The alarming anti-Americanism in Europe

[Perinquus]

Excuse me for taking the words of fundamentalist idiots with a grain of salt. It's their actions that count, and their interest in conducting terrorist attacks against nations is pretty proportional to that nation's involvement in wronging (they feel) their countries of their people. Israel conducts the most military and economic operations against muslims, and not surprisingly they are the biggest terrorist target. The US conducts a significant number but substantially less, so we suffer substantially less terrorist attacks. Countries like the UK and Australia conduct operations very occasionally, and they get attacked very occasionally. There's a pattern here that you're ignoring in favor of the fevered, angry words of an irrational fundamentalist.

Take a fundamentalist's words with a grain of salt? He's the enemy we're fighting. When your enemy gives you a glimpse into his aims and his way of thinking, you'd do well to pay attention. Here you have man who professes his hatred of the West, and whose actions bear eloquent witness to that hatred, telling you frankly that he just hates you and wants you dead. This is not a complex problem. There is no need to look for some deeper, hidden meaning. You won't even consider the possibility that people like these actually mean what they say. It doesn't fit your view of things, so you decide it must not really be theirs either, and you go looking for deeper motivations. Well, trust me, you really can just believe what he says. You're in serious danger of outsmarting yourself.

But fine. He's too extreme for you? How about some more "mainstream" figures in the Muslim world? Sheik Muhammad al-Gamei'a, an Egyptian big shot who was the imam at the Islamic Cultural Center and Mosque in New York at the time of September 11th's unfortunate example of the price of American arrogance. Just after, in October, the big-time Westernized imam thought it was all to do with America's Jewish influence: ''You see these people all the time, everywhere, disseminating corruption, heresy, homosexuality, alcoholism, and drugs. Because of the Jews, there are strip clubs, homosexuals, and lesbians everywhere. They do this to impose their hegemony and colonialism on the world.'' This is not about American foreign policy; it's hatred and intolerance for what he sees as an evil, decadent culture, spreading its corrupting influence among the faithful.

You subscribe to the view that Islamic terrorism is caused by Arab resentment and bitterness. The problem is that that's only part of it. They are bitter and resentful, but there's something more that you're missing. You refuse to acknowledge the other part. You don't consider the possibility that the Islamic faithful could actually mean what they say. Justifying Arafat's suicide brigades, for example, Cherie Blair (wife of British PM Tony Blair) said, "As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress." This is an inanity heard nightly on cable talk shows from the left. It is the propaganda line of spokesmen for the terrorist cause like PLO spokesman Abudl Rachman and westernized apologists like Hussein Ibish who equate the terrorists' terror with the victims' response. But it ignores what the combatants say about themselves and their inspiration, and patronizes them in the process.

The Middle East Research Institute has also translated an interview given to the Arab press by a mother of a suicide bomber, who has nothing to say about root causes like poverty, or thwarted national desires or "social injustice." What she says is this:

I am a compassionate mother to my children,… Because I love my son, I encouraged him to die a martyr's death for the sake of Allah... Jihad is a religious obligation incumbent upon us, and we must carry it out. I sacrificed Muhammad as part of my obligation. This is an easy thing. There is no disagreement [among scholars] on such matters. The happiness in this world is an incomplete happiness; eternal happiness is life in the world to come, through martyrdom. Allah be praised, my son has attained this happiness... I prayed from the depths of my heart that Allah would cause the success of his operation. I asked Allah to give me 10 [Israelis] for Muhammad, and Allah granted my request and Muhammad made his dream come true, killing 10 Israeli settlers and soldiers. Our God honored him even more, in that there were many Israelis wounded. When the operation was over, the media broadcast the news. Then Muhammad's brother came to me and informed me of his martyrdom. I began to cry, 'Allah is the greatest,' and prayed and thanked Allah for the success of the operation. I began to utter cries of joy and we declared that we were happy. The young people began to fire into the air out of joy over the success of the operation, as this is what we had hoped for him.

The will of the terrorists to perform their horrible atrocities comes not from despair, but from a hope of heaven - from extending the territory of Islam and doing Allah's will. Nothing could be more obvious to anyone paying attention. That is, to anyone paying attention without the screen of liberal arrogance, which denies what it has seen in order to explain it.

Your flowery rhetoric does not jibe with your resistance to the idea that the US's conduct is in need of overhaul.

You're de-railing this into a debate about the attainability of perfection, can I take that as a concession that the US foreign policy sucks?

No, you may not take it as that. Unlike you, I am not willing to condem U.S. foreign policy across the board. We have had many foreign policy failures. Our state department is in serious need of a shake up to get certain people out. But I do not think we should throw the baby out with the bath water.

Slippery slope. If you're not satisfied with imperfection, then you always seek to improve where improvements can be made. This should be the default state of all human beings, and it's ludicrous to suggest that this mindset puts one on the road to becoming an intolerant fanatic. Just the opposite, in fact, a fanatic arises out of a person taught not to question, not to change.

You're missing the point. A person who insists on perfection that is beyond the attainable is usually the kind of person who thinks he knows how to get there. Think of socialism and communism. Socialists were trying to create a heaven on earth, a workers' paradise. They were sure of the perfectability of human institutions, and they had a blueprint for making it happen. This moral certainly led them to kill tens of millions of innocent unbelievers during the 20th Century. When you are sure you can bring about perfection, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, it's easy to justify almost anything for the "greater good".

It boils down to your view of human nature - what Thomas Sowell has called the constrained and unconstrained vision of human nature. The constrained vision, views man as unchanged, limited and dependent on evolved social processes (market economies, constitutional law, etc.). It believes that human beings are basically motivated by self interest, and the best social order can be brought about by social institutions which provide incentives which appeal to that self interest. Adam Smith was a famous devotee of this vision. The unconstrained vision holds that people are basically good, and argues for man's potential and perfectability, and the possibility of rational planning for social solutions. It appeals to idealism. If you can simply eliminate poverty, social injustice, and other ills, you can bring about a better society. Rousseau was a prominent figure of this persuasion.

The Eric Hoffer quote comes from a man with the constrained vision. The problem with people of the unconstrained view, such as yourself, is that you automatically and unconsciously assume that you are the only ones trying to improve or change things. Those of us willing to defend things which are imperfect you write off as morally inferior because we are clinging to old, outworn ideas, and you think we don't want to see things get better. Well, we constrained types DO want to improve things. We just have less faith in the ability of individuals to engineer utopian societies.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Take a fundamentalist's words with a grain of salt? He's the enemy we're fighting. When your enemy gives you a glimpse into his aims and his way of thinking, you'd do well to pay attention.

What you see as a glimpse of his aims and way of thinking, I see as angry rhetoric. You would ask me to ignore evidence and logic in favor of the public rhetoric of a murdering fundamentalist son of a bitch. These people are willing to kill and die for their beliefs. Lies and self-justification are nothing to them.

Here you have man who professes his hatred of the West, and whose actions bear eloquent witness to that hatred, telling you frankly that he just hates you and wants you dead.

He says he hates and wants to kill all Westerners, yet his group and others like it very rarely attack non-US, non-Israeli targets. His rhetoric doesn't jibe with facts, therefore it's bullshit.

This is not a complex problem. There is no need to look for some deeper, hidden meaning. You won't even consider the possibility that people like these actually mean what they say.

I didn't consider the possibility because it doesn't make any damn sense, not because it runs counter to my previous assessment of the situation. Give me a good reason to take rhetoric at face value when it doesn't jibe with evidence.

It doesn't fit your view of things, so you decide it must not really be theirs either, and you go looking for deeper motivations.

No, it doesn't fit the facts, so it must be bullshit.

Well, trust me, you really can just believe what he says. You're in serious danger of outsmarting yourself.

No, you can't. He says he hates Westerners just for being the way they are, yet he doesn't attack countries that don't involve themself in his region. He's obviously lying, which is no surprise coming from a brainwashed murderer.

But fine. He's too extreme for you? How about some more "mainstream" figures in the Muslim world? Sheik Muhammad al-Gamei'a, an Egyptian big shot who was the imam at the Islamic Cultural Center and Mosque in New York at the time of September 11th's unfortunate example of the price of American arrogance. Just after, in October, the big-time Westernized imam thought it was all to do with America's Jewish influence: ''You see these people all the time, everywhere, disseminating corruption, heresy, homosexuality, alcoholism, and drugs. Because of the Jews, there are strip clubs, homosexuals, and lesbians everywhere. They do this to impose their hegemony and colonialism on the world.'' This is not about American foreign policy; it's hatred and intolerance for what he sees as an evil, decadent culture, spreading its corrupting influence among the faithful.

How much of this hatred existed before the Zionist movement? They say they hate the Jews because of the way they are, but that's bullshit. It's because the Jews and Muslims are at each others' throats. The Sikhs are a very progressive people (gave suffrage to women centuries before the West), yet Muslims don't care about them, even though they share many of these traits, and by the rhetoric you cited, they should hate them just as much.

You say I'm looking for deeper motivations, and you're offering the simplest explanation that fits all the facts, but this claim doesn't hold water:

I say that the evidence shows that the most terrorism by Muslim extremists occurs against countries that the Muslims could have a legitimate beef with.

You say that the Muslims simply hate Westerners irrationally and passionately.

My hypothesis relies on simple cause and effect, while yours introduces an extra term that must be understood before we can understand why the Muslims hate us. Of course, yours doesn't fit the facts, so it's moot anyway, but you can give up pretending your hypothesis is simpler, because it's not true.

You subscribe to the view that Islamic terrorism is caused by Arab resentment and bitterness.

Funny, I thought I specifically refuted that idea a few posts ago:

I've heard this argument before. They hate us for our freedoms, they're jealous because we have choice and democracry and because we're secular heathens. Either that or the more subtle variation: They hate the West because it's part of their culture and they can't let go of history. Either way, you realize it's bullshit as soon as you remember that there are other Western countries that are just as wealthy as us, freer than us (Patriot Act means we're no longer the Land of the Free), more secular than us (less fundies), and yet none of them are the Great Satan. We are. Your theory does not fit the facts.

Perhaps you didn't recognize it because it was stated without the usual sophistry and made-up jargon.

The problem is that that's only part of it. They are bitter and resentful, but there's something more that you're missing. You refuse to acknowledge the other part. You don't consider the possibility that the Islamic faithful could actually mean what they say.

I do consider it, and then I discard it because it doesn't jibe with facts.
[qutoe]Justifying Arafat's suicide brigades, for example, Cherie Blair (wife of British PM Tony Blair) said, "As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress." This is an inanity heard nightly on cable talk shows from the left.[/quote]
How is it inane? Are you suggesting that people would be willing to blow themselves up if they didn't feel cornered and desperate?

