Kasz216 said:
akuma587 said:
My point on the Gulf War is more that we left troops stationed on holy land after the war was over, which REALLY pissed a lot of people off. That is why Osama bin Laden, who supported and fought with the support of the US before then, became a terrorist. Its really risk to leave troops in a foreign country, ESPECIALLY when religion gets involved. This was really one of the core reasons behind the big rise in Jihad in the last decade or two.
The Iran Contra thing was just bad all around.
I am not in the least bit surprised we have been messing around in the Middle East that long either for political or finacial reasons or both.
I agree the USSR was a a horrible regime, but I guarantee relations between the US and the USSR would have been a lot smoother if we were mutually dependent on each other's economies.
A modern corollary is the US and China. China still does a lot of questionable things, and their record on human rights and abiding by a modern standard of law in which people aren't unreasonably accused of things they didn't commit and given almost no chance to exonerate themselves is just plain awful. Hell, if you deny that you committed a crime they take it like you have insulted the government in claiming that the government could make a mistake. This is gradually improving, but there is still a lot of work to do.
The US does plenty of questionable things too, for that matter, we just see things through our own form of shaded goggles.
But the US and China get along pretty well. You know why? Because our economy's are intertwined. We can't fuck with them and they can't fuck with us because it will fuck both of us. That is really the best part of the global free market. This is why we really don't even need to get involved militarily in the Middle East. Its like trying to build a network of ropes that bind you together with a hammer. Its just not the most effective way to do it.
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Eh I'm going to have to ask for a source on that one. Aside from which... he was a terrorist when he was fighting with the US too.
He was really just pissed the US stole his oppurtunity to get in big and gain influence in the government.
The US was an easy target to bolster recruits when his failing terrorist cell was falling apart and needed a new influx of troops.
He doesn't hate America.(not anymore then the rest of the non islamists anyway) He's an opurtunist.
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Fair enough, I can't really find any information that he received money directly from America. He did receive a lot money from the Saudis though, who the US supported.
But the argument I was making doesn't need the Osama bin Laden connection. People who put a face on terrorism really misunderstand the roots of terrorism. Its the concept of Western interventionism that really upset people, and turned people who would otherwise be law-abiding citizens into terrorists. It pisses people off when they feel like their rights are being trampled on.
A great parallel example is the US after the French and Indian War. The British literally came over to fight the war for us and won the war for us. They saved our ass! But what did we do? They left troops on our soil so that future attacks would not occur, and this really pissed us off. And this was even without any kind of religious our larger ideological debate between the cultures. We were even technically their own colony, so it was totally normal for them to station troops on our land.
Leaving troops on foreign soil generally pisses those people off even if the intentions were good, which is why military force is really an ineffective way to bridge gaps between different countries and different cultures.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
