Whose decision making is more reasonable than ours?
Lots of folks' decision making is emminently more reasonable than ours.
The decision making that cheered in the streets following 9/11?
Not only reasonable, but warranted. There's a reason that much of the world hates America, and it isn't because we have freedoms that they do not (which is for the most part not true anyway).
Again, both reasonable and warranted in light of the circumstances. His demands were not at all unreasonable or unjustified, except possibly his demand that the middle east adopt Shari'a as law.
The Iranian support of various terrorist organizations/activities?
Not entirely reasonable, and sometimes not warranted.
And various other little things. Yep, I would agree that actions do speak louder than words.
It follows, then, that the only thing we have to do is examine all the relevant actions by all parties. Americans are kept shielded, by and large, from the knowledge of actions carried out in their name. However, once you come to understand the sheer horror and monumental injustice we have brought the rest of the world, things like the 9/11 attacks fade into insignificance. We deserve worse.
This may seem like a remarkable thing to say, especially from someone who has everything to lose from another such attack. But let's consider a couple things--the first being that it's human nature to not accept the idea that one deserves any kind of negative consequences. Back when I managed several hundred people, I had to fire at least one person every week (on average). I didn't like doing it, but when someone's performance on the job warranted that they be let go, I didn't farm the matter out.
I never once came across anyone who thought they deserved to be fired. I caught people stealing cash from a register, committing timeclock fraud, failing to show up for their shift repeatedly, arriving drunk or stoned for work, destroying company property for nothing more than amusement, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Some of the things I saw during that time really gave me pause about human nature. But every single one of those people (some of whom--those that stole--I sent to jail) believed that they did not deserve to be fired. A disinterested party can look at an instance of malfeasance--say, someone being late for work repeatedly--and can see that the person in question deserves some kind of reprimand. But that same disinterested party will, if confronted with their own malfeasance, rationalize endless reasons why
they do not deserve punishment. If we were to lay our actions abroad (especially our economic actions) before the American people, but we said they were committed by, say, the Swiss, there would be a call for destroying Switzerland. The minute we attribute those actions correctly, however, we end up with a near-infinite list of reasons why
we ought to be allowed to do those thing, and why
we ought to 'scape whipping because of it.
Consider that hijacking an airplace and piloting it into a building is an extreme act. How many people reading this post would have the resolve required? And what would it take to motivate someone to do such a thing? Try to imagine yourself doing this--spend some time with it and really try to visualize what it must be like to even board a plane knowing that your life will end within the hour by actions that you plan to commit. Anyone who could do that must either be insane or motivated by factors that most of us could scarcely imagine.
We do not want to consider what we've done to the rest of the world, but we've created our enemies. If you want to understand the extent of what we've done, I recommend a few books:
1) "When Corporations Rule the World" by David Korten. I've harped on this book at length elsewhere on these forums.
2) "Crossing the Rubicon" by Michael Ruppert. Ruppert sometimes gets a little paranoid, but he researches well and sources meticulously. Even disregarding his polemics, he makes a solid case that Western Governments are now, and have been for a long time, run by literal sociopaths.
3) "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond. An account of how the West managed to rule and exploit everyone else. Useful mainly as background.
4) "Hopeful Harvest" by Jane Goodall. The politics of the world food supply ought to make one sick.
5) "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" by John Perkins. This is actually something of a limited hangout, but what it exposes is quite bad enough.
And there's plenty more material available. Essentially, we've established a system whereby the rest of the world is made to suffer unspeakably for our benefit. We will be paying for this soon enough.
Whereas, to wisely get to the root of and destroy the evolutionally retarded ideology of the trouble makers in the Middle East, America deposes a two-bit petty dictator and uses his ground as a base to do it.
I'm not sure what to make of the phrase "evolutionally retarded." Do you mean that people in the middle east are so retarded that they can't understand the theory of evolution? Or do you mean that evolution is slower in the middle east? Or that evolution has led to an abnormal concentration of retarded people in the middle east? Or something else? Clear that up, and I'll respond at more length. In the meantime, I will simply say that you ignore the very real human cost of what we've done, and the injustice of it. We were not justified in invading Iraq or, it turns out, Afganistan.
So your comparing removing a murdering dictator to nuclear destruction.
No, I made no such comparison. I said that we had committed considerable evil by the indiscriminate killing of civilians by conventional means, whereas Iran hasn't invaded any countries recently and killed any civilians.
considering you feel that killing civilians in terrorist attacks is warranted, this post doesn't surprise me
It's warranted in very extreme circumstances. We turn out to be living in times where those circumstances obtain. I wish that weren't the case.
Why are you comparing DU which is essentially harmless (thats why it's caled "depleted". My understanding is the radoactive isotope is removed leaving its virtually harmless. And you again make an absurd comparison to this and detonating a nuclear weapon.
DU turns out not the be entirely harmless (in ways other than the obvious--that is, I mean it causes more harm than that caused by the kinetic act of hurling it towards a target at great speeds). It isn't completely non-radioactive, and we've used so much of it that low levels of radioactivity are endemic to certain parts of Iraq. It poisons the water, causes crops to fail, and makes people and animals sick.
I did not mean to compare this to detonating a nuclear weapon per se; I did mean to suggest that we're causing great harm to Iraqi civilians needlessly. I further mean to suggest that in the final analysis, we'll have turned out to have killed far more innocent civilians than detonating a nuclear bomb will do.
That said, I hope a nuclear bomb is not detonated. I hope that people will come to their senses and stop killing each other. I just don't think that's likely to happen.