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Obama Wins! Men & Race Superior To Women.

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Your Text: Insert Slimies » Insert UBB Code » Close Last Tag \| All Tags UBB Help	I've been reading and re-reading your post, Ram. I'm going to do my best to hit each of your key points. It's a very thoughtful post and you bring up a lot of excellent points. I'm very glad that you recognize that I'm not being taken for a ride but that I've come to these conclusions after careful consideration of what I believe to be the facts. I am always open to reconsidering my opinions but in order for there to be a different outcome I will certainly require very good reason as I'm sure you can agree. It's not like I expect you to just change your opinion overnight either. You say you cannot understand why I still support our actions and I can only try to explain it further. Do we understand why we were attacked? You, me and the rest of us disagree on the why. I am comfortable that I understand enough of why. In a nutshell, the United States is the biggest thing standing between the Islamists and where they want to be. I think they actually believed we would recoil from the horror of the attack and withdraw enough to allow them to consolidate power into a new caliphate in the ME. I think you echo part of this here: [quote] [b]Ramasax said:[/b] I tend to hold the view that OBL (if he is still even alive) and others like him are simply using religion as a means to an end. That end is driving out those who would oppress and hold back the Arab peoples of the region. [/quote] Why do they want this? For all the same reasons anyone in our history has sought world domination so that should come as no surprise. But their motivations have to be understood within the context of their world view and to say that radical Islam's religion is not a major motivating factor really misses the boat. We've got to jettison this idea of religion as some pie-in-the-sky masturbatory exercise and acknowledge its very real and major impact on people's lives and day to day actions. I would ask that you consider the possibility your own discomfort with religion may be shielding you from seeing how important it is to people like UBL. [quote] [b]Ramasax said:[/b] Does their idea of an Arab world ruled by Sharia law seem all that nice? No, but once the reasons for extremism are removed, they would become increasingly irrelevant, and their societies would eventually progress past these things and when they are ready culturally, they will have their freedom. That freedom will not be forced, to try and do so is insane. [/quote] Are you saying that freedom comes free of charge? Can you show any time in known history when the freedoms you and I enjoy emerged without significant sacrifice? I'll definitely require several examples of this if I'm to be persuaded on that point. My read of history shows me that no great strides forward in the cause of freedom came without sacrifice. Even our own civil rights movement begun with millions of dead Americans. Do you know that Lincoln was criticized much as Bush is today for carrying on with the war between the states? But how many people look back and would wish those gains away? I could go on for pages of examples of this. The idea of imposing freedom on the ME is bold, risky and perhaps insane (see the quote below about it also being arrogant). But it's precisely because of the following sentiment of yours that I believe it's justified and worthwhile: [quote] [b]Ramasax said:[/b] The healing of the region, on an individual and cultural level, needs to begin sometime, because to me this is the only way things will ever change. [/quote]You say my heart is in the right place and I believe yours is too. We clearly disagree on how to achieve healing. I believe that Al Qaeda and most of the regimes and monarchies of the Arab world (including Iran which is non Arab) are not too concerned about oppression of their peoples or the loss of life. As is usually the case with tyrants the people are only good for propping up the regime and not much else. I wanted to cite Charles Krauthammer on the state of the ME ( from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Krauthammer ): [quote] He supported the Iraq war on the ?realist" grounds of the strategic threat the Saddam regime posed to the region as UN sanctions were eroding and of his weapons of mass destruction; and on the "idealist" grounds that a self-sustaining democracy in Iraq would be a first step towards changing [b]the poisonous political culture of tyranny, intolerance and religious fanaticism in the Arab world that had incubated the anti-American extremism from which 9/11 emerged.[/b] ...and... On the eve of the invasion, Krauthammer wrote that [b]?reformation and reconstruction of an alien culture are a daunting task. Risky and, yes, arrogant.?[/b] In February 2004, Krauthammer cautioned that "it may yet fail. But we cannot afford not to try. There is not a single, remotely plausible, alternative strategy for attacking the monster behind 9/11. [b]It?s not Osama bin Laden; it is the cauldron of political oppression, religious intolerance, and social ruin in the Arab-Islamic world--oppression transmuted and deflected by regimes with no legitimacy into virulent, murderous anti-Americanism.?[/b] [/quote] ...I've simply got to post this now and work on the rest... . . . : [url=http://www.bugimus.com][img]http://www.bugimus.com/sigs/small-sig1.gif[/img][/url] : . . [url=http://www.bugimus.com/]Innervating Your Eyes & Mind[/url] : . . . [small](Edited by [url=http://www.ozoneasylum.com/user/16]Bugimus[/url] on 05-25-2008 05:14)[/small] Loading...
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