OK, now why is that????? Is Bush selling secrets to China????? Tell me something else, what huge foreign policy breakthrough was it that Clinton/Gore accomplished in the 90's????? I'm sure there were some, but, I can't think of anything that sticks out...................it was like 10 years of "status quoe"..............Originally posted by: Zakath15
Originally posted by: skyking
The U.S. isn't awful. It is the attitude that allowed it to manipulate the very lives of others with little concern, that is what the problem is. You can't apologize for it, negotiate with terrorist criminals to fix it, do anything about it at all!
If the U.S. doesn't figure it out well enough to quit repeating the same mistakes, this will only get worse.
I am not suggesting a course of isolationsim, it is far too late for that.
I am hoping that the simplistic approach will be set aside, it didn't work before, it won't work now
If only we had someone other than Bush in office... ugh. He's about as simple as you can get, short of a duck with a blindfold on.
Even then, I think the duck's a better match.
Why shouldn't we be imposing them? Do you even think it is remotely possible that our way is the best way and it is incumbent upon us to try to get countries to come out of the dark ages especially in the area of basic human rights? You know, to try to get them to change things like driving little girls back into burning buildings because they weren't veiled. I will agree that we have been heavy handed sometimes and have made mistakes but I also think we have the best thing going.
No, I just don't like Bush. I think his approach to, well, most everything is quite simpleminded. It hurts me to watch him speak.
Is it really our place to do that, though? It is their prerogative to bring their country out of the "dark ages", so to speak, at their own behest. If we force it, I would imagine that we would end up supporting them (like we'll probably have to do with Afghanistan). We may have the best way, but, IMO, all we can do is model that and let others follow in their own time.
I'm trying to figure out, how do we prevent them from becoming terrorists in the first place?
You love them.
Immediately after ordering the ground attack on Iraq, in February 1991, President Bush addressed his nation, saying, "Whatever you are doing at this moment, please stop and pray for our soldiers in the Gulf. God Bless the United States of America." I suspect that at the same moment many Moslems were also praying to their God to protect Iraq and the Iraqi soldiers. How could God know which nation to support? Many people pray to God because they want God to fulfill some of their needs. If they want to have a picnic, they may ask God for a clear, sunny day. At the same time, farmers who need more rain might pray for the opposite. If the weather is clear, the picnickers may say, "God is on our side; he answered our prayers." But if it rains, the farmers will say that God heard their prayers. This is the way we usually pray.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught, "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." Those who work for peace must have a peaceful heart. When you have a peaceful heart, you are the child of God. But many who work for peace are not at peace. They still have anger and frustration, and their work is not really peaceful. We cannot say that they belong to the Kingdom of God.
To preserve peace, our hearts must be at peace with the world, with our brothers and our sisters. When we try to overcome evil with evil, we are not working for peace. If you say, "Saddam Hussein is evil. We have to prevent him from continuing to be evil," and if you then use the same means he has been using, you are exactly like him. Trying to overcome evil with evil is not the way to make peace.
Jesus also said, "Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment. But I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment ... whosoever shall say, 'Thou fool,' shall be in danger of hell fire."
Jesus did not say that if you are angry with your brother, you will be put in a place called hell. He said that if you are angry with your brother, you are already in hell. Anger is hell. He also said that you don't need to kill with your body to be put in jail. You need only to kill in your mind and you are already there.
In the Persian Gulf, many people practiced killing in their minds--Iraqi, American, French, British, and other soldiers. They knew that if they didn't kill, the enemy soldiers would kill them, so they used sandbags to represent their enemy, and holding their bayonets firmly, they ran, shouted, and plunged the bayonets into the sandbags. They practiced killing day and night in their hearts and minds. The damage caused by that kind of practice is huge. I happened to see a few seconds of that kind of practice on TV. Even if President Bush had not given the order for a land offensive, a lot of damage was already being done in the minds and hearts of one million people in the Gulf. Those kinds of wounds last for a long time and are transmitted to future generations. If you train yourself every day to kill during the day and then dream of killing during the night because you have spent so much time concentrating on that, the damage is deep. If you survive, you will bear that kind of scar for many years. This is a real tragedy. We usually count bodies to measure the damage from a war, but we don't count these kinds of wounds in the hearts and minds of so many soldiers. We have to see the real long-term damage that war causes. Soldiers live in hell day and night, even before they go into the battlefield, and even after they return home.
We may think of peace as the absence of war, that if the great powers would reduce their weapons arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we will see our own minds--our own prejudices, fears, and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of the bombs are still here--in our hearts and minds--and, sooner or later, we will make new bombs. To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. To start a war and give the opportunity to one million men and women to practice killing day and night in their hearts is to plant many, many seeds of war--anger, frustration, and the fear of being killed. I felt very sad when I learned that more than eighty percent of the American people supported the Gulf War.
"Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also."
This is Jesus' teaching about revenge. When someone asks you for something, give it to him. When he wants to borrow something from you, lend it to him. How many Christians actually practice this? There is a story about an American soldier who was taking a Japanese prisoner during World War II. While walking together, the American discovered that the Japanese soldier spoke English and that he had been a Christian before he abandoned his faith. So he asked, "Why did you abandon Christianity? It is an excellent religion," and the Japanese man said, "I could not become a soldier and continue to be a Christian. I don't think a good Christian can become a soldier and kill another person." He understood this passage from Matthew. There must be ways to solve our conflicts without having to resort to killing. We must focus our attention on this. We have to find ways to help people get out of difficult situations, situations of conflict, without having to kill.
"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father who is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."
This is nondiscrimination. When you pray only for your own picnic and not for the farmers who need the rain, you are doing the opposite of what Jesus taught. Jesus said, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you..." When we look deeply into our anger, we see that the person we call our enemy is also suffering. As soon as we see that, we have the capacity of accepting and having compassion for him. Jesus called this "loving your enemy." When we are able to love our enemy, he or she is no longer our enemy. The idea of "enemy" vanishes and is replaced by the notion of someone suffering a great deal who needs our compassion. Doing this is sometimes easier than we might think, but we need to practice. If we read the Bible but don't practice, it will not help much.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." Everyone makes mistakes. If we are mindful, we see that some of our actions in the past may have caused others to suffer, and some actions of others have made us suffer. We want to be forgiving. We want to begin anew. "You, my brother or sister, have wronged me in the past. I now understand that it was because you were suffering and did not see clearly. I no longer feel anger towards you." That kind of forgiveness is the fruit of awareness. When you are mindful you can see all the causes that led the other person to make you suffer. When you see this, forgiveness and release arise naturally. You can't force yourself to forgive. Only when you understand what has happened can you have compassion for the other person and forgive him or her.
If President Bush had had more understanding of the mind of President Hussein, peace might have been obtained. President Gorbachev made a number of proposals that could have been acceptable to the allies, and many lives could have been spared. But because anger was there, Mr. Bush rejected Mr. Gorbachev's proposals, and Mr. Hussein gave the order to burn Kuwaiti oil wells. If President Bush had seen clearly the suffering of the Iraqi people, he would not have allowed his anger to be expressed by starting a war. He asked the American people to pray for the allied soldiers. He asked God to bless the United States of America. He did not say that we should pray for the civilians in Iraq or even the people of Kuwait. He wanted God to be on the side of America.
Eighty percent of the American people called the Persian Gulf War a victory--only a few hundred American soldiers were killed. But every human life is precious, and the loss of the 100,000 or more Iraqi people was a great tragedy! You may identify yourself as an American, but that is only partially true. You are more than that. You may have lost just a few hundred American lives, but you also suffered from the Gulf War in many other ways. The deaths of so many Iraqi soldiers and civilians are also casualties that America suffered, because their death was your country's work. When President Bush said, "God bless the United States of America," he was not paying enough attention to the lives of non-Americans. To those of us who are not American, this was not a good image of America. It was selfish and arrogant, and this was also a casualty that America suffered--not just by guns and bombs, but by your President's statement. If the President had said, "God bless us so that the war will end soon and that Americans as well as Iraqis will suffer as little as possible," he could have won a lot more sympathy from people around the world. But he did not say that.
Who is President Bush? President Bush is us. We are responsible for the way he feels, for everything he does. Eighty percent of the people in America supported him in this just war. Why blame him? Our capacity of loving and understanding was so limited. We were not peaceful enough in our own hearts, and we were not able to bring peace to the hearts of other people. When I saw how we prepared for war and practiced killing day and night in our hearts and minds, I felt overwhelmed.
After the parades ended and the yellow ribbons were no longer there, what did we have? What did the wives, husbands, children, brothers, and sisters of the soldiers receive when their loved ones returned from the Gulf after so much fear, hatred, and killing--in reality and in their daily practice? We cannot imagine the long-term effects of watering so many seeds of war.
Please sit still, breathe, and look deeply, and you will see the real losses, the real casualties that America suffered and continues to suffer from the Gulf War. Visualize 500,000 allied soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia, waiting for the order to invade Iraq, jumping and screaming as they plunge their bayonets into sandbags that represent Iraqi soldiers. You cannot plunge a bayonet into a person without first transforming yourself into a beast. On the other side, one million Iraqi soldiers were practicing the same. One and a half million solders were practicing violence, hatred, and fear, and the American public supported them to do so. They thought that this war was somehow clean, quick, and moral. They saw only bridges and buildings being destroyed, but the real casualties were the souls of the men and women who came home after practicing violence for so many months.
How could they do that and remain themselves? When they returned, the soldiers cried for joy; they were alive! Their parents, wives, husbands, children, and friends also cried for joy. But after one or two weeks, the war welled up from within their deepest consciousness, and their families and the whole of society will have to endure their pain for a long time. If you are a psychologist, a playwright, a novelist, a composer, a filmmaker, a lawyer, a legislator, a peacemaker, or an environmentalist, please look deeply into the souls of the soldiers who returned from the war so you can see the real suffering that war causes, not only to soldiers, but to everyone. Then project that image onto a huge screen for the whole nation to see and to learn. If we are able to share the truth concerning the Gulf War, we will be able to avoid starting another war like it in the future. We have to see how deep the wounds of war are. How could anyone call the Gulf War a victory? A victory for whom?
Excerpt from Love In Action by Thich Nhat Hanh
You love them.
Immediately after ordering the ground attack on Iraq, in February 1991, President Bush addressed his nation, saying, "Whatever you are doing at this moment, please stop and pray for our soldiers in the Gulf. God Bless the United States of America." I suspect that at the same moment many Moslems were also praying to their God to protect Iraq and the Iraqi soldiers. How could God know which nation to support? Many people pray to God because they want God to fulfill some of their needs. If they want to have a picnic, they may ask God for a clear, sunny day. At the same time, farmers who need more rain might pray for the opposite. If the weather is clear, the picnickers may say, "God is on our side; he answered our prayers." But if it rains, the farmers will say that God heard their prayers. This is the way we usually pray.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught, "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." Those who work for peace must have a peaceful heart. When you have a peaceful heart, you are the child of God. But many who work for peace are not at peace. They still have anger and frustration, and their work is not really peaceful. We cannot say that they belong to the Kingdom of God.
To preserve peace, our hearts must be at peace with the world, with our brothers and our sisters. When we try to overcome evil with evil, we are not working for peace. If you say, "Saddam Hussein is evil. We have to prevent him from continuing to be evil," and if you then use the same means he has been using, you are exactly like him. Trying to overcome evil with evil is not the way to make peace.
Jesus also said, "Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment. But I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment ... whosoever shall say, 'Thou fool,' shall be in danger of hell fire."
Jesus did not say that if you are angry with your brother, you will be put in a place called hell. He said that if you are angry with your brother, you are already in hell. Anger is hell. He also said that you don't need to kill with your body to be put in jail. You need only to kill in your mind and you are already there.
In the Persian Gulf, many people practiced killing in their minds--Iraqi, American, French, British, and other soldiers. They knew that if they didn't kill, the enemy soldiers would kill them, so they used sandbags to represent their enemy, and holding their bayonets firmly, they ran, shouted, and plunged the bayonets into the sandbags. They practiced killing day and night in their hearts and minds. The damage caused by that kind of practice is huge. I happened to see a few seconds of that kind of practice on TV. Even if President Bush had not given the order for a land offensive, a lot of damage was already being done in the minds and hearts of one million people in the Gulf. Those kinds of wounds last for a long time and are transmitted to future generations. If you train yourself every day to kill during the day and then dream of killing during the night because you have spent so much time concentrating on that, the damage is deep. If you survive, you will bear that kind of scar for many years. This is a real tragedy. We usually count bodies to measure the damage from a war, but we don't count these kinds of wounds in the hearts and minds of so many soldiers. We have to see the real long-term damage that war causes. Soldiers live in hell day and night, even before they go into the battlefield, and even after they return home.
We may think of peace as the absence of war, that if the great powers would reduce their weapons arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we will see our own minds--our own prejudices, fears, and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of the bombs are still here--in our hearts and minds--and, sooner or later, we will make new bombs. To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. To start a war and give the opportunity to one million men and women to practice killing day and night in their hearts is to plant many, many seeds of war--anger, frustration, and the fear of being killed. I felt very sad when I learned that more than eighty percent of the American people supported the Gulf War.
"Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also."
This is Jesus' teaching about revenge. When someone asks you for something, give it to him. When he wants to borrow something from you, lend it to him. How many Christians actually practice this? There is a story about an American soldier who was taking a Japanese prisoner during World War II. While walking together, the American discovered that the Japanese soldier spoke English and that he had been a Christian before he abandoned his faith. So he asked, "Why did you abandon Christianity? It is an excellent religion," and the Japanese man said, "I could not become a soldier and continue to be a Christian. I don't think a good Christian can become a soldier and kill another person." He understood this passage from Matthew. There must be ways to solve our conflicts without having to resort to killing. We must focus our attention on this. We have to find ways to help people get out of difficult situations, situations of conflict, without having to kill.
"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father who is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."
This is nondiscrimination. When you pray only for your own picnic and not for the farmers who need the rain, you are doing the opposite of what Jesus taught. Jesus said, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you..." When we look deeply into our anger, we see that the person we call our enemy is also suffering. As soon as we see that, we have the capacity of accepting and having compassion for him. Jesus called this "loving your enemy." When we are able to love our enemy, he or she is no longer our enemy. The idea of "enemy" vanishes and is replaced by the notion of someone suffering a great deal who needs our compassion. Doing this is sometimes easier than we might think, but we need to practice. If we read the Bible but don't practice, it will not help much.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." Everyone makes mistakes. If we are mindful, we see that some of our actions in the past may have caused others to suffer, and some actions of others have made us suffer. We want to be forgiving. We want to begin anew. "You, my brother or sister, have wronged me in the past. I now understand that it was because you were suffering and did not see clearly. I no longer feel anger towards you." That kind of forgiveness is the fruit of awareness. When you are mindful you can see all the causes that led the other person to make you suffer. When you see this, forgiveness and release arise naturally. You can't force yourself to forgive. Only when you understand what has happened can you have compassion for the other person and forgive him or her.
If President Bush had had more understanding of the mind of President Hussein, peace might have been obtained. President Gorbachev made a number of proposals that could have been acceptable to the allies, and many lives could have been spared. But because anger was there, Mr. Bush rejected Mr. Gorbachev's proposals, and Mr. Hussein gave the order to burn Kuwaiti oil wells. If President Bush had seen clearly the suffering of the Iraqi people, he would not have allowed his anger to be expressed by starting a war. He asked the American people to pray for the allied soldiers. He asked God to bless the United States of America. He did not say that we should pray for the civilians in Iraq or even the people of Kuwait. He wanted God to be on the side of America.
Eighty percent of the American people called the Persian Gulf War a victory--only a few hundred American soldiers were killed. But every human life is precious, and the loss of the 100,000 or more Iraqi people was a great tragedy! You may identify yourself as an American, but that is only partially true. You are more than that. You may have lost just a few hundred American lives, but you also suffered from the Gulf War in many other ways. The deaths of so many Iraqi soldiers and civilians are also casualties that America suffered, because their death was your country's work. When President Bush said, "God bless the United States of America," he was not paying enough attention to the lives of non-Americans. To those of us who are not American, this was not a good image of America. It was selfish and arrogant, and this was also a casualty that America suffered--not just by guns and bombs, but by your President's statement. If the President had said, "God bless us so that the war will end soon and that Americans as well as Iraqis will suffer as little as possible," he could have won a lot more sympathy from people around the world. But he did not say that.
Who is President Bush? President Bush is us. We are responsible for the way he feels, for everything he does. Eighty percent of the people in America supported him in this just war. Why blame him? Our capacity of loving and understanding was so limited. We were not peaceful enough in our own hearts, and we were not able to bring peace to the hearts of other people. When I saw how we prepared for war and practiced killing day and night in our hearts and minds, I felt overwhelmed.
After the parades ended and the yellow ribbons were no longer there, what did we have? What did the wives, husbands, children, brothers, and sisters of the soldiers receive when their loved ones returned from the Gulf after so much fear, hatred, and killing--in reality and in their daily practice? We cannot imagine the long-term effects of watering so many seeds of war.
Please sit still, breathe, and look deeply, and you will see the real losses, the real casualties that America suffered and continues to suffer from the Gulf War. Visualize 500,000 allied soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia, waiting for the order to invade Iraq, jumping and screaming as they plunge their bayonets into sandbags that represent Iraqi soldiers. You cannot plunge a bayonet into a person without first transforming yourself into a beast. On the other side, one million Iraqi soldiers were practicing the same. One and a half million solders were practicing violence, hatred, and fear, and the American public supported them to do so. They thought that this war was somehow clean, quick, and moral. They saw only bridges and buildings being destroyed, but the real casualties were the souls of the men and women who came home after practicing violence for so many months.
How could they do that and remain themselves? When they returned, the soldiers cried for joy; they were alive! Their parents, wives, husbands, children, and friends also cried for joy. But after one or two weeks, the war welled up from within their deepest consciousness, and their families and the whole of society will have to endure their pain for a long time. If you are a psychologist, a playwright, a novelist, a composer, a filmmaker, a lawyer, a legislator, a peacemaker, or an environmentalist, please look deeply into the souls of the soldiers who returned from the war so you can see the real suffering that war causes, not only to soldiers, but to everyone. Then project that image onto a huge screen for the whole nation to see and to learn. If we are able to share the truth concerning the Gulf War, we will be able to avoid starting another war like it in the future. We have to see how deep the wounds of war are. How could anyone call the Gulf War a victory? A victory for whom?
Excerpt from Love In Action by Thich Nhat Hanh
I'll give you that, he is not a good public speaker in most occasions, but, to be honest, his "straight forward" approach to some of these other countries is a welcome suprise to the last ten years IMO................when he basicly told the world, "you can stand with us to go after these people............or we'll do it ourselves" (don't recall the exact message
) but that was something that made most Americans feel proud again for some reason...........................and I agree as did about 93% of Americans according to polls on it........ Honestly, I don't even know that Bush is tough enough, but, considering the alternative and the deals Gore was attempting to make with China and several other countries................I'm glad we have him as opposed to Gore............ 
Random Variable
Lifer
- Aug 10, 2001
- 10,420
- 2
- 0
EnginerNr9's approach to dealing with terrorism is just as imbalanced as people who say that you can only fight terrorism with violence.
I know it is. Just the mixture of the Christian aspect touched on a subject that's still sensitive for me. Felt good to cry, I haven't cried in a while.
It's hard to be a semi-pacifist and be a leader.
How do you know if you haven't taken the plunge? What is there that love can't cure, and what is even the point of living without ideals?
Random Variable
Lifer
- Aug 10, 2001
- 10,420
- 2
- 0
Although... I think I do see his point.
We're so obsessed with America winning or America triumphing that we cannot see the effects of our actions upon the innocents in the world, the ones that are devastated by our waged wars, etc.
We're so obsessed with America winning or America triumphing that we cannot see the effects of our actions upon the innocents in the world, the ones that are devastated by our waged wars, etc.
There will always be terrorism when half the world is more or less democratic and the other half is...less.
Random Variable
Lifer
- Aug 10, 2001
- 10,420
- 2
- 0
War always seems to be waged between two non-democratic countries, or between a democratic country and a non-democratic country. But when was the last time a war was waged between two democratic countries?
Exactly. Democracies don't wage miltary wars but economic ones and these tend to create a lot of wealth. It's the only good form of war.
There are several reason why we are hated
-America supports not democratic/oppresive regimes in the Gulf States
-This has led to the continous failure of modernization in the middle east
-America continous to support sanctions on Iraq (maintaining them with their veto ability in the UN), these sanctions kill millions of Iraqi children while Sadaam continues to build palaces.
-America continues to support a neo-nazi/zionist regime in Israel.
America will never be safe until we act American in the foreign world. We must support democracy, return to our orignial ideals. George Washington said "Don't get involved in entangling foreign alliances" for a reason, because he knew we could not possible maintain our morality. Look at Israel, a freaken artificial country oppressing millions. What can we do? Tell Israel, we will not stand for zionism. Declare ISrael a member of the axis of evil as the are, sure they are of incredible strategic interest but in my opinion supporting evil this great outweighs any strategic importance. Again, this war on terror requires a change in policy not a military war. Do the terrorists win if we change? Who cares, who win, we get safety. We need to change our ways, it can begin at home and then spread to the world political scene.
