"Why Do They Hate US?"

Ik heb altijd geleerd. Never talk about money, politics and religion. Zit je altijd goed:grijns:

Korte reactie grotendeels vanwege 5 glazen sambuca en dus moe.
 
Q-nimbus said:
Mochten we over een paar jaar de olie in Yuan betalen, zou je het dan ook begrijpelijk vinden dat we China aanvallen? Irak en China zijn natuurlijk niet te vergelijken, maar het is hetzelfde principe.
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Onze euro is niet afhankelijk van de olie, de dollar wel. Verder zal Amerika er inderdaad voor zorgen dat het niet zover zal komen, with all means necessary...

Amerika is een land waar de economie ook afhankelijk lijkt van oorlog. De wapenindustrie is een van de grootste industrieën in hun land en ik kan me niet herinneren wanneer ze voor het laatst nergens in een vorm van oorlog betrokken waren.
 
Victory

Victory

Vraag aan jou, waarom zijn we in Irak?

We gingen er toch heen omdat er massa vernietigingswapens zouden zijn, of was het omdat Sadam terroristen steunden???

Interesting read:

Politics sometimes manages to muddle the obvious. The war in Iraq, authorized by three quarters of the Senate, was launched in response to Saddam Hussein's refusal to abide by 17 United Nations resolutions- and by the fact that Saddam Hussein clearly supported terror movements around the world. We never argued that he played a role in 9/11; political opponents manufactured the claim to question the President's intergrity.
Politics has muddled another fact: Our enemies started fighting long before 2001. Terrorists bombed the WTC in 1993.They hit the Kobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, US Embassies in East Africa in 1998 and the USS Cole in 2000. All the while, Osama Bin Laden was advocating war against the US and building a terror network from camps in Afghanistan.
The most astonishing argument is the claim the US (or Bush administration) is responsible for this terror wave. Terrorists are resposible for terror, period.
The al-Qaeda of 2001 no longer exists.
We've killed or captured two-thirds of its senior leadership. The new National Intelligence Estimate says our nation has become a tougher target. That's because our government has adopted aggressive measures to gather intelligence, protect Americans and strike enemies before they can strike us.
Al-Qaeda doesn't have the strength it had six years ago, but it remains committed to killing Americans. It also wants to find a safe heaven, as it had in Afghanistan. It sees Iraq as its best hope. It wants to topple Iraq's emerging democracy and establish a base of operations in a land with vast oil reserves.
More than anything, al-Qaeda wants the US to leave Iraq and hand victory to the terrorists. But it will not succeed. Recent military action has inflicted serious damage on al-Qaeda in Iraq and has inspired a growing numbers of Iraqis to fight al-Qaeda. That vindicates the President's faith in liberty as a common inheritance of mankind.
Iraq and Afghanistan are theaters in the fight against terror that has spread through Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Asia. To deny al-Qaeda victory in Iraq sends the message that terrorism will fail and democracy prevail. Victory in Iraq will mark the beginning of the end of the global war on terror.

Courtesy of Tony Snow
 
...and by the fact that Saddam Hussein clearly supported terror movements around the world. We never argued that he played a role in 9/11...
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Tenenkrommend.

De rest van het artikel snijdt enigzins hout, maar deze specifieke argumentatie haalt alles onderuit.

Saddam heeft (had), niets, maar dan ook NIETS met terroristen te maken. Bin Laden heeft hoogst persoonlijk gezegd dat hij Saddam een slechte moslim vindt. Iets ergers is er niet in de ogen van Bin Laden, dus hij zal nooit zaken doen met zo iemand. Sterker nog, toen Irak Kuwait binnen viel, was Bin Laden de EERSTE die zijn Mujahedeen leger aanbood om Irak binnen te vallen. Ze hadden net de Russen Afghanistan uitgeknikkerd, dus ze hadden toch niets te doen.

Als je denkt dat Saddam met terrorisme heeft te maken ben je dom, onwetend en/of goedgelovig. Iets anders kan ik er niet van maken.

Het feit dat Al Qaida voet aan de grond probeert te krijgen in Irak, staat buiten kijf. Desalniettemin denk ik dat Al Qaida zo verzwakt is dat ze dat niet lukken. Er is ook geen sprake van centraal georganiseerd verzet in Irak; het zijn allemaal splintergroeperingen die onafhankelijk van elkaar operen, niet onder de paraplu van Al Qaida.

Al Qaida = dood. Nu de ideologie bestrijden, maar dat lukt niet met oorlog.
 
Nog een kleine toevoeging:

Saddam heeft wel degelijk 'terroristische' organisaties gesteund: de Palestijnse.

