Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Hi GM,

You're American Indian?  Then I'm really confused.  How can you not identify with the Palestinians?

And you pose an excellent question, one that I was expecting to ask you in a follow up post yet in the reverse direction.

I don't blame you in the least for asking when the white/black/asian folks will leave your homeland.  It's not likely to happen but that does not mean it is morally right for your homeland to be invaded and a whole people to be displaced.

Frankly, I wonder sometimes why American Indians have not become domestic terrorists.  The US has been horrible to you guys.  I wonder frequently why the Palestinians have decided to fight back (and at such horrible expense) and other groups in history, including Jews during the Nazi times, have not fought back so long or so hard or so desparately.  I'd like to know what the difference is.

I do not consider terrorism valid or good, for the record, under any circumstances.  I am not pleased about my bro-in-law still having nightmares of heads on stakes in his home village or my wife instinctively ducking when a car backfires or being good a certain surgical proceedures because she's had to repair certain wounds (sometimes on kids) before.

I'm not endorsing it.  I am trying to get really clear on how it comes about and I do not like my taxes going to support fascist countries who woudl be forced to compromise and behave more honorably if they did not have my money and my weapons aiding them.  If we want to figure out why soap is flying across the bathroom and knocking us in the head, it makes sense to look at who is wetting and squeezing it and why.

I do think that Islamist terrorism comes from the defeat of the Turks in 1918, re-drawing of the middle east by France and England, creation of Israel and its policies toward the Palistinians, modern high-tech which has changed the game (reference Thomas Freedman's concept of super-empowered individuals or groups competing with nation-states as actors), plus a bit of class-warfare that is a function of globalism.  That means that we play a role in creating it and we therefore have some responsibility for it AND, importantly, an opportunity to make changes in our collective behavior that may just solve the problems with less violence and less avoidance of self-accountability than otherwise.  I think that's a good thing.

I think what I just described is the mechanism by which such violence is made and I think it's important for people to understand this for the reasons you and I agreed upon earlier, namely that we've got to understand the problem well in order to solve it.

And, as agreed earlier, this mennace of Islamist terrorism is a real danger and must be understood if we're goign to solve it, maybe even in order for us to survive.  It could get pretty bad in the next 50 years.

-E

You're joking, right, GM?

****We provide BILLIONS more to the arab nations surrounding Israel and military aid. However Israel has the intellectual ability to have a very compitent and creative domestic arms industry while the Arab nations sorrounding Israel produce new and exciting forms of terrorism. ****
They are pretty competent with a lot of things.  Intel is being outsourced to Israel, etc.  They also have a labor force that bounces between Silicon Valley and Israel, their pet industries get gov't support (whereas ours must rely upon earning money and/or capital investment), and they built

*****Second, most of the Arabs that ABANDONED their homes did so that they would return after the Jews had been driven into the sea. *****
Yes, the locals ran away from a massive fight that was brewing in their homeland.  You would want to get the heck out of Dodge, too.  They were about to be smashed between a hammer and an anvil.

*****No such luck. A decent people would move forward, not teach their children it is glorious to be a suicide bomber.****
    A "decent people" would accept a foreign invasion and occupation, the rape of their culture and homes and people, and not fight back?  You ARE joking, aren't you?  You have to be.

You need to go learn more about this.  You are swallowing too much propoganda without thinking about it.  Try this book (it's not what you're expecting, given the discussion in this thread, and it doesn't pick sides, unlike me): http://www.amazon.com/Attack-Novel-Yasmina-Khadra/dp/0385517483/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-7381093-2408608?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176920798&sr=8-1

****Jews lived in Israel since it was Israel and Judea. Jews and Christians have been forced from their homelands all over the muslim world and yet do not sink to the level of conduct that the so-called "Palestinians" live and die by. ******
3-5% Jewish before WWI.  Now, there's a 90%+ Jewish state (NOT multi-religious nor multi-cultural) on land that was formerly multi-cultural and Muslim, at least for ca. 1600 years.

And the Israelis are religious facists, plain and simple.  This is not complicated.  Their identity comes from their religious text (Old Testament as well as rabinical works) which specifies quite clearly that they are God's chosen people and that key locations in Palestine are theirs (and somehow composed of milk and honey) by God's promise.  So, we have a modern state armed with F15s, Cobras, Apaches, and other modern weapons based upon psychotic religious ideas. 

Seriously, would you tolerate such whacko ideas from anyone else?

