kurtster wrote: 

Rather reaching. As usual I agree with RichardPrins.

 sirdroseph wrote: 

I'll risk crawling farther out on my limb ...

These are my assumed givens ... in no particular order.

Jihad is seperate from Islam in the senses I am speaking.
Obama has clearly thrown Israel under the bus.
Jihadists only respect power.  Negotiation is interpreted as a sign of weakness, therefore to be regarded as inferior and the negotiators culled.
Arminajad or however you spell his name is serving his last term in office.
Arminajad seeks to bring the Islamic version of End Times on the world.
He is hell bent of wiping out Israel and will use the bomb as soon as he can.

As long as Obama is in office, there is doubt that the US will back Israel should they elect to act on their own and are highly vulnerable to unchallenged retaliation.  Romney as POTUS clearly represents unwavering support for Israel, making any initial hostile actions towards them less likely.  How much I don't pretend to know, but there would certainly be an effect.

The mullahs in Iran are getting unhappy with A...d and if there is chance to wait him out, that is the best strategy.  The mullahs are looking at him like a loose cannon.  I don't think they really want to bring about End Times.  There is no way we can stop Iran from getting a nuke without a military action and even that is uncertain.  I would prefer to have someone in office who might make the mullahs think twice about it and slow down A....d internally.

Meanwhile, we secure our own energy resources and make us totally independent of the Middle East so when it does go nuclear, we will not suffer immediately and directly.  It becomes Europe, Russia and China's problem as they are the ones dependent on the oil, not us.  We will cut Israel loose, but later rather than sooner.  Eventually Israel will have to stand up for itself.

We need to get back to where the US was at its peak and strongest.  That was when we didn't need the rest of the world, they needed us.

The Monroe Doctrine again comes into play as a guide for our future foreign policy.
All the above is incomplete, oversimplified and broadbrushed.  And it only matters if we can survive our domestic economic problems.

 kurtster wrote: 
If that historical enmity were true to such an extent, then why would Saudi Arabia, with its holiest of holies, Mecca, have such a close relationships with the West, and the US in particular, when they are one of the most fundamentalist countries (see Wahhabism) out there? Why sell them state-of-the-art weaponry and consider them a close ally?

Why would the US use the Mujahideen (those brave "freedom fighters" fighting those godless commies) in their fight against Russian influence in Afghanistan, or in reverse why would they let themselves be used by the US (or the West) to do the fighting? Same goes for Libya and Syria.

If Jihad would be as important as you claim, 1.6 billion Muslims would have a considerable and possibly devastating impact on the West. It has not. What does appear to have a huge impact is institutionalized paranoia.

 kurtster wrote: 

Absolutely is part of the equation. Given this, Romney as opposed to Obama or anyone for that matter is going to make them hate us less by...........and if you don't care whether they hate us and just want to support Israel at all cost and increase bombing of the Islamic world than this policy is going to make us safer by..........

 sirdroseph wrote: 

Its a little deeper than 1947.  It goes back to the breakup of the Ottoman empire which was the Caliphate that the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to re-establish and expand.  The Europeans were responsible for ending the Ottoman Empire, not the US.  The US has just been lumped into the hate for that act along the way.

 kurtster wrote: 

If this is true, than does it not render any policy or stance we take towards the Islamic world mute, making it a complete non-issue as to how we react towards them? In other words, they are gonna do what they are gonna do regardless of US policy and who is implementing them therefore they don't give a rat's ass whether Obama, Romney or the Pillsbury doughboy occupy the White House.  Given this, why even speak of it in regards to making our choice for POTUS?  Not to mention, I am sure US foreign policy in particular from 1947 on has absolutely nothing with providing fertile ground for the impoverished Arab youth to take up arms against us I am sure. I am thinking that there is something in the dirty water that makes them hate us.

 islander wrote: 
I'll reply broadly to the 4 posts below and directly answer the questions above.

Economic imbalances and upheaval are not to be ignored or discounted by my original post.  They are always a threat to peace.

Jihad is a special distinction and the US has been fighting the status of Infidel for two hundred years.  From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli ... from the Marine Hymm.  Jihad is sanctioned war.  It is instutionalized.  It is institutionalized meglamania when applied broadly.  It requires as little as a cartoon to be implemented.  It is a fight to the death.

While Jihad is a minority view of the broader Muslim community, one risks death in denouncing it from within.  Dictators of varying bents and extremes have come and gone and been killed, vanquished or whatever, Jihad has no singular face or personna.  It is an ideal.  It does not require a Hitler for example to be successful or effective or continue indefinitely.

It will use anything deemed worthy for justification, from economic to religious reasons.  To answer a question posed above, IMO it can never be satisfied.  The US is still being treated in the same terms for 200 years.  Only the total conquering of the US will end the Jihad declared against it.  Same as erasing Israel from the map.

Jihad is currently working and conducting extreme violence as we speak.  There are no other worldwide threats currently operating that threaten world peace on the levels of the Jihadists, hence my point that Jihad is the greatest threat to global peace that we have at this point in time.

