because all news is forged. News is a collection of information combined together to lay out an event, no diffrent then a sword which is a collection of metal combined together. Funny thing is a sword can be called an article:).
> This year's Nobel Laureates have succeeded - they have caused atoms to "sing in unison" - thus discovering a new state of matter, the Bose-Einstein condensate.
> I agree that Microsoft does things specifically to retain a monopoly, but does everything it do have that purpose?
I'd say yes, but only in the sense that a monopoly is like a wet dream for all companies that want to make profits, and microsoft is no exception. They want to increase their profit then they are going to release products that help them do this, they will focus on features that will help them towards this goal and not do much on features that can be used against them. Its no surprise that places of competition (like competitoin over file types and file type loaders) they are not going to focus that much on that is beyond necesity. IMO winNT was the worst of them all, I had file types associated that I could not fix from the standard interface, I literarly had to go into registery to fix these file type associations. I think it is poor design, but its likely do to less competition, rather then for less competition. That is if a competitor had better and easier means to alter your file types, microsoft would then have reason try to improve theirs, as of right now though, I think they rather not do much work on it.
Well, at least until they out law listening... Hey the constitution only guarantees we have a right to make a speech, but aparently we dont have the right to listen...
That sounds about right to me, both are in poverty, both think jews are part of the problem. So you cant expect democracy to magicly appear during poverty, people are to busy trying to survive (struggling) to care about politics, and they ask for God to come save them, so they are easy picken for those who enforce their religion and enhance their power.
> If we leave the rest of the world to the wolves, though, then WE may be safe but the next generations of Americans will have a much bigger mess to clean up as a result of our isolationism.
Isn't sanctions a similar route to isolationism though, and part of the cause of our current problems. More specificly the incomplete war against Saddam, and the sanctions against him. I personly dont see it any better, as starving Iraqis does not do any good considering that Saddam doesnt really care, and those that are starving are not just going to all of a sudden be strong enough to take over the Iraqi government. You cant have any kind of democracy living in poverty, to many people worried how they are going to survive to care about politics or freedom. World War 2 kicked off because we left Germany devasted in poverty with no real way for them to get out of it except military, and it was unfortunet that it was the Nazis who took that opertunity. The current big fear for Israel now is Iran, Iraq, Siria, and possibly Egypt. So sanctions haven't helped much, and the only diffrence between that and isolationism is who is choosing to be isolated and who is not.
> Bush Sr. was not a wimp.
I'm just stating it as News Week and several other media outlets did back then when he went into office, when he had the US come after Iraq, they reversed their opinions, but it just seems to me they first opinion may not have been far off from the truth.
> Was it wrong to condem the citizens of Iraq to live (or, for many... to die) under Hussein's rule in order to further our long range plans for stabalizing and Westernizing the Mid-East? Maybe. Maybe it was the lesser of many evils.
How was "stabalizing and Westernizing the Mid-East" achieved? Doesnt look like it was to me beyond that what some of them could not do themselves. Saudi-Arabia is definetly not a good example of this at all.
> We are not "unbiased" in the Mid-East, but neither are we on Israel's side
My point of 'bias' is we let Israel get away with a lot more then we have others.
> As Kissinger (who, while Jewish was never one to go easy on Israel) has pointed out, nations do not have friends, they have common interests. It is not an easy problem to solve, and whoever can do so certainly deserves a Nobel prize for it.
Its unfortunate many of the problems are not about nations as much, and more about groups of people who cross international borders, not only living in Arab nations but also the US Israel Egypt and several other places. That is why this is not so much a war of nations, but a war of nations against groups of people.
Well, there is several articles out there on the web doing a search will help find them. And this is not just some nutz who believe this, its also the survivors of the attack on the USS Liberty (one of the writers of the book). There is other parts that CNN left out, like that they were supposed to have arial support if they were attacked, and when they were under attack that they radioed for this support but a command from washington killed the arial support, and there is military laws that say if such supports are denied that those who prevented it could be executed. Do some searchs on the web for more information so you dont think I am just making this up, or better yet consider finding the book. Why Israeli did it is speculation, but there is plenty of evidence that they knew they were attacking an US ship.
Here is a nice piece of history strangely left out...
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/04/23/liberty.attack/
I've read other speculation that there may have been surveliance that showed Israel starting the fight between Egypt, as the reason the Israelis knowingly attacked the USS Liberty.
> Ah, so we should trade with Iran, even when they do things that we don't like?
It should depend on what those things are. If they attack their neighbors, forget not trading, get together with the UN and attack them. If they have child slave labor, dont allow international corporations to use that labor. If they use the money from the oil exports to buy military weapons, that should be fine (what they do with their money is their business) up to the point they start using it to kill innocent people. If we want to stop trade, stop trade that affects the government not the people and their businesses.
> Opposing economic sanctions is just like saying I should trade lunches with a bully, just because he wants my lunch. If Iran/Iraq/whoever wants to do business with the Western world, they might want to tone down their anti-Western rhetoric. Why should I trade with somebody who hates me?
Is it that they hate us or is it that we hate them? Part of the reason we started supporting Iraq was to get at Iran, and the reason we went after Iran was because Israel was afraid of Irans military force, we were afraid Iran would distabilize that area affecting our oil interests. We turned on Iraq when Saddam Hussien invading Kuwait, but before doing that we allowed him (and even encouraged) to slaughter Shites because they could support Iran. If we had taken out Saddam and at least tried to install a democratic government or a UN presence the people there would have been better off, then this half @ss job.
> The Saudi government BEGGED the US to station troops on the peninsula to protect them from their imperialistic neighbors. If you think differently, that's OK. You're just wrong.
Yes but a lot of people believe the Saudi government to be corrupt. That there is cases where people disappear and are never heard from again. That Saudi Arabia is not stabilized and part of the problem is our support of their government.
> When did we torture Iraqis?
Thats *innocent* Iraqis, and we let many of the starve, and why did we do this? To pressure Saddam Hussien who could give a shit less about them, and the are to weak to go against him.
> Timothy McVeigh is the product of Timothy McVeigh. People have free will. For every example of a tortured soul trained by the military, I can provide you with ten examples of great human beings made greater by the discipline and training of military service.
What, I mentioned him because he is the product of military idealism. He used words that the US military uses to describe innocent deaths as 'colateral damage', and that 'colateral damage' is justified for a bigger cause. I'm not saying all military people think like that, but I am saying he is a product of our military.
> If you want to talk about whether Israel has the right to exist or not, take it up with the UN.
Fine its out of this discussion (you brought it up not me).
> If we help the Israelis we insult the Palestinians.
Eh, we do a little more then that unfortunetly, after all they get a lot of their weapons from us.
> The only answer to your concerns is for us to completely pull out of all conflicts and become isolationist.
Well, the oposite choice is to get involved and to risk terrorists attacks as we have been through already (several times).
> You are effectively saying that we should have let Saddam Hussein have his way with Kuwait, and probably invade Saudi Arabia as well.
We had our chance to get rid of Saddam Hussein, but as the media said at the time, Bush (Senior) was a wimp.
> I agree we could be more careful with who we choose as friends, but we will always make someone mad, no matter who we help. That's part of the reality that we must accept and learn to deal with.
The problem comes in, is that we pretend to be a moderator (unbiased by both sides) to gain international support, but in reality we are still one sided, we still give weapons to Israel but do nothing for Palistine. And as we do this Palistinians get more afraid of Israel terrorists attack Israel, and Israel uses those weapons against them.