It is the propaganda line of spokesmen for the terrorist cause like PLO spokesman Abudl Rachman and westernized apologists like Hussein Ibish who equate the terrorists' terror with the victims' response. But it ignores what the combatants say about themselves and their inspiration, and patronizes them in the process.

The suicide bombers are merely soldiers in an asymetrical war. Poorly educated, propagandized soldiers who understand what they're fighting for are a rarity. Why should I be shocked when these combatants' words don't correlate with reality?

The Middle East Research Institute has also translated an interview given to the Arab press by a mother of a suicide bomber, who has nothing to say about root causes like poverty, or thwarted national desires or "social injustice." What she says is this:

I am a compassionate mother to my children,… Because I love my son, I encouraged him to die a martyr's death for the sake of Allah... Jihad is a religious obligation incumbent upon us, and we must carry it out. I sacrificed Muhammad as part of my obligation. This is an easy thing. There is no disagreement [among scholars] on such matters. The happiness in this world is an incomplete happiness; eternal happiness is life in the world to come, through martyrdom. Allah be praised, my son has attained this happiness... I prayed from the depths of my heart that Allah would cause the success of his operation. I asked Allah to give me 10 [Israelis] for Muhammad, and Allah granted my request and Muhammad made his dream come true, killing 10 Israeli settlers and soldiers. Our God honored him even more, in that there were many Israelis wounded. When the operation was over, the media broadcast the news. Then Muhammad's brother came to me and informed me of his martyrdom. I began to cry, 'Allah is the greatest,' and prayed and thanked Allah for the success of the operation. I began to utter cries of joy and we declared that we were happy. The young people began to fire into the air out of joy over the success of the operation, as this is what we had hoped for him.

She didn't say anything at all about the reasons he did it, only that Allah wanted him to. What is this supposed to prove?

The will of the terrorists to perform their horrible atrocities comes not from despair, but from a hope of heaven - from extending the territory of Islam and doing Allah's will. Nothing could be more obvious to anyone paying attention. That is, to anyone paying attention without the screen of liberal arrogance, which denies what it has seen in order to explain it.

You're claiming that the truth is obvious, and I just can't see it because I've been blinded by "liberal arrogance". That's an ad-hominem attack, and a misplaced one at that, as I've never associated myself with group thinking of any kind, be it liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. If the truth is so obvious, you should be crushing me with these undeniable facts. Are they too good for the likes of me, so you haven't presented them?

Your flowery rhetoric does not jibe with your resistance to the idea that the US's conduct is in need of overhaul.

You're de-railing this into a debate about the attainability of perfection, can I take that as a concession that the US foreign policy sucks?

No, you may not take it as that. Unlike you, I am not willing to condem U.S. foreign policy across the board. We have had many foreign policy failures. Our state department is in serious need of a shake up to get certain people out. But I do not think we should throw the baby out with the bath water.

You say you acknowledge our failures, yet I haven't heard you acknowledge a single one. Nothing but apology and justification.

Slippery slope. If you're not satisfied with imperfection, then you always seek to improve where improvements can be made. This should be the default state of all human beings, and it's ludicrous to suggest that this mindset puts one on the road to becoming an intolerant fanatic. Just the opposite, in fact, a fanatic arises out of a person taught not to question, not to change.

You're missing the point. A person who insists on perfection that is beyond the attainable is usually the kind of person who thinks he knows how to get there.

I'd love to see you back that up.

Think of socialism and communism. Socialists were trying to create a heaven on earth, a workers' paradise. They were sure of the perfectability of human institutions, and they had a blueprint for making it happen. This moral certainly led them to kill tens of millions of innocent unbelievers during the 20th Century. When you are sure you can bring about perfection, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, it's easy to justify almost anything for the "greater good".

They had a religious mindset, putting conclusion before evidence gathering. You assume that anyone who strives to perfect his society must share this mindset, that anyone who isn't satisfied with inequity and injustice must have a crystal clear image of perfection formed in his mind. Do you really think you're fooling anyone here? I hate to point out the obvious, but this is Stardestroyer.net. People don't buy that guilt by association shit here. If you want to show that I'm an ideologue who puts ivory tower pure philosophy ahead of truth and facts, you'll have to do better than "You strive for perfection, well so did the commies and the Nazis."

It boils down to your view of human nature - what Thomas Sowell has called the constrained and unconstrained vision of human nature. The constrained vision, views man as unchanged, limited and dependent on evolved social processes (market economies, constitutional law, etc.). It believes that human beings are basically motivated by self interest, and the best social order can be brought about by social institutions which provide incentives which appeal to that self interest. Adam Smith was a famous devotee of this vision. The unconstrained vision holds that people are basically good, and argues for man's potential and perfectability, and the possibility of rational planning for social solutions. It appeals to idealism. If you can simply eliminate poverty, social injustice, and other ills, you can bring about a better society. Rousseau was a prominent figure of this persuasion.

The Eric Hoffer quote comes from a man with the constrained vision. The problem with people of the unconstrained view, such as yourself, is that you automatically and unconsciously assume that you are the only ones trying to improve or change things. Those of us willing to defend things which are imperfect you write off as morally inferior because we are clinging to old, outworn ideas, and you think we don't want to see things get better. Well, we constrained types DO want to improve things. We just have less faith in the ability of individuals to engineer utopian societies.

I hope everyone can see your strawman, because it's pretty obvious from where I'm sitting. Rather than try to deal with my points, you've chosen to explain that I subscribe to "the unconstrained view", a ridiculous and stupid mode of thinking that you can easily knock down. If you knew I was a student of Economics, you'd know how silly it is to contrast my views to those of Adam Smith, and anyone who's read even one of my posts in this thread can see plain as day that I'm not a follow of "the unconstrained view".

Let me spell it out for you: Humans aren't basically good, they're basically fucking idiots looking frantically for the nearest metaphorical needle they can find to jam themselves in the eye and blind themselves to the hard truths of the world.

You assume that because I attack Machiavellian geopolitics (and notice that I attacked it based on its results, not based on idealist philosophy), which is a constrained view (using your terminology), I must not advocate another constrained view. In fact, I point out that America's success worldwide comes from commercialism, and though I might not be a huge fan of McDonald's crappy food or the Gap's overpriced clothes, I recognize that international trade and commercialism (based on greed and self-interest, which you claimed without evidence that I rejected) can bring us prosperity without violent hatred and the inevitable bloody downfall of the empire. I advocate replacing one constrained view with another, despite your strawman.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The argument, however, can be made that Empire doesn't have the results you contend (the minimal-realist model) but rather it follows the maximal-realist model, and that vigorous application of the power of the hegemony in fact preserves it. Unsurprisingly, I'm a maximal-realist; I doubt I'd change anyone like Stuart (Mackey) on this board who falls into the minimal-realist category, though, no matter what evidence I produced.

At any rate:

I don't think the problem is Islam as a whole, but rather a specific part of it on the lines Perinquus suggests. To this I am in agreement with some Muslims, and would submit this interview with Stephen Schwartz, a Jewish convert to Islam, as the real contribution I could make at this point:

The Good & the Bad: Stephen Schwartz on Islam and Wahhabism.

[Edi]

I am a firm believer in applying the same standard across the board. I expect officers and citizens to be equally honest. When they are not, I may be a bit more disappointed in the officer, but I am not prepared to excuse of forgive the regular citizen anymore than I am a corrupt cop. Fiat iustitia ruat caeli. Let justice be done though the heavens fall. I am a great believer in standards of integrity and justice being applied impartially.

Yes, justice should be the same across the board. Nobody is arguing it shouldn't. However, just like you'd be more disappointed with a dishonest cop than with a dishonest citizen, so are we more disappointed with the US when it engages in reprehensible practices than we re with e.g. China when it does. The reason is because the US publicly claims moral leadership and being good, while China does not even attempt it other than domestically, and we know what to expect from them. Leaders are not required to behave in a manner conforming to higher standards than the followers, but often it is expected of them. Do you see the difference? Justice is required to be the same for leader and follower alike, but moral expectations (especially in light of the putative leader's claims) by others are not.

By the same token, whether we expect this failing in communist nations or not is beside the point. What's wrong is wrong, no matter who is responsible. I am not prepared to excuse communist nations from acting like barbarians because they are not expected to behave any better. Again, I may be more disappointed in the errant democracy than the errant communist state, but in terms of moral accountability, I would hold them equally at fault.

If you would hold them equally at fault, then why the hell are you writing post after post after post after post of apologia for the disreputable parts of US foreign policy and trying to justify it? Because that's what you have been doing. You've dug yourself into a deep hole here, and you're still digging. All it would have taken is saying "Yes, we've fucked up, we should strive not to do so in the future, and to improve FP", and people like me, Stuart and AT would be happy to pursue a discussion into that direction, but as long as you're trying to justify past immoral FP actions in such a blatantly hypocritical apologist fashion, we'll keep shredding your bullshit to pieces.

It can't just be that fucking difficult to concede an impossible position, is it? Or have you been studying Darkstar debating techniques lately, with the objective of trying them out in mind? I've had my ass kicked in enough debates to know when I'm outmatched, and I've no problem conceding in those cases. The debate here is about the moral consistency of foreign policy with stated aims, claims and objectives, and the US foreign policy sheet balance simply does not add up in this respect. It does add up when you take US interests (especially short term ones) as the defining criterion, but that requires most of the rhetoric about freedom and democracy (for non-Americans anyway) to go to the scrap pile first.

Edi

[Edi]

The argument, however, can be made that Empire doesn't have the results you contend (the minimal-realist model) but rather it follows the maximal-realist model, and that vigorous application of the power of the hegemony in fact preserves it. Unsurprisingly, I'm a maximal-realist; I doubt I'd change anyone like Stuart (Mackey) on this board who falls into the minimal-realist category, though, no matter what evidence I produced.

Not completely, because the basic premises of our approaches are too different, but that doesn't prevent constructive discussion as long as we acknowledge the difference in premises. Doesn't mean that you won't get us to admit a point or two now and then, but in all probability you'll not change our minds significantly enough to make us switch camps.

Edi

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

The argument, however, can be made that Empire doesn't have the results you contend (the minimal-realist model) but rather it follows the maximal-realist model, and that vigorous application of the power of the hegemony in fact preserves it. Unsurprisingly, I'm a maximal-realist; I doubt I'd change anyone like Stuart (Mackey) on this board who falls into the minimal-realist category, though, no matter what evidence I produced.

I may not understand the terms you're using, but I don't see how they refute that the current threat of terrorism, including 9/11, the recent surge in arms buildup spending in China and its increasing anti-US paranoia, and increasing anti-US sentiment worldwide can be demonstrated to be a direct result of following ruthless Machiavellian diplomacy, and we'd be better off today had we not followed it.

