luke warm, on Oct 2 2006, 02:13 PM, said:
mike777, on Sep 28 2006, 09:06 PM, said:
i agree... what exactly is it that we do that they want us to stop doing? i know we're the great satan and evil to the core, but i don't quite remember why that's true
The fact that you can post this in all sincerity is indicative of the problem.
Nothing the US does justifies terrorism, but much of what the US does explains terrorism. And the scariest thing, to a foreigner, about America is that it appears that the majority of Americans really have no idea what the fuss is about. Why, for example, Tony Blair, in his farewell political speech recognized that a majority of westerners view Bush as a greater threat to world peace than they do bin Laden. Why some Americans claim to be Canadian when travelling overseas.
Israel is one factor. The kneejerk protection and support given to the Israeli State is a key irritant: the US seems to behave as if it is faced with a choice: help Israel or help the Palestinians. What many would prefer would be for the US to help both.
Use half the money used for military assistance to Israel over the past 30 years (or more) to promote economic and political integrity for Palestinians and maybe the refugee communities would not be a prime source of recruits for Islamic fundamentalist terror groups.
But Israel is merely an obvious, and perennial, example.
Stop invading other countries, stop promoting coups d'etat in other countries, stop proclaiming moral superiority while acting in a morally reprehensible fashion, and so on. Stop funding and supplying unsavoury individuals and groups as surrogates on the discredited notion that the enemy of my enemy is my friend (Saddam Hussein and the Taliban being merely the two most obvious examples of the flaws in this approach)
Would that fix the problem? No, not entirely. As the wealthiest country in the owrld and the most powerful military nation, the US will attract resentment and even hatred from others, but there was a time when, despite claims to be both of these things, the US was looked to by oppressed peoples as a beacon of hope. Woodrow Wilson was imperfect, but his attitude and, by association, the attitude of the US in 1919 was idealistic not merely in words but, to some degree, in actions as well. Of course, the results were not always perhaps what he intended, but his heart was in the right place. Compare Bush to Wilson, and you have to shudder.
No rational person really thinks the US is the great satan, but many rational people do think that the US is, unfortunately, seeing the consequences of its own actions.
The saddest development is that the terrorists are winning. They have generated unprecedented change in the US society. A country that, for all of its faults, remained, bye and large, a free and open democracy, has surrendered its fundamental values out of fear... fear of terrorism. Now the President has the power to secretly wiretap, arrest, torture and imprison, without any access to the courts, anyone he doesn't like. He has only to define his victims appropriately and the Congress has told the courts to back off. Of course, he would never dream of doing that to a careful, conservative mainstream American citizen, so such a person lacks any concerns that the President has been given too much power. But repressive governments rarely directly take on the bulk of the population: they marginalize sectors of the population and the comfortably numb great majority lose both their empathy for the victims of executive repression and their moral outrage. Look at how racial profiling is now not merely tolerated but actively encouraged by many white commentators. Look at how domestic survelliance is now viewed by many.
I have a number of American friends: and, as individuals, I truly respect them, and there are facets of American society that are outstanding examples to the world. Every country has had and has problems and the US, in many ways, dealt with its problems with great courage. But that seems to be, temporarily I hope, a thing of the past.