Maar zoals een veel slimmer iemand dan ik al eens eerder opmerkte: het verschil tussen een terrorist en een vrijheidsstrijder hangt er van af aan welke kant je staat. In de Palestijnse Zaak ga ik voor het laatste :biertje:

Gr.

Arabist Q-Nimbus. (heerlijke discussies!)
 
Grappig dat in het eerste artikel het woord 'Realpolitik' gebruikt wordt. Dit verwijst naar het Duitsland van voor de eerste wereldoorlog. Het is bekend wat er met dit land gebeurd is door die oorlog.

Verder denk ik dat het verhaal veel simpeler is. Verder is over de laatste 150 jaar ofzo het altijd de buitenland politiek van de US geweest, om steeds een nieuwe vijand aan te wijzen/te creeëren. Begonnen met de Engelsen, vervolgens de Duitsers. Toen lag de globale economie even op zijn gat en kwamen de Nazi's aan bod. Toen de Japanners, vervolgens de Russen en nu de terroristen. Zolang de USA nog een van de grootste wapenhandelaars is ter wereld, varen ze er wel bij. Als machtigste land in de wereld, heb je een vijand nodig.

Mogelijk heeft men zich in deze laatste vergist, de tijd zal het leren. Misschien is het eerlijker om te zeggen dat over pakweg 150 jaar de USA niet meer de machtigste natie op aarde is. Niet door het globale terrorisme, maar doordat andere landen (China, Oost Europa, het Midden Oosten) haar voorbij streven.
 
Een artikel van de Britse journalist Tony Parsons. Ik ben het niet overal mee eens, maar het is een mooi artikel, en godzijdank zonder patriotic crap:

ONE year ago, the world witnessed a unique kind of broadcasting - the mass murder of thousands, live on television.
As a lesson in the pitiless cruelty of the human race, September 11 was up there with Pol Pot's mountain of skulls in Cambodia, or the skeletal bodies stacked like garbage in the Nazi concentration camps.

An unspeakable act so cruel, so calculated and so utterly merciless that surely the world could agree on one thing - nobody deserves this fate.

Surely there could be consensus: the victims were truly innocent, the perpetrators truly evil.

But to the world's eternal shame, 9/11 is increasingly seen as America's comeuppance.

Incredibly, anti-Americanism has increased over the last year.

There has always been a simmering resentment to the USA in this country - too loud, too rich, too full of themselves and so much happier than Europeans - but it has become an epidemic.

And it seems incredible to me. More than that, it turns my stomach.

America is this country's greatest friend and our staunchest ally. We are bonded to the US by culture, language and blood.

A little over half a century ago, around half a million Americans died for our freedoms, as well as their own. Have we forgotten so soon?

And exactly a year ago, thousands of ordinary men, women and children - not just Americans, but from dozens of countries - were butchered by a small group of religious fanatics. Are we so quick to betray them?

What touched the heart about those who died in the twin towers and on the planes was that we recognised them. Young fathers and mothers, somebody's son and somebody's daughter, husbands and wives. And children. Some unborn.

And these people brought it on themselves? And their nation is to blame for their meticulously planned slaughter?

These days you don't have to be some dust-encrusted nut job in Kabul or Karachi or Finsbury Park to see America as the Great Satan.

The anti-American alliance is made up of self-loathing liberals who blame the Americans for every ill in the Third World, and conservatives suffering from power-envy, bitter that the world's only superpower can do what it likes without having to ask permission.

The truth is that America has behaved with enormous restraint since September 11.

Remember, remember.

Remember the gut-wrenching tapes of weeping men phoning their wives to say, "I love you," before they were burned alive. Remember those people leaping to their deaths from the top of burning skyscrapers.

Remember the hundreds of firemen buried alive. Remember the smiling face of that beautiful little girl who was on one of the planes with her mum. Remember, remember - and realise that America has never retaliated for 9/11 in anything like the way it could have.

So a few al-Qaeda tourists got locked without a trial in Camp X-ray? Pass the Kleenex.

So some Afghan wedding receptions were shot up after they merrily fired their semi-automatics in a sky full of American planes? A shame, but maybe next time they should stick to confetti.

AMERICA could have turned a large chunk of the world into a parking lot. That it didn't is a sign of strength.

American voices are already being raised against attacking Iraq - that's what a democracy is for. How many in the Islamic world will have a minute's silence for the slaughtered innocents of 9/11? How many Islamic leaders will have the guts to say that the mass murder of 9/11 was an abomination?

When the news of 9/11 broke on the West Bank, those freedom-loving Palestinians were dancing in the street. America watched all of that - and didn't push the button. We should thank the stars that America is the most powerful nation in the world. I still find it incredible that 9/11 did not provoke all-out war. Not a "war on terrorism". A real war.

