On our history and relationship with Arab/Islamic nations. I've been thinking about the peace movement and the people involved. Some of the people I know through this list, in real life, whatever, are very against the war(s). I wonder how this can be. With our history, thousands of years of conflict between Western/European countries and (with a brieg shining exception I will talk about in a minute) Islamic culture.
How far back should we go? Rome and middle east, the destruction of the temple? Europe, the crusades and the sacking of Jerusalem? The "Barbary Pirates" we fought. That's America's first involvement, so I will start there. People want to talk about how we are fighting terror, and since terror doesn't have a nation we can't win. You know what else doesn't have a nation? Piracy? However we went to war against that very issue under Jefferson. These men were not only the terrorists of the high seas, they were slavers too, they traded in Europeans (yup we were slaves too). Thankfully we were able to stay out of world affairs for quite a while after that. We don't become involved with Muslims again until the 1st World War. Wait we fought the Germans, no? Yes, and the Ottoman Empire. Yet another time that our cultures couldn't co-exist in peace. The enemies made in the first world war and the years immediately following can be traced directly to British and allied policy decisions made during this period. The partitioning of countries was badly done. This is a fact. Also a fact that the arabs were already killing westerners and jews in large numbers all over the middle east during this period. The second world war is what lead directly to the Arab nationalism that, more than religion, drives many terrorists and insurgents. Many people don't know, the Grand Mufti, close ally and admirer of the Nazi regime. They directly modeled the Baath party on the Nazi party. Basically the Baath Party was and is the Arab Nazi party. They are still in control of Syria by the way. Oh and they were the government of Iraq let's remember. Sadaam's mentor and eventual head of the Baath party in Iraq actually studied in France and Germany during the occupation. They were very close, the Germans even gave various nationalist groups money and weapons to fight the British and American forces. If Italy hadn't mismanaged the Arab states so badly we probably would have lost the second world war. After World War 2 we saw the rate of hostilities increasing rapidly. The west's support of Israel's right to exist, and Israel's repeated successes against Arab imperialism and invasion mean there will be no lasting peace in the region until all parties recognize that Israel is a nation now, whether they like it or not. We were directly attacked by Islamic and Arab terrorists all over the middle east during this century. Think back people, in almost every country, Saudi, yep, Lebanon, yep, Egypt, yep, Iran, yep, Kuwait, yep, Yemen, yep. We also found that almost every nation in the region supports terrorism against Americans to one extent or another. I know I've been all over, and this is a lot to read. Do some research. Look back through our history in the region, and you tell me that showing weakness is the right thing to do. You tell me how pulling out makes the situation better. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_pirates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amin_al-Husayni http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baath_Party http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_nationalism ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| ColdFusion 8 - Build next generation apps today, with easy PDF and Ajax features - download now http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/coldfusion/cf8_beta_whatsnew_052907.pdf Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:242494 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