I do not think that our country has expressed any language equal to convert or die.

Either I explained myself or dug a deeper hole.  I'll let y'all decide ...

from Anti-War.com...

 kurtster wrote: 
Who do you feel has called for Jihad?  What do you think it would take to satisfy it?  Do you think that any of our countries actions might objectively be defined using the same language and terms?

 kurtster wrote: 
The greatest threat to world peace is economic inequality. There was war long before there was jihad, and there will be war after jihad. Wars, on the other hand, have almost invariably been over economics. 

Jihad is the struggle of Muslims that is either internal or external. Like many things Islam, there are many meanings, from improving your home and community, to the armed struggle against infidels and non-believers. 

 kurtster wrote: 

I actually think on the whole Jihad is not really a big deal. At worse they may unleash a bomb here and there. No, the greatest threat does not even involve bombs and military at all, that is an antiquated 20th century way of looking at the world. No the greatest threat is the world economy and currency.

Presently, the greatest threat to world peace is Jihad.

Jihad does not take prisoners.  All life is expendable in the pursuit of Jihad.

The world would be pretty quiet right now if it weren't for Jihad.

 miamizsun wrote: 
Interestingly, it didn't always use to be this way (see Vietnam). And even stranger when you go further back in time: American Resistance to a Standing Army

Now, apparently, "resistance" is living the atomized good life, keeping your head down and avoiding eye contact.

 RichardPrins wrote: 
americans aren't very concerned about their rulers slaughtering innocent people, and if they are I don't see many speaking out about it

it seems the anti-war or peace movements have been marginalized by authority and sham promises

some people are afraid of that same govt putting them on a list or targeting them for whatever, they fear the violence or threat of violence

others just don't know or care, they're looking at (listening to) promises of what govt can do for them

those promises are backed up by force/laws/rules and folks want to be on what they perceive to be the beneficial end of that coercion and violence, even if it means ignoring or turning a blind eye to murder, death, destruction and locking people in cages

obama and romney are both purchased by the same lobbyists and people will fall for their rhetoric cause they've been trained to or because it is just easier to go along

the war machine is a big business and wielding that power has been coveted by rulers for ages

human rights? peace? innocent life?

they'll continue to be snuffed by these two and millions will vote to enable it...

regards

In Foreign Policy Debate, Romney Capitulates, Agrees With Obama
In Monday’s presidential debate, GOP contender Mitt Romney persistently avoided confronting President Obama on foreign policy issues, with both candidates agreeing on most fundamental issues.

Romney’s ‘Me Too’ Foreign Policy Debate

Kill on...

 RichardPrins wrote: 
A very thoughtful piece. Thank you.

Note that my remaining eye hates you. ::joking:: (It's hard to read these days.)

Michael Parenti: The Nobel Peace Prize for War

(...) But what was I to expect? For years I ironically asserted that the best way to win a Nobel Peace Prize was to wage war or support those who wage war instead of peace. An overstatement perhaps, but take a look. (...)

The first world war: the real lessons of this savage imperial bloodbath

(...) All the main warring states were responsible for the brutal suppression of nations, large and small, throughout the racist despotisms that were their colonial empires. In the years leading up to the first world war an estimated 10 million Congolese died as a result of forced labour and mass murder under plucky Belgian rule; German colonialists carried out systematic genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples in today's Namibia; and tens of millions died in enforced or avoidable famines in British-ruled India, while Britain's colonial forces ran concentration camps in South Africa and meted out continual violent repression across the empire.

The idea that the war was some kind of crusade for democracy when most of Britain's population – including many men – were still denied the vote, and democracy and dissent were savagely crushed among most of those Britain ruled, is laughable. And when the US president, Woodrow Wilson, championed the right to self-determination to win the peace, that would of course apply only to Europeans – not the colonial peoples their governments lorded it over.

As the bloodbath exhausted itself, it unleashed mutinies, workers' revolts and revolutions, and the breakup of defeated empires, giving a powerful impetus to anti-colonial movements in the process. But the outcome also laid the ground for the rise of nazism and the even bloodier second world war, and led to a new imperial carve-up of the Middle East, whose consequences we are still living with today, including the Palestinian tragedy.

Unlike in 1940, Britain wasn't threatened with invasion or occupation in 1914, and Europe's people were menaced by the machinations of their masters, rather than an atavistic tyranny. Those who died didn't give their lives "for freedom"; they were the victims of an empire that was a stain on humanity, the cynicism of politicians and the despicable folly of the generals. As Harry Patch, last British survivor of the trenches who died three years ago, put it, the first world war was "nothing better than legalised mass murder". (...)

Veterans for Peace convene in Miami

 

The pro-peace organization is having its national convention in downtown Miami this week, looking at past U.S. military involvement in Latin America to learn lessons for the future.

BY ANNA EDGERTON

aedgerton@MiamiHerald.com

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/10/2944539/veterans-for-peace-convene-in.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy