Watched C-Span early this morning - Americans for Informed Democracy / The People Speak: “Town Hall Meeting on U.S.-Islamic World Relations." Some very good points were made, reminders actually. If it is re-run, you should try to watch it.
1 – Terrorism is not (I repeat, NOT) the United States’ fault. Terrorism has long been used as a weapon in Middle Eastern countries, long before George Bush or Dick Cheney ever came on the scene.
**My note: a look at just one group, Muslim Brotherhood which was founded in Egypt in the late 1930's, you see terrorist acts perpetrated against each other. In 1948 the brotherhood blamed the Egyptian government for passivity in the war against the Zionists. They started to perform terrorist attacks inside Egypt. By December of that year, the Egyptian authorities banned the Muslim Brotherhood and they turned around and assassinated Prime Minister Mahmud Fahmi Nokrashi. Eventually their own Egyptian President Anwar as-Sadat was murdered by this group of thugs.
2 – Terrorism is not a result of abject poverty. Take the 9/11 terrorists – most of them were from wealthy Saudi Arabian families. Saudi Arabia is supposed to be one of our strong allies in the Middle East.
3 – Poverty in the Middle East is an internal problem; those citizens are NOT allowed to speak out against their rulers, so the anger is redirected at the United States, all with the knowledge and encouragement of those rulers, through the Wahabi fundamentalist schools.
4 – The war in Iraq was not driven by oil. Oil will find its way to the world no matter how terrible a despot is in control. They want our money. They NEED our money. Sanctions on Iraq that were put into place by the UN were fully supported by the US. If we were so concerned and focused on controlling oil, why would we do such a foolish thing?
It always amazes me to hear Americans trying to find a way to blame our government for the attacks on us including September 11th. “Why do they hate us?” really shows the naiveté of the questioner.
OF COURSE governments of different countries aren’t always going to get along. We have different cultures, different opinions, different objectives.
Our government SHOULD do things that are in the best interest of OUR CITIZENS. Being President of the United States doesn't mean that we are striving to win a popularity contest on the world stage.
If the President of the United States doesn't take our interests FIRST, our security FIRST, he should not be allowed to be president of this country.