No its more then likely to do with, Iraq sanctions and Saudi-Arabia occupation. And a bully is not imperialistic (which is actually closer to an amoeba in swallowing others), a bully just beats up some and *scares* others. Iraq would have been better off if we did just take it over like at the end of most wars, how does a war end with someone like Saddam Hussien still in power? And look at what that kind of strategy lands us, we ended up torturing innocent Iraqi people who have little to nothing to do with Saddam Hussien, occupying Saudi-Arabia with our military forces. And it just so happens the enemies of the US were made or supported by the US, both Saddam Hussien, and Osama Bin Laden. Even here in the US, Timothy McVeigh (to move a little tangent to the topic) was made by the US military. But my point is, we have been doing these things in their lands, and innocent people have been dieing as results.
Israel is some what the same thing, but a weaker arguement because we are not directly involved, we supply the weapons and we support Israel, and even Jewish Lobbiests in the US pressure us into conflicts (like Iran, the bombing of US Liberty and Egypt etc etc).
This is not equavalent to our situation. I agree the US can not be pacifist, but that is because we are the bully, we are the one beating up those in the middle east. Only the underdog has the options of pacifist or terrorists, and we are not the underdog, we are the bully and dont have the option of being pacifist.
Slashdot Mirror
Isnt all of life like that? People start off doing thier own thing, then they have to learn how to integrate these things. I find its easier to work alone at first because you dont have to worry about what other people want, instead you create it the best way you feel it should work. Its like how when government was created, it started off as kings czars with one man in charge of the rest, stemming from tribes and down to a tribe of monkeys with a dominant male that controls things. Eventually you want more people to help you because you know your program is deficient in some ways, so you start inviting other architects to contribute ideas, after they gain your trust, you start trusting them with parts of the architecture that you can almost ignore what they are doing and let them do it the way they want but still you hold over some control, eventually you start taking user/public opinion as to how things should work, but still since you are the ones who have to do it, you only take it as an opinion. Eventually things change, eventually they become so componentized that any one can structure anything the way they want. Like Themable GUIs, that a user can customize things to the way they want to work with them, eventually these things will be easier to translate from system to system, and dependancy on things being done one way by one person vanish (fade out) and rather then build everything from the ground up, you merely reconfigure things to the way you need them down to their most basic components as necesary and up to their most largest meanings, you dont have to worry about damage because the system will translate them for you. But that is what we all want, but what we currently dont have and will achieve some day when translation becomes better (translation from language to language, like a cpp compiler).
Man, not one mention that this is from south park... the underwear gnomes...
> It's a little give and take, but it's nice to see the "give" this time.
I notice you quoted the word give... I guess alluding to refering to it as "a little not take and take". As they didnt really have anything to "give" but had plenty to take.
> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects
In this day in age, I wonder where 'rentals' or 'licensing' lies in this.
> If more people would limit themselves to only getting information from biased sources such as slashdot, peta and the NRA we would be in a far better place.
or anonymous cowards.
> That's why we're a Republic so majority rules doesn't fuck over the minority. The majority is quite simply unclued on this issue and Congress should be listening to the experts (aka the Minority) instead of bullshitting the people of this country.
The problem is the majority is not as educated, the majority does not have the information necesary to make a decision (and in many cases the time or interest to study such information). I think there should be fact tests (not opinion or suspicion tests) that make sure people know the facts before being allowed to make a decision. Notice I said not opinions or suspicions, and part of it is that opinions and suspicions could bias a test to exclude people who know the facts but have differing opinions about those facts, for example a opinion test that makes sure you think Israel is innocent before being allowed to help decide foriegn policy.
What may be a cool idea is to have public debates (almost like slashdot), and people read and vote for a poster who they feel is capable of debating for their beliefs and ideas on an issue, but redundant people are removed (based upon who better represents those ideas). And so you end up with a set of debaters who will debate an issue, then an several analysis can be done on how factual and how idealistic both sides are on the nuances of an issue, so that you can correctly chart the good and bad of an idea or belief in an issue, and how viable each good and bad are as well as possible ways to compensate for the bad and how to use the good. You end up with trails that could detail out all the possibilities in an issue. That to me would be awesome, but I doubt our government would set up something such as that.
