Actually, most of this, I’ve said pretty explicitly, near the beginning of the OP.
There are of course different sects, and some are more radical than others, but we can’t just tell people to change their religion to suit our policy needs - much less being a foriegn country as we are. We can, however, tell everyone to keep their religion out of government policy.
There are a couple reasons why we need to do this with moderates as well as hardliners (in addition to followers of other religions). For one, the hardliners will never be wiling to espouse peace with the West if they feel they’re being treated unfairly. Also, it can be hard, sometimes impossible, to predict which factions are going to erupt, and which religious rules can be broken. Religion by its nature is irrational.
Also, philosophically, many of the apparent moderates agree with the basic tenets of hard-line Islam, but just haven’t thought through the full implications. It would be impossible to get any hard numbers on this, but given how uneducated, and in some cases brainwashed, the population is - and how low their logical standards can be (look at the Cartoon Crisis. Can you imagine what would happen to any of these people who advocated boycotting all of Denmark because of the actions of a few, if they decided to debate here on the SDMB?) - I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that this is a huge latent threat.
I’m sure whenever I say that most of the Muslim world is radicalized against the US, you can point to exceptions here and there. But I don’t think that changes my overall conclusions.
Have you ever tried to change a creationist’s mind?
I’m sure almost everyone in the Muslim world would condemn the violence of the Algerian Civil War. Plenty I’m sure agree (as would most of the US) with the right of the populace to rise up if the government refused to recognise the result of legitmate election, because they didn’t like the party that was getting elected. That doesn’t mean they agree with slitting the throats of whole villages of men, women and children.
Thats simple BS, and shows you either do not understand the issue or are diliberately distorting it to make your argument. All the main palestian terrorist organisations were, until advent of Hamas, a secular and left-leaning. In the early days of Hamas they were actually supported by Israel as an alternative to Fatah and the other secular palestinian organisations they considered there main enemy.
The US is deeply unpopular in the Muslim world, in particular, because of the ACTIONS of the US. Not because the entire muslim world is run by extremists. The invasion of Iraq was a gift to extremists and made moderates life much harder. This is where any comparison between the cold war and the war on terror (or the global struggle against extremism, or the long war, or the war against Eurasia or whatever its called this week) break down.
At the end of the day world wide public opinion did not effect the outcome of the cold war at all. The cold war finished as it did because politically and social conditions INSIDE the soviet union. If the soviet union had decided to reimpose its will on eastern europe in 1989, the west would have been as helpless to stop them as they had been in 1956. This is not true of the war on terrorism, the history of anti-terrorist strugles is a history of pyhric military victories that resulted in defeat because of their effect on public opionion (Easter rising in Ireland, Battler of Algiers, etc).
Well, okay, I’m not sure why they ally themselves with the left. But I still would consider them philosphically right-wing, unless they would really align themselves with Russia, Europe, Latin America, and other traditionally left-leaning places before they would the rest of the Muslim world (the idea that you should define one’s alliances by religion, rather than ideological similarity, is inherently right-wing.) But I don’t really see them taking any kind of hard line against Muslims, like they do with Israel.
The same goes for the terrorists (and those that support them) in Algeria, both in the 50’s and the 90’s. Are they really for democratic, anti-colonial rule, or is that just a shill for another agenda?
Re: your second post. First of all, as many people have correctly pointed out, terrorism is a tactic. If you’re going to look at history pre- about 1980, you would want to look at Islamic history, for the purposes of this discussion, rather than terrorist history.
Secondly, the Cold War was won because of conditions inside the USSR, but we helped created those conditions. Actually, to be very precise, we didn’t interfere with them creating themselves. I don’t think it’s fair to say that public opinion didn’t have anything to do with it: public opinion shaped the politics of the last half century that got them in that position.
Hamas is fairly right wing, at least on social issues, but that is NOT true for the main stream palestian factions. Fatah is philiosphically left/centrist, some of the other factions withing the PLO are out and out communists. Thats clear weakness in considering this “The Islamic World” as this monolythic entity, as you do. Its wrong to view even a tiny portion of the islamic world (e.g. palestinian factions) this way. And making decisions about it as if it was leads to insantity like the Iraq war.
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unless they would really align themselves with Russia, Europe, Latin America
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Not sure what you mean by this. But they WERE aligned with left-wing terrorists (red army faction, ETA, IRA) in other places for most of their history. In fact the current advanced IED used in Iraq could have come because of this relationship (http://www.nogw.com/download/2005_ira_bombs_iq.pdf).
In the 50’s no obviously, the campaign stopped when france withdrew (and many of those who fought the french are on the other side of situation now). As for the Algeria war of the 90’s, of course the terrorist themselves did :smack: That war was a model for subsquent Extremist Islamic campaigns. Your point ?
A few things here. First of all, the Israel issue was originally one of colonialism, where it was basically seen as a European settlement. After that, we sided with Israel during the Cold War against communism. During that time, we considered anyone with a ‘big-state’ philosophy to be leftist - which was a good approach for the time, but it left out right-wing big-government philosophies. When Iran had its revolution, we thought it was left-wing, even though there were conservative elements to their approach as well (which have since taken over.) So, in short, given the geopolitical environment, groups like Fatah could have been considered leftist at one point. This entire pan-Islamic movement is very new historically. Now, Hamas clearly has more legitimacy, and they are right-wing.
You’re also right that this is just a tiny portion of the Islamic world. Like a big abstract painting, many of these patterns only really start to come out when you look at it from a distance.
This just goes to prove my point. They’re happy to accept tactical aid from leftist groups. In fact, if they ever do get nuclear weapons, I expect they will do so from Russia, but that wouldn’t have anything to do with accepting a communist ideology. Whether they will cooperate with leftists if they have nothing to gain, much less if they have anything to lose, is an entirely different question.
I love this stuff. We supported Sadaam the terrible when he fought Iran. We armed him and Rumsfield was involved in selling the poisonous gas.
We helped overthrow Iran elected government because they were going to nationalize the oil companies. We installed the Peacock Throne and dictatorship prevailed. It was outr time to assist dictators who helped our oil companies.They diont hate us for our freedoms like Bush keeps saying. It was our deeds. If we acted properly ,even now .perhaps relations would improve.But the exploitation of the mid east must stop.
I’m not sure what we’re doing would really count as “exploitation.” For it to be exploitation, they would have to be acting in their own self-interest. But they’re not - putting religion into policy doesn’t help anybody. If people there aren’t doing it themselves, most of them are defending people that do.