My open letter to America

I'll go get my fire extinguisher... Well said, Refman.

 

Refman, good to see we can be friendlier adversaries.

Now to my point. The AlQaeda that are in Northern Iraq are there with the Kurds. Sadam has little or no control over Northern Iraq due to our no fly zones.

This is an example of cluthching at straws in order to tie Sadam to AlQaeda-- charges made by the neoons to try to convince people to support the war on Iraq. The lillogic of using these AlQaeda in areas controlled by Sadam's opponents has been commented on by the press.

 

I can see the headline now "Bush Declares War on the US".

 

This may sound stupid, and/or ridiculous, but instead of going south to the Persian Gulf, why don't we build oil pipes going north over the Artic ocean, and into Canada? That way, we don't have to mess with that part of the country. I can already see some arguments for what the hell are you thinking? Who the hell is going to build a pipe in the freezing Artic over an ocean? And what if a pipe leaks? Yeah yeah yada yada, but it would be better to mess with tree hugging hippies who want to save the baby seals, and hug trees and what not then mess with these crazy, zealous terrorist people.

 

Refman, I think that our leaders owe it to us to seriously debate the issue of commiting American troops to war, especially a war with few allies and logistical difficulties. However much you, or I have confidence in American abilities to win any war, we don't have to actually risk our lives, do we? There are real questions that in seeking to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction that an invastion of Iraq without international support could provoke their use by a cornered Hussein. There is certainly room for debate about the many complex political, diplomatic and economic issues such an invasion would involve in an ostensible democracy, right? I don't think the Democrats and Tom Daschele have asked enough hard questions. Republicans like Chuck Hegel, Brent Scocrowft and Armey have been more demanding of the administration and they should be commended. Refman, in closing I would say that while I think your feelings of vengence are understandable and share many of them, I think our country has to be careful about letting these kinds of feelings cloud our better judgment.

 

what in the world is this supposed to mean?? so you get to call someone's "heartfelt rant" a disgrace??? shameful?? but when you get called on it you turn into Mr. Sensitivity??

get over it...my opinions here aren't important enough for you to get upset over.

 

I don't agree with the logic in your first assertion, a much better point would be to mention the millions of dollars the House of Saud paid to OBL as "protection money", to keep him from attempting to foment rebellion & overthrow the Royal Family.

"Walking away" from the Saudis is also a completely unacceptable option - the sentiments & teachings of the Wahabbis won't just go away if we cease economic/political ties with the country. That's where the true problem lies, with that sect of Islam, whose beliefs are so anacronistic & antithetical to all that the civilized world holds dear. I don't know what the answers are, but I firmly believe that the rest of the Muslim world needs to take a stand against the radicals, and stop ignoring the problem of Saudi money being used as a carrot to spread Wahabbiism throughout the Muslim world. Here's a fantastic article from the Times of London:

The toxins that lie behind September 11
Michael Gove, Sept. 10, 2002

Mankind’s most lethal poisons require careful incubation. To manufacture anthrax and botulinum you need “growth media”. The toxins require a particular mix of chemicals to grow into weapons of terror. Throughout his period in power President Saddam Hussein has been acquiring these chemical cultures by the tonne to manufacture his biological weapons arsenal. And for much of the time the West has looked on with indifference. Indeed in some cases, such as Germany, Western nations have profited from providing the infrastructure for the manufacture of poison.
But anthrax and botulinum are not the only toxins which have been manufactured in the Middle East. There are two other poisons which have been incubated over years in that region, and which have proved lethal to those who come into contact with them. They are Islamic fundamentalism and Arab national socialism.

Like the anthrax and botulinum which bubble in Saddam’s vats, these twin ideological toxins have also been developed in special cultures conducive to the manufacture of poison. It has been the mix of social, economic and political factors prevailing in the Arab Middle East which have provided the growth media in which these ideologies have fermented. They have poisoned thousands of minds, and led to the death of thousands more.

One of those toxins, Islamic fundamentalism, created the killing fever in the bloodstream of the men behind September 11. The other poison, Arab national socialism, is driving Saddam towards the acquisition of terrible weapons with which he could pose an even greater threat to the West. The most important lesson of the past year is that the world’s security now depends on dealing with these poisons. And the surest way of doing so is to tackle the cultures in which they grow. For the real root causes of the conflict which has become known as the War on Terror are the failures of Arab and Islamic elites.

