Terrorists hate us for who we are, not what we do - VDH
Bob Cooper
Terrorists hate us for who we are, not what we do
By Victor Davis Hanson
As the third recent Middle East election nears in Iraq, Americans
are still puzzled over why well-off Islamic fundamentalists crashed
planes into skyscrapers and now send mercenaries to the Sunni
Triangle to slaughter us as we sponsor democracy. Yet since Sept.
11, we have grasped that Muslim fascists understood that the
course of American-led world history - democracy and globalized
capitalism - was leaving them behind. Thus they strike the United
States before they are made irrelevant.
America symbolized the onset of a hated modernism and its
breakdown of religious, gender and ethnic hierarchies that were
so treasured by Islamicist patriarchs. As this war wore on, we
also fathomed the pathological partnerships of tyrannies in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria with al-Qaida
and other terrorist cadres.
Both groups scapegoated the superpower United States for
their own failures. In addition, killers in bin Laden's mafia and
other terrorist planners from Iran to the West Bank turned out
not to be the impoverished, but more often the pampered of
the middle class - like the Saudi suicide zealot who just blew
up Americans in Mosul.
Yet in the gloom over postwar Iraq, ex-CIA agents and moody
public intellectuals have recently doubted this "They hate us
for who we are" explanation. Instead, they have reintroduced
the notion of "They hate us for what we do" -- as if there are
legitimate grievances that logically earn such violent attacks
organized by petro-heirs, doctors and crackpot mullahs.
Even a toned-down bin Laden is quoted as witness. He
recently joked that al-Qaida is going after America, not liberal
Sweden: Had we just shrunk to the stature of the politically
correct Scandinavians, then our problems would vanish.
But would they?
Not at all. First, the Islamofascists of the Middle East, like all
autocrats, cannot be believed since they neither allow criticism
nor tolerate self-reflection. Lying is their bible. Did poor Tojo
and Hitler really have cause to gobble up their neighbors? Was
Stalin's postwar Soviet Union that overran Eastern Europe
unfairly stigmatized because of purported anti-communist
frenzy? Of course not.
Second, alleged sins against Islam transform monthly.
Americans have been murdered with near impunity all over the
Middle East for a near quarter-century on a variety of pretexts.
Sometimes fatwas and infomercials cited the "loss" of
Jerusalem. Then there were the U.S. troops in the Land of the
Holy Shrines or the U.N. embargo of Iraq - such gripes still
persisting long after withdrawal of American soldiers from
Saudi Arabia and massive aid to, not boycotts of, Iraq.
Do not forget hurt over the expulsion of the Moors from Spain
or the Crusades - as if the Islamicists alone can nurse
centuries-old wounds. What unites this tired victimization is
never logic, but always a pre-existing antipathy toward
Western liberalism, tempting and repelling the fundamentalists
all at once.
Third, bin Laden and various mujahideen distort history. American
beneficence - saving Kuwaitis, protecting Bosnians, feeding
Somalis, or billions in aid for Egyptians - means nothing, while
Islamic internecine murder is excused. The unspoken truth is that
the killers of the Middle East have mostly been other Middle
Eastern Muslims: the Kurdish holocaust, millions butchered in
the Iranian-Iraqi war, Iraq's rape of Kuwait, Syrian obliteration of
Hama, Algerian massacres or the genocide in the Sudan. Land,
oil, religion or ethnic hatred - not America - prompted such
slaughter.
Fourth, terrorists still imperil liberal Europe that subsidized
Hamas, armed Saddam and chastised America for its pro-Israel
policy. After Spain fled from Iraq, it was rewarded with further
terrorist threats. France is under intimidation for scarves, Holland
for films and England still for Salman Rushdie.
Fifth, al-Qaida's hatred is opportunistically selective. The United
States is slurred with allegations of petrol imperialism. But why
no charges against a cutthroat nuclear China that is hungrier for
Arab oil than is America and digested Tibet? Israel purportedly
occupies Palestinian land, but Syria gobbled up Lebanon to
the silence of the Arab League. We earn loathing for billions
given to Israel, but why not gratitude for matching that amount to
Egypt and Jordan?
