I pit the statement from the US Embassy in Cairo

Well, I stand corrected, this is the guy (Sam Bacile) who should be sent to the embassy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/09/12/romney-calls-obama-response-to-libya-attacks-disgraceful/

They have oil, we have money. Other countries have (less) money; Venezuela, Alaska, Texas and Russia all have oil. Besides, it’s time we moved away from hydrocarbons anyway.

And I don’t really want Arab & Persian cultures to go away. They can visit us any time as long as they play by our rules when they’re here, and we can promise to just not pay them any more visits. Unless they’re asking for it.

Actually, although it’s likely to turn on economic issues, if he handles it in a sufficiently ham-handed manner, it could cost him the election. It’s not very likely at all, though, that he’d fuck it up that badly. I wouldn’t go getting my hopes up over it…

The point about wolves at the gates is well taken here. I hadn’t thought of it that way.

And last year a local government appears to have made up a threat to keep Rushdie from showing up at a literary festival close to an election. Yes, it’s disgusting.

That’ll show them for being bloodthisty crazy- wait a minute.

Anyway Obama has, of course, made a much stronger statement in response to the assassination of the ambassador and the other embassy workers. The Libyan government is not happy about this turn of events and several officials have also apologized and condemned the violence, which naturally is also killing Libyan civilians.

The Islamic world needs a huge lesson in DNFTT. If they didn’t go apeshit every time some idiot did something offensive there would be far fewer offenses.

They’re fucking rich morons.

FIFY

I’m pretty sure that we spent the entire Cold War dealing with the various communist states in all ways possible, from diplomatically to trading with them (I remember a Khrushchev quote about the West selling the rope that would hang them).

As a point of discussion, let’s look how well a policy of near total disengagement has worked with the two examples I can think of - North Korea and Cuba. After 50+ years of US sanctions and embargos, both are now prosperous, open democracies.

As noted by other posters, secularization doesn’t guarantee a society free of violence and oppression. There’s a spectrum of forms of secular society from the humane and liberated to the repressive and tyrannical, just as there is for forms of religious society.

In particular, there’s no reason to imagine that the imposition of secularization by foreign military might would be particularly good for the cause of freedom and peace.

Libya, where this outrage took place, is not strictly speaking a subset of “Arab culture”, nor is it significantly related to “Persian culture”. It’s a North African country with a blend of Arab and Berber ethnicities, cultures and languages.

I don’t think there’s a simple or easy description or solution for the problem of violent Islam, and I don’t think that broad-brush characterization of a vaguely defined cultural or religious designator as “the enemy” is much help in understanding the problem.

Mhm. I think the technical term for this is “stepping in it.”

I’m going to assume that your suggestion that Barack Obama make himself the enforcer for religious terrorists didn’t sound quite so retarded in your head.

There is no historical reason to believe freeing slaves was a good idea or going to the moon was possible until it happened. As I said, the changes that happened in the Christian world have left the Muslim world behind. We have to live in the same world as them and should treat the scourge of backwards Islamic governments the same as we treated the great scourge of Stalinist style Communism.

What millions would die? I’m not advocating we invade any Muslim country, and unless millions of us were in their countries they have absolutely no means to kill millions of us. He’s an imbecile if he believes otherwise.

If they might killing millions of each other–I consider that part of the intended results of treating Islamic states the same way we treated Communist states during the Cold War.

Most Islamic countries do significant trade and receive significant aid from the free world. The USSR and the Eastern Bloc never would have failed if the West was propping them up.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter did lots of things, but it didn’t make fun of him. In fact the author of the book was a huge admirer of the man.

So you’ll be getting rid of your car, I assume?

Seriously, probably the single best thing we could do to reduce our entanglement with undemocratic Islamic societies is to control our petroleum addiction.

Libya, for example, is estimated to have the fifth-largest oil reserves in the world. Do you really think the US is going to abandon diplomatic engagement with Libya under these circumstances, or with any other of the undemocratic Islamic oil-producing states that we now deal with?

Surely not Persian. Arab enough to be a member of The League of Arab States, to be included in the context of “Arab countries,” to name Arabic as its official language, and to jump on the Anti-West bandwagon whenever there is some kind of military or political action on Middle Eastern turf. Iraq isn’t purely Arabic either, nor is Egypt for that matter. I know it’s fun to do, but must we split hairs? Libya is, for all intents and purposes, as Arabic as Hawaii and Alaska are American.

And while it may not be helpful in solving problems, I fail to see the harm in returning the sentiment when someone calls you their enemy.

We barely get any of our oil from OPEC these days, these continual statements about oil and the Muslim world are based on 1980s and 1990s realities and ignore the booming oil production and natural gas production going on in the West. Love or hate Mitt Romney his goal of energy independence by 2020 is actually very realistic, and total independence from direct trade with OPEC countries even more so.

Your entire post was filled with bigoted ignorant bullshit, but this statement quite possibly takes the cake.
Until rather recently, virtually of the of majority Muslim countries in the Middle East were ruled by secular dictatorships propped up by either the West or the Soviet bloc. That, along with the failure of Arab nationalism as practiced by Nasser, Arafat, and many others is what gave rise to radical Islam.

I’d recommend actually visiting the region or at least reading up on it before shooting off your mouth and hitting your foot.

I meant to specifically talk about Persian Gulf countries, which supply something like 15% or less of our total oil supply (fluctuates, obv) and not OPEC as a whole, which isn’t limited to the Persian Gulf or the Muslim world in general.

We import more oil from the Netherlands than we do from Libya, for example.

Again, this post shows jaw-dropping ignorance about the region.

The overwhelming majority of government in the Middle East are as secular as most European governments.

Iran and Saudi Arabia are the exceptions not the rule.

In fact, Turkey is vastly more of a secular government than Canada or most of Europe.

No, what gave rise to radical Islam is an entire population of extremely ignorant, uneducated people. Islam has produced garbage society and its people are garbage, they are ignorant and anti-education and this has caused a centuries long stagnation of all of their cultures. From the heights of the Ottoman Empire Islam has caused an intellectual and social decay that has made Muslim countries a backwards, barbaric, imbecilic laughing stock. Pathetic, grotesque, weak and stupid compared to even the most backward Western country.

These people are little better than our animal forebears and should not be considered as rational humans. They were raised irrationally and think irrationally, and are incompatible with our modern world. They should be segregated from the modern world and punished at every turn. I’d start with destroying all their water and electric facilities, as they do not deserve the benefit of modern utilities. We can let all their well trained engineers and scientists rebuild them.