You’re making a leap to the idea that Arab and Muslims populations are somehow more easily pissed off than any other type of people, and I don’t think that’s true. And even if they were, it wouldn’t give us a moral green light to stomp all over them.

“And people aren’t born as terrorists, they are recruited from the general population. Being genuinely pissed off predisposes you to becoming a terrorist. So maybe if we stopped pissing off large sections of the Arab and Muslim populations we wouldn’t have to worry about so many terrorists in the first place.”

So you say pissing off large sections of the Arab and Muslim populations leads to people becoming terrorists. I say large sections of the Arab population are easily pissed off over pretty trivial matters. Extending the idea of how trivial these matters are, I say its pretty pointless to try and please everyone. There, its spelled out.

I don’t think some poor angry terrorist on the other side of the world is a great threat to the US, or even more important, a threat to me. The only way they become a threat is if some rich asshole like bin Laden gives them money. And that some rich asshole bin Laden is a Saudi prince, which means he has or had some sort of ties to their government. So if governments can watch over their money, the poor terrorist can stay a poor terrorist and just sit and be pissed off.

And predisposes is a bad word, you are kind of connecting terrorism to a disease.

“I care about how we deal with existing governments, not some group of thugs high on religion.”
And people aren’t born as terrorists, they are recruited from the general population. Being genuinely pissed off predisposes you to becoming a terrorist. So maybe if we stopped pissing off large sections of the Arab and Muslim populations we wouldn’t have to worry about so many terrorists in the first place.

See thats just irresponsible. You have to pick up your toys after you are done playing. You want to talk about producing a hostile country, picking up and leaving it to the dogs is probably the best way to go about it.

When terrorists organize into a well formed military capable of overthrowing the US government, or any government for that matter, I might be concerned about their wants and needs. When some assholes in caves make videotapes about how we are imperialists, I could care less. I care about how we deal with existing governments, not some group of thugs high on religion. I have problems with our dealings with Saudi Arabia, but not in relation to how it affects terrorist mindsets.

Reparations should be given in the absence of the desire to control the outcome in Iraq. We pledge $XXX amount to be given to the government(s) that rises from the ashes. They can do what they want as long as their stated policy isn’t revenge. And then our hands are somewhat washed of the whole affair. At least then, it’d be their problem and not ours.

As for sowing the seeds of terrorism, I’m not going to get over the notion There are very real and predictable consequences to our actions on the world stage. There are very real and legitimate gripes with the use of U.S. of American economic and military power. We should seek at all costs to minimize the legitimate backlash against our policies. Bin Laden may be crazy and we shouldn’t look to him to guide our policy, but part of what he says is true. Our money and military prop up the leaders of Saudi Arabia, which just happens to be home to a lot of holy sites for Muslims.

Also, get over this notion of sowing seeds of terrorism. Like I said in a previous post, we can’t be concerned with what people like bin Laden preach. He doesn’t dictate our policy. And regardless, the damage has been done by the loss of life of those 100,000 people. I just don’t see how its going to get considerably worse from here. Its untrue that having any presence over there makes things worse. Its just false, and I really fail to see how you think everything would be OK if we just got up and left.

And yes we owe them infrastructure, and probably the lives of well over 100,000 of their people. But what you’re proposing is an imperial solution to a problem caused by imperialism. Let the Iraqi people decide what they should do with our reparation money.