It is humane to send massive aid to Southeast Asia after the
tsunami. Yet the idea that the fundamentalist Muslim world in
recompense will temper its hatred of the United States because
we give far more than Saudi Arabia or China is sadly mistaken.
If Israel were to disappear, or America were to give the Middle
East $100 billion, the deductive hatred from radical Islam
would persist.
The United States has adopted a rational strategy against
Islamic fascism: Kill the terrorists, remove illegitimate regimes
that aid the extremists, foster democracies in their places and
alter American policy from tolerance of the corrupt status quo
to calls for reform. Yet we cannot finish the Islamicists' war
unless we understand why they started it. For that answer,
look at who Americans are and what we represent - not at
what we supposedly have done.
===============================================
What we represent is liberation.
The Islamofascists do not fear US oppression of Muslims.
Oppression is something they understand and are familiar
-- even comfortable -- with, having practiced it for centuries.
They love oppression.
What they fear is US liberation of Muslims. For them, liberation
is the stuff nightmares are made of.
clwi...@prodigy.net
Bob Cooper wrote:
> http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/news/opinion/10648373.htm
>
> Terrorists hate us for who we are, not what we do
> By Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Hanson writes for the Hoover Instititute which is funded by the
Neocon nut foundations of Scaife, Olin, and Bradley. Hansen's public
relation mistakes are represented by Benadore Associates, whose
clientelle is limited to almost exclusively Neocon nutcases with
markedly low IQ's and a high propensity to lie.
>
> As the third recent Middle East election nears in Iraq, Americans
> are still puzzled over why well-off Islamic fundamentalists crashed
> planes into skyscrapers and now send mercenaries to the Sunni
> Triangle to slaughter us as we sponsor democracy.
In typical Neocon nutcase fashion, Hanson has opened his argument with
unsubstantiated garbage - that foreign mercenaries are fighting against
us in Iraq. This Neocon nutcase argument was trotted out - and
disproved - at Fallujah.
Hanson is no stranger to lying to Americans. He was one of those who
originally appeared in NRO (Neocon Rants Online) arguing for WMD's in
Iraq - then, when they weren't found, insisting they were there anyway.
Remember those guys? He's one of them. He also predicted low oil prices
as a result of the war (Friday's prices reached $ 48 a barrel) and that
we would have an easy occupation of Iraq.
> Yet since Sept.
> 11, we have grasped that Muslim fascists understood that the
> course of American-led world history - democracy and globalized
> capitalism - was leaving them behind. Thus they strike the United
> States before they are made irrelevant.
So that afterwards they could be irrelevent?
Obviously, Hanson isn't the sharpest pencil out there.
>
> America symbolized the onset of a hated modernism and its
> breakdown of religious, gender and ethnic hierarchies that were
> so treasured by Islamicist patriarchs.
Again, Hanson has resorted to lying. There is nothing to indicate that
Islamists oppose "modernism". Even Iran, possibly the most backwards
country in the Islamic world, now has two car plants, is developing
missiles, and nuclear technology.
> As this war wore on, we
> also fathomed the pathological partnerships of tyrannies in
> Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria with al-Qaida
> and other terrorist cadres.
Evidently, no one has told Hanson that these were all known before the
war in Iraq.
Not a sharp pencil - a pencil head maybe - and definitely a dull one.
>
> Both groups scapegoated the superpower United States for
> their own failures.
Again, this was known before the war.
> In addition, killers in bin Laden's mafia and
> other terrorist planners from Iran to the West Bank turned out
> not to be the impoverished, but more often the pampered of
> the middle class - like the Saudi suicide zealot who just blew
> up Americans in Mosul.
Again, you'd think that Hanson might have had a clue to this when it
was noted they were driving Toyota Landcruisers. Anyone priced one
lately?
Again, not a sharp pencil.
>
> Yet in the gloom over postwar Iraq, ex-CIA agents and moody
> public intellectuals have recently doubted this "They hate us
> for who we are" explanation. Instead, they have reintroduced
> the notion of "They hate us for what we do" -
Hanson again displays his ignorance. It is now the REST of the world
that "hates us for what we do". That's what changed.
Just not a sharp pencil.
>- as if there are
> legitimate grievances that logically earn such violent attacks
> organized by petro-heirs, doctors and crackpot mullahs.
