My more moderate posts?!@#
<br>Which would those be? :-)
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<br>Actually, after re-reading Scaredy's original post, I still get a slightly different read on it...
<br>Rather than seeming to be written to encourage war, I do believe the sermon seems to be written only to excuse it, within carefully circumscribed circumstances. This is an important distinction.
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<br>Then Scaredy moves on into his own feelings about the more secular side of things, and it is that portion of his post to which most of the responses seem to be directed.
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<br>Which is why I felt your post so... er... *novel* in this thread, even though SC began the whole thing with a sermon. So, feeling your point that ol' JC wouldn't approve to be entirely irrelevent, I said so.
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<br>As to your final question, some of my posts today make the point that it is worse than irrelevent, actually impedemential, to found any discussion or evaluation of same on a person's innate leanings re: pacifism. Rather, it's much more productive to discuss whether the probable outcome of this whole thing mandates turning the other cheek, or smiting them who afflict thee. And to do that, it is crucial to spend one minute in the terrifying void you can only find by asking yourself, with deepest urgent sincerity, "What if my assumptions are all wrong here. What have I missed in my analysis? Have I used my logic to reinforce my beliefs, or do my conclusions arise from unbiased logic?"
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<br>Only when you open your mind, for a few scary minutes, to the possibility that you've built a logical house of straw, then try actively to prove your opponents *right* can you say you've made every effort to find the best answer.
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<br>Even if the "Usama agenda" *IS* about his intra-Islam political machinations; - - come to mention it, *ESPECIALLY* if that's his goal, then killing thousands of people on our soil is especially inexcusable.
<br>And if 5000 lives *is* revenge for, as he says, underpriced oil and us not being Islamic, while having the arrogance to enter into defense treaties with Islamic nations, well, then for us to say, in effect, "Okay, we deserved that, can we call quitsies now?" would be worse than ludicrous.
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<br>It's important to remember that our actions aren't measured by our tormentors in the same light that we view them. - - Usama tossed the Sov's out of Afghanistan, he thinks Superpowers are weak, with no staying power. A spasm of bombing, followed by a face-saving exit in six months or a year is what he's expecting, and he'll interpret any peacefull gesture as one of weakness.
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<br>This will embolden him.
<br>In Usama's own words, he didn't like our humanitarian mission to feed the oppressed Muslims in Somalia. He didn't care for our military defense of Muslims in Bosnia, against Christian Serbs.
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<br>No amount of Christlike nurturing-in-spite-of-violence will appease this guy. Stopping him now is going, likely, to cost many lives of his truest victims, who are poor Muslims. Stopping him later will only cost more of their lives. And stopping him never will cost us everything we hold dear.
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<br>Don't trust me, look it up. He wants the oil, and the Paki's nuke, and he's more than halfway to both. There's rioting in the streets of Soudi, Paki, Palestine, Kartoum, Oman, the UAE, you name it. Araft asked ISrael, *ISRAEL* for help today in quelling the pro-Usama demonstrators in his own streets, his own Palestinian people! The Islamic world is in turmoil, which is precisely what most informed Middle Easterners are saying that Usama wants.
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<br>Read SAILCRAC's post, (
http://www.catsailor.com/forums/sho...view=expanded&sb=5&o=21#Post3086) He's a tad committed to his point of view, but the CNN article in this post of his spells it out.
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<br>Usama thinks the Taliban's Afganistan is exactly how all of Islam should be run, under one ruling body. Could such a super-state allow itself to fall to the same insidious force which toppled the Soviet Union? Our luxurious lifestyle is what eventually convinced mom-and-pop Russian citizen that communism wasn't lifting them out of poverty.
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<br>Having the west around, living it up here, would be far more intolerable to a Taliban-like Islamic super-state. Do you think they'd allow us to live in peace and prosperity?
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<br>HOW COULD THEY??? bin Laden's proposed nation is inherently unstable. When the average Islamic citizen notices that kicking the west out didn't put beans on the table and starts asking why, what're the leaders going to do, huh? They'll do what every, single ruling body in every culture on this planet has done in times of domestic unrest; they'll blamee everything on some other country. They'll point to, you guessed it, *US* and blame us, as they have already been doing for years.
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<br>It'll start with half witted plans like, "I know, let's double the price of oil!" Of course they'll foolishly forget to ask, "why didn't OPEC think of that?"
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<br>Can you answer that one? I can. The price of oil, right now, is, as it nearly always is, right on the "Sweet spot" for maximum yield. See, if you're OPEC, and you price your product too high, two limiting factors mess up your nice theoretical profits. One, the economies of the buyers go in the tank, meaning they consume less oil, and your profit goes down. Two, they notice other energy sources start to look more attractive, and they use less oil and your profits go down, permanently.
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<br>So when "Nation of Islam" tries to lift their citizens out of penury by jacking up oil prices, it's doomed to failure from the start. What then? "Obviously, it's a Western plot to starve our Islam's children. Hey, they weren't so tough in '01, let's take what they've stolen from us." Don't forget; the Paki's have a nuke now.
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<br>"He who fails to understand history is doomed to repeat it"
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<br>There's a reason the victors in WWII spent incalculable sums to rebuild their attacker's countries. They learned from their own history - - WW one. We left Germany in a shambles. Ten years of starvation later, they were ripe for revolution, and war of conquest.
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<br>This stuff is so obvious, and so ineluctible. Bush gets it. Blair gets it too. His two predecessors, Chaimberlain and Churchill, haunt him today, I'm sure. Nato gets it. Wouter doesn't get it, because for fifty years, his half of Germany's been stuffed full of Pravda, and in reaction to being told bad things about Hitler by dishonest liars, he's much less inclined to see ol' Adolf in the unflattering light we do. I've lived with East Germans, they're fine people, just got an odd slant on history, some of 'em.
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<br>You want to live in a world like the one we just graduated from? Only, instead of the Commies vs. the Decadent Capitalists, it'll be the pure Islamic Militants against their Evil Opressors.
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<br>No thanks, I vote Usama off the island this round.
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<br>Ed (sorry about the rant) Norris<br><br>
