Blast reported at Illinois mall

[Darth Wong]

A lot of people seem to think that anyone who became a radical, abandoned his home life, and traveled to Iraq to fight the infidels would have still done something like that if America had not provoked him. In other words, the assumption is that the number of fanatics is fixed, regardless of what America does.

If one accepts this logic, then Iraq is a brilliant idea: draw them out and kill them. But the logic is completely unjustifiable; it relies on the assumption that the increase in anti-American sentiment around the world somehow skipped the Muslim countries, so that while Germany, France, England, Canada, etc. all think worse of America than they did 8 years ago, Muslim sentiment is exactly the same.

[Lord Poe]

Forget it. My initial post was quite clear. I'm not going to make 12 more explaining why it wasn't addressed.

[Ryan Thunder]

A lot of people seem to think that anyone who became a radical, abandoned his home life, and traveled to Iraq to fight the infidels would have still done something like that if America had not provoked him. In other words, the assumption is that the number of fanatics is fixed, regardless of what America does.

If one accepts this logic, then Iraq is a brilliant idea: draw them out and kill them. But the logic is completely unjustifiable; it relies on the assumption that the increase in anti-American sentiment around the world somehow skipped the Muslim countries, so that while Germany, France, England, Canada, etc. all think worse of America than they did 8 years ago, Muslim sentiment is exactly the same.

Sorry, 'nother potentially dumb question; Why do we think worse of them again?

[Ryan Thunder]

Gah, hit submit instead of "preview".

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Carrying on from where I was: I realize they pretty well told the UN to go screw themselves but, then again, I've always seen the UN as an attempt by smaller countries to control the other ones they can't afford to invade anyways...

[Darth Wong]

Forget it. My initial post was quite clear. I'm not going to make 12 more explaining why it wasn't addressed.

Ahh, of course, so when you respond to my post by completely misinterpreting it, I'm actually misinterpreting you, and apparently I'm misinterpreting you so badly that you can't even bother explaining what I got wrong.

[Darth Wong]

Sorry, 'nother potentially dumb question; Why do we think worse of them again?

I see no point trying to list all of the possible reasons why so many people outside the US have a much less favourable impression of it than they did 8 years ago. The point is that this negative shift in US perception is a fact, and to think that such a dramatic downward shift in opinion has nothing to do with the conduct of the administration over that period is sheer nonsense.

http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=247