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That's quite a distinction you're making here. You can declare any war or combatant action as response to an attack on US interests, however marginal or ill defined they may be. This more or less gives you free hand to attack anybody, anywhere, anytime. Is this what you want?
Otherwise, both Iraq wars and Somalia don't qualify as responses to attacks on the US. What were the US interests again for these three actions?
So you exonerate Saddam from the brutal acts he pulled on his people? Gassing the kurds, his sons just randomly picking up young girls to rape them, killing Atheletes when they didn't perform well. All of that? You excuse all of that? How about the ethnic cleansing going on in Somalia, you excuse that too?
I think you need to understand, that Islam is a theocracy, not just a religion.
No, Islam is a religion. The clerics that rule Iran are a theocracy. They overthrew a Shah that was a dictatorship that the US helped establish when the Shah staged a military coup to overthrow their democratically elected leaders. Iraq did not have a theocracy, it had a dictatorship, even though the country was largely Islamic. Pakistan has an elected government. The Taliban that ruled Afghanistan was a theocracy. Turkey has a secular government that has been struggling to fight off incursions of theocratic laws, a struggle made harder because of the animosity that is generated by American policies in Islamic countries. Saudi Arabia has a monarchy with theocratic overtones because the monarchy is based on descendance from the Prophet Mohammed. Libya has a dictatorship. Palestine has elections.
Pretty thin chielgirl, pretty thin. One photo of Bush praying with the troops and a secondhand account from a Palestinian who was at a meeting with Bush who reportedly said "God told me".
"This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while"
Do you think that the families of the dead give a damn about our "intentions?"
Did our unintentional killing make the unintended less dead?
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if the terrorists weren't such cowards,
Blowing yourself up for a cause doesn't seem all that cowardly to this observer.
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then maybe they could face us on the battlefield, instead of hiding behind innocent civilians.
Or unmanned drones, F-15's, F-18's and artillery.
Terrorism like precision bombing are just tactics, and folks who want to win a battle will always use those tactics that work best for their conditions.
Conservative and anti-Muslim leaders apparently believe they have the right to level massive criticism at Muslims as individuals and as a whole. Meanwhile, any sort of criticism of American diplomatic policy--policy that has resulted in the deaths of millions of Muslims, policy that has resulted in authoritarian regimes being imposed on countries that were embracing democratic values--is labeled as terrorism.
The double standard gets more than a bit ridiculous.
Rauf doesn't tear up American society at all. He makes speeches about how Muslims can live at peace in a country where tolerance and religious freedom exists, how American laws are in accord with the tenets of Muslim belief.
You're ignoring WHY there is criticism of the Islamic world. Saudi textbooks (distributed all over the Muslim world) unrepentantly insult other religions. There are 22 Muslim nations. They're pretty horrible places where women are dirt and non-Muslims essentially second class citizens. You're also infantiziling Muslims by not holding them responsible for their own actions in their own countries.
The third greatest casualties from a war last century was during the Iran-Iraq war. That was not a US doing.
FYI, democratically elected governments can still suck. Hamas is a truly evil organization, a Muslim version of the KKK, yet they were freely elected by the Palestinians. Were we supposed to applaud somehow?
Rauf is defending Al Quada while building a big giant building a short distance away from where thousands of American citizens were murdered by his fellow co-religionists.
Yes, that's rather tacky and insensitive.
His own community is hardly much better. Even in America the Islamic community here tolerates the worst kind of hatred in their very own mosques:
Americans are supposed to admit to all our supposed enormous faults while the Islamic community perpetually whines about Israeli Jews living next door to them, blames America for the faults of a billion people and plays the victim constantly at every turn. I'm a very liberal person but I'm more than a little sick of it. Islam is nothing more than ideology. If I find it an extremely distasteful ideology well that's no different than finding capitalism or communism rather unpalatable.
So you exonerate Saddam from the brutal acts he pulled on his people? Gassing the kurds, his sons just randomly picking up young girls to rape them, killing Atheletes when they didn't perform well. All of that? You excuse all of that? How about the ethnic cleansing going on in Somalia, you excuse that too?
Where do you see me excusing it?
But to stay on topic: Again, what US interests were attacked?
I always like how the word "interests" gets subfused with idea of self-defense.
1944: U.S. State Department memo refers to Middle Eastern oil as "a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history." During U.S.-British negotiations over the control of Middle Eastern oil, President Roosevelt sketches out a map of the Middle East and tells the British Ambassador, "Persian oil is yours. We share the oil of Iraq and Kuwait. As for Saudi Arabian oil, it's ours." On August 8, 1944, the Anglo-American Petroleum Agreement is signed, splitting Middle Eastern oil between the U.S. and Britain.
November 1947: The U.S. helps push through a UN resolution partitioning Palestine into a Zionist state and an Arab state, giving the Zionist authorities control of 54% of the land. At that time Jewish settlers were about 1/3 of the population.
March 29, 1949: CIA backs a military coup overthrowing the elected government of Syria and establishes a military dictatorship under Colonel Za'im.
1953: The CIA organizes a coup overthrowing the Mossadeq government of Iran after Mossadeq nationalizes British holdings in Iran's huge oilfields. The Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, is put on the throne, ruling as an absolute monarch for the next 25 years--torturing, killing and imprisoning his political opponents.
October 1956: A planned CIA coup to overthrow a left-leaning government in Syria is aborted because it was scheduled for the same day Israel, Britain and France invade Egypt.
April 1957: After anti-government rioting breaks out in Jordan, U.S. rushes 6th fleet to the eastern Mediterranean and lands a battalion of Marines in Lebanon to "prepare for possible future intervention in Jordan." Later that year, the CIA begins making secret payments of millions a year to Jordan's King Hussein.