> Is vendor lock-in such a bad thing tho?
It can be, or am I mistaken in microsofts anti-competitive practices.
There is not that many viable competitors to Windows these days, a lot of people like linux but it still lacks as a general purpose desktop environment.
Vendor lockin after all means your choices will degrade.
> At the end of the day, if can happily do everything I need to do with one company, why not stick with them? From Windows on the desk top to Exchange & SQL on the back end.
Because at some point it goes from being about whether you should stick with them, to whether they should stick with you. And I mean that in several ways. Like prices, quality of support, quality of products. When you have less choices they have more.
> Where 'Going The Microsoft Way' is a good thing is skill sets.
But you would be foolish to think the Microsoft way is the only way (which I'm not saying you are), and to not be constantly exploring your options and trying to leave your options open.
> So you can end up running your entier company from within the Outlook Interface, with different web pages hosted within the Outlook UI. Take it off-line, sync to a local MSDE database and everything is available on the road.
It sounds nice, but doesnt sound exactly secure.
> In my experience, it all comes down to trade offs. Yes I will be locked in to using Microsoft for ever, yes they can jack the price up, but at the end of the day I've probably better off because development has been quicker/easer/less painful.
But again, at what trade off will there be for security? If you run your business off of outlook, then your business is centered on outlook and how secure your system is. The best thing to have is a way out, dont put yourself in the situation where if things go wrong your ship is sunk with no chance for rescue. Just remember the Code Red Worm cost aproximately $2.6 billion and you want to depend on Microsoft.
Wouldnt that mean MSIL-lockin or dotNet-Lockin...
Not only that, but also they assume that someone who programs in an object oriented language like Java for example, really wants to access a shared library in another language. Java developers as an example tend to use object oriented programming in a particular manner that most Java developers are used to, while if a libray is written in C or C++ or Objective-C or Python or VB or JSCript will likely not be in a condition in which Java programmers would like to do it. Plus they dont seem to mention the fact that there is still issues between the way libraries work and how one language will access a library of another language, there would definetly be restrictions in that. So even then their arguement about language lockin is pointless unless they alter the language itself making it incompatible with the original language.
Dont forget abortion doctors who get killed by christians. It was even mentioned on TV about hate groups, and how they had a web site with lists of doctors and information about them who do abortions, basicly terrorizing abortion doctors.
The name may sound funny, but its not in any way wrong. They do forge the news, because all news is forged. News is a collection of information combined together to lay out an event, no diffrent then a sword which is a collection of metal combined together. Funny thing is a sword can be called an article :).
LOL..
> This year's Nobel Laureates have succeeded - they have caused atoms to "sing in unison" - thus discovering a new state of matter, the Bose-Einstein condensate.
Plasma
Gas
Liquid
Solid
Singing Choir
> I agree that Microsoft does things specifically to retain a monopoly, but does everything it do have that purpose?
I'd say yes, but only in the sense that a monopoly is like a wet dream for all companies that want to make profits, and microsoft is no exception. They want to increase their profit then they are going to release products that help them do this, they will focus on features that will help them towards this goal and not do much on features that can be used against them. Its no surprise that places of competition (like competitoin over file types and file type loaders) they are not going to focus that much on that is beyond necesity. IMO winNT was the worst of them all, I had file types associated that I could not fix from the standard interface, I literarly had to go into registery to fix these file type associations. I think it is poor design, but its likely do to less competition, rather then for less competition. That is if a competitor had better and easier means to alter your file types, microsoft would then have reason try to improve theirs, as of right now though, I think they rather not do much work on it.
Well, at least until they out law listening... Hey the constitution only guarantees we have a right to make a speech, but aparently we dont have the right to listen...
According to Moores law shouldnt they be at 32ghz in 6 years (based upon their current 2ghz processor)?