No Arab nation is a democracy, none enjoys a free press or speech. None can guarantee basic human rights, whether it be respect for property, life or conscience. Whether they are oil-rich or resource poor, they prefer to keep their people in ignorance and poverty. In the wider Islamic world there are related problems. Few Islamic nations, perhaps only Turkey and Malaysia, have made any halfway satisfactory progress into the modern age.

There is nothing intrinsic either in Arab life or Islamic belief which means this state of affairs is preordained. The success of Arab and Islamic individuals in the West, when they enjoy freedom of thought, association and speech as well as security of person and property, proves that. Arab nations and Islamic states could provide their peoples with the opportunity to prosper. The talents which currently flower only in the West could make a garden of desert lands. But that will not happen as long as corrupt sheikhs, military strongmen and assorted other kleptocrats remain in power. While they do, the stench from these thieves’ kitchens pollutes the world.

But something even more noxious than the smell of corruption emanates from four of these nations. They are the countries whose cultures have, pre-eminently, become the growth media for terror. They are Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

A successful War on Terror requires that all these nations change, that their regimes reform or are removed. Each of these countries has a different history and poses a discrete challenge. In Iran and Saudi Arabia the poison of Islamic fundamentalism is generated and spread across the globe. In Syria and Iraq it is Arab national socialism, known as Ba’athism, which poses the threat.

The two ideologies have different roots, indeed they have been at each other’s throats, most notably during the Iran-Iraq war. But, as with Nazism and communism, both ideologies are much closer to each other than their adherents admit and both are implacably, malevolently, hostile to the free West, its peoples, values and interests.

Both poisonous ideologies were synthesised from older traditions in the years after the Second World War by two very different thinkers, Michel Aflaq and Sayyid Qutb. Aflaq was the founder of Ba’athism and Qutb the founding ideologist of modern Islamic fundamentalism.

Ba’athism stands comparison with German National Socialism in many ways. It shares the same attachment to revolutionary violence, a belief in racial destiny, with the united Arab nation taking the place of the German Volk, and a desire to build an enduring totalitarian political order.

Islamic fundamentalism is a similarly totalitarian creed, which also celebrates the purgative power of violence. But it is in its way perhaps closer to Marxism. While Ba’athists and Nazis divide the world on nationalist and racist lines, Islamists, like Communists, split humanity on the basis of belief. There is an elect who have been redeemed by their faith in a Utopian project, and entry to that group is potentially open to all who will submit to its terrible simplicities. But those who resist conversion are, for Islamists perhaps more than Marxists, enemies of the faith who must not be allowed to stand in the way of its triumph.

Appreciating that each of these poisons of the mind has a different DNA is important. But not as vital as understanding the joint threat they pose to all of us. Like Marxism and Nazism before them, these ideologies define themselves by opposition to the West.

The joint hostility of Baghdad and Tehran to the US is not a consequence of America’s military presence or diplomatic policies in the Middle East. It is a basic defining feature of tyranny. Totalitarian regimes which govern in the name of a political religion require an enemy; to maintain their supporters in a state of fervour, to provide a scapegoat for the failure of their rule to deliver improvements in living conditions, and, above all, to legitimise internal repression.

That enemy can at different times be a neighbouring nation or an indigenous minority, the Jews or the Kurds. But, inevitably and always, the worst tyrannies elevate to the position of mortal enemy those nations whose very existence and success as beacons of freedom is a challenge and a goad. America, Israel and Britain are vilified by these extremists because they stand in opposition to everything Ba’athism and Islamism hold dear.

The hostility which these regimes, and the terrorists they sponsor, feel towards the West is existential. It cannot be assuaged by more international aid, a reordering of the world financial system, a new peace plan for the Palestinians, the signing of the Kyoto treaty or any other of the panaceas for soothing away world tension peddled by the new Left or old Arabists. As with Nazis and the Communists, they hate us for what we are, not what we do.

And that hatred, being molten, is dynamic. It cannot be limited by lines in the sand, or constrained by diplomacy. Just as it is in the nature of totalitarians to hate so it is endemic to them to attack, to expand, to export their violence. As the distinguished scholar of the Middle East David Wurmser has pointed out, “states that launch wars on their own people eventually escalate their conflicts beyond their borders”. It is no surprise that Ba’athist Syria has sought to make a colony of Lebanon, that Ba’athist Iraq has invaded its neighbours and that both of them, as well as Iran, have sponsored terror across their region. As for Saudi Arabia, its elites fund organisations which promote terror abroad to ensure that they can continue practising repression at home.