>
> Even a toned-down bin Laden is quoted as witness. He
> recently joked that al-Qaida is going after America, not liberal
> Sweden: Had we just shrunk to the stature of the politically
> correct Scandinavians, then our problems would vanish.
>
> But would they?
Warning! An avalanche of ignorance approaches:
>
> Not at all. First, the Islamofascists of the Middle East, like all
> autocrats, cannot be believed since they neither allow criticism
> nor tolerate self-reflection. Lying is their bible. Did poor Tojo
> and Hitler really have cause to gobble up their neighbors? Was
> Stalin's postwar Soviet Union that overran Eastern Europe
> unfairly stigmatized because of purported anti-communist
> frenzy? Of course not.
The question was whether or not Islam would stop hating the US if the
US stopped antagonizing them? The above response does not address that
question.
> Second, alleged sins against Islam transform monthly.
> Americans have been murdered with near impunity all over the
> Middle East for a near quarter-century on a variety of pretexts.
Hanson displays his ignorance again. Osama bin Laden attacked the US to
get American troops out of Saudi Arabia. Bush surrendered to the
terrorists and pulled US troops out of Saudi Arabia and no more attacks
on the US have followed.
So nothing has changed "monthly".
It's the same old game. The US is to stay out of the al Qaida
revolution or be attacked.
> Sometimes fatwas and infomercials cited the "loss" of
> Jerusalem. Then there were the U.S. troops in the Land of the
> Holy Shrines or the U.N. embargo of Iraq - such gripes still
> persisting long after withdrawal of American soldiers from
> Saudi Arabia and massive aid to, not boycotts of, Iraq.
Notice he cannot provide these "gripes".
I wonder why?
>
> Do not forget hurt over the expulsion of the Moors from Spain
> or the Crusades - as if the Islamicists alone can nurse
> centuries-old wounds. What unites this tired victimization is
> never logic,
This is very similar to the oft asked question of what unites the
Neocons - It is never logic.
> but always a pre-existing antipathy toward
> Western liberalism, tempting and repelling the fundamentalists
> all at once.
>
The typical suicide bomber knows nothing of Western liberalism - And
could care less.
> Third, bin Laden and various mujahideen distort history. American
> beneficence - saving Kuwaitis,
Here is, on his third point, and he still hasn't addressed his own
question, would Islam stop hating the US if the US stopped antagonizing
them? The above response does not address that question.
It is simply a mindless Neocon nutcase rant.
> protecting Bosnians, feeding
> Somalis, or billions in aid for Egyptians - means nothing, while
> Islamic internecine murder is excused. The unspoken truth is that
> the killers of the Middle East have mostly been other Middle
> Eastern Muslims: the Kurdish holocaust, millions butchered in
> the Iranian-Iraqi war, Iraq's rape of Kuwait, Syrian obliteration of
> Hama, Algerian massacres or the genocide in the Sudan. Land,
> oil, religion or ethnic hatred - not America - prompted such
> slaughter.
Islam has not blamed America for any of the above.
Evidently, no one has told Hanson that.
Or perhaps they did tell him and, being a Neocon, he simply didn't
listen?
>
> Fourth, terrorists still imperil liberal Europe
Does Hanson mean "liberal" Spain?
> that subsidized
> Hamas, armed Saddam and chastised America for its pro-Israel
> policy. After Spain fled from Iraq, it was rewarded with further
> terrorist threats.
But the US, after getting out of Saudi Arabia, was not - And the
question isn't about Spain. It was about the US and whether a change in
US policy would change Islamic attitudes towards us.
This loser keeps dodging and ducking his own question.
> France is under intimidation for scarves,
The question was about the US, not France.
> Holland
> for films and England still for Salman Rushdie.
The question was about the US and not Holland or England.
>
> Fifth, al-Qaida's hatred is opportunistically selective.
Hmmm! You don't suppose "limited budget" has something to do with that?
This guy is one of the great mental midgets of our time.
>The United
> States is slurred with allegations of petrol imperialism.
Which were disproven when?
This idiot doesn't seem to remember that he, himself, raised the issue
of Iraq's "three million barrels of oil per day" as a reason to invade
Iraq back in 2002.
Small brains evidently have short memories.