At any rate:

I don't think the problem is Islam as a whole, but rather a specific part of it on the lines Perinquus suggests. To this I am in agreement with some Muslims, and would submit this interview with Stephen Schwartz, a Jewish convert to Islam, as the real contribution I could make at this point:

The Good & the Bad: Stephen Schwartz on Islam and Wahhabism.

Interesting article. Are you submitting it to increase the level of knowledge on the subject, or does it argue against something I've said and I just missed it?

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Damn lack of an edit button. Upon re-reading, that last sentence sounded sarcastic and baiting. It wasn't meant to be.

[Perinquus]

What you see as a glimpse of his aims and way of thinking, I see as angry rhetoric. You would ask me to ignore evidence and logic in favor of the public rhetoric of a murdering fundamentalist son of a bitch. These people are willing to kill and die for their beliefs. Lies and self-justification are nothing to them.

He says he hates and wants to kill all Westerners, yet his group and others like it very rarely attack non-US, non-Israeli targets. His rhetoric doesn't jibe with facts, therefore it's bullshit.

I didn't consider the possibility because it doesn't make any damn sense, not because it runs counter to my previous assessment of the situation. Give me a good reason to take rhetoric at face value when it doesn't jibe with evidence.

It jibes perfectly with the evidence. He hates Westerners. And he kills them. What do you want? Do you need him to travel to, say Norway or Portugal to kill Westerners there in order to prove that he hates them too? Why should he do that when he lives in close proximity to Israel - a target rich environment as we said in the army. Even if he has the will, he lacks the ability to strike at all Westerners indiscriminately. There's a reason that terrorists engage in assymetrical warfare: they don't have the resources, the manpower, the organization, etc. to engage in the other kind. They are limited in what they can do. He hates the Israelis for being infidels in Arab lands, and he hates Americans for supporting Israel and spreading its decadent, Godless culture. None of this makes it automatic that he does not hate Western society in general with equal venom. He simply strikes out at Israel and America as both the nearest to hand and the most prominent examples of this despised Western culture.

No, it doesn't fit the facts, so it must be bullshit.

No, you can't. He says he hates Westerners just for being the way they are, yet he doesn't attack countries that don't involve themself in his region. He's obviously lying, which is no surprise coming from a brainwashed murderer.

No he's obviously telling the truth. How do I know this? I can tell the same way I can tell when suspects are not lying to me on the street - this is a statement that is contrary to his interests. If he isn't motivated primarily by hatred. If he doesn't really mean it when he says that he just wants to destroy us, why would he say that he does? Admitting this not only gets him nothing, it hurts his cause. Because if he is willing to compromise or negotiate or be placated, why the hell would he say things calculated to make people think he is an intransigent fanatic who cannot be reasoned with? That might turn people who would otherwise be willing to negotiate with him and his group into hardliners who see him as an implacable enemy whom they have no alternative but to destroy.

How much of this hatred existed before the Zionist movement? They say they hate the Jews because of the way they are, but that's bullshit. It's because the Jews and Muslims are at each others' throats. The Sikhs are a very progressive people (gave suffrage to women centuries before the West), yet Muslims don't care about them, even though they share many of these traits, and by the rhetoric you cited, they should hate them just as much.

This is simply a "what came first, the chicken or the egg" issue. Conflicts have a habit of persisting long after their initial causes have long since faded from memory. Even if I concede, for the sake of argument, that the Muslims did not hate the Jews before the Zionist movement, the fact remains that they do hate them now. After generations of conflict, of atrocities by both sides, each of which creates new enmities and stirs up new resentments, it hardly matters what started it. People can forget the root causes of enmity and end up hating simply out of prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry. And once they become bigoted, they can find all sorts of ways to rationalize and justify their hatreds.

You say I'm looking for deeper motivations, and you're offering the simplest explanation that fits all the facts, but this claim doesn't hold water:

I say that the evidence shows that the most terrorism by Muslim extremists occurs against countries that the Muslims could have a legitimate beef with.

You say that the Muslims simply hate Westerners irrationally and passionately.

No I didn't. Go back and reread my last post. I said there is both a sense of grievance AND fanatical hatred. Once these two elements are present in people's thinking, they can feed off each other.

My hypothesis relies on simple cause and effect, while yours introduces an extra term that must be understood before we can understand why the Muslims hate us. Of course, yours doesn't fit the facts, so it's moot anyway, but you can give up pretending your hypothesis is simpler, because it's not true.

Mine is simpler. Yours is the one that has to introduce extra terms - torturted rationalizations to justify disregarded frank admissions by the parties whose motivations are in question, and find some rationale not to take what they say at face value. Mine fits the facts. It considers both the the fact that Muslims do feel aggrieved, and also the fact that there is a radical element in Islam today which is fanatical, fundamentalist, and venomously anti-Western.

I've heard this argument before. They hate us for our freedoms, they're jealous because we have choice and democracry and because we're secular heathens. Either that or the more subtle variation: They hate the West because it's part of their culture and they can't let go of history. Either way, you realize it's bullshit as soon as you remember that there are other Western countries that are just as wealthy as us, freer than us (Patriot Act means we're no longer the Land of the Free), more secular than us (less fundies), and yet none of them are the Great Satan. We are. Your theory does not fit the facts.

First off, there are no other Western countries that are as wealthy as us. There are countries where the standard of living is just as high, but no other country represents as large an economic bloc as we do. No other country has seen its popular culture spread to the degree ours has either. Islamic fundies hate what they see as a godless, corrupt culture which gives more freedom and what they see as license to women, and this goes against the Islamic law they worship. They see a culture which promulgates secularism, which in its modern, political meaning, is the idea that religious and political authority - church and state - are, and ought to be separate. This is diametrically opposed to Islam, which holds that there is no human legislative power, and there is only one law for the Believers - the Holy Law of God, promulgated by revelation. It's American movies and American music and American pop culture more than anything else that waves this culture in their faces, so it's natural they should fixate on us as the primary target (or on Israel which is bother geographically closer, and culturally Westernized), but it does not for a moment mean that Western civilization as a whole is not reviled by Muslim fundamentalists.

They fear this as well because it is seductive. They fear the faithful will be seduced by this decadent lifestyle. In Islam, Shaitan is not quite the same as the Christian Satan. He is not the powerful and awesome Prince of Darkness, he is the subtle tempter, whose power lies in his ability not to destroy, but to lead one away from what is Holy. Western culture, with its high standard of living and freedom from the strict constraints of Islamic law is tempting in its perceived luxury.

How is it inane? Are you suggesting that people would be willing to blow themselves up if they didn't feel cornered and desperate?

Yes! Don't you get it yet? These people (some of them) are religious fanatics. They truly believe, right down to their marrow, that they are serving the greater glory of Allah. That they are obligated to spread Islamic culture (spirit of Jihad), and that Allah will reward them. They really, truly, deeply believe in that paradise with the 72 nubile young virgins, and that a martyr's death will put them on the express train to get there. Some of the 9/11 hijackers were from very well-to-do Saudi families. They were well off, and living in a stable, unthreatened Islamic state; why would they feel cornered and desperate? They could have stayed in Saudi Arabia and lived a life of actual, no shit luxury, and they chose to slam themselves into American buildings at 600 miles per hour.

I don't think you appreciate the tremendous motivating power of religious fanaticism. Not being fanatical, I don't really understand it myself either, but unlike you, I don't let that blind me to the fact that it exists. In the words of Richard Dawkins:

Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr's death will send them straight to heaven. What a weapon! Religious faith deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war technology, on an even footing with the longbow, the warhorse, the tank, and the hydrogen bomb.

The suicide bombers are merely soldiers in an asymetrical war. Poorly educated, propagandized soldiers who understand what they're fighting for are a rarity. Why should I be shocked when these combatants' words don't correlate with reality?

For them it is reality. That's what you seem incapable of understanding. What motivates someone to strap on a belt made of semtex and vaporize himself as long as he can take some hated Jews with him? Whether their leaders are selling them a bill of goods or not, the important thing is that these people really believe this stuff. Even if the terrorist leadership is composed of cynical, worldly, jaded men who merely use this faith as a tool to manipulate their followers and maintain their power, the important thing is that they are using this belief successfully as a manipulating force. The rank and file are convinced. It's real to them! When a mother gets that euphoric look in her eyes, and says she is grateful that her son was granted the blessing of blowing his guts all over the street with a bunch of Israelis, she's speaking from the heart.

She didn't say anything at all about the reasons he did it, only that Allah wanted him to. What is this supposed to prove?

Aren't you paying attention? It's supposed to prove that rather than merely being about American foreign policy, it's about a hatred so all-consuming and venomous that a mother can cheer and weep for joy at the death of her very son as long as he can take some of the hated enemy with him. It takes a powerful hatred to achieve that kind of result. It's a hatred so intense it's almost palpable, yet you are apparently unwilling to admit that it exists.

You're claiming that the truth is obvious, and I just can't see it because I've been blinded by "liberal arrogance". That's an ad-hominem attack, and a misplaced one at that, as I've never associated myself with group thinking of any kind, be it liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. If the truth is so obvious, you should be crushing me with these undeniable facts. Are they too good for the likes of me, so you haven't presented them?

I've presented you with frank admissions by the very people whose motivations are in question - what better evidence for their intentions than their own words, borne out by their actions? - and you have blithely dismissed them or rationalized them away. I've shown you at least one example of an anti-Western and anti-Semitic hatred so apparent that a blind man could see it and you just dismiss the idea without serious consideration.

Your flowery rhetoric does not jibe with your resistance to the idea that the US's conduct is in need of overhaul.
You say you acknowledge our failures, yet I haven't heard you acknowledge a single one. Nothing but apology and justification.

Then you haven't been paying attention, since I've already twice admitted that our betrayal of the Kurds after the Gulf War in '91 was deplorable.

That not enough for you? Fine. You want examples? No problem. So as not to make this too long a list, let's start with fairly recent history - American foreign policy failures since WWII. (And this is by no means an exhaustive list.) U.S. foreign policy toward Soviet Russia was naive and shortsighted, and had we taken a tougher line, we might have kept a bit more of eastern Europe free. Then after the war, American foreign policy in the far east was disastrously bungled, and in hindsight, actually appears to have helped the Reds take over China in 1949 and impose one of the most bloody regimes in history. During the Eisenhower years, a Vietnamese chap named Ho Chi Minh actually sought U.S. support against French colonialism in order to attain independence for his nation. He was refused because we did not want to go against France - DeGaulle's France that was already obstructing U.S. interests and sabotaging the U.S. economy. Our justification for this was not only that France was an ally (not much of one, even then), but also that Ho Chi Minh had espoused communist ideals in his younger days. He'd shed a lot of that communist baggage since then, especially since he was trying to court the United States. He picked it back up when we turned him down so he could get help from Red China and the U.S.S.R., so you might say we drive Ho back into the arms of the communists.

