The Answer to this Mess

Great Debates
21

I might, and you can bet it won’t be spelled out in a single paragraph, [choice wording removed for fear of moderator].

I see that Alessan has already shared a bit of info with you on the question of Israel, but let me add one otem there - the interest the U.S. has (as much of Europe does as well) is to protect access to Christian Holy sites, which will be very limited under the type of Radical control that is likely to step in if Israel was not there.

As far as the rest of your “solution”, you can talk about it very long term, and to varying degrees - to get out of oil dependancy would be great, and if you take a look, there are some serious discussions going on (one has been linked). However, you are not going to do it overnight, and not even over a decade - more like twenty years would be a good target - unless you are ready for drastic changes in life. To leave that out of the discussion is absurd. To just say that you can wave a magic wand and pull out of the Middle East is ridiculous on the face of it. You are pathetically weak in your arguments - sure it would be nice but please, put some serious logic behind it. It would also be nice if we all lived “like kings”, but limited resources, and all that, you know.

Puh-lease, why do I bother?

22

First - for the record, I am not portojohn or any other previous poster. I’m new. Thanks for the warm reception. Interesting that one of them got banned. I assume he was banned for expressing his beliefs. Is anyone in uncomfortable with banning someone for their beliefs? Sounds like something the Taliban would do.

It would seem that Alessian, whom Tradesilicon cites for the Israeli viewpoint, does not see a withdrawal of financial and military support from Israel as problematic. As far as needing a presence to protect the world’s access to holy sites throughout the world - I’m not sure that’s the proper function of our government, which, I am told, is not in the religion business. And who, by the way, elected us as the world’s policeman?

As for the rest of the region, I agree that an immediate withdrawal from the entire Middle East is not feasible, given the area’s instability and our dependency on the energy which flows from that unstable region. Our country is great at developing technology on a crash basis when needed to counter a threat [see, e.g., The Manhattan Project or Kennedy’s fulfilled pledge to put a man on the moon in ten years]. Where there is a will, there is a way. Right now, the will seems to be lacking, perhaps due to the fact that Big Oil’s best buddy is in the White House.

My point is that our government’s assessment of the appropriate response to recent events seems to be drop bombs and ‘stay the course’. Which means keeping a strong military presence in the Mid-east. Which does not seem to be going over very well with some of the more resourceful locals. I would prefer our leaders learn from the past, show a bit of that ‘vision thing’, and start moving in a direction that makes sense. Given our failure to stabilize the region by propping up shaky ‘good’ regimes with money and guns [see, e.g., the ex-Shah of Iran]and punishing ‘bad’ regimes with bombs and sanctions [see, e.g., the resilient Saddam Hussein], those efforts are doomed to failure.

The ‘War on Terrorism’ will be about as successful as our ‘War on Drugs’ or the ‘War on Poverty’. Either we develop an exit strategy from the Mid-East or we should get used to being targets of increasingly sophisticated weapons of mass destruction. Personally, I’ve seen enough footage of buildings in the US collapsing. I know more about anthrax than I ever wanted to know. I’m not interested in finding out what else they have in their bag of tricks.

Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. Plan for the inevitable dissolution of the Mid-east into chaos, make energy independence the highest government priority, and bring our boys and girls home.

23

When have Jews not been surrounded by enemies who want to wipe them out? The difference now…Israel’s got guns. :slight_smile: Your home, and the right to live as you want are probably two of the few things that ARE worth dying over. I think you have it backwards, though. They don’t hate the US because we support Israel. They hate Israel because it supports the US. Israel has a western culture and western values, and a lot of its enemies are enemies because of that.