Against these evils there can be no effective containment, just as there could be no lasting appeasement of the Nazis or no meaningful detente with Communists. Weakness in the face of evil only encourages its practitioners.

The events of September 11 did not follow assertions of Western strength. They were the acts of extremists emboldened by our irresolution in the face of terror, our preference for peace processes and bombing aspirin factories over the hard business of tackling evil at its source.

The enduring tragedy of that day is that we did not act before, to save the West from terror by saving the Middle East from tyranny. The enduring legacy of that day is that we cannot rest until that work is done, until we dismantle the cultures in which the poison still ferments.

 

If it were up to me we would be going after the saudi's right after we take out Iraq. Allies my A$$. The whole region would be America East after I got through with it.

 

Sometimes my posts are a bit pithy My opinion better stated is that the US should be more careful in chosing their friends. And if the US makes a mistake in chosing their friends, they should admit it and correct it.

I see a pardox in the US's relationship with the Saudis. The US can claim them as our closest friends/allies in the Middle East, outside of Israel. The US's primary interest in the region regretably is the free flow of oil. This has lead to a friendship with the Saudis, based of the US's business interests. The US's secondary interest in the region is for peace and really derives from the primary interest, i.e. war may impede the flow of oil.

Unfortunately while the Saudis are great business partners, they are also a big reason for the political instability in the Middle East. The Saudi government is not military or imperialistic minded, but money from their country is used to foment unrest. To be clear, the Saudi government is not directly at fault. It is their rich private citizens who are out of control (like sending payments to Palestine suicide bomber families). Thus, the political agenda of the private Saudi citizens is a problem that needs to be addressed.

The Saudi government appears to not want to address the issue. The Saudi government certainly knew about the suicide bomber payments. One has to assumes the payments had the government's tacit support, until the issue got attention in the world presses and they were force to end it. And don't expect the "at fault" private Saudi citizens to get anything more than a slap on the wrist, accopanied by a wink of the eye.

As another more germane example, how the Saudi government handled their private citizen OBL had dire consequences for the US.

When I wrote that we should walk away from our Saudi friendship, I did not mean the US should cut diplomatic ties. I meant that the US should treat them more even handedly, where they consider us neither friend nor foe. To further the point, the US should not be in the game of providing for their defense. The Saudis should use their own money to solve this problem. Diverting money to provide for the country's defense may mean that the rich private citizens have less to spend to further their political agenda.

 

I don't see this as being purely about politics. I can see that Bush is worried about Iraq and them supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists for an attack against us. Daschle and Armey are concerned with the outcome of an attack/war. For one, this isn't going to be Desert Storm Part 2. The Iraqi's are positioning their forces in cities and surrounding themselves with civilians. Can you imagine the reaction from other countries if there are heavy civilian casualties? And our country has already shown that it isn't very good in the way it handles mistakes like that Wedding in Afghanistan that one of the C-130 gunships totally anihilated. There hasn't been any kind of true apology or offer of reperations, just finger pointing. And we wonder why people around the world hate us. Also, this could be a war with the heaviest american soldier casualties since Vietnam. The only comparison we have to the war Bush wants us to get into is what happened in Mogidishu, and we all know that wasn't a victory for us. Another thing is that this administration hasn't even produced credible evidence of any weapons. You ask Rumsfeld to counter to Iraq saying they don't have any weapons and instead of offering some evidence or mentioning something from a report, he just says "harumph, they're lying." Feast your eyes on this . I would really prefer that we have evidence to show to the rest of the world and total support before we make any moves.

 

Well, if you bothered to read my first post in this thread, you'd see that the CIA doesn't find any real ties between Iraq and terrorism. Obviously, they do not share your sentiments.

Moreover, if you want to stop the Palestinian terrorism, then our country needs to focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not on Iraq. I think even you can admit that those Palestinian bombers aren't killing Israelis and themselves just to get charity payments from Saddam. Granted, the Iraqi money is one more headache caused by the Israeli-Palestinan mess, but it barely registers in the grand scheme of things. If you really want to win the war on terror, you've got to determine your priorities. And the Holy Land is by far the biggest powderkeg that we face.