September 1957: In response to the Syrian government's more nationalist and pro-Soviet policies, the U.S. sends Sixth Fleet to eastern Mediterranean and rushes arms to allies Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey and Saudi Arabia; meanwhile the U.S. encourages Turkey to mass 50,000 troops on Syria's northern border.
1958: The merger of Syria and Egypt into the "United Arab Republic," the overthrow of the pro-U.S. King Feisal II in Iraq by nationalist military officers, and the outbreak of anti-government/anti-U.S. rioting in Lebanon, where the CIA had helped install President Camille Caiman and keep him in power, leads the U.S. to dispatch 70 naval vessels, hundreds of aircraft and 14,000 Marines to Lebanon to preserve "stability." The U.S. threatens to use nuclear weapons if the Lebanese army resists, and to prevent an Iraqi move into the oilfields of Kuwait, and draws up secret plans for a joint invasion of Iraq with Turkey. The plan is shelved after the Soviet Union threatens to intervene.
1957-58: Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA agent in charge of the 1953 coup in Iran, plots, without success, to overthrow Egypt's Nasser. "Between July 1957 and October 1958, the Egyptian and Syrian governments and media announced the uncovering of what appear to be at least eight separate conspiracies to overthrow one or the other government, to assassinate Nasser, and/or prevent the expected merger of the two countries."
1960: U.S. works to covertly undermine the new government of Iraq by supporting anti-government Kurdish rebels and by attempting, unsuccessfully, to assassinate Iraq's leader, Abdul Karim Qassim, an army general who had restored relations with the Soviet Union and lifted the ban on Iraq's Communist Party.
September 17, 1970: With U.S. and Israeli backing, Jordanian troops attack Palestinian guerrilla camps, while Jordan's U.S.-supplied air force drops napalm from above. U.S. deploys the aircraft carrier Independence and six destroyers off the coast of Lebanon and readies troops in Turkey to support the assault. The U.S. threatens to use nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union if it intervenes. 5000 Palestinians are killed and 20,000 wounded. This massacre comes to be known as "Black September."
1973-1975: U.S. supports Kurdish rebels in Iraq in order to strengthen Iran and weaken the then pro-Soviet Iraqi regime. When Iran and Iraq cut a deal, the U.S. withdraws support, denies the Kurds refuge in Iran, and stands by while the Iraqi government kills many Kurdish people.
1978: As the Iranian revolution begins against the hated Shah, the U.S. continues to support him "without reservation" and urges him to act forcefully against the masses. In August 1978, some 400 Iranians are burned to death in the Rex Theater in Abadan after police chain and lock the exit doors. On September 8, 10,000 anti-Shah demonstrators are massacred at Teheran's Jaleh Square.
Summer 1979: The U.S. publicly supports the Khomeini regime's efforts to suppress the Kurdish liberation struggle and maintain Iranian domination of Kurdestan.
1979: U.S. President Jimmy Carter designates the Persian Gulf a vital U.S. interest and declares the U.S. will go to war to ensure the flow of oil.
Summer 1979: U.S. begins arming and organizing Islamic fundamentalist "Mujahideen" in Afghanistan. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski writes, "This aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention," drawing the Soviets into an Afghan quagmire. Over the next decade the U.S. alone passed more than $3 billion in arms and aid to the Mujahideen, with another $3 billion provided by the U.S. ally Saudi Arabia.
September 22, 1980: Iraq invades Iran with tacit U.S. support, starting a bloody eight-year war. The U.S. supports both sides in the war providing arms to Iran and money, intelligence and political support to Iraq in order to prolong the war and weaken both sides, while trying to draw both countries into the U.S. orbit.
September 14, 1982: Lebanon's pro-U.S. President-elect, Bashir al-Jumayyil, is assassinated. The following day, Israeli forces occupy West Beirut, and from 16 to 18 September, the Phalangist militia, with the support of Israel's military under now-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, move into the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps and barbarically massacre over 1,000 unarmed Palestinian men, women, and children.
It's always been about U.S. interests around the world and the American lifestyle, so what?
But to stay on topic: Again, what US interests were attacked?
First of all Somalia was a humanitarian act, not a war. Get that straight first. Second, Iraq was shooting at our aircraft daily well before the war started, try for about 10 years.
At the end of the day, all arguments and points have been made. If they build it, we will see what they do with it. 80% of mosques have been radicalized by Saudi Arabia.
Whats the percentage of Mosques that have been radicalized here in the USA where we live? I wouldn't expect you to know or care because everyone always seems to think Saudi Arabia and the USA are the same country...
Um, what about the millions of people Christians have killed throughout history.
I'd wager to bet that Christians have killed way more people than Muslims.
You'd lose .... even the Christian Crusades were an answer to a call for assistance by the Byzantine Empire to stem the invasions of marauding, murdering and rampaging Muslims, which by the way, conquered by sword more territory and christian communities than any other source. The backlash of the Christian Crusades, often mischaracterized as an example of christian evil and aggression was in fact a response to Muslim aggression, started by that wonderful prophet of peace and brotherly love so venerated by our peaceful Muslim brothers and sisters.
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Originally Posted by Memphis1979
If this is your argument, then you've got a problem. I'm not condoning Muslim violence, neither do most Muslims. Imam Rauf isn't condoning the terrorist attacks, but is explaining some of the reasons behind them.
These "reasons" as you characterize them are nothing more than inflammatory political statements that are music to the ears of radicals. It's a public statement to extremists and fundamentalists that says to their Muslim brothers ... there is always a place in our Mosques for the avengers of injustice by the infidels.
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