alphieb said:
They just LOVE to HATE us. Why is that, Israel, religion or jealousy or all of the above. Is there any other nation full of so much hate?
No. There is no other region on earth like this.
All of the above. We are a threat to their religion in that we have progressed and prospered. We have done this despite the fact that we are "infidels." This is a smack to them. Imagine if Christianity's God taught us that all non believers are doomed to failure, yet we watch all others prosper as we suffer decade after decade. Our support of Israel is a factor, however when a democratic nation supports the single democratic nation in the region...I don't think we are doing anything we shouldn't. But the most encompassing and wide sentiment in the Middle East is jealousy. It is a natural human condition for all of us to feel jealousy from time to time. But when an entire civilization embraces it..it is tragic - likewise when they embrace the butchers that have made a gory mess of their religion. Their civilization cannot compete with the west on any front and it is thrown in their faces daily. There is no trade...industry...pride. There is a low value placed on education. Aside from Israel, there isn't one world class university in the Middle East. The free flow of information is confined to what "holy" men and Al-Jazeera tells them. Though it doesn't do it justice..a very simple reference would be if America only had FOX news to watch and thousands of Pat Robertsons taking the most cruelest junctions in the Bible and dictating what "God" wants to us with absolutely no other means of information or influence of other cultures and religions - not praying is a crime. They are domineered by a brutal religion. It is not the Islam that is reflected in the rest of the world. They suffer the subjegation of women. This is about power and the complete equality of gender is a direct attack on the Arab's sense of self. Ironically, Muhammed preached equality between man and woman. What is also ironic is how the hardliners of the Middle East preach against "infidels" attacking their religion, but in fact, it is them and their extrermists who are the true blasphemers against Islam and Muhammed.
When celebrities and well meaning officials say that Islam is not the problem...they are utterly wrong. All religions have gone through desperate and dark times. Christianity did it during the 16th century in Europe. Jews waged war over the contents of the communion cup. America has conquered, for the most part, religious persecution in our lands, but we forget that in the beginning the word of God was brought to the people by a breach loaded rifle. Islam is struggling for an identity today. Islam is as diverse as Christiandom, but this particular civilization has embraced the notion of the sanctity of their "martyrs." We can no longer accept that all religions go through a struggling period and wait for them to figure things out for themselves - not when the weapon of choice has gone from the sword or rifle to the bomb of nuclear bomb. We forget that Islam is one of the youngest of the world's great religions and no time in history has a religious crisis been so dangerous to other cultures and we are foolish if we do not give this religion every chance to survive into a peaceful religion rather than the image of a hang mans noose. Their passed down traditions simply do not work in the 21st century. Instead of rolling up their sleeves and going to work, they want everybody else to digress to them and their extremists are determined. This civilization has not digressed because of progress, but in spite of it. Religions change because men change them. All civilizations have had to deal with changing their religions to reflect progress within our societies. We no longer believe that the world is flat or that the planets are Gods. The Muslims in the Middle East refuse to let go of their past and progress their faith, thereby, stagnating their society and blaming us for the result.
Despite all of these truths, they are unable to accept responsibility for it. In the Middle East, "blame" is the narcotic of choice. It allows them to place responsibility on other's shoulders. To them, it is not their Arab elite, Khomeinis, Khudafis, Saddams, etc. that have done this to them. We are. We are the ones that have hijacked their religion. We are the one's that told the Arab elite to squander their people's resource money on themselves. We told them to refrain from building schools, infrastructure, and technology. The Middle Eastern populations have blown it. In a hundred years they are a civilization that cannot even build a car and there is no good reason for it. The truth is that our only guilt in this is that we have looked the other way while all of this has occurred. We have ignored the hate speech taught to their children by the duplicity of men we call insist are our "friends." As long as the oil flowed, we have allowed them the use of us as a scapegoat. Greed drives the Arab elite to ignore their people and their lands. If the Middle Eastern Arab could, he would steal the air itself and charge the poor for breathing. I find it poetic justice that they have had to chase down their own creations in their own country over the last few years. These words are harsh, but by no means racist. There are much more good Muslims in the Middle East than there are bad, but make no mistake, the amount of bad is large and they are all, good and bad, subjected to the above. It is the reality of this region. Saddm, Bin Ladden, Khomeini, and all terrorists and terror groups are mere symptoms of decay. The result of all of this is Islamic extremism focused on an imagined enemy.
f course,in the short term we can only gain a government under the protect of the American troops,although people can cheat themselvs by announcing that it's built up by election.I hope the government will throw off the influence of the U.S. completely someday in future so that the U.S. and Iraq could benefit each other in an equal way.