Then of course there was our involvement in Vietnam against Ho Chi Minh, which never should have happened. But when it did, we pulled out in the end and left our South Vietnamese ally in the lurch. We reneged on our commitment. We never should have made that commitment, but once it was made, we were obligated to live up to it, and we failed to do so. This not only damaged U.S. prestige, it hurt our credibility as well. Then there was giving up the Panama Canal, which is now controlled by China. Allow me to mention the Kurds yet again. And let's not forget our appeasement of North Korea during the 90s, and it's wonderful result.

And that's just in the last half century. That says nothing about our unjust military actions, like the Spanish-American War, or the Mexican War, and how we basically stole California, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. And of course, there are all those treaties we broke with the Indians, but if I list ALL our misdeeds since 1776, I'll have to make this post almost book-length.

Are you satisfied now? Are you ready to get off that particular horse yet? Because I'm tired of hearing this accusation.

You're missing the point. A person who insists on perfection that is beyond the attainable is usually the kind of person who thinks he knows how to get there.

I'd love to see you back that up.

I did. The socialist experiments, and all the deaths they caused, are a great example of this exact phenomenon. The French Revolution and the Reign of Terror are another. People in search of perfection, unwilling to settle for less, and ardently convinced they knew how to make it happen.

They had a religious mindset, putting conclusion before evidence gathering. You assume that anyone who strives to perfect his society must share this mindset, that anyone who isn't satisfied with inequity and injustice must have a crystal clear image of perfection formed in his mind. Do you really think you're fooling anyone here? I hate to point out the obvious, but this is Stardestroyer.net. People don't buy that guilt by association shit here. If you want to show that I'm an ideologue who puts ivory tower pure philosophy ahead of truth and facts, you'll have to do better than "You strive for perfection, well so did the commies and the Nazis."

I hope everyone can see your strawman, because it's pretty obvious from where I'm sitting. Rather than try to deal with my points, you've chosen to explain that I subscribe to "the unconstrained view", a ridiculous and stupid mode of thinking that you can easily knock down. If you knew I was a student of Economics, you'd know how silly it is to contrast my views to those of Adam Smith, and anyone who's read even one of my posts in this thread can see plain as day that I'm not a follow of "the unconstrained view".

Let me spell it out for you: Humans aren't basically good, they're basically fucking idiots looking frantically for the nearest metaphorical needle they can find to jam themselves in the eye and blind themselves to the hard truths of the world.

You assume that because I attack Machiavellian geopolitics (and notice that I attacked it based on its results, not based on idealist philosophy), which is a constrained view (using your terminology), I must not advocate another constrained view. In fact, I point out that America's success worldwide comes from commercialism, and though I might not be a huge fan of McDonald's crappy food or the Gap's overpriced clothes, I recognize that international trade and commercialism (based on greed and self-interest, which you claimed without evidence that I rejected) can bring us prosperity without violent hatred and the inevitable bloody downfall of the empire. I advocate replacing one constrained view with another, despite your strawman.

Your statement that we need to have a foreign policy that ensures that we will "be well liked and the enemy of no one," is something that inclines one to think that you are an idealogue who puts idealism ahead of realism. The idea that a nation our size and with our interests, commitments, and alliances can possibly craft a foreign policy that will keep us in everyone's good graces is starry-eyed, pie-in-the-sky fantasy wholly unworthy of a realist.

Your assertion that Europe has "shifted to new modes of thinking" and that they don't do all the shabby things we do anymore, that some how that have hearkened unto the better angels of their natures also would lead one to the conclusion that you subscribe to the unconstrained vision - since a central tent of the constrained vision is that basic human nature does not change.

If I have categorized you mistakenly, I think my error is understandable, given your statements.

[Perinquus]

If you would hold them equally at fault, then why the hell are you writing post after post after post after post of apologia for the disreputable parts of US foreign policy and trying to justify it? Because that's what you have been doing.

No it's not. Jesus H. Christ on a popsickle stick! I've been writing in defense of the parts that are NOT dispreputable, but which we are still getting condemned for. I should have thought I made that clear in the very first post on this thread, where we see poll evidence that most Europeans are angered and resentful that we are doing something that they themselves admit is probably the lesser of two evils.

I'm quite prepared to condemn the aspects of U.S. foreign policy that are deplorable, and if you read my latest response to Arthur_Tuxedo you can see a short list of actions taken by the U.S. that I think were absolutely disgraceful. But it just so happens that that is not the central theme of this thread, so I have not focused on that issue.

[Stuart Mackey]

You were saying?
It is a red herring. The entire thread is about America and why it cops so much flack

Why on earth are you sneering "red hering" at me for answering an argument that you raised? If you weren't prepared to deal with that argument, then the proper thing to do is not to have brought it up.

christ on his cross This thread was started by you, was it not?

That may be your opinion, but in my nation police are expected to be better than the average person or they loose the trust and confidence of the public. You expect me to obey the law when you the police violate it? I seem to remember an old army saying about officers
"do not ask the men to do something that you are not prepared to do yourself".

I don't ask anyone to do what I'm not willing to do myself. I expect everyone to be as honest as I am. I don't believe in double standards, higher or otherwise. Breaking the law is breaking the law, whether you're a cop or not.

You are supposed to uphold the law, if you do not you are held in low esteem lower than a ordinary person would be because a certain degree of trust is put in you.

No one is prepared to excuse a communist nation its failings, but we do expect it because that is the nature of such governments, but if you act like it while claiming to be 'the arsenal of democracy' expect a few nasty comments.

If we act like it? Excuse me, but when have we ever sunk to the level of the communist countries. Where are our Gulags? Where is our Berlin wall? Where are our secret police? When have we sent our tanks rolling into our neighboring countries to put down political movements? When did we have our purges?

I am not saying your internal policies are like that, but your external behavior is the same, albeit to a lesser degree. You aided and abetted Saddam Hussein, not to mention the artocities in Chilie and thats just the start of it and still in living memory. Your nation has set up dictatorships that have killed thousands, so yes you have acted like it.

So next time the world critisices your nation for acting like offal, take alook at your values and how they apply to your actions.

I don't mind taking flak for actual offenses we commit, like selling the Kurds down the river like we did in '91 for example. But I'm tired of hearing self righteous condemnation from the likes of France and Germany, who are quite content to sell dangerous technologies, or send money to a regime like Saddam Hussein's, and then turn around and try to paint us as the big villains when they're just as hip deep in shit as we are.

I really dont see that you have a case either. Sure these nations can be assholes, but perhaps the reason you dislike their critisims of America is because they are correct? But ulitimately, that other nations do these things is no excuse for you to do it as well. Start behaving in the way you preach and you might get less critisims.

[Perinquus]

christ on his cross This thread was started by you, was it not?

Yes, but it was you who raised the double standard issue, saying we should expect more from democracies. The corrollary to that is that we should expect less from the non-democracies. If it is somehow more reprehensible for a democracy to disregard justice, or to kill millions of people, then that means it is somehow less reprehensible for non-democracies to do these things. I merely pointed out that this line of argument cuts both ways and you started squawking "red-herring" at me. Well I'm sorry, but you're wrong. If you raise a point you have to be prepared to deal with all the ramifications it carries.

You are supposed to uphold the law, if you do not you are held in low esteem lower than a ordinary person would be because a certain degree of trust is put in you.

Well maybe I'm just a hardcase, but to me a shitbag is a shitbag, no matter what he started out as.

I am not saying your internal policies are like that, but your external behavior is the same, albeit to a lesser degree. You aided and abetted Saddam Hussein, not to mention the artocities in Chilie and thats just the start of it and still in living memory. Your nation has set up dictatorships that have killed thousands, so yes you have acted like it.

I concede we have done these things you say, and I fully accept that the U.S. merits blame for them, but what irks me is people out there who seriously regard America as a rogue nation, and seriously compare Bush to Hussein, or even Hitler. Or people who, like the Europeans in the poll I cited, condemn the United States, even as they concede that it is choosing what appears to be the lesser of two evils. Or people who praise the French, for example, for standing up for principle against the American Cowboy, when in reality, the French are behaving every bit as bad if not worse.

I really dont see that you have a case either. Sure these nations can be assholes, but perhaps the reason you dislike their critisims of America is because they are correct? But ulitimately, that other nations do these things is no excuse for you to do it as well. Start behaving in the way you preach and you might get less critisims.

I wish we would. The realities of world politics mean we never will, I fear, but despite the bad things we certainly have done, we have also done a lot that was good that people seem all too ready to forget, and I really do think that the United States, for all its undoubted faults, has a cleaner record than most dominant powers throughout history have had.

[Sam Or I]

Just to point out this part with Saddam, he was never a trusted ally with the United States. Why would he be? Most of the funding for his regiem did come from the USSR, the "Evil Empire" so to speak. Just look at his military most of it is made up of Soviet equipment, you do not see to many Abram tanks in his arsanal. He was an enemy of an enemy, but never a "friend" due to his support of communism during the Cold War.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

It jibes perfectly with the evidence. He hates Westerners. And he kills them.

He also hates secularism, yet he doesn't kill Turks or Iraqis much. He hates Hindus and Sikhs, yet the only Muslim aggression pointed at India comes from its next door neighbor. He hates all the European nations and Australia, yet rarely do terrorist incidents happen to them. In light of this, I find your insistence that the murderous hatred (as opposed to normal hatred) and terrorism would remain if the US changed its foreign policy to stop aggravating Muslims unjustified.

What do you want? Do you need him to travel to, say Norway or Portugal to kill Westerners there in order to prove that he hates them too? Why should he do that when he lives in close proximity to Israel - a target rich environment as we said in the army. Even if he has the will, he lacks the ability to strike at all Westerners indiscriminately. There's a reason that terrorists engage in assymetrical warfare: they don't have the resources, the manpower, the organization, etc. to engage in the other kind. They are limited in what they can do. He hates the Israelis for being infidels in Arab lands, and he hates Americans for supporting Israel and spreading its decadent, Godless culture. None of this makes it automatic that he does not hate Western society in general with equal venom. He simply strikes out at Israel and America as both the nearest to hand and the most prominent examples of this despised Western culture.

Although America may be the most prolific exporter of culture, other Western nations contribute proportionately to the heathenizing of the globe. If it were a simple matter of geographical proximity and prominance, Israel and America should get disproportionate attacks, but not be virtually the exclusive targets like we are. How do you explain that the two countries with foreign policies most geared toward pissing off Muslims are the two countries who receive virtually all terrorist attacks aimed at the West?

