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Politics & Religion / Re: Invitation to dialog to Muslims
« on: August 14, 2006, 05:38:36 PM »
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1. the U.S. has the only military in the world that can reach out and touch someone.
2. there are many authoritarian regimes in the world, who kill/abuse/torture the people under them.
3. the U.S. is responsible for putting many of those regimes in power (i.e. Saddam, Mubarak, the Saudi family, a few dictators in Asia, and a few more in Africa, and some in South America).
4. when we let those regimes continue to oppress their people, these people get pissed off (either because they know it's the U.S. that's supporting their dick-tators, or because the U.S. won't do anything to help them).
* Zarqawi was from Jordan, Zawahiri is from Egypt, and bin Laden from Saudi Arabia, all countries the U.S. supports, all are authoritarian (actually Jordan is less so nowadays)
5. when the U.S. takes a "we don't wanna do anything cuz it's not in our best interest" stance, or "we don't wanna impose our own culture~if they wanna beat up their wives and teach their kids only the Quran, it's fine with us" stance, this policy as we saw first hand on sept the 11th, blew back in our face.
6. the U.S. is the only military in the world capable of doing the greatest GOOD (caveat: without re-training/vision, probably the greatest EVIL).? the U.S. military along w/ diplomats, students, volunteers, the media, etc. now have the responsibility to bring the FREE flow of everything (goods, ideas, education, people, etc. etc.) to EVERYONE else.
you are right, the U.S. has been misrepresented in the world by soul-less corporations whose only purpose is profit, by sex tourists, pedophiles who fly all the way to countries like the philippines/cambodia to feast, by hollywood, by the porn industry, by all the apathy and meaningless-ness shown in MTV,
but we all know America has so much more purpose, and now DUTY...
what to do?
* re-train the military, so that every soldier starts thinking more like a police officer (i.e. fairness, knowledge of culture, be able to balance violence and compassion, diplomacy, information gathering w/ in the constitutional framework~consensual, resonable suspicion, probable cause, etc.)
* start teaching anthropology and languages from elementary to college (the more languages a person speaks the more cultures, and with that understanding)
* increase funding for study abroad programs (to off set the global misrepresentation of Americans, to show the world that we are not just a bunch of drunken monolingual idiot sex tourists hell bent on putting a McDonalds or Starbucks at every street corner, FUCK corporations!)
* start regulating corporations, so they don't just suck all the resources of poor countries just to be wasted here in the west (becuz this PISSES alot of people too, especially me)
* increase funding for the Peace Corps, Americorps, USAID, etc. since these are the only gov't entities that seem to understand the bigger picture at hand
* lastly, get everyone to start smoking pot, the U.S. gov't was once responsible for growing the best pot in the world, when they were experimenting with pot as healing/pain killing agents awhile back, they stopped that program around the same time Reagan declared wars on Drugs...
*********************************************************
hizballah kidnaps and kills a couple of israelis, the state of israel responds with fire and brimstone.? hizb has been stockpiling weapons in southern lebanon since israel pulled out of that area.? the new lebanese gov't for the past couple of years has been urging hizb members to join the lebanese military (every faction in lebanon from the maronites to the druzis have their own armies, the end game was to consolidate arms under a 'lebanese' military).? the state dept has always been uneasy of hizballah's arsenals.? hizballah needed to be castrated, period.? the u.s. gave the green light, and israel got to play.
what everyone is forgetting though, is the bigger war: the war on terror (or the war against muslim fundamentalism).? the bigger war is to win the hearts and minds of the moderate muslims, eastern christians, and other minorities in the middle east.? although, the disarming of hizballah (and the 'democratization' of iraq for that matter) seems to make sense, we are losing focus of the end goal.? instead of seeing the benefits of western modernity, the people in the mid east are seeing only destruction (dismembered little girls, rape, etc.).
hizballah is shiite and represents a form of islamic fundamentalism.? the other form is salafi islam, which is sunni.? there were only 2 islamic nations, nations which practiced the shari'a or islamic law, iran/shiite and afghanistan/salafi under mawdudi (keep in mind saudi arabia is a kingdom, egypt/syria/iraq are secular dictatorships).? in retrospect, we should've just stayed in afghanistan and made an example of that country.? put a 7-eleven and starbucks at every corner, open up stipjoints, introduce in-door plumming, the bikini, brazilian wax, and made it our 51st state.?
instead, the u.s. went for saddam's regime which would have made a great ally, since it was secular and hated the fundamentalists as much as we did.? now, iraq will become part of iran.? syria is another example of another potential ally.? when asad, an alawi, took power in the 70s he formed a faction (his power base) of syria's minorities, i.e. christians, druzis, alawis, assyrians, and shiites.? syria is close to iran because of how asad treated the shiite minority in syria (a diplomatic move).? the current regime in syria can just as easily turn its back on iran, if given the right incentives.
bashir al-asad, president asad's opthalmologist son from england, seemed now more than ever a likely ally.? he is westernized, secular (eastern christians, from assyrians to armenians to greek orthodox enjoy the greatest freedoms in only 3 countries in the middle east, syria, lebanon, and israel). syria shares our aversion with islamic fundamentalism (hama in the early 1980s is a great example).? but, without our backing syria will fall to the islam re-interpreted by savage idiots (the muslim brotherhood is fast gaining strength in egypt, iraq will fall to iran).?
we are losing the people we need so much to win over, because they are seeing their women and children killed on tv.