> But why
> no charges against a cutthroat nuclear China that is hungrier for
> Arab oil than is America and digested Tibet?
Cutthroat? Who has China attacked or killed?
For the curious, Neocon nutcases advocate war with China. Hence they
become "nuclear cutthroats". In reality they are the second largest
purchaser of US treasury Bills in the world.
And as for their hunger for Arab oil, they have just contracted with
Iran for their needs. Something Israel will soon be noticing.
> Israel purportedly
> occupies Palestinian land,
purportedly?
BTW, for those who don't know, it is Israel that sells China its
military hardware which, in turn, China will be soon sharing, if not
already, with Iran as part of its oil sale.
Oh! And Israel has sold Iran weapons too.
> but Syria gobbled up Lebanon to
> the silence of the Arab League.
And everyone else...
> We earn loathing for billions
> given to Israel,
Who uses it to reverse engineer the weapons we give them, and then
sells them abroad as copies of their own manufacture - becoming the
world's 10th largest arms supplier.
And also used it to develop WMD's "purportedly" aimed at Europe's
capitals.
> but why not gratitude for matching that amount to
> Egypt and Jordan?
Notice, how he still hasn't answered his own question? Neocons live in
nuthouses.
>
> It is humane to send massive aid to Southeast Asia after the
> tsunami. Yet the idea that the fundamentalist Muslim world in
> recompense will temper its hatred of the United States because
> we give far more than Saudi Arabia or China is sadly mistaken.
Notice Hanson has not provided a single Islamic country or organization
critical of US aid for the tsunami?
And how he still keeps avoiding his own question?
> If Israel were to disappear, or America were to give the Middle
> East $100 billion, the deductive hatred from radical Islam
> would persist.
Because????
I don't see a reason listed above.
>
> The United States has adopted a rational strategy against
> Islamic fascism: Kill the terrorists, remove illegitimate regimes
> that aid the extremists, foster democracies in their places and
> alter American policy from tolerance of the corrupt status quo
> to calls for reform. Yet we cannot finish the Islamicists' war
> unless we understand why they started it.
What war?
Hello? Hello? What war did the Islamists start that we don't
"understand why they started it"?
> For that answer,
> look at who Americans are and what we represent - not at
> what we supposedly have done.
"supposedly"?
Remove that one word and try that sentence again.
Neocons are just dumb as stumps.
> ===============================================
>
> What we represent is liberation.
What we represent is regime change.
That is the CLEARLY stated Neocon nutcase policy. Just look at the
Neocons own words on Iraq and Iran.
>
> The Islamofascists do not fear US oppression of Muslims.
???
> Oppression is something they understand and are familiar
> -- even comfortable -- with, having practiced it for centuries.
> They love oppression.
Now there's a prejudiced statement.
One could say the same thing about Zionists and the West Bank/Gaza.
>
> What they fear is US liberation of Muslims. For them, liberation
> is the stuff nightmares are made of.
Rather like granting Palestinians equal rights with Jews on the West
Bank and Gaza is the stuff their nightmares are made of?
And the original question posed never gets answered.
Typical Neocon nutcase.
All duck and dodge.
::Clark::
clwi...@prodigy.net
Bob Cooper wrote:
> http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/news/opinion/10648373.htm
>
> Terrorists hate us for who we are, not what we do
> By Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Hanson writes for the Hoover Instititute which is funded by the
Neocon nut foundations of Scaife, Olin, and Bradley. Hansen's public
relation mistakes are represented by Benadore Associates, whose
clientelle is limited to almost exclusively Neocon nutcases with
markedly low IQ's and a high propensity to lie.
>
> As the third recent Middle East election nears in Iraq, Americans
> are still puzzled over why well-off Islamic fundamentalists crashed
> planes into skyscrapers and now send mercenaries to the Sunni
> Triangle to slaughter us as we sponsor democracy.
In typical Neocon nutcase fashion, Hanson has opened his argument with
unsubstantiated garbage - that foreign mercenaries are fighting against
us in Iraq. This Neocon nutcase argument was trotted out - and
disproved - at Fallujah.
Hanson is no stranger to lying to Americans. He was one of those who
originally appeared in NRO (Neocon Rants Online) arguing for WMD's in
Iraq - then, when they weren't found, insisting they were there anyway.
