In Reply to: In defense of American empire posted by Carol on June 23, 2004 at 09:02:14:
Good realistic apprasal.
I think we have to look at the root of this mess and ask ourselves, why do certain Muslims hate the West? Why are there terrorists anyway? So far I’ve not heard anyone address this issue. The nearest you get is, ‘They hate freedom & Democracy and love anarchy and hatred’. Still, no why?
It's a complicated subject but basically it boils down to the West giving the Jews land, which 2000 years ago used to belong to them (Israel) in 1948 without the agreement of the people who had been living there for the last 2000 years. After all, the Western nations had occupied N. Africa so it was there's to give right?
That created the Israel Palestine problem, which plagues the region to this day. On top of that there's the West's political and trade policies which are protectionist and damaging to developing countries. I lived in third world countries for 15 yrs and around 2000 had friends who were high up in the UN and WWF. The things they told me that were going on behind the scenes to enrich the capitalists at the cost of the poor were astonishingly tenacious and massive in scale.
On the more obvious side is things like food aid. Say the US pats itself on the back and announces to the world that it’s sending say $20m of food aid to some starving nation. Here’s how it works. The food is bought from US farmers (despite the fact it could be bought from other poor and often closer countries), transported by US companies and distributed by US or US sponsored agencies. The value of what arrives at the doorstep is a fraction of the original cost, the rest is ploughed back into the US economy.
Then latter on if the same countries don’t toe the US line then no help in the future is forthcoming. The poor and oppressed have found a way via the Islamic militants through which they channel their frustrations and hate. Add to this generous helpings of Islamic propaganda, sympathetic funding and generations who have grown up under the heel of the Israeli jackboot and there you have it. A recipe for the suicide bomber.
Re: Iraq: The US & Britain went to war claiming the high moral ground. Connections between Sadam & Al Qaeda, WMD and as icing on the cake we’ll topple Sadam and of course the oil and billions going to US contractors to reconstruct Iraq but we won’t mention that. Despite Hans Bliks (did I spell that right)? Stating it was not necessary and that there was probably no WMD, in went the troops. Over a year latter and still no WMD but it was still all worth it cos Sadam was a bad guy. He probably was but if that’s true invading a sovereign nation because the ruler is bad is very shaky grounds for justifying war. What about N. Korea, Burma, China and a host of African, Arab & S. American countries? Surely they are next because the world must be cleansed.
My conclusion is that both sides are terribly wrong and war in it’s nature will never be fought fairly, each side will use whatever weapon it can. The thing that stinks though is hypocrisy. But then the truth of we want to climb as high as we can and don't mind on who's head we step on does not make for good PR