No he's obviously telling the truth. How do I know this? I can tell the same way I can tell when suspects are not lying to me on the street - this is a statement that is contrary to his interests. If he isn't motivated primarily by hatred. If he doesn't really mean it when he says that he just wants to destroy us, why would he say that he does? Admitting this not only gets him nothing, it hurts his cause. Because if he is willing to compromise or negotiate or be placated, why the hell would he say things calculated to make people think he is an intransigent fanatic who cannot be reasoned with? That might turn people who would otherwise be willing to negotiate with him and his group into hardliners who see him as an implacable enemy whom they have no alternative but to destroy.

You're right, he probably isn't lying. Now that I think about it more, I'm sure he believed everything he said. Just like Communist or Anarchist leaders of Unions make empassioned speeches about not settling until big business is down in flames (and believe every word of it), but then go away when they get the concessions they wanted. Or, to use an example factoring in religious extremism, how fundamentalists in many Latin American countries stopped killing abortion doctors after restrictions on abortion were put in place. In order to make the case that it should be any different with Muslim fundamentalists, you'd have to establish a fundamental difference between poor Middle Eastern Muslim fanatics and poor Latin American Christian fanatics.

This is simply a "what came first, the chicken or the egg" issue. Conflicts have a habit of persisting long after their initial causes have long since faded from memory. Even if I concede, for the sake of argument, that the Muslims did not hate the Jews before the Zionist movement, the fact remains that they do hate them now. After generations of conflict, of atrocities by both sides, each of which creates new enmities and stirs up new resentments, it hardly matters what started it. People can forget the root causes of enmity and end up hating simply out of prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry. And once they become bigoted, they can find all sorts of ways to rationalize and justify their hatreds.

And yet, these types of feuds do stop eventually. France and England are no longer bleeding each other white. Japan is no longer trying to invade Korea. Catholics and Protestants are at peace everywhere except Ireland. Having a foreign policy that encourages the continuation and exacerbation of this feud is not going to help.

No I didn't. Go back and reread my last post. I said there is both a sense of grievance AND fanatical hatred. Once these two elements are present in people's thinking, they can feed off each other.

Yet you don't get significant violence without both. Remove the grievances, and the hatred is not only starved of something to feed on, but is manifested more in economic maneuvering and wailing and gnashing of teeth than suicide bombers and sarin gas.

Mine is simpler. Yours is the one that has to introduce extra terms - torturted rationalizations to justify disregarded frank admissions by the parties whose motivations are in question, and find some rationale not to take what they say at face value.

Care to point out these tortured rationalizations?

Mine fits the facts. It considers both the the fact that Muslims do feel aggrieved, and also the fact that there is a radical element in Islam today which is fanatical, fundamentalist, and venomously anti-Western.

But it doesn't explain why non-US, non-Israeli Western nations or non-Western yet equally infidel nations are rarely targeted, and I never saw any consideration of legitimate grievances. Maybe I just missed it. In any case, even under your interpretation, take away the grievances, and the violence largely dissapears as well. Therefore we should reform our foreign policy to be much less militaristic and aggressive.

First off, there are no other Western countries that are as wealthy as us. There are countries where the standard of living is just as high, but no other country represents as large an economic bloc as we do. No other country has seen its popular culture spread to the degree ours has either. Islamic fundies hate what they see as a godless, corrupt culture which gives more freedom and what they see as license to women, and this goes against the Islamic law they worship. They see a culture which promulgates secularism, which in its modern, political meaning, is the idea that religious and political authority - church and state - are, and ought to be separate. This is diametrically opposed to Islam, which holds that there is no human legislative power, and there is only one law for the Believers - the Holy Law of God, promulgated by revelation. It's American movies and American music and American pop culture more than anything else that waves this culture in their faces, so it's natural they should fixate on us as the primary target (or on Israel which is bother geographically closer, and culturally Westernized), but it does not for a moment mean that Western civilization as a whole is not reviled by Muslim fundamentalists.
They fear this as well because it is seductive. They fear the faithful will be seduced by this decadent lifestyle. In Islam, Shaitan is not quite the same as the Christian Satan. He is not the powerful and awesome Prince of Darkness, he is the subtle tempter, whose power lies in his ability not to destroy, but to lead one away from what is Holy. Western culture, with its high standard of living and freedom from the strict constraints of Islamic law is tempting in its perceived luxury.

Normal hatred is different from murderous hatred. Everything you said here is true, it's the follow-up assumption that they would still terrorize without ongoing legitimate grievances that I find fault with. Would they still think we're infidel bastards? Of course. Would they still set off bombs hose down crowds? Every once in a while, but not at anywhere approaching the rate it happens now.

How is it inane? Are you suggesting that people would be willing to blow themselves up if they didn't feel cornered and desperate?

Yes! Don't you get it yet? These people (some of them) are religious fanatics. They truly believe, right down to their marrow, that they are serving the greater glory of Allah. That they are obligated to spread Islamic culture (spirit of Jihad), and that Allah will reward them. They really, truly, deeply believe in that paradise with the 72 nubile young virgins, and that a martyr's death will put them on the express train to get there. Some of the 9/11 hijackers were from very well-to-do Saudi families. They were well off, and living in a stable, unthreatened Islamic state; why would they feel cornered and desperate? They could have stayed in Saudi Arabia and lived a life of actual, no shit luxury, and they chose to slam themselves into American buildings at 600 miles per hour.

Unless it turns out that John Edward's talents are real and you've been communicating with suicide bombers through him, I don't see how you can confidently insist that their brainwashing extends down to the same level as primordial instinct. Japanese kamikaze pilots were brainwashed too, yet most of them died trying to ditch their planes. Even so, none of this changes the need for a decent explanation of why America and Israel are, with very few exceptions, the sole targets of Islamic terrorism. America may be the most prolific exporter of culture, but all the European nations export their culture and heathen values too, and the only Islamic terrorism they get comes from inside their own countries, just like all the US's Christian terrorism comes from within our own borders. You don't see Christian fundies from overseas coming to shoot our abortion clinics. Abstract hatred alone is not enough to get extremists to turn their eyes away from their own countries.

I don't think you appreciate the tremendous motivating power of religious fanaticism. Not being fanatical, I don't really understand it myself either, but unlike you, I don't let that blind me to the fact that it exists. In the words of Richard Dawkins:

Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr's death will send them straight to heaven. What a weapon! Religious faith deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war technology, on an even footing with the longbow, the warhorse, the tank, and the hydrogen bomb.

Very true. Yet it still doesn't explain why all this hateful faith is focused on us and not their own countries. No grievances means no oxygen for widespread acceptance of terrorist ideals, and no tantilizing power for fundies to turn their eyes away from their surroundings, even though the hatred is still there.

For them it is reality. That's what you seem incapable of understanding. What motivates someone to strap on a belt made of semtex and vaporize himself as long as he can take some hated Jews with him? Whether their leaders are selling them a bill of goods or not, the important thing is that these people really believe this stuff. Even if the terrorist leadership is composed of cynical, worldly, jaded men who merely use this faith as a tool to manipulate their followers and maintain their power, the important thing is that they are using this belief successfully as a manipulating force. The rank and file are convinced. It's real to them! When a mother gets that euphoric look in her eyes, and says she is grateful that her son was granted the blessing of blowing his guts all over the street with a bunch of Israelis, she's speaking from the heart.

I'm sure they believe with all their hearts what they're saying, but without legitimate grievances coming from the US, they'd be working against secularism in their own and neighboring countries, making equally empassioned speeches on the subject, and believing that with all their hearts. It's what all the other fundies do and have done, and unless you subscribe to the view that there's something genetically wrong or subhuman about Middle Eastern people, it shouldn't be any different for them.

Aren't you paying attention? It's supposed to prove that rather than merely being about American foreign policy, it's about a hatred so all-consuming and venomous that a mother can cheer and weep for joy at the death of her very son as long as he can take some of the hated enemy with him. It takes a powerful hatred to achieve that kind of result. It's a hatred so intense it's almost palpable, yet you are apparently unwilling to admit that it exists.

Not at all. I just don't buy that these people would still be willing to blow themselves up if we stopped provoking them.

I've presented you with frank admissions by the very people whose motivations are in question - what better evidence for their intentions than their own words, borne out by their actions? - and you have blithely dismissed them or rationalized them away.

If by rationalized you mean pointed out that it's just angry rhetoric, no different from the rhetoric used by other extremists who seem to forget about it when something else occupies their attention, then yes, that's exactly what I've done.

I've shown you at least one example of an anti-Western and anti-Semitic hatred so apparent that a blind man could see it and you just dismiss the idea without serious consideration.

I think everyone can see quite clearly that I have done nothing of the sort.

Then you haven't been paying attention, since I've already twice admitted that our betrayal of the Kurds after the Gulf War in '91 was deplorable.

Sorry, I didn't see it.

That not enough for you? Fine. You want examples? No problem. So as not to make this too long a list, let's start with fairly recent history - American foreign policy failures since WWII. (And this is by no means an exhaustive list.) U.S. foreign policy toward Soviet Russia was naive and shortsighted, and had we taken a tougher line, we might have kept a bit more of eastern Europe free. Then after the war, American foreign policy in the far east was disastrously bungled, and in hindsight, actually appears to have helped the Reds take over China in 1949 and impose one of the most bloody regimes in history. During the Eisenhower years, a Vietnamese chap named Ho Chi Minh actually sought U.S. support against French colonialism in order to attain independence for his nation. He was refused because we did not want to go against France - DeGaulle's France that was already obstructing U.S. interests and sabotaging the U.S. economy. Our justification for this was not only that France was an ally (not much of one, even then), but also that Ho Chi Minh had espoused communist ideals in his younger days. He'd shed a lot of that communist baggage since then, especially since he was trying to court the United States. He picked it back up when we turned him down so he could get help from Red China and the U.S.S.R., so you might say we drive Ho back into the arms of the communists.

Then of course there was our involvement in Vietnam against Ho Chi Minh, which never should have happened. But when it did, we pulled out in the end and left our South Vietnamese ally in the lurch. We reneged on our commitment. We never should have made that commitment, but once it was made, we were obligated to live up to it, and we failed to do so. This not only damaged U.S. prestige, it hurt our credibility as well. Then there was giving up the Panama Canal, which is now controlled by China. Allow me to mention the Kurds yet again. And let's not forget our appeasement of North Korea during the 90s, and it's wonderful result.

And that's just in the last half century. That says nothing about our unjust military actions, like the Spanish-American War, or the Mexican War, and how we basically stole California, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. And of course, there are all those treaties we broke with the Indians, but if I list ALL our misdeeds since 1776, I'll have to make this post almost book-length.