Remember those guys? He's one of them. He also predicted low oil prices
as a result of the war (Friday's prices reached $ 48 a barrel) and that
we would have an easy occupation of Iraq.
> Yet since Sept.
> 11, we have grasped that Muslim fascists understood that the
> course of American-led world history - democracy and globalized
> capitalism - was leaving them behind. Thus they strike the United
> States before they are made irrelevant.
So that afterwards they could be irrelevent?
Obviously, Hanson isn't the sharpest pencil out there.
>
> America symbolized the onset of a hated modernism and its
> breakdown of religious, gender and ethnic hierarchies that were
> so treasured by Islamicist patriarchs.
Again, Hanson has resorted to lying. There is nothing to indicate that
Islamists oppose "modernism". Even Iran, possibly the most backwards
country in the Islamic world, now has two car plants, is developing
missiles, and nuclear technology.
> As this war wore on, we
> also fathomed the pathological partnerships of tyrannies in
> Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria with al-Qaida
> and other terrorist cadres.
Evidently, no one has told Hanson that these were all known before the
war in Iraq.
Not a sharp pencil - a pencil head maybe - and definitely a dull one.
>
> Both groups scapegoated the superpower United States for
> their own failures.
Again, this was known before the war.
> In addition, killers in bin Laden's mafia and
> other terrorist planners from Iran to the West Bank turned out
> not to be the impoverished, but more often the pampered of
> the middle class - like the Saudi suicide zealot who just blew
> up Americans in Mosul.
Again, you'd think that Hanson might have had a clue to this when it
was noted they were driving Toyota Landcruisers. Anyone priced one
lately?
Again, not a sharp pencil.
>
> Yet in the gloom over postwar Iraq, ex-CIA agents and moody
> public intellectuals have recently doubted this "They hate us
> for who we are" explanation. Instead, they have reintroduced
> the notion of "They hate us for what we do" -
Hanson again displays his ignorance. It is now the REST of the world
that "hates us for what we do". That's what changed.
Just not a sharp pencil.
>- as if there are
> legitimate grievances that logically earn such violent attacks
> organized by petro-heirs, doctors and crackpot mullahs.
>
> Even a toned-down bin Laden is quoted as witness. He
> recently joked that al-Qaida is going after America, not liberal
> Sweden: Had we just shrunk to the stature of the politically
> correct Scandinavians, then our problems would vanish.
>
> But would they?
Warning! An avalanche of ignorance approaches:
>
> Not at all. First, the Islamofascists of the Middle East, like all
> autocrats, cannot be believed since they neither allow criticism
> nor tolerate self-reflection. Lying is their bible. Did poor Tojo
> and Hitler really have cause to gobble up their neighbors? Was
> Stalin's postwar Soviet Union that overran Eastern Europe
> unfairly stigmatized because of purported anti-communist
> frenzy? Of course not.
The question was whether or not Islam would stop hating the US if the
US stopped antagonizing them? The above response does not address that
question.
> Second, alleged sins against Islam transform monthly.
> Americans have been murdered with near impunity all over the
> Middle East for a near quarter-century on a variety of pretexts.
Hanson displays his ignorance again. Osama bin Laden attacked the US to
get American troops out of Saudi Arabia. Bush surrendered to the
terrorists and pulled US troops out of Saudi Arabia and no more attacks
on the US have followed.
So nothing has changed "monthly".
It's the same old game. The US is to stay out of the al Qaida
revolution or be attacked.
> Sometimes fatwas and infomercials cited the "loss" of
> Jerusalem. Then there were the U.S. troops in the Land of the
> Holy Shrines or the U.N. embargo of Iraq - such gripes still
> persisting long after withdrawal of American soldiers from
> Saudi Arabia and massive aid to, not boycotts of, Iraq.
Notice he cannot provide these "gripes".
I wonder why?
>
> Do not forget hurt over the expulsion of the Moors from Spain
> or the Crusades - as if the Islamicists alone can nurse
> centuries-old wounds. What unites this tired victimization is
> never logic,
This is very similar to the oft asked question of what unites the
Neocons - It is never logic.
> but always a pre-existing antipathy toward
> Western liberalism, tempting and repelling the fundamentalists
> all at once.