That sounds about right to me, both are in poverty, both think jews are part of the problem. So you cant expect democracy to magicly appear during poverty, people are to busy trying to survive (struggling) to care about politics, and they ask for God to come save them, so they are easy picken for those who enforce their religion and enhance their power.
> If we leave the rest of the world to the wolves, though, then WE may be safe but the next generations of Americans will have a much bigger mess to clean up as a result of our isolationism.
Isn't sanctions a similar route to isolationism though, and part of the cause of our current problems. More specificly the incomplete war against Saddam, and the sanctions against him. I personly dont see it any better, as starving Iraqis does not do any good considering that Saddam doesnt really care, and those that are starving are not just going to all of a sudden be strong enough to take over the Iraqi government. You cant have any kind of democracy living in poverty, to many people worried how they are going to survive to care about politics or freedom. World War 2 kicked off because we left Germany devasted in poverty with no real way for them to get out of it except military, and it was unfortunet that it was the Nazis who took that opertunity. The current big fear for Israel now is Iran, Iraq, Siria, and possibly Egypt. So sanctions haven't helped much, and the only diffrence between that and isolationism is who is choosing to be isolated and who is not.
> Bush Sr. was not a wimp.
I'm just stating it as News Week and several other media outlets did back then when he went into office, when he had the US come after Iraq, they reversed their opinions, but it just seems to me they first opinion may not have been far off from the truth.
> Was it wrong to condem the citizens of Iraq to live (or, for many... to die) under Hussein's rule in order to further our long range plans for stabalizing and Westernizing the Mid-East? Maybe. Maybe it was the lesser of many evils.
How was "stabalizing and Westernizing the Mid-East" achieved? Doesnt look like it was to me beyond that what some of them could not do themselves. Saudi-Arabia is definetly not a good example of this at all.
> We are not "unbiased" in the Mid-East, but neither are we on Israel's side
My point of 'bias' is we let Israel get away with a lot more then we have others.
> As Kissinger (who, while Jewish was never one to go easy on Israel) has pointed out, nations do not have friends, they have common interests. It is not an easy problem to solve, and whoever can do so certainly deserves a Nobel prize for it.
Its unfortunate many of the problems are not about nations as much, and more about groups of people who cross international borders, not only living in Arab nations but also the US Israel Egypt and several other places. That is why this is not so much a war of nations, but a war of nations against groups of people.
Well, there is several articles out there on the web doing a search will help find them. And this is not just some nutz who believe this, its also the survivors of the attack on the USS Liberty (one of the writers of the book). There is other parts that CNN left out, like that they were supposed to have arial support if they were attacked, and when they were under attack that they radioed for this support but a command from washington killed the arial support, and there is military laws that say if such supports are denied that those who prevented it could be executed. Do some searchs on the web for more information so you dont think I am just making this up, or better yet consider finding the book. Why Israeli did it is speculation, but there is plenty of evidence that they knew they were attacking an US ship.
Here is a nice piece of history strangely left out...
/
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/04/23/liberty.attack
I've read other speculation that there may have been surveliance that showed Israel starting the fight between Egypt, as the reason the Israelis knowingly attacked the USS Liberty.
> Ah, so we should trade with Iran, even when they do things that we don't like?
It should depend on what those things are. If they attack their neighbors, forget not trading, get together with the UN and attack them. If they have child slave labor, dont allow international corporations to use that labor. If they use the money from the oil exports to buy military weapons, that should be fine (what they do with their money is their business) up to the point they start using it to kill innocent people. If we want to stop trade, stop trade that affects the government not the people and their businesses.
> Opposing economic sanctions is just like saying I should trade lunches with a bully, just because he wants my lunch. If Iran/Iraq/whoever wants to do business with the Western world, they might want to tone down their anti-Western rhetoric. Why should I trade with somebody who hates me?