Are you satisfied now? Are you ready to get off that particular horse yet? Because I'm tired of hearing this accusation.

Now that I've actually seen a reason to get off the horse, yes.

I'd love to see you back that up.

I did. The socialist experiments, and all the deaths they caused, are a great example of this exact phenomenon. The French Revolution and the Reign of Terror are another. People in search of perfection, unwilling to settle for less, and ardently convinced they knew how to make it happen.

Yes, yes, we know the type of people you're talking about are bad for society. What I was asking you to back up was the connection between them and anyone who insists on perfection in society, and isn't satisfied with inequity or injustice.

Your statement that we need to have a foreign policy that ensures that we will "be well liked and the enemy of no one," is something that inclines one to think that you are an idealogue who puts idealism ahead of realism. The idea that a nation our size and with our interests, commitments, and alliances can possibly craft a foreign policy that will keep us in everyone's good graces is starry-eyed, pie-in-the-sky fantasy wholly unworthy of a realist.

If I thought that goal was realistic, that would make me an ideologue. But just because you can't keep everyone happy doesn't make it OK for a nation to act like a street thug. It doesn't mean you shouldn't work toward be better liked and having less enemies. Of course an influential country like the US can't be no one's enemy, but working toward that goal yields the best results, whether it's attainable or not.

Everyone accepts this when it's applied on a personal level. We tell our kids "shoot for the A, even if you only end up with a C, you would have done worse had you set your sights on a C". It's only when our thinking enters the international realm, and our senses are confronted by the flowery language and jargon of the proponents of Realpolitik (which not surprisingly originates from the social class with the most to gain by aggressive foreign policy), that we abandon the idea that the best results come from shooting for the ideal, whether it's attainable or not.

Your assertion that Europe has "shifted to new modes of thinking" and that they don't do all the shabby things we do anymore, that some how that have hearkened unto the better angels of their natures also would lead one to the conclusion that you subscribe to the unconstrained vision - since a central tent of the constrained vision is that basic human nature does not change.

That's your strawman, not what I actually said. All I said was that they have largely abandoned aggressive, militaristic foreign policy, and it's been nothing but helpful for them. "hearkened unto the better angels of their natures" or "higher moral plane of existence" are your words, not mine.

If I have categorized you mistakenly, I think my error is understandable, given your statements.

Not having the years of experience in debate like some on this board, my ideas are not expressed as clearly as theirs, so I can understand an error. The miscommunication is most likely on my part.

[Perinquus]

He also hates secularism, yet he doesn't kill Turks or Iraqis much. He hates Hindus and Sikhs, yet the only Muslim aggression pointed at India comes from its next door neighbor. He hates all the European nations and Australia, yet rarely do terrorist incidents happen to them. In light of this, I find your insistence that the murderous hatred (as opposed to normal hatred) and terrorism would remain if the US changed its foreign policy to stop aggravating Muslims unjustified.

Although America may be the most prolific exporter of culture, other Western nations contribute proportionately to the heathenizing of the globe. If it were a simple matter of geographical proximity and prominance, Israel and America should get disproportionate attacks, but not be virtually the exclusive targets like we are. How do you explain that the two countries with foreign policies most geared toward pissing off Muslims are the two countries who receive virtually all terrorist attacks aimed at the West?

Simple, since our foreign policy does bring us into closer and more frequent contact, and since they are aggrieved by it to a certain degree, they have become fixated to a degree on us.

If I may draw a comparison, think of the Ku Klux Klan. Everybody knows they are a white supremacist group that hates blacks passionately. But if you look into them and their rhetoric, and their actions, you will find that they are also anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-Hispanic, and anti-foreigner etc.. They are most well known for their hatred of African-Americans, and the vast majority of violent acts perpetrated by the Klan are against blacks - hell, the Klan was even formed because of blacks, or rather fear of blacks, who had just been given freedom by the victorious Union armies, and it was feared they'd run amok or start acquiring political power - but that doesn't change the fact that they passionately hate these other groups as well. Blacks, being populous in the South and therefore in close proximity, simply fall into their sights more often by virtue of geography. But if every black man, woman and child in America were to disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow, the Klan members wouldn't stop hating; they'd just move on to the next most prominent group on their shit list - most likely the Jews.

You're right, he probably isn't lying. Now that I think about it more, I'm sure he believed everything he said. Just like Communist or Anarchist leaders of Unions make empassioned speeches about not settling until big business is down in flames (and believe every word of it), but then go away when they get the concessions they wanted. Or, to use an example factoring in religious extremism, how fundamentalists in many Latin American countries stopped killing abortion doctors after restrictions on abortion were put in place. In order to make the case that it should be any different with Muslim fundamentalists, you'd have to establish a fundamental difference between poor Middle Eastern Muslim fanatics and poor Latin American Christian fanatics.

Fanatics like Hussein Massawi will not be placated no matter what you do. I grant you that moderate Muslims throughout the Middle East can almost certainly be negotiated with. The terrorists, however, cannot. They are fanatics, and trying to reason or negotiate with them is an exercise in futility.

The real problem in the Muslim world today, is that the moderate Muslims are proving far less willing than they ought to be to repudiate terrorists, and all the hateful, venomous, anti-Western and anti-Semitic preaching that even some of their more mainstream Imams are engaging in. One area in which we are morally on higher ground than many, perhaps even most, Muslims today is that when someone like Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson comes on TV and says America in under attack because gays and lesbians and atheists and people who have abortions and so forth have offended God, most Americans - who mostly profess themselves Christians - repudiate that message, and do not want to be associated with it. When Falwell came on the 700 club and said pretty much exactly that, Geo. W. Bush, who is a religious man, came on TV shortly after and publicly repudiated such remarks. When Pat Robertson said Muslims are worse than Nazis, Bush swiftly appeared again to state that Robertson did not speak for him or for most Americans. Now even if you argue that that was just politics, and that maybe Bush personally agrees with Falwell (though I don't think he does) it was still politically necessary for him to distance himself from that position, because most Americans will not tolerate blatant, open hate speech.

Contrast this with the Muslim world, where many mainstream Muslim clerics spew venom from their mosques and any other forum, and their flock either cheers it, or maintains silence. For example, at the invitation of the Muslim Students Association at Orange Coast College, Mohammad al-Asi last April gave an anti-Semitic speech to the howls of approval from assembled Muslim students. His speech was laced with anti-Semitic insults and slurs, and he handed out four-color literature praising the terrorist group Hamas.

All through the Middle East, on Saudi television, in mainstream newspapers in Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, all over the Muslim world you will find mainstream figures, many of them clerics, preaching hatred. The moderate Muslims need to step up an repudiate this sort of hatemongering, and they're not doing it. Not enough of them anyway.

And yet, these types of feuds do stop eventually. France and England are no longer bleeding each other white. Japan is no longer trying to invade Korea. Catholics and Protestants are at peace everywhere except Ireland. Having a foreign policy that encourages the continuation and exacerbation of this feud is not going to help.

Again, this will placate the moderates perhaps, but the terrorists are likely to keep right on going.

Care to point out these tortured rationalizations?

Calling plainly worded statements bullshit, and automatically assuming someone must be lying because you are simply not willing to accept what he says at face value is a way of rationalizing away a viewpoint you don't happen to agree with.

But it doesn't explain why non-US, non-Israeli Western nations or non-Western yet equally infidel nations are rarely targeted, and I never saw any consideration of legitimate grievances. Maybe I just missed it. In any case, even under your interpretation, take away the grievances, and the violence largely dissapears as well. Therefore we should reform our foreign policy to be much less militaristic and aggressive.

See above.

Normal hatred is different from murderous hatred. Everything you said here is true, it's the follow-up assumption that they would still terrorize without ongoing legitimate grievances that I find fault with. Would they still think we're infidel bastards? Of course. Would they still set off bombs hose down crowds? Every once in a while, but not at anywhere approaching the rate it happens now.

Softening foreign policy might have worked to prevent this sort of thing from starting. Now that the conflict has started, however, trying to appease them is likely to work about as well as appeasement ever does.

Unless it turns out that John Edward's talents are real and you've been communicating with suicide bombers through him, I don't see how you can confidently insist that their brainwashing extends down to the same level as primordial instinct. Japanese kamikaze pilots were brainwashed too, yet most of them died trying to ditch their planes.

Red herring. The 9/11 hijackers were very different in their motivations for their actions. They were not trying to ditch their planes. Suicide was not a weapon of last resort to them; it was their first choice, and they carried it out with holy zeal. I have little dount they all screamed " Allahu Ackbar!" just as the planes were about to hit.

Even so, none of this changes the need for a decent explanation of why America and Israel are, with very few exceptions, the sole targets of Islamic terrorism. America may be the most prolific exporter of culture, but all the European nations export their culture and heathen values too, and the only Islamic terrorism they get comes from inside their own countries, just like all the US's Christian terrorism comes from within our own borders. You don't see Christian fundies from overseas coming to shoot our abortion clinics. Abstract hatred alone is not enough to get extremists to turn their eyes away from their own countries.

See above. They are fixated on us right now because we are the top dog. A century ago, when the British Empire was still the greatest power on earth, they were more anti-British than anti-American. Any great non-Muslim power that has interests in the region, and maintains a presence to look after them is likely to provoke the anger of the radical Muslims. Right now, that happens to be us.

I'm sure they believe with all their hearts what they're saying, but without legitimate grievances coming from the US, they'd be working against secularism in their own and neighboring countries, making equally empassioned speeches on the subject, and believing that with all their hearts. It's what all the other fundies do and have done, and unless you subscribe to the view that there's something genetically wrong or subhuman about Middle Eastern people, it shouldn't be any different for them.

They do work against infidels and secularists in and around their own countries. In Pakistan, the radical Muslim fundies most often target Hindus, because India is right next door, and not only is it full of Hindus, there is a considerable Hindu minority in Pakistan. On the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, it's the Jews who are the biggest target, because that's were Israel is. During the 80's when the Iran-Iraq war was going on, one of the grievances Iran's fundamentalist regime laid against the Iraqis was that they were secularized and corrupted by Western influence. Radical Muslims have a long history of attacking the nearest perceived enemies to hand.

Not at all. I just don't buy that these people would still be willing to blow themselves up if we stopped provoking them.

At the risk of repeating myself, how are we provoking the Saudis? Ostensibly, Saudi Arabia is an ally - at least that is how we are still portraying it in diplomatic circles. And we certainly aren't threatening that country. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis; so is Osama Bin Laden. The mere fact of our presence on the holy soil of Islam's birthplace is enough to provoke them to mass-murdering fury. I'm not talking about the moderates mind you, but it doesn't take much at all to set off the fanatics.

