Where Next?

[SoCalDem]

Explosives are cheap, and lives are even 'cheaper'. People act as if this is all "new"...it's NOT. Modern travel has just made it more available as a tactic against "people who are disagreed with". The super powers have always been able to hit at will, the places of people WE disagreed with, but only recently have THEY been able to hit back.

There seems to have been a short time in history, when attentions were zeroed in on the Cold War and the Evil Empire, but the ordinary people felt pretty free to come and go and mingle with people of all nations. I was a teen during the 60's, and even at the height of tensions, young people wandered all over Europe, Africa, and (as the middle east was called back then) the Holy Lands, Asia, and pretty much anywhere on earth. Did anyone even know about Marakesh, until CSN&Y??

People of those lands did not want to kill us.... they wanted to enlighten us, entertain us, and in some cases BE like us. The people who are leading the charge to destroy us, are of the same generation, and their impressions of us seem to have changed dramatically since the 80's.. WHAT could have changed their minds??

REAGAN/BUSH/(and yes..even Clinton)/and now the evilest one of all...BUSH, the lesser and their tightfisted/obnoxious foreign policies..That's what has made us the pariahs we are today. Our leaders speak without thinking, because their talk is aimed at their consitutents, and only for effect, and to get campaign cash.But... the rest of the world is listening and watching.. They hear and see the evil rhetoric..The believe the words and the actions..

Look at the "recent wars"...

Were we really afraid of (or needing to go to war with):

Nicaragua?
Panama?
Honduras?
El Salvador?
Colombia?
Venezuela?
The Falklands? (a UK adventure)
Grenada?

Was our Viet Nam experience "necessary"?

We do not live in a vacuum, and when we deploy soldiers, the locals NOTICE... They form their opinions of our country, by what those soldiers DO.

Sadly, the rest of the world sees us and our close allies as bullies who only want power and money...two things that most of the world has never had. They DO have lots of unemployed, or fully indoctrinated angry young men who are willing to "do anything for the cause".

There will be no end to this "war", because it's basically a war between the haves and the have-nots, with a generous dollop of zealotry, which is needed to fire up the combatants. We have it here, in the form of the religious-right, and the rest of the world seems to have coalesced into factions of pro radical-Islam and run of the mill anti-American/Western.. Both of their factions dislike us, but for many reasons.

We meddle, and it has consequences.

[RummyTheDummy]

1. I don't think it would be here

Assuming you believe UBL was behind 9-11, and I realize some here don't believe that, they've already delivered a slow,festering, but fatal blow to our democracy. All they need to do now is sit back and watch our leaders assist them in the destruction.

So where next? Probably Saudi Arabia. That would be my best guess.

[SoCalDem]

2. I think they are willing to let SA just play out.

There has been a steady erosion over the years, and the Princes seem to have been knocking each other off, in anticipation of the "transfer of power"..AQ probably doesn;t have to do much in SA..

The fear they create in western countries is probably sufficient to totally change our way of life (which is what they really wanted anyway)..They probably hope that if our people are too afraid to travel, and spend their whole lives fearing for their own safety, they cannot do much mischief abroad.. The fallacy is that when western countries get very afraid, they dump even MORE power into their leaders:(.

[Karenina]

3. It's ALL such a waste

of human creative potential. :argh:

[SoCalDem]

4. Amen..No mother on earth looks into her newborn's eyes, and

says.. "I want you to grow up and kill for your beliefs". To a person, they dream about how that child will grow up, strong, healthy, educated, happy.. They project into the future and see that child with children of their own, living in comfort..

Somewhere around late adolescence, the dream turns nightmarish for most of the world's children.. :(