They force the locals into ghettos (or reservations, however you want to call it), terrorize them, destroy their villages (many 1,000+ years old), tear up their farms (of equal age), pave the whole area over, make the national language something different (Hebrew, not Arabic as it had been for centuries), rape and humiliate the locals, destroy their infrastructure whenever they get one (2003 the 5 Bilion Euro water system was destroyed by the Israelis, but most of what I'm talking about stems from 1948 and onward), offer bogus disingenuous "peace" deals that deny the UN mandated Right of Return to the displaced Palestinians as well as making sure that whatever territory they are so generously allowed is non-contiguous.  Imagine if you lived in LA and had to pass a police checkpoint every time you wanted to cross a freeway to see your cousin.  That's NOT a fair deal.

Hell, the founding charter of the Likud party even specified methods to make the locals so uncomfortable, including never hiring them for work, burining their villages (yes, pogroms BY Jews), etc, that they would give up and leave.  It's been a deliberate part of a major political party since Day 1!

This kind of thing would NEVER be tolerated by any invaded people.  No wonder the Palestinians blow themselves up.  It's horrible, but it's an act of desparation.

****** There has never been a nation called "Palestine". There has been a region, or province of various empires but not a nation-state.*******
That's totally irrelevant.  There were people living there for centuries and they were chased out by foreigners from Europe.

***** The "palestinian" identity is a psy-op from the 60's, probably done by the KGB.****
Alright, GM, you lost me here.  Are you joking?  The KGB?  The 1960s?

The Brits, who ran the territory for about 50 years, got the name from the Romans who called that area Palestine.  I don't know if it was a state, a province, a hand-drawn circle on a Roman gov't map loosely encapsulating some tax district, whatever.  Doesn't matter.

The displaced locals had to come up with some sort of name.  If they called themselves "UN Designated Group Number XZY-123 of Locals Displaced by Foreign Occupation Stemming from Post-Colonial Europe" it would be the same thing (though more of a mouthful).

The name applies to the Muslim (and often Coptic and Orthodox Christian) locals who lived in what was called the Mandate of Palestine by the Brits since about 1895 (my date may be off) there before the massive influx of Jews starting in 1948 who declared their own country on top of others' homes.

I feel sorry for the Jews who faced the Nazi holocaust, but they inflicted their own holocaust on the locals.
****No, it's frankly a disgusting use of language to compare the holocaust to the self-inflicted misery and depravity of the "palestinians" and their self constructed culture of death.****

Actually, I think it fits perfectly.  And it's the Israelis, politically and financially backed by you and me, who inflicts this, not themselves.

After the Nazi holocaust (I lost family in that, by the way), the Jews should know how this feels and should know better.  All they seemed to learn to do is be subtile enough, pursueding the US that they are the poor innocent victims, to get away with it for 60 years.  The Nazis only lasted about 12 years.  Who's the better Nazi?

GM, I am a little perplexed about where you get your infomation.  Do you just swallow propoganda without being critical about it and chewing on it?  Watch Fox "news" too much?  Have you done any real research on this (TV and internet don't count - I was thinking more along the lines of academic and travelling, learning languages, meeting people, cross-checking stories, etc.)?

For the record, me: BA Poli-Sci, comparative politics and international relations, specializing in the Middle East, born Jewish, 2nd language Hebrew (though I can't speak it anymore), been Christian (though more of a secular humanist these days) since I was 15, married into a modern and moderate Moslem immigrant family, live daily in French, German, and English. 

Every single day I live this 3-religion crap and who deserves what and who did what to whom and who is bad and whose religion is evil.  Then, I go for a drink with my Russian Orthodox neighbor just for a break from it.

And, per my daily experience, it's the Muslims who are the most easy-going, pro-human-rights, and anti-fundamentalist and the Zionist-Jews (you know what that is, right?  Zionist?  As opposed to a normal, average, everyday guy who is Jewish?  Big difference) who are the most racist, fundamentalist, violent and extreme.  The Christians mean well but are very confused, at least in my neighborhood.

As it says on the Rules of the Road WE SEEK TRUTH.  It sounds like you belong here as part of this search.  The conversation may be vigorous, because Truth matters and its discernment in these troubled times can be as elusive as it is important.

Okay, good, so I'm not out of line.  Just wanted to make sure.

a) I sense a "good cop bad cop" routines between "good" and "bad" muslims-- and like good cop/bad cop, ultimately that they are two faces of the same coin.

Most, if not all Muslims I've met (grew up with some Iranians, married N. African, work with some Pakistanis and Palistinians) are just people trying to get by and they enjoy living in the USA.  Some have problems with our post-cold war foreign policy but heck, so do most college students and many intellectuals.  In this climate, they seem to avoid talking about politics but readily invest in getting families together for some bonding.  Very, very good cooking in these circles, by the way, which does not help me stay skinny. 

They hate the bad ones as much or more than we do, having personally experienced them.