Yes, yes, we know the type of people you're talking about are bad for society. What I was asking you to back up was the connection between them and anyone who insists on perfection in society, and isn't satisfied with inequity or injustice.

Point out the connection? The connection is that that is exactly the type of personality they had. Reasonable people understand that perfection is not possible when you are dealing with human beings, and they don't insist on it. They insist on the best that is humanly possible, not the unattainable perfect.

If I thought that goal was realistic, that would make me an ideologue. But just because you can't keep everyone happy doesn't make it OK for a nation to act like a street thug. It doesn't mean you shouldn't work toward be better liked and having less enemies. Of course an influential country like the US can't be no one's enemy, but working toward that goal yields the best results, whether it's attainable or not.

You always try to avoid stepping on other people's toes. But occasionally, it's inevitable. Sometimes you have to piss off Peter in order to avoid pissing off Paul. It all comes down to whom you can afford to offend the least. Nations always act in their own perceived self interest. That's just not going to change in the forseeable future.

Everyone accepts this when it's applied on a personal level. We tell our kids "shoot for the A, even if you only end up with a C, you would have done worse had you set your sights on a C". It's only when our thinking enters the international realm, and our senses are confronted by the flowery language and jargon of the proponents of Realpolitik (which not surprisingly originates from the social class with the most to gain by aggressive foreign policy), that we abandon the idea that the best results come from shooting for the ideal, whether it's attainable or not.

There is something else to consider, and this applies on a personal level as well, and everyone accepts it. You don't get to be a success by endlessly denigrating or dismissing your accomplishments, and focusing primarily on your failures. You acknowledge your mistakes, certainly, and you learn from them. But as the old song goes, you've got to accentuate the positive. More than anything else, I suppose, that is what irritates me about the "blame America first" mentality. Our country was not built into the great power that it is today by endlessly harping on the things we've done wrong. It was built by learning from past mistakes, taking pride in our accomplishments, maintaining our pride and self respect, and making the best use of our talents, resources, and energies.

[The_Nice_Guy]

It's funny when you think about it. If it was the USSR that had won the Cold War, the fundies would have been fighting against the Soviets. In that event, we would be seeing the leftists arguing vehemently to glass the Middle East.

If in the future China becomes top dog, the fundies would be switching their sights to China. No doubt about it.

What the fundies want is a kingdom of Islam, and everybody else can get out of the way(and hopefully die). The US just happens to be the biggest target right now, and since it's perched high top at the top, an easy target too.

It's lonely(and dangerous) at the top.

The Nice Guy

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Sorry for the delay in responding, was unavailable over the weekend.

Simple, since our foreign policy does bring us into closer and more frequent contact, and since they are aggrieved by it to a certain degree, they have become fixated to a degree on us.

If I may draw a comparison, think of the Ku Klux Klan. Everybody knows they are a white supremacist group that hates blacks passionately. But if you look into them and their rhetoric, and their actions, you will find that they are also anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-Hispanic, and anti-foreigner etc.. They are most well known for their hatred of African-Americans, and the vast majority of violent acts perpetrated by the Klan are against blacks - hell, the Klan was even formed because of blacks, or rather fear of blacks, who had just been given freedom by the victorious Union armies, and it was feared they'd run amok or start acquiring political power - but that doesn't change the fact that they passionately hate these other groups as well. Blacks, being populous in the South and therefore in close proximity, simply fall into their sights more often by virtue of geography. But if every black man, woman and child in America were to disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow, the Klan members wouldn't stop hating; they'd just move on to the next most prominent group on their shit list - most likely the Jews.

The difference is that their fixation with the U.S. is due not to geographic proximity, but to our foreign policy. Just as if you removed blacks, the Klan would focuse on Jews or foreigners, if you removed our foreign policy, Middle Eastern hate groups' focus would return to something closer to home, most likely affairs internal to their own countries or region. I see and accept the parallel you're trying to make, and don't see how it refutes my point.

You're right, he probably isn't lying. Now that I think about it more, I'm sure he believed everything he said. Just like Communist or Anarchist leaders of Unions make empassioned speeches about not settling until big business is down in flames (and believe every word of it), but then go away when they get the concessions they wanted. Or, to use an example factoring in religious extremism, how fundamentalists in many Latin American countries stopped killing abortion doctors after restrictions on abortion were put in place. In order to make the case that it should be any different with Muslim fundamentalists, you'd have to establish a fundamental difference between poor Middle Eastern Muslim fanatics and poor Latin American Christian fanatics.

Fanatics like Hussein Massawi will not be placated no matter what you do. I grant you that moderate Muslims throughout the Middle East can almost certainly be negotiated with. The terrorists, however, cannot. They are fanatics, and trying to reason or negotiate with them is an exercise in futility.

I agree. You won't find me making apologies for hate groups. All I'm saying is that we shouldn't gear our foreign policy toward doing things that piss these people off (and please don't strawman this statement into "we shouldn't do anything that might piss off Muslims"). I'm not saying they're freedom fighters against an American hegemony or that suicide bombs and terror are justifiable responses to some of the admitedly legitime grievances they have, only that these ongoing legitimate grievances are most likely what keeps us as a center of attention.

The real problem in the Muslim world today, is that the moderate Muslims are proving far less willing than they ought to be to repudiate terrorists, and all the hateful, venomous, anti-Western and anti-Semitic preaching that even some of their more mainstream Imams are engaging in. One area in which we are morally on higher ground than many, perhaps even most, Muslims today is that when someone like Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson comes on TV and says America in under attack because gays and lesbians and atheists and people who have abortions and so forth have offended God, most Americans - who mostly profess themselves Christians - repudiate that message, and do not want to be associated with it. When Falwell came on the 700 club and said pretty much exactly that, Geo. W. Bush, who is a religious man, came on TV shortly after and publicly repudiated such remarks. When Pat Robertson said Muslims are worse than Nazis, Bush swiftly appeared again to state that Robertson did not speak for him or for most Americans. Now even if you argue that that was just politics, and that maybe Bush personally agrees with Falwell (though I don't think he does) it was still politically necessary for him to distance himself from that position, because most Americans will not tolerate blatant, open hate speech.

Contrast this with the Muslim world, where many mainstream Muslim clerics spew venom from their mosques and any other forum, and their flock either cheers it, or maintains silence. For example, at the invitation of the Muslim Students Association at Orange Coast College, Mohammad al-Asi last April gave an anti-Semitic speech to the howls of approval from assembled Muslim students. His speech was laced with anti-Semitic insults and slurs, and he handed out four-color literature praising the terrorist group Hamas.

All through the Middle East, on Saudi television, in mainstream newspapers in Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, all over the Muslim world you will find mainstream figures, many of them clerics, preaching hatred. The moderate Muslims need to step up an repudiate this sort of hatemongering, and they're not doing it. Not enough of them anyway.

Well said. I completely agree.

Care to point out these tortured rationalizations?

Calling plainly worded statements bullshit, and automatically assuming someone must be lying because you are simply not willing to accept what he says at face value is a way of rationalizing away a viewpoint you don't happen to agree with.

I already explained the (factually based) reasons why I called his plainly worded statement bullshit, and I conceeded that he most likely wasn't lying when I thought about it.

Normal hatred is different from murderous hatred. Everything you said here is true, it's the follow-up assumption that they would still terrorize without ongoing legitimate grievances that I find fault with. Would they still think we're infidel bastards? Of course. Would they still set off bombs hose down crowds? Every once in a while, but not at anywhere approaching the rate it happens now.

Softening foreign policy might have worked to prevent this sort of thing from starting. Now that the conflict has started, however, trying to appease them is likely to work about as well as appeasement ever does.

Ceasing aggressive actions is not appeasement.

Unless it turns out that John Edward's talents are real and you've been communicating with suicide bombers through him, I don't see how you can confidently insist that their brainwashing extends down to the same level as primordial instinct. Japanese kamikaze pilots were brainwashed too, yet most of them died trying to ditch their planes.

Red herring. The 9/11 hijackers were very different in their motivations for their actions. They were not trying to ditch their planes. Suicide was not a weapon of last resort to them; it was their first choice, and they carried it out with holy zeal. I have little dount they all screamed " Allahu Ackbar!" just as the planes were about to hit.

The point I was trying to make was that suicide bombers and the 9/11 hijackers are not necesarily representative even of the brainwashed extremists. They're more akin to the much smaller fraction of kamikazes who didn't try to bail.

Even so, none of this changes the need for a decent explanation of why America and Israel are, with very few exceptions, the sole targets of Islamic terrorism. America may be the most prolific exporter of culture, but all the European nations export their culture and heathen values too, and the only Islamic terrorism they get comes from inside their own countries, just like all the US's Christian terrorism comes from within our own borders. You don't see Christian fundies from overseas coming to shoot our abortion clinics. Abstract hatred alone is not enough to get extremists to turn their eyes away from their own countries.

See above. They are fixated on us right now because we are the top dog. A century ago, when the British Empire was still the greatest power on earth, they were more anti-British than anti-American. Any great non-Muslim power that has interests in the region, and maintains a presence to look after them is likely to provoke the anger of the radical Muslims. Right now, that happens to be us.

The British also had aggressive and opressive foreign policy (almost undoubtedly worse than ours). It seems strange to me to conclude that they terrorize whoever is the top dog (which doesn't explain why Israel gets more than the U.S.) rather than whoever's actions are the most anti-Muslim.

I'm sure they believe with all their hearts what they're saying, but without legitimate grievances coming from the US, they'd be working against secularism in their own and neighboring countries, making equally empassioned speeches on the subject, and believing that with all their hearts. It's what all the other fundies do and have done, and unless you subscribe to the view that there's something genetically wrong or subhuman about Middle Eastern people, it shouldn't be any different for them.

They do work against infidels and secularists in and around their own countries. In Pakistan, the radical Muslim fundies most often target Hindus, because India is right next door, and not only is it full of Hindus, there is a considerable Hindu minority in Pakistan. On the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, it's the Jews who are the biggest target, because that's were Israel is. During the 80's when the Iran-Iraq war was going on, one of the grievances Iran's fundamentalist regime laid against the Iraqis was that they were secularized and corrupted by Western influence. Radical Muslims have a long history of attacking the nearest perceived enemies to hand.

And yet the U.S. isn't near at all, so it's most likely our anti-Muslim actions that is the difference-maker. I'm still trying to understand on what grounds you disagree with this assessment.

Not at all. I just don't buy that these people would still be willing to blow themselves up if we stopped provoking them.