-America supports not democratic/oppresive regimes in the Gulf States
-This has led to the continous failure of modernization in the middle east
-America continous to support sanctions on Iraq (maintaining them with their veto ability in the UN), these sanctions kill millions of Iraqi children while Sadaam continues to build palaces.
-America continues to support a neo-nazi/zionist regime in Israel.
America will never be safe until we act American in the foreign world. We must support democracy, return to our orignial ideals. George Washington said "Don't get involved in entangling foreign alliances" for a reason, because he knew we could not possible maintain our morality. Look at Israel, a freaken artificial country oppressing millions. What can we do? Tell Israel, we will not stand for zionism. Declare ISrael a member of the axis of evil as the are, sure they are of incredible strategic interest but in my opinion supporting evil this great outweighs any strategic importance. Again, this war on terror requires a change in policy not a military war. Do the terrorists win if we change? Who cares, who win, we get safety. We need to change our ways, it can begin at home and then spread to the world political scene.
Does anyone remember that reasons that were given by Al-Queda for the attacks they made on the US. Not just the attacks on 9/11 but the earlier attacks on the embassies and the USS Cole?
From what I remember they have little to do with this discussion and the reasons being advanced.
From what I remember they have little to do with this discussion and the reasons being advanced.
Random Variable
Lifer
- Aug 10, 2001
- 10,420
- 2
- 0
Random Variable
Lifer
- Aug 10, 2001
- 10,420
- 2
- 0
It's not supposed to be some instant evilbegone solution, it will be an indefinite work in progress. We have to water the seeds of good in people...humanism is not spread through weapons exports or a cultural ideology based entirely on the pursuit of material happiness. It starts very easily with little things...
When President Bush said, "God bless the United States of America," he was not paying enough attention to the lives of non-Americans. To those of us who are not American, this was not a good image of America. It was selfish and arrogant, and this was also a casualty that America suffered--not just by guns and bombs, but by your President's statement. If the President had said, "God bless us so that the war will end soon and that Americans as well as Iraqis will suffer as little as possible," he could have won a lot more sympathy from people around the world.
When President Bush said, "God bless the United States of America," he was not paying enough attention to the lives of non-Americans. To those of us who are not American, this was not a good image of America. It was selfish and arrogant, and this was also a casualty that America suffered--not just by guns and bombs, but by your President's statement. If the President had said, "God bless us so that the war will end soon and that Americans as well as Iraqis will suffer as little as possible," he could have won a lot more sympathy from people around the world.
if israel were to be considered part of the axis of evil, we'd better just nuke the rest of the middle east since they are far far worse. israel is democratic, they treat their women equally, their women could vote very early on, they didn't have to fight for it. we have an interest in protecting democracies, and they are the closest thing in that part of the middle east. as for nazi, you must be kidding. israel suffers casualities in trying to avoid civilian casualties. palestinians on the other hand go out of their way to increase civilian casualities. methods such as adding rat poison to nail bombs so women and childrens wounds won't stop bleeding. if something should be termed as nazi, the palestinians deserve the label far more. not to mention the rest of the middle east with its tyrants
as for supporting democracy, you can't support them all. after all, hitler was elected. as for israel being an artificial country oppressing millions.. um ok. the palestinians sided with those that attacked israel after UN partition, they supported attack after attack, they deserve nothing. and all countries and borders are artificial. america is artificial, most indians are dead so its not too much of a problem. the same goes for the rest of countries, which probably were just as good at genocide and probably worse.
perhaps muslim fundamentalism is the cause of failure to thrive in the middle east. its a corruption of humanity this islamic fundamentalism. look at turkey. they had a secular leader that smashed the fundamentalists with an iron fist and made turkey what it is today. maybe thats what the us should do eh? its bloody and hard, and you'd whine about it too.
first of all, iraq likes making up things. 2nd of all we let iraq sell oil to buy humanitarian supplies. if iraq spends it on weapons development instead its not our fault. the responsibility is their own. iraq kills iraqs childrens because iraq likes to research means of death instead. iraq is the place where chemical weapons were used on civilians in war. their own kurds. pathetic indeed. maybe we should just nuke them off the map. after all, they are far worse then israel who you think should be part of the axis of evil
*Vespasian edits out the line in which he says he was just starting to agree with EngineNr9 on some issues*
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