Maybe I shouldn’t be posting at 4:30 AM, but…
Which news item are you talking about? Whose apologies are you expecting or demanding to hear? And who are you referring to as “assholes”?
flickster probably refers to http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/11/iraq.main/index.html (content may change; this URL looks generic. Headline at present is Web site says American captive beheaded - An al Qaeda-linked Web site showed video Tuesday of a man who identified himself as an American and then was beheaded.).
Sickening, and going to make a lot of people excuse torture of Iraquis 
We don’t care because we have a back-up plan.
During Republican convention in New York a caravan of camels will be “inexplicably” allowed to enter the city, set camp at Times Square, assemble a sizeable nuclear device and blow up the whole Manhattan Island.
That will get rid of Bush, make US the victim again and garner four times the international sympathy we get at the best of times. All this sympathy we can really squander.
But this time we won’t go after some stupid terrorists. This time we paint Antarctica red. This time we go after the penguins.
This looks like a perfect opportunity for the administration to start spinning about how the terrorists are evil and would have done things like this anyway. Which is true, but beside the point, since it only applies to the outright terrorists.
The point is a lot of people here seem to think that people in the ME can’t get any more radicalized or hate the US any more, so that anything we do is pretty much okay because they are all a bunch of crazies anyways. Which is dead wrong. The terrorists know that it is dead wrong: that is exactly why they are staging things like this.
AQ & the Iraqi terrorist had the perfect opportunity to take the high road in relation to world opinion considering the quagmire the US is in over treatment of Iraqi prisoners. However, AQ does not concern itself with world opinion. Their goals are termination of free societies and they are fueled by outright hate (IMHO).
We must be careful not to use a broad paint brush in painting all Iraqi citizens as having the same opinion.
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A poll about 9/11 won’t tell us anythng about the previous 40 years.
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You claimed 15-20%. Now it’s 7-20%. Make up your mind.
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You made the claim, why should I have to find the cite?
Absolutely correct!
??? Which army?
The perfect opportunity… wha? This is AQ, are you joking? Their whole purpose is to spread and incite horror, and they needed no excuses to do so. Heck, they were beheading people and murdering Americans before we even invaded Iraq: Al Qaeda’s behavior is nothing new. (of course, you can see right wing pundits almost chortling with glee that Berg was murdered so that they could change the subject from a losing battle)
That’s why, maybe, it would have been a good idea to make them a priority, instead of making our priority giving them everything they ever dreamed of and more.
I’m just curious how many folks who believe “The United States doesn’t have to care about how other countries feel about us, we can do everything by ourselves” actually do everything in their lives by themselves.
Grow your own food?
Make your own clothes?
Walk yourself to work?
Bathe in your own rainwater?
Clean out your own septic pit?
No idea what you are babbling about here. Whats this got to do with anything in this thread? Because we trade with other countries we should care enough about their opinions of our internal/external politics that we change them? :dubious: Why? Turn it around, again. Should THEY care about what WE think then, since they also buy and sell from us (and since most of ‘them’ have us as their major trading partner)? Of course not! One has nothing to do with the other.
Let me put this in some perspective rjung. The other nations of the world don’t trade with us because they love us. They trade with us because they want our money or they want our goods or services. They won’t stop trading with us because they hate us (i.e. their citizens are pissed off at us). They will continue to trade with us because they want our money or they want our goods or services. If they stop trading with us, their economies (and ours) will collapse. I suppose if they get REALLY pissed off enough they MIGHT boycott our goods (and probably face retaliation). Haven’t seen much of that though, so they must not be THAT pissed at us.
Definitely agree, if you are refering to us going into Iraq.
OK, how close to beheading someone should we come, since you seem to think that it is OK for us to abuse as long as ours less than theirs?
If you honestly believe that picking up and abusing or torturing, or whatever, persons A, B, C, and D is an adequate response to the actions of the entirely differenct persons W, X, Y and Z then I guess we don’t have a lot to discuss.
Well, its not as if americans arent concerned only about the opinions of people in other countries. Very many of us also arent concerned about the opinions of other americans.
Individualism is a large part of american culture, and a large part of individualism is ‘be yourself and screw what other people think’. I dont understand why anyone would think americans would react differently to world opinion than they would to local opinion.
If people in the local area all have a negative opinion of someone, its not uncommon and its rather admired for that person to ignore it and flaunt the very things that the locals make fun of or dislike. The attitude of many in the US towards the opinion of other countries just reflects this same attitude seen locally at an individual level all over.
Ive been to europe a few times, and yes Ive run into negative attitudes from europeans. Just as Ive been to the widwest many times and run into negative attitudes from midwesterners. And in either case, I dont care.
Im not going to apologize for anything Im not ashamed of, or for anything I dont see as wrong. Im just as proud of being from the US when Im in europe as I am from being from California when Im in the midwest.
How about, “You arrogant Americans can fight your own damn ‘war on terror’”, for starts? Kinda hard to get international support against terrorists if you end up pissing off your own allies.
Broadly speaking, there’s just no rational reason for the whole cock-eyed “we don’t care what others think of us” attitude. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking trade, or terrorism, or global warming, or whatever – the idea that the United States can accomplish its goals by recklessly snubbing 9/10ths of the planet is laughably juvenile.
You’ve got a point. Even if we could do it all by ourselves it would be much easier if we could work with others to accomplish common goals. Personally I don’t think the United States does all that bad a job of working with other nations to attain goals. While I recognize the importance of foreign attitudes towards the United States those attitudes must take a back seat to what we believe the right thing to do is.
Marc
Looks like the Vatican and the Italians are joining the bandwagon.
Given the nature of the Vatican to protect sexual abusers maybe the UN should intercede there as well.
Marc
Of course, their army is much smaller now.
Yeah, the Vatican can speak with REAL moral authority on sexual abuse, with their fine record … :rolleyes:
Your quite correct. The same can be broadly said about the US and any other nation on this planet so it kinda loses it’s strength.