At the risk of repeating myself, how are we provoking the Saudis? Ostensibly, Saudi Arabia is an ally - at least that is how we are still portraying it in diplomatic circles. And we certainly aren't threatening that country. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis; so is Osama Bin Laden. The mere fact of our presence on the holy soil of Islam's birthplace is enough to provoke them to mass-murdering fury. I'm not talking about the moderates mind you, but it doesn't take much at all to set off the fanatics.

We have done very little to provoke the Saudis in particular, but our talk and actions against almost exclusively Muslim countries and support of Israel is most likely the main point of contention.

Yes, yes, we know the type of people you're talking about are bad for society. What I was asking you to back up was the connection between them and anyone who insists on perfection in society, and isn't satisfied with inequity or injustice.

Point out the connection? The connection is that that is exactly the type of personality they had. Reasonable people understand that perfection is not possible when you are dealing with human beings, and they don't insist on it. They insist on the best that is humanly possible, not the unattainable perfect.

I think we're arguing on semantics here. We seem to agree that improvements should be made wherever and whenever they can, and that the seeking of a pre-determined notion of "perfect" is a harmful mindset. Unless I'm not understanding something, I don't see a disagreement at all.

If I thought that goal was realistic, that would make me an ideologue. But just because you can't keep everyone happy doesn't make it OK for a nation to act like a street thug. It doesn't mean you shouldn't work toward be better liked and having less enemies. Of course an influential country like the US can't be no one's enemy, but working toward that goal yields the best results, whether it's attainable or not.

You always try to avoid stepping on other people's toes. But occasionally, it's inevitable. Sometimes you have to piss off Peter in order to avoid pissing off Paul. It all comes down to whom you can afford to offend the least. Nations always act in their own perceived self interest. That's just not going to change in the forseeable future.

Again, I think we agree, and are arguing on semantics.

Everyone accepts this when it's applied on a personal level. We tell our kids "shoot for the A, even if you only end up with a C, you would have done worse had you set your sights on a C". It's only when our thinking enters the international realm, and our senses are confronted by the flowery language and jargon of the proponents of Realpolitik (which not surprisingly originates from the social class with the most to gain by aggressive foreign policy), that we abandon the idea that the best results come from shooting for the ideal, whether it's attainable or not.

There is something else to consider, and this applies on a personal level as well, and everyone accepts it. You don't get to be a success by endlessly denigrating or dismissing your accomplishments, and focusing primarily on your failures. You acknowledge your mistakes, certainly, and you learn from them. But as the old song goes, you've got to accentuate the positive.

No, failures shouldn't be dwelt on, but they shouldn't be pushed out of mind until the causes for them can be understood and fixed. I agree that events like the Great Depression shouldn't be discussed as relevant to today's America since the structural conditions that allowed it to happen have largely been dealt with, but Cold War atrocities are different since there has been no paradigm change with regard to foreign policy, and events like them are just as immanent now as then. Until such a paradigm shift has been affected, Cold War atrocities are still relevant and shouldn't be put out of mind.

More than anything else, I suppose, that is what irritates me about the "blame America first" mentality. Our country was not built into the great power that it is today by endlessly harping on the things we've done wrong. It was built by learning from past mistakes, taking pride in our accomplishments, maintaining our pride and self respect, and making the best use of our talents, resources, and energies.

As is the case with every other superpower, the ultimate cause for America's dominance is simple geography. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that the American people are superior (or inferior, as anti-Americans would claim).

[The_Nice_Guy]

American people are superior (or inferior, as anti-Americans would claim).

Truth. However, there is some quite compelling evidence that American culture(philosophy, beliefs etc) are indeed superior to many others. By the yardsticks we use of liberty, right to happiness etc.

And many other countries are pissed when they feel their own inferiority in the face of McDonalds, Starbucks, and MTV. That is a major source of anti-American sentiment.

The Nice Guy

[Spyder]

There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that theAmerican people are superior (or inferior, as anti-Americans would claim).

Truth. However, there is some quite compelling evidence that American culture(philosophy, beliefs etc) are indeed superior to many others. By the yardsticks we use of liberty, right to happiness etc.

And many other countries are pissed when they feel their own inferiority in the face of McDonalds, Starbucks, and MTV. That is a major source of anti-American sentiment.

The Nice Guy

How many people would honestly consider McDonalds, Starbucks and MTV trademarks of a superrior country?[/code]

[The_Nice_Guy]

Perhaps not superior to them, according to them, but they don't like it in any case. Their reasoning goes something like this:

Code: Select all

I see McDonalds, Starbucks, MTV all over the place. These are symbols of America. I do not know why the youth of my country is so engrossed in this decadent culture, which is eroding my traditional values. I will support my own values, and naturally I will also dislike these symbols of America. This leads to not liking America itself for 'forcing' these symbols and its values, onto us. Perhaps, I may even be angry enough to denounce it outright.

I know it's not very logical, but that is the way a lot of people in the developing world think.

To some, the reason why these so-called symbols of America are so successful is because of their culture.

So superior culture->successful companies. An inferior culture would hardly be able to have such an impact on the rest of the world.

The Nice Guy

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

American people are superior (or inferior, as anti-Americans would claim).

Truth. However, there is some quite compelling evidence that American culture(philosophy, beliefs etc) are indeed superior to many others. By the yardsticks we use of liberty, right to happiness etc.

The Nice Guy

Without turning this into a continuation of the Chinese Philosophy thread, success and cultural superiority is nothing more than the end result of geological and ecological circumstances. The US is gifted with just about every stroke of luck you could ask for:

1. Abundant mineral and other natural resources, including incredibly fertile farmland. This allows us to produce things efficiently, keeping what is advantageous and selling what is not.

2. Friendly barrier countrys to the North and South and ocean to the East and West, guaranteeing virtual invincibility from attack. This allows us to spend less on military or to use it to enforce beneficial circumstances (the route we have chosen). It also means we have no natural enemies.

3. Unlike in some nations, epidemics and pandemics are not constantly wiping out sections of the population.

The stability of our politics, soundness of our institutions, might of our economy, values of our culture, etc. are all results of these geographical and ecological determinants. That is why the claims of superiority made by jingoists ring so hollow.

[Spyder]

It's inacurate to say that any culture could be considered superrior or inferrior to another, especially using corporate success as a measuring stick. Those that see McDonnalds and Starbucks cropping up and resent them as American symbols obviously have some form in inferriority complex (for one thing, most of them are locally owned franchises anyway) but on the other hand to say that American culture is superrior because of them is a trademark of a superriority complex. Multinational corporations are a poor judge of cultural success because they have never been about who's better, they've been about who's first and who has the most financial backing.

[Aeolus]

American people are superior (or inferior, as anti-Americans would claim).

Truth. However, there is some quite compelling evidence that American culture(philosophy, beliefs etc) are indeed superior to many others. By the yardsticks we use of liberty, right to happiness etc.

The Nice Guy

Without turning this into a continuation of the Chinese Philosophy thread, success and cultural superiority is nothing more than the end result of geological and ecological circumstances. The US is gifted with just about every stroke of luck you could ask for:

1. Abundant mineral and other natural resources, including incredibly fertile farmland. This allows us to produce things efficiently, keeping what is advantageous and selling what is not.

2. Friendly barrier countrys to the North and South and ocean to the East and West, guaranteeing virtual invincibility from attack. This allows us to spend less on military or to use it to enforce beneficial circumstances (the route we have chosen). It also means we have no natural enemies.

3. Unlike in some nations, epidemics and pandemics are not constantly wiping out sections of the population.

The stability of our politics, soundness of our institutions, might of our economy, values of our culture, etc. are all results of these geographical and ecological determinants. That is why the claims of superiority made by jingoists ring so hollow.

All of these benefits are multipied by:
1. Free flow of capital (free markets)
2. Protestent work ethic
3. Political Liberty
4. Rule of Law

Without these America would just be another Mexico or Brazil.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Without turning this into a continuation of the Chinese Philosophy thread, success and cultural superiority is nothing more than the end result of geological and ecological circumstances. The US is gifted with just about every stroke of luck you could ask for:

1. Abundant mineral and other natural resources, including incredibly fertile farmland. This allows us to produce things efficiently, keeping what is advantageous and selling what is not.

2. Friendly barrier countrys to the North and South and ocean to the East and West, guaranteeing virtual invincibility from attack. This allows us to spend less on military or to use it to enforce beneficial circumstances (the route we have chosen). It also means we have no natural enemies.

3. Unlike in some nations, epidemics and pandemics are not constantly wiping out sections of the population.

The stability of our politics, soundness of our institutions, might of our economy, values of our culture, etc. are all results of these geographical and ecological determinants. That is why the claims of superiority made by jingoists ring so hollow.

All of these benefits are multipied by:
1. Free flow of capital (free markets)
2. Protestent work ethic
3. Political Liberty
4. Rule of Law

Without these America would just be another Mexico or Brazil.

You're putting the cart before the horse. Free markets and political liberty could not occur under unfavourable geological and ecological circumstances. An environment where your primary concerns are survival and stability is not conducive to these principles. As for rule of law, with the exception of transition phases and contested land, every society has that. And as for the "Protestant work ethic" that so many historians have waxed poetic about, I have yet to see any non-anecdotal evidence for it, or hear anyone give a satisfactory explanation for the success or past success of Asian or Islamic societies.

[Spyder]

All of these benefits are multipied by:
1. Free flow of capital (free markets)
2. Protestent work ethic
3. Political Liberty
4. Rule of Law

Without these America would just be another Mexico or Brazil.

1: As Athur said, Cart before horse

2: Impossible to quantify. There is no evidence proving that protestant work ethic is a contributing factor to the success of the US or that it is any better then the work ethic of people that worship ten-pin bowling. It's also a sweeping generalization.

3: That's an odd why of describing a system where outcomes are largely decided by campaign contributions.

4: Again this is something that is not unique to America.

[Aeolus]

All of these benefits are multipied by:
1. Free flow of capital (free markets)
2. Protestent work ethic
3. Political Liberty
4. Rule of Law

Without these America would just be another Mexico or Brazil.

1: As Athur said, Cart before horse

2: Impossible to quantify. There is no evidence proving that protestant work ethic is a contributing factor to the success of the US or that it is any better then the work ethic of people that worship ten-pin bowling. It's also a sweeping generalization.

3: That's an odd why of describing a system where outcomes are largely decided by campaign contributions.

4: Again this is something that is not unique to America.

Maybe I should have said a strong work ethic. But such a thing certainly exists. And some societys have it and some do not.

As for political liberty I was refering to basic civil rights not the method of choosing ones leaders.

"Rule of law"does not exist in all nations. In many nepotism and coruption are the dominant rule.
American success is based on natural wealth multipied by CULTURAL factors. Natural wealth alone does not explain American wealth and sucess. If it did Mexico, and Brazil would be very wealthy and Japan would be very poor