>
The typical suicide bomber knows nothing of Western liberalism - And
could care less.
> Third, bin Laden and various mujahideen distort history. American
> beneficence - saving Kuwaitis,
Here is, on his third point, and he still hasn't addressed his own
question, would Islam stop hating the US if the US stopped antagonizing
them? The above response does not address that question.
It is simply a mindless Neocon nutcase rant.
> protecting Bosnians, feeding
> Somalis, or billions in aid for Egyptians - means nothing, while
> Islamic internecine murder is excused. The unspoken truth is that
> the killers of the Middle East have mostly been other Middle
> Eastern Muslims: the Kurdish holocaust, millions butchered in
> the Iranian-Iraqi war, Iraq's rape of Kuwait, Syrian obliteration of
> Hama, Algerian massacres or the genocide in the Sudan. Land,
> oil, religion or ethnic hatred - not America - prompted such
> slaughter.
Islam has not blamed America for any of the above.
Evidently, no one has told Hanson that.
Or perhaps they did tell him and, being a Neocon, he simply didn't
listen?
>
> Fourth, terrorists still imperil liberal Europe
Does Hanson mean "liberal" Spain?
> that subsidized
> Hamas, armed Saddam and chastised America for its pro-Israel
> policy. After Spain fled from Iraq, it was rewarded with further
> terrorist threats.
But the US, after getting out of Saudi Arabia, was not - And the
question isn't about Spain. It was about the US and whether a change in
US policy would change Islamic attitudes towards us.
This loser keeps dodging and ducking his own question.
> France is under intimidation for scarves,
The question was about the US, not France.
> Holland
> for films and England still for Salman Rushdie.
The question was about the US and not Holland or England.
>
> Fifth, al-Qaida's hatred is opportunistically selective.
Hmmm! You don't suppose "limited budget" has something to do with that?
This guy is one of the great mental midgets of our time.
>The United
> States is slurred with allegations of petrol imperialism.
Which were disproven when?
This idiot doesn't seem to remember that he, himself, raised the issue
of Iraq's "three million barrels of oil per day" as a reason to invade
Iraq back in 2002.
Small brains evidently have short memories.
> But why
> no charges against a cutthroat nuclear China that is hungrier for
> Arab oil than is America and digested Tibet?
Cutthroat? Who has China attacked or killed?
For the curious, Neocon nutcases advocate war with China. Hence they
become "nuclear cutthroats". In reality they are the second largest
purchaser of US treasury Bills in the world.
And as for their hunger for Arab oil, they have just contracted with
Iran for their needs. Something Israel will soon be noticing.
> Israel purportedly
> occupies Palestinian land,
purportedly?
BTW, for those who don't know, it is Israel that sells China its
military hardware which, in turn, China will be soon sharing, if not
already, with Iran as part of its oil sale.
Oh! And Israel has sold Iran weapons too.
> but Syria gobbled up Lebanon to
> the silence of the Arab League.
And everyone else...
> We earn loathing for billions
> given to Israel,
Who uses it to reverse engineer the weapons we give them, and then
sells them abroad as copies of their own manufacture - becoming the
world's 10th largest arms supplier.
And also used it to develop WMD's "purportedly" aimed at Europe's
capitals.
> but why not gratitude for matching that amount to
> Egypt and Jordan?
Notice, how he still hasn't answered his own question? Neocons live in
nuthouses.
>
> It is humane to send massive aid to Southeast Asia after the
> tsunami. Yet the idea that the fundamentalist Muslim world in
> recompense will temper its hatred of the United States because
> we give far more than Saudi Arabia or China is sadly mistaken.
Notice Hanson has not provided a single Islamic country or organization
critical of US aid for the tsunami?
And how he still keeps avoiding his own question?
> If Israel were to disappear, or America were to give the Middle
> East $100 billion, the deductive hatred from radical Islam
> would persist.
Because????
I don't see a reason listed above.
>
> The United States has adopted a rational strategy against
> Islamic fascism: Kill the terrorists, remove illegitimate regimes
> that aid the extremists, foster democracies in their places and
> alter American policy from tolerance of the corrupt status quo
> to calls for reform. Yet we cannot finish the Islamicists' war
> unless we understand why they started it.