Think of the bad ones as the Muslim world's KKK.  The terrorists are as genuinely Muslim as the KKK is Christian.

b) I sense that "good muslims" have a very strong aversion to standing with "good infidels" against "bad muslims".

They're often trapped between a rock and a hard place.  Nobody idealizes the USA like many did after WWII.  Those days are over yet we don't realize it.  We're not so cool anymore - kinda like the French.

We're not horrible, but we are a scary superpower who is not very worldly and has no problem attack countries who have not attacked us.  That's pretty clear around the planet and scares the daylights out of people.  We are also seen as an oil-greedy nation who will do anything we want to create, corrupt, and suck dry whole countries for their oil.

True or not, and I don't think we're as bad as we're seen these days, this makes us look like not such a good friend to ally with.  So in the interest of self-preservation, many Muslims are staying out of it if they can and not standing with us as we don't offer anything credible and we don't look like we're going to succeed.

c) This is shown by the tremendous scarcity of translators and interpretors coming forward from the millions of Arab, Persian and Pakistani immigrants and their children in America.

As above.

But do you mean translators abroad or within the USA?

d) To be Muslim, my understanding is that one must seek Sharia.  Sharia is not only a religious idea, it seeks to be the law-- a political idea.  And the political idea of Sharia is contrary to Freedom of Choice, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion and Separation of Church and State-- all core American inalienable rights derived from our Creator.  In other words, I do not seeing a way around raising the question that in America Sharia, hence Islam, is per se seditious.

Nah, this isn't correct, though it's a good point.

To be Muslim you have to do five things and THAT'S IT.
1) Declare there's no god but God and that Mohammed is his prophet.
2) Fast for Ramadan.
3) Give money to the poor.
4) Make a pilgrimage to Mecca once in your life if and only if you can afford it.
5) Pray 5 times per day.

The desire to have religious law is a cultural one.  But think of it like this - it's more natural to have religious laws than specifically non-religious laws.  If morality comes from God (in theory) and God decides what's good or bad (murder, adultry, theft, paying taxes, etc.) then it follows that the details would be "clarified" (or interpreted) by God's ministers (priests) who would, logically, claim that their legitimacy comes from God himself, right?

So a separation between church and state (which I wholeheartedly believe in) is a big step, one that the West only learned after centuries of corruption.

What are our laws based upon?  "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." It works for us because it makes sense to us, but we're the exception, not the rule in the grand scheme of history.

So, imagine that the US were split up by, say, China or India or pre-1918 Turkey (pick a once or future big power), our resources sucked out of the country and the common US citizen wasn't making a dime on it, the state gov'ts were corrupt and controlled by foreign money, the KKK took an anti-foreigner as well as racist ideology and was the most organized group out there as hate makes sense under such circumstances, had characters like Pat Robinson and other extremists who were totally corrupting Christianity yet the church was the only hope and/or explanation of why God was treating us like we were being treated, Catholics and Protestants were fighting like they did during the Hugonaught time (sorry for the spelling), and somehow people whose lives and minds were warped by this life figured out a way to lash out.

That's as close of a parallel as I can can muster right before bed.  I hope it makes a little sense.

The battles between Islam and the west are not a new thing. More specifically the US has been battling Islam since the earliest days of our country. We fought 2 wars against the Barbary Coast Pirates in the early 1800s.

The Barbary Coast demanded a tribute be paid to them in exchange for allowing the non-muslim ships into their harbors. This would be the practice of dhimmi whereas non-muslims pay (jizya) to muslims for the right to live. (see Sura 9:29)

Our struggle with Islam has been an over 200 year long struggle for our freedom, not just for religion.

Sort-of.

The Barbary Coast "pirates" were the Ottoman Turkish-flagged navy and they were controlling the sea lanes in the Med. for a while.  The Europeans and Romans before that had been doing the same thing back and forth for centuries.  It was just a way of competing with the other side, though it got pretty nasty.

They were called the "Barbary Coast Pirates" because the main naval power came from N. Africa (Berber territory), not from Turkey itself.  Not a big difference - the whole region was one big nation during this time.

Trust me on this.  I married a Berber and my father-in-law used to build ships in Algiers.  Real modern-day Algerines.

Very interesting foreign policy question back in Jefferson's time.  Is the USA going to keep to its own area or expand into Europe?  Will our navy be a brown-water or blue-water navy?  If I remember correctly, the operations in N. Africa (where the Marines really cut their teeth, too!) was the first blue-water naval operation that the US ever did and I _think_ that the US Marine's saber handle was modeled after the Turks' specifically to symbolize victory over them, then a great world power.  See this sword: http://www.allamericangifts.com/images/productpictures/ALL%20AMERICAN%20GIFTS%20PRODUCT%20LINE%20021.jpg