Rob, I think if you argue that France, Germany and Russia wanted to protect their oil interests by not attacking Iraq you need to be willing to imagine that America protected it’s oil interests by invading. But I fear you think Iraq was occupied primarily to depose a brutal dictator.

Attacking Iraq created the very thing BushCo lied about in order to justify it. You want to speak of Islamics hating us, now they have more reason to.

I realize you get the pro-America spin automatically in the service but now that you’re out, couldn’t you try seeing the larger picture? Greedy men do horrible things in this world and the more you applaud them the more you encourage their heavy-handed tactics. We’re not the blameless, innocent, wrongly attacked nation you seem to think we are. Wake up and smell the

Unfortunately, whoever

when Kerry wins, we’re in for a rocky road of repairing the damage that has been done by this administration through its economic irresponsibility, civil rights violations, and mangled foreign policy.  I find it oddly amusing how Colin Powell is getting very little camera time.

I find it incredulous that Bush can still stand up and say that he’s for so many things while the opposite is happening.

Bush is for smaller government yet the government is drastically larger than ever and has more than doubled in some areas.

Bush is for a balanced budget, yet we have a record deficit.

Bush is against abortion, yet abortion rates went down under Clinton (practice safe sex) and have gone up under Bush (just abstain).

Bush is pro military, but he squashed the bill that would have given the guard and reservists health-care and rolled back a portion of the pay raise initially awarded.

Hell, if Bush would stand up and say “I’m against cat owners!“, Les would probably get a government check in the mail. 

President Bush is all about slight of mouth.

Rob, you said:

> Conversely, we have had others like France,
> Germany and Russia that favored their own
> financial stakes in the oil concerns of Iraq
> rather than the safety of the world.

Rob, do you realize that we (Germany) have throusands of troops (of our barely our 200.000 active forces) in Afghanistan? Did Afghanistan play any role in an attack on Germany? No.

But we are still there. We do pull our weight. So don’t go cursing us out because we didn’t jump on your Iraq thing. We are very happy about that choice - and there is still broad support for our troops remaining in Afghanistan.

Fucksake, people. The word is “Muslims”, not “Islamics”. That is all.

Rob, that’s very interesting about German troops and Afghanistan.  None of my friends here knew that.

James, an “Islamist” is someone who supports an Islamic theocracy.  As distinct from a “Muslim” who is a follower of Islam.  Generally we might think of the first as an avowed enemy of the US and the second as a person of a certain religion who may or may not be anti-American. 

None of the Muslims I personally know are anti-American, though some of them are pretty disgusted with US foreign policy.

I was mostly using the term as Rob seemed to have used it to suggest a religious affiliation. Islamics are followers of Islam as Christians are followers of Christianity. Right?

Rob’s use of the term “radical� Islamic suggested to me that Iraq is a religious war, or at least he is ok with is if it is and that there is a correct religion, whose followers can rightfully invade other countries. America fashions some of the best terrorists money and religious fanaticism can provide. But if you want to speak of greed and self-serving interests, well America “The Great� is 2nd to no other there as well.

Maybe I’m wrong about the proper use of the term Islamic, but I only wish I was wrong about America.

But James said “that is all� so I would guess the discussion is over.

DOF: Rob, that’s very interesting about German troops and Afghanistan.  None of my friends here knew that.

Did you mean Ingolfson?

Somebody still living in Germany might be better qualified to comment, but Chancellor Schroeder staked his political survival on sending combat troops to Afghanistan. Doing so required a change in the German constitution, which now allows Germany to use military force outside of NATO territory - provided there is an unequivocal international mandate.

For reasons I’m not privy to, Germany decided to give Iraq a miss. I don’t believe that any of the UN resolutions that got passed would have allowed Germany to participate; there is a good chance that even the passive support like allowing the US use of German air space and bases on German soil blatantly violated the German constitution.

For whatever reasons, the Americans had some of their air raids cross over cities they bombed in WWII. Perhaps a coincidence, perhaps a message.

To make a long story short, there is an awful lot that never makes the US papers.

Did you mean Ingolfson?

Yep.  That’s how well my head’s been working lately.

Anyway, I mentioned Germany’s contribution to Afghanistan to some friends and they’d never heard of it.  So a lot of stuff doesn’t get in the news.