What war?
Hello? Hello? What war did the Islamists start that we don't
"understand why they started it"?
> For that answer,
> look at who Americans are and what we represent - not at
> what we supposedly have done.
"supposedly"?
Remove that one word and try that sentence again.
Neocons are just dumb as stumps.
> ===============================================
>
> What we represent is liberation.
What we represent is regime change.
That is the CLEARLY stated Neocon nutcase policy. Just look at the
Neocons own words on Iraq and Iran.
>
> The Islamofascists do not fear US oppression of Muslims.
???
> Oppression is something they understand and are familiar
> -- even comfortable -- with, having practiced it for centuries.
> They love oppression.
Now there's a prejudiced statement.
One could say the same thing about Zionists and the West Bank/Gaza.
>
> What they fear is US liberation of Muslims. For them, liberation
> is the stuff nightmares are made of.
Rather like granting Palestinians equal rights with Jews on the West
XpatriotgamesX
>From: clwi...@prodigy.net
>Date: 1/15/2005 6:49 PM Pacific Standard Time
>Message-id: <1105843793....@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>
>
>
>Bob Cooper wrote:
>> http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/news/opinion/10648373.htm
>>
>> Terrorists hate us for who we are, not what we do
>> By Victor Davis Hanson
>
>Victor Hanson writes for the Hoover Instititute which is funded by the
>Neocon nut foundations of Scaife, Olin, and Bradley. Hansen's public
>relation mistakes are represented by Benadore Associates, whose
>clientelle is limited to almost exclusively Neocon nutcases with
>markedly low IQ's and a high propensity to lie.
You crack me up, Clarkie. VDH is a scholar extraordinaire and literary genius.
You, on the other hand, are a whiny left-wing loon unworthy of carrying his
jockstrap.
clwi...@prodigy.net
XpatriotgamesX wrote:
> >Subject: Re: Terrorists hate us for who we are, not what we do - VDH
> >From: clwi...@prodigy.net
> >Date: 1/15/2005 6:49 PM Pacific Standard Time
> >Message-id: <1105843793....@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>
> >
> >
> >Bob Cooper wrote:
> >> http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/news/opinion/10648373.htm
> >>
> >> Terrorists hate us for who we are, not what we do
> >> By Victor Davis Hanson
> >
> >Victor Hanson writes for the Hoover Instititute which is funded by
the
> >Neocon nut foundations of Scaife, Olin, and Bradley. Hansen's
public
> >relation mistakes are represented by Benadore Associates, whose
> >clientelle is limited to almost exclusively Neocon nutcases with
> >markedly low IQ's and a high propensity to lie.
>
> You crack me up, Clarkie. VDH is a scholar extraordinaire and
literary genius.
Googled "Victor Davis Hanson literary genius" and got zero hits.
Googled " Victor Davis Hanson scholar extraordinare" and got zero hits.
Googled " Victor Davis Hanson Neocon" and got 8,050 hits.
Googled " Victor Davis Hanson wrong" and got 73,400 hits.
Looks like Victor Hanson is most widely known for being wrong.
BTW, his PH.D. is in the Classics. He doesn't know jack sh*t about
current politics - As his writings prove.
> You, on the other hand, are a whiny left-wing loon unworthy of
carrying his
> jockstrap.
That's another thing Victor doesn't know about. The ancient Greeks
didn't have them.
So, bright boy? Why don't you defend him? Shall we pick an article he
wrote before March, 2003 and debate it? I'll let you pick it.
::Clark::
Bob Cooper
<clwi...@prodigy.net> wrote in message
news:1105843793....@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
> Bob Cooper wrote:
> > http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/news/opinion/10648373.htm
> >
> > Terrorists hate us for who we are, not what we do
> > By Victor Davis Hanson
>
> Victor Hanson writes for the Hoover Instititute which is funded by the
> Neocon nut foundations of Scaife, Olin, and Bradley. Hansen's public
> relation mistakes are represented by Benadore Associates, whose
> clientelle is limited to almost exclusively Neocon nutcases with
> markedly low IQ's and a high propensity to lie.
>
> >
> > As the third recent Middle East election nears in Iraq, Americans
> > are still puzzled over why well-off Islamic fundamentalists crashed
> > planes into skyscrapers and now send mercenaries to the Sunni
> > Triangle to slaughter us as we sponsor democracy.
>
> In typical Neocon nutcase fashion, Hanson has opened his argument with
> unsubstantiated garbage - that foreign mercenaries are fighting against
> us in Iraq. This Neocon nutcase argument was trotted out - and
> disproved - at Fallujah.
Really? Exactly how was it disproved?
> Hanson is no stranger to lying to Americans. He was one of those who
> originally appeared in NRO (Neocon Rants Online) arguing for WMD's in
> Iraq - then, when they weren't found, insisting they were there anyway.
> Remember those guys? He's one of them. He also predicted low oil prices
> as a result of the war (Friday's prices reached $ 48 a barrel) and that
> we would have an easy occupation of Iraq.
Got any links?
> > Yet since Sept.
> > 11, we have grasped that Muslim fascists understood that the
> > course of American-led world history - democracy and globalized
> > capitalism - was leaving them behind. Thus they strike the United
> > States before they are made irrelevant.
>
> So that afterwards they could be irrelevent?
No. With the misguided and futile notion that they could somehow
impede or even reverse the course of "American-led world history,
and remain securely ensconced in the seventh century clutches of
Islamofascism. It ain't gonna work.
> Obviously, Hanson isn't the sharpest pencil out there.
Tsk, tsk. An ad hominem attack, and not a particularly imaginative
one. I know they feel good, but, do they really contribute much
to the discussion?
> > America symbolized the onset of a hated modernism and its
> > breakdown of religious, gender and ethnic hierarchies that were
> > so treasured by Islamicist patriarchs.
>
> Again, Hanson has resorted to lying. There is nothing to indicate that
> Islamists oppose "modernism".
Oh pullleeeezze! Surely you jest. You can't be serious. These guys
would like nothing better than for the whole world to revert back to
the 10th century.
> Even Iran, possibly the most backwards
> country in the Islamic world, now has two car plants, is developing
> missiles, and nuclear technology.
The car plants are cranking out Peugeots and Kias, if I'm not
mistaken, in relatively small numbers. Probably joint ventures,
using technology imported from France and Korea. Manifestations
of the "global capitalism" Hanson refers to. Even the Mad Mullahs
have been forced by practical necessity to grudgingly accept cars
as a concession to modernity.
Of course, in Saudi Arabia -- the seat of Muslim lunacy -- the
acceptance of cars is contingent on women not being permitted
to drive them. And, therein lies the rub Hanson speaks of. Those
chicks are not going to put up with waiting around for their
husbands to drive them to the mall (another western abomination)
forever. Sooner or later (probably sooner), exposed to western
satellite TV and the internet, they're going to demand the right to
get behind the wheel, and, hell, the next thing you know they're
going to want to wear lipstick and high heels and go in the mosque
by the front door! Heck, some of them are already talking about
(gasp) voting. Hence, the "breakdown of religious, gender and
ethnic hierarchies" the Islamists fear, and to which Hanson refers.
As for Iran "developing missiles, and nuclear technology", I suspect
"acquiring" is more descriptive than "developing. Saddam was
doing the same thing, you know. He's in jail now.
> > As this war wore on, we
> > also fathomed the pathological partnerships of tyrannies in
> > Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria with al-Qaida
> > and other terrorist cadres.
>
> Evidently, no one has told Hanson that these were all known before the
> war in Iraq.
> Not a sharp pencil - a pencil head maybe - and definitely a dull one.
I believe Hanson refers to the war on terror, not specifically to
Iraq. Check out his second or third paragraph above, where he says,
"since Sept. 11."
> >
> > Both groups scapegoated the superpower United States for
> > their own failures.
>
> Again, this was known before the war.
>
> > In addition, killers in bin Laden's mafia and
> > other terrorist planners from Iran to the West Bank turned out
> > not to be the impoverished, but more often the pampered of
> > the middle class - like the Saudi suicide zealot who just blew
> > up Americans in Mosul.
>
> Again, you'd think that Hanson might have had a clue to this when it
> was noted they were driving Toyota Landcruisers. Anyone priced one
> lately?
> Again, not a sharp pencil.
Oh my. Another