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eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
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QotD

posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:26am on 2007-09-11

"Tragically for America and the world, George Bush's 'war on terror' approach walked directly into the trap the terrorists set for us. Islamic extremists wanted to frame the conflict with the U.S. as a war of civilizations, and the Bush Administration, stuck in a Cold War mentality, happily complied." -- John Edwards, "A New Strategy Against Terrorism", 2007-09-07 ( thanks to [info] twistedchick for linking to the speech)

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There are 4 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 

(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] flaviarassen.livejournal.com at 02:01pm on 2007-09-12
Except that it IS a clash of cultures/civilizations, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. They will not stop until they are crushed or they crush us, and, frankly, I vote for them to be crushed. And yes, I know a lot of innocents will get killed, but, when push comes to shove, I also vote for their innocents rather than ours. It is going to come down to survival, and the sooner we face it, the better.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] dptwisted.livejournal.com at 09:38pm on 2007-09-12
It is, but not in the way you think, IMHO. I think the real struggle is between secular Muslims and fundamentalist Muslims*. The extremists have figured out that they'll never get rid of the secular governments in their countries without removing the support of their backers, i.e., the West. Except for a few nuts who truly want world Islam, for the most part, they just want us to get the hell out of there and let them form strict Islamic states. Unfortunately, history is on their side. It's not that unusual to make an invading force decide that it's not worth it to stick around (see: India, China, Afghanistan [vs. Russians], etc.) In this case, it's not the military that they necessarily need to get rid of, it's the big companies. If they can make it too expensive for them to continue their investments in the Middle East, they win.

* in American terms, "secular" would be a government run by the Christian Coalition, and "fundamentalist" would be a government run by the Puritans.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] flaviarassen.livejournal.com at 06:17pm on 2007-09-13
You're going to have to excuse me, but I can't see any differences in the Puritans and Christian Coalition, insofar as the way they would run a government.

And you are only thinking of Iraq. World terrorism is not about Iraq.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] dptwisted.livejournal.com at 09:44pm on 2007-09-13
Oh, trust me, the Puritans would consider Pat Robertson a pinko commie liberal.

We had military and business in the Middle East long before the Iraq Fiasco, so, no I'm not thinking just of Iraq.

Lemme put it like this. Joe Islamic Extremist sees his traditional way of life being consumed by Western capitalism. His mosque is surrounded by McDonalds, Old Navy, and Starbucks. The women have forgone their burqas in favor of Levis. And this pisses him the hell right off. On top of that, his government is being run by rich slobs who claim to be pious followers of Muhammed, but he sees that they prostrate themselves before the oil companies. It doesn't help that these are all gazillionaires while JIE makes substantially less than US minimum wage.

So, he resorts to suicide bombings in the hope that Starbucks will get tired of rebuilding store after store and move along. On a larger scale, they hope to get the US tired of the whole thing and withdraw from the region, which will make the indolent sheiks easy targets.
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