I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.
No nation has any right to have any presence in the Middel East then the Middle East itself.
Countries can however make agreements on certain issues. Yet that doesn’t give the country allowed to be present in a certain nation or region, the rigth at no matter what.
That is the difference between a civilized approach and the arrogant imperialism of the USA (but one can extrapolate that easily to the Western nations in general) when it comes to other nations then their own.
This is nothing new in history. Yet in this period of history this is what is done by the West since a few centuries.
I didn’t accuse you of anything; I said you “came across” as…
I’m not so long a member of this board so I don’t know the other members. I’m sorry if you felt insulted a bit by my approach. If so, I apologize.
Well, that issue is just the same as what goes on right now: it was not in the least about “those poor Kuwaitis”.
It was about Hussein making a grab at their natural resources who are considered by the West as being their own.
The main reason Hussein went through with this was strangely enough because he got a very tame reaction of the US when making it clear he planned to do this.
Until now there is no clear explanation why this happened, yet there is also no clear explanation why Hussein one fraction of a second thought the surrounding nations would let him get away with it. This invasion of Kuwait was in fact the greatest political blunder of his career and discredited him all over the region for good.
But to answer your question: No I couldn’t and still can’t support this action undertaken by the US, be it that they were at the time operating under the UN umbrella.
There could have been sought much harder for a diplomatic solution for this.
And not only that: the brutality, the cruelty and the mass murdering of the USA combined with the fact that they tried to use the Kurds and Shi’a to finish the job and have Hussein enthroned -what they actually couldn’t finish themselves without trespassing the UN mandate- and next letting Hussein slaughter them under their eyes, made me witness these developments with an absolute horror and disbelief.
Looking at this with the eyes of a historian I have the strong impression that on the contrary it would have been in the interest of the region and far beyond if the whole Western world wouldn’t have developped the Invading Colonial Disease.
From which the installation of Israel on the spot they finally decided to install it was one of the greatest blunders ever(not to speak of the incredible injustice).
And from which we see in and by the USA the latest Colonisation Eruption these days.
Yet one can’t re-write history.
Nevertheless I morally disagree with you that the interests of a nation should give that nation any right to act as if other nations have to serve them and can be invaded, robbed, slaughtered, disrupted, destabilized, in order to keep their economy going and their suppremacy secured.
Salaam. A
No insult felt and no need for an apology. 
On the contrary, I think we would entirely agree on that point.
As I said before, I entirely supported the liberation of Kuwait. I agree with you that there were unsatisfactory parts to the episode though.
Maybe I was mistken in using the word “right” in this context, it contains too many moral connotations. I believe that it is necesary for the US to be involved in the Middle East, from their own point of view and from the point of view of the region. The US can potentially play a great role in the region, in maintaining stability, solving some of the long standing problems and promoting a better future for the people of the region. For that to happen will require great leadership of a kind which the US does not look capable of providing at the moment though.
I do not feel that a US policy of isolationism at this stage would be sustainable from their own point of view or be desirable for the rest of the world. That applies to any region of the world.
I understand that the USA needs to be invlved in some parts of the Middle East, but is it really ok to build MacDonalds there, that is one thing that the Middle East hate, the USA trying to spread themselves to the Middle East, they hate that fact the the USA is making money of them, they tollerate the oil and shipping routes to a certain extent but it is the thing like MacDonalds that really make them angry.
If McDonalds really made the population angry, people wouldn’t go there and it wouldn’t be successful. Since McDonalds are expanding and have a huge patronage overseas, it seems to indicate that the populations enjoy eating there. Since no one is forcing people to eat there, it would seem to invalidate your premise, that the local populations don’t like McDonalds.
Clearly, some people are upset that there are McDonalds in various countries around the world, but you make a huge unsubstantiated leap in logic to therefore conclude that the majority of people don’t like McDonalds.
I did not mean it to sound like i was saying that everyone in the middle east hates MacDonalds, because i am not stupid and i know that it is not true.
What i was saying was that the USA should be careful where it spreads its wings, many people in much of the Middle East are anti-american to begin with, so when they see a MacDonalds built in their town the large amount of anti-americans will be very angry.
magic - People in this thread seem to be asking you to back up your assertions with cold hard cited facts. When you do not back up your assertions you come across as just babbling things you think are correct. When really you have not done enough research and/or looked in the right places for factual information. And I’m not talking about logging on to CNN either.
Take it easy, do some reading, and please for the love of Allah preview your posts for spelling. It’s really difficult to read something that looks like it was written by a 4th grader.
Exactly. You know what the coffeehouses in NY did now that there’s so many Starbucks there’s places you can sit in one and see another one out the window?
Instead of just whining, although there was and is whining, they improved their products, broadened their offerings, cleaned up and made their decor and atmosphere unique, while consistently keeping their prices a dollar or so lower. Some of them have regular music and poetry, etc. Yes, some have gone out of business, but Starbucks has so increased the lure of coffeehouses in general that now there’s enough business for all of them.
So, instead of sitting in water-pipe cafes complaining about McDonald’s, maybe these folks should pool what little money they have and make a native burger joint that has its own style and lower prices and can compete, not on volume of course, but on quality and character. I take it I don’t have to point out some basic things like the fact that all McDonald’s worldwide are owned and staffed by locals, that the menu is always tailored to native tastes, and that they didn’t become what they are by staying in places where they don’t make money so if people don’t want them to stay, they can stay the hell away.
There’s a French Muslim guy who’s started a pretty successful company called Mecca Cola, as an alternative to Coke. Although some of his customers seem a bit smug about “fighting The Man” by not buying his sugar water, that’s the sort of thing I’m talking about. Rather then get angry, get competitive!
Whoops, need cites
From the Beeb.. 10% of the profits go to (non terrorist related) Palestinian charities, another 10% go to European NGO’s.
Finally, their main site.
Yes, some of the owner’s statements rub me the wrong way, but Magicman, don’t you think this is a better tactic than terrorism?
Besides, the only way to stop American companies from going to the Middle East would be a widespread embargo like Cuba and North Korea gets. Do you think the ME deserves that? No more Microsoft computers, no more sneakers, no more American cars, no more books or TV shows or music from the one remaining world superpower? How would that help?
Then perhaps you should take more care in selecting your words. Based on what you’ve written so far, there was no way for me to figure out what you meant.
Who is this USA of which you speak? The McDonalds corperation? The local investors who build and own the restaurant? The US Government which has no control over where international companies build and invest?
Basically you are saying that even if 90% of the population wants to have McDonalds and Coke and Nikes because they like the products, the products are better than other things offered locally, and are willing to spend their own money to get them, these companies shouldn’t sell their products because a vocal 10% is willing to use violence to stop them.
While it certainly pays to be aware and concious of local sentiments and “street”, you are basically allowing one group of people to dictate what others get access to. The threat of violence shouldn’t be the final arbitor of where commercial activity is set up.