When the USA became the strongest of the Western powers, and the major powerbroker among 'infidel/Christendom' governments, it inherited the mantle of Great Satan from Britain. Because we are 'the West' and 'the West' is behind every problem that has befallen the Arab-Islamic world, then that means that we are even respensible for the Crusades, even though it was quite impossible for us to be involved.Surlethe wrote:Is that really the case? Israel is just one example of Western interventionism into the region, but if the US had, say, bucked the trend and just left well-enough alone, would it be the "Great Satan"?Coyote wrote:... and lets face it, we all know that even if Israel had never existed in the first place, these tin-pot warlords in the region would have easily cooked up other reasons to hate the USA. ...
The fact that Bush-II even, at one point, used the word 'Crusade' to describe the initial invasion of Iraq only confirmed it.
The problem is, the Arab world does have a lot of legitimate greviences; but they are mixed in with a lot of stuff that (to us) seems crazy, as well as stuff that only they themselves can solve if they'd be honest and quit looking for outsiders to blame. The West exploited the Arabs with corrupt rulers for cheap oil, sure, but they also blame us for... well, I guess you could say 'stealing Islam's mojo' or something and making them weak. If Israel were gone or never existed, there'd be plenty of axes to grind from the 1920's and back to the Battle of Poitiers. How dare the Westerner infidels defend their land from our holy expansion!