The fundamentalist dudes are talking about "opening the gates of hell", if America attacks Iraq. Well, America could have opened the gates of hell like you wouldn't believe.

The US is the most militarily powerful nation that ever strode the face of the earth.

The campaign in Afghanistan may have been less than perfect and the planned war on Iraq may be misconceived.

But don't blame America for not bringing peace and light to these wretched countries. How many democracies are there in the Middle East, or in the Muslim world? You can count them on the fingers of one hand - assuming you haven't had any chopped off for minor shoplifting.

I love America, yet America is hated. I guess that makes me Bush's poodle. But I would rather be a dog in New York City than a Prince in Riyadh. Above all, America is hated because it is what every country wants to be - rich, free, strong, open, optimistic.

Not ground down by the past, or religion, or some caste system.

America is the best friend this country ever had and we should start remembering that.

Or do you really think the USA is the root of all evil? Tell it to the loved ones of the men and women who leaped to their death from the burning towers.

Tell it to the nursing mothers whose husbands died on one of the hijacked planes, or were ripped apart in a collapsing skyscraper.

And tell it to the hundreds of young widows whose husbands worked for the New York Fire Department. To our shame, George Bush gets a worse press than Saddam Hussein.

Once we were told that Saddam gassed the Kurds, tortured his own people and set up rape-camps in Kuwait. Now we are told he likes Quality Street. Save me the orange centre, oh mighty one!

Remember, remember, September 11. One of the greatest atrocities in human history was committed against America.

No, do more than remember. Never forget.
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En hier nog een ander artikel, welke ik ook erg goed vind:

Subject: America's Madness - John Le Carre

The United States of America has gone mad
John le Carré

America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War. The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.

The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world's poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.

But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer's pocket? At what cost - because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people - in Iraqi lives?

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.

Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I'm dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam's downfall - just not on Bush's terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.

The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America's Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.

God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are equal in His sight, if not in one another's, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.

Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God's work.

In 1993, while ex-President George Bush was visiting the ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to receive thanks for liberating them, somebody tried to kill him. The CIA believes that "somebody" was Saddam. Hence Bush Jr's cry: "That man tried to kill my Daddy." But it's still not personal, this war. It's still necessary. It's still God's work. It's still about bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed Iraqi people.

To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won't tell us is the truth about why we're going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil — but oil, money and people's lives. Saddam's misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn't, won't.

If Saddam didn't have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart's content. Other leaders do it every day - think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.

Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, if he's still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes' notice. What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America's need to demonstrate its military power to all of us - to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.

The most charitable interpretation of Tony Blair's part in all this is that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer it. He can't. Instead, he gave it a phoney legitimacy, and a smooth voice. Now I fear, the same tiger has him penned into a corner, and he can't get out.

It is utterly laughable that, at a time when Blair has talked himself against the ropes, neither of Britain's opposition leaders can lay a glove on him. But that's Britain's tragedy, as it is America's: as our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way. Blair's best chance of personal survival must be that, at the eleventh hour, world protest and an improbably emboldened UN will force Bush to put his gun back in his holster unfired. But what happens when the world's greatest cowboy rides back into town without a tyrant's head to wave at the boys?

Blair's worst chance is that, with or without the UN, he will drag us into a war that, if the will to negotiate energetically had ever been there, could have been avoided; a war that has been no more democratically debated in Britain than it has in America or at the UN. By doing so, Blair will have set back our relations with Europe and the Middle East for decades to come. He will have helped to provoke unforeseeable retaliation, great domestic unrest, and regional chaos in the Middle East. Welcome to the party of the ethical foreign policy.

There is a middle way, but it's a tough one: Bush dives in without UN approval and Blair stays on the bank. Goodbye to the special relationship.

I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head prefect's sophistries to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties about terror are shared by all sane men. What he can't explain is how he reconciles a global assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial assault on Iraq. We are in this war, if it takes place, to secure the fig leaf of our special relationship, to grab our share of the oil pot, and because, after all the public hand-holding in Washington and Camp David, Blair has to show up at the altar.

"But will we win, Daddy?"

"Of course, child. It will all be over while you're still in bed."

"Why?"

"Because otherwise Mr Bush's voters will get terribly impatient and may decide not to vote for him."

"But will people be killed, Daddy?"

"Nobody you know, darling. Just foreign people."

"Can I watch it on television?"

"Only if Mr Bush says you can."

"And afterwards, will everything be normal again? Nobody will do anything horrid any more?"

"Hush child, and go to sleep."

Last Friday a friend of mine in California drove to his local supermarket with a sticker on his car saying: "Peace is also Patriotic". It was gone by the time he'd finished shopping.
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