Is it that they hate us or is it that we hate them? Part of the reason we started supporting Iraq was to get at Iran, and the reason we went after Iran was because Israel was afraid of Irans military force, we were afraid Iran would distabilize that area affecting our oil interests. We turned on Iraq when Saddam Hussien invading Kuwait, but before doing that we allowed him (and even encouraged) to slaughter Shites because they could support Iran. If we had taken out Saddam and at least tried to install a democratic government or a UN presence the people there would have been better off, then this half @ss job.
> The Saudi government BEGGED the US to station troops on the peninsula to protect them from their imperialistic neighbors. If you think differently, that's OK. You're just wrong.
Yes but a lot of people believe the Saudi government to be corrupt. That there is cases where people disappear and are never heard from again. That Saudi Arabia is not stabilized and part of the problem is our support of their government.
> When did we torture Iraqis?
Thats *innocent* Iraqis, and we let many of the starve, and why did we do this? To pressure Saddam Hussien who could give a shit less about them, and the are to weak to go against him.
> Timothy McVeigh is the product of Timothy McVeigh. People have free will. For every example of a tortured soul trained by the military, I can provide you with ten examples of great human beings made greater by the discipline and training of military service.
What, I mentioned him because he is the product of military idealism. He used words that the US military uses to describe innocent deaths as 'colateral damage', and that 'colateral damage' is justified for a bigger cause. I'm not saying all military people think like that, but I am saying he is a product of our military.
> If you want to talk about whether Israel has the right to exist or not, take it up with the UN.
Fine its out of this discussion (you brought it up not me).
> If we help the Israelis we insult the Palestinians.
Eh, we do a little more then that unfortunetly, after all they get a lot of their weapons from us.
> The only answer to your concerns is for us to completely pull out of all conflicts and become isolationist.
Well, the oposite choice is to get involved and to risk terrorists attacks as we have been through already (several times).
> You are effectively saying that we should have let Saddam Hussein have his way with Kuwait, and probably invade Saudi Arabia as well.
We had our chance to get rid of Saddam Hussein, but as the media said at the time, Bush (Senior) was a wimp.
> I agree we could be more careful with who we choose as friends, but we will always make someone mad, no matter who we help. That's part of the reality that we must accept and learn to deal with.
The problem comes in, is that we pretend to be a moderator (unbiased by both sides) to gain international support, but in reality we are still one sided, we still give weapons to Israel but do nothing for Palistine. And as we do this Palistinians get more afraid of Israel terrorists attack Israel, and Israel uses those weapons against them.
No its more then likely to do with, Iraq sanctions and Saudi-Arabia occupation. And a bully is not imperialistic (which is actually closer to an amoeba in swallowing others), a bully just beats up some and *scares* others. Iraq would have been better off if we did just take it over like at the end of most wars, how does a war end with someone like Saddam Hussien still in power? And look at what that kind of strategy lands us, we ended up torturing innocent Iraqi people who have little to nothing to do with Saddam Hussien, occupying Saudi-Arabia with our military forces. And it just so happens the enemies of the US were made or supported by the US, both Saddam Hussien, and Osama Bin Laden. Even here in the US, Timothy McVeigh (to move a little tangent to the topic) was made by the US military. But my point is, we have been doing these things in their lands, and innocent people have been dieing as results.
Israel is some what the same thing, but a weaker arguement because we are not directly involved, we supply the weapons and we support Israel, and even Jewish Lobbiests in the US pressure us into conflicts (like Iran, the bombing of US Liberty and Egypt etc etc).
"being attacked" != "was attacked"
Jihad is not a holy war, its a holy struggle. Look it up on the internet with "jihad means".
This is not equavalent to our situation. I agree the US can not be pacifist, but that is because we are the bully, we are the one beating up those in the middle east. Only the underdog has the options of pacifist or terrorists, and we are not the underdog, we are the bully and dont have the option of being pacifist.