1. the U.S. has the only military in the world that can reach out and touch someone.
2. there are many authoritarian regimes in the world, who kill/abuse/torture the people under them.
3. the U.S. is responsible for putting many of those regimes in power (i.e. Saddam, Mubarak, the Saudi family, a few dictators in Asia, and a few more in Africa, and some in South America).
4. when we let those regimes continue to oppress their people, these people get pissed off (either because they know it's the U.S. that's supporting their dick-tators, or because the U.S. won't do anything to help them).
* Zarqawi was from Jordan, Zawahiri is from Egypt, and bin Laden from Saudi Arabia, all countries the U.S. supports, all are authoritarian (actually Jordan is less so nowadays)
5. when the U.S. takes a "we don't wanna do anything cuz it's not in our best interest" stance, or "we don't wanna impose our own culture~if they wanna beat up their wives and teach their kids only the Quran, it's fine with us" stance, this policy as we saw first hand on sept the 11th, blew back in our face.
6. the U.S. is the only military in the world capable of doing the greatest GOOD (caveat: without re-training/vision, probably the greatest EVIL).? the U.S. military along w/ diplomats, students, volunteers, the media, etc. now have the responsibility to bring the FREE flow of everything (goods, ideas, education, people, etc. etc.) to EVERYONE else.
you are right, the U.S. has been misrepresented in the world by soul-less corporations whose only purpose is profit, by sex tourists, pedophiles who fly all the way to countries like the philippines/cambodia to feast, by hollywood, by the porn industry, by all the apathy and meaningless-ness shown in MTV,
but we all know America has so much more purpose, and now DUTY...
what to do?
* re-train the military, so that every soldier starts thinking more like a police officer (i.e. fairness, knowledge of culture, be able to balance violence and compassion, diplomacy, information gathering w/ in the constitutional framework~consensual, resonable suspicion, probable cause, etc.)
* start teaching anthropology and languages from elementary to college (the more languages a person speaks the more cultures, and with that understanding)
* increase funding for study abroad programs (to off set the global misrepresentation of Americans, to show the world that we are not just a bunch of drunken monolingual idiot sex tourists hell bent on putting a McDonalds or Starbucks at every street corner, FUCK corporations!)
* start regulating corporations, so they don't just suck all the resources of poor countries just to be wasted here in the west (becuz this PISSES alot of people too, especially me)
* increase funding for the Peace Corps, Americorps, USAID, etc. since these are the only gov't entities that seem to understand the bigger picture at hand
* lastly, get everyone to start smoking pot, the U.S. gov't was once responsible for growing the best pot in the world, when they were experimenting with pot as healing/pain killing agents awhile back, they stopped that program around the same time Reagan declared wars on Drugs...
*********************************************************
hizballah kidnaps and kills a couple of israelis, the state of israel responds with fire and brimstone.? hizb has been stockpiling weapons in southern lebanon since israel pulled out of that area.? the new lebanese gov't for the past couple of years has been urging hizb members to join the lebanese military (every faction in lebanon from the maronites to the druzis have their own armies, the end game was to consolidate arms under a 'lebanese' military).? the state dept has always been uneasy of hizballah's arsenals.? hizballah needed to be castrated, period.? the u.s. gave the green light, and israel got to play.
what everyone is forgetting though, is the bigger war: the war on terror (or the war against muslim fundamentalism).? the bigger war is to win the hearts and minds of the moderate muslims, eastern christians, and other minorities in the middle east.? although, the disarming of hizballah (and the 'democratization' of iraq for that matter) seems to make sense, we are losing focus of the end goal.? instead of seeing the benefits of western modernity, the people in the mid east are seeing only destruction (dismembered little girls, rape, etc.).
hizballah is shiite and represents a form of islamic fundamentalism.? the other form is salafi islam, which is sunni.? there were only 2 islamic nations, nations which practiced the shari'a or islamic law, iran/shiite and afghanistan/salafi under mawdudi (keep in mind saudi arabia is a kingdom, egypt/syria/iraq are secular dictatorships).? in retrospect, we should've just stayed in afghanistan and made an example of that country.? put a 7-eleven and starbucks at every corner, open up stipjoints, introduce in-door plumming, the bikini, brazilian wax, and made it our 51st state.?
instead, the u.s. went for saddam's regime which would have made a great ally, since it was secular and hated the fundamentalists as much as we did.? now, iraq will become part of iran.? syria is another example of another potential ally.? when asad, an alawi, took power in the 70s he formed a faction (his power base) of syria's minorities, i.e. christians, druzis, alawis, assyrians, and shiites.? syria is close to iran because of how asad treated the shiite minority in syria (a diplomatic move).? the current regime in syria can just as easily turn its back on iran, if given the right incentives.
bashir al-asad, president asad's opthalmologist son from england, seemed now more than ever a likely ally.? he is westernized, secular (eastern christians, from assyrians to armenians to greek orthodox enjoy the greatest freedoms in only 3 countries in the middle east, syria, lebanon, and israel). syria shares our aversion with islamic fundamentalism (hama in the early 1980s is a great example).? but, without our backing syria will fall to the islam re-interpreted by savage idiots (the muslim brotherhood is fast gaining strength in egypt, iraq will fall to iran).?
we are losing the people we need so much to win over, because they are seeing their women and children killed on tv.