It’s pretty gutsy for the Bush camp to claim that our allies who didn’t jump into Iraq were doing so because of economic interests, then cry “foul” when accused of jumping into Iraq for economic interests (oil).  Sauce for the goose…

Actually, on a bit of a side note all the major NATO countries that refused to send troops to Iraq have forces currently in Afghanistan, this even includes France.  I think the reason that more countries didn’t join in on Iraq was because the US was unwilling to wait to receive UN sanction before going to war.  Most other NATO countries seem to have a bit more respect for due process (in terms of the UN at least) than the United States does.  Also, it strikes me that many countries couldn’t afford to send troops into Iraq even if they wanted to because they had to increase their presence in Afghanistan because the US pulled out their troops.  That’s just how it seems to me though, and I’m not a military analyst so I don’t really know….

Brock: no, Muslims are followers of Islam as Christians are followers of Christianity, is what I was trying to say.

As far as I know, there is no noun in English “Islamic” (merely the obvious adjective), though I was surprised to discover that “Islamist” is a real word (and, according to my dictionary, equivalent to “Muslim”)

But, sorry, I didn’t mean to turn this into a debate on the nature of language. As you were, citizens. I’ll be watching from over -> there.

All this arguing about oil and the ecomomics of war… Yesterday I read another article listing all the instances in which George W. Bush has intimated that God wanted him to be president.  Then, I watched the 60 minutes report last night on General Boykin and how he likes to turn all military operations into holy crusades.  This morning, I picked up a book I’ve been reading and found the logical explanation for GWB’s war on Iraq.  It’s not about oil—It’s a holy war!  It may seem that this war is secular and economically motivated, but it IS basically religious (on both sides).  It is about affirming one’s power over life and death.  Citing J.Huizinga in Homo Ludens (1955), Ernest Becker points out that “war was a test of the will of the gods, to see if they favored you; it forced a revelation of destiny and so it was a holy cause and a sacred duty, a kind of divination.  Whatever the outcome was, it was a decision of holy validity—the highest kind of judgement man can get—and it was in his hands to be able to force it:  all he had to do was stage a war.“  Becker goes on to say that it is as if the divine king [or divinely appointed president] said to God, “Now show me if I’m really as special as I believe; prove to me that I am your favored son.“  Isn’t that what this war is really all about?  Becker provides a great quote from Elias Canetti that paints the picture in stark relief:  “Fortunate and favored, the survivor stands in the midst of the fallen.  For him there is one tremendous fact; while countless others have died, many of them his comrades, he is still alive.  The dead lie helpless; he stands upright amongst them, and it is as though the battle had been fought in order for him to survive it. . . . It is a feeling of being chosen from amongst the many who manifestly shared the same fate. . . . The man who achieves this often is a hero.  He is stronger.  There is more life in him.  He is favored of the Gods.“ 
The sick thing is Bush never stepped onto that battlefield.  He cannot ever properly claim the title of “hero.“  Odds are that someone else’s name is on that wall at the Vietnam Memorial because he managed to “pull some strings.“  I can’t blame him for it.  Not many of us would turn down a free pass out of harm’s way.  What really chills me is how he embraces the sacrificial lambs, (oops, I mean soldiers) that he is personally responsible for sending to their deaths, NOT TO MENTION touting 9/11 as his finest hour when it is blatantly clear (after watching NOW with Bill Moyers last week, who could deny it) that 9/11 should have and could have been prevented if our boy king had even half-heartedly done the job we elected (oops, I mean the Supreme Court appointed) him to do.  Food for thought anyway…
As a sidenote:  anyone who wants a great, mind-blowing learning experience on what’s wrong with the world, I highly recommend reading Ernest Becker’s “Denial of Death” and quickly following it up with his “Escape from Evil.“  You’ll never see the world the same way again.  PEACE.

So a lot of stuff doesn’t get in the news.

Here’s something that was mentioned in German papers at the time. I have no idea if there’s any truth to it, but allegedly German commando troops had a chance of getting Bin Laden, but the US wanted to cherry-pick and were too late…

Terrorism is old news. There have been terrorist attacks since the Roman times and from these many lessons should be learned.

When a terrorist group strikes, one of their goal is to create a state of war in the targeted country. As soon as a politician declares a “war against terrorism” he is incompetent because such kind of war cannot be won.  He is just the reaction the terrorists are wanting. It is giving them the attention they are begging for.

Cheney like thousands of other fascist fellows of the past is creating a state of war just for the POWER it gives him. He does not care to see that he is actually helping the terrorist by doing so. American citizens will pay for his ego lust.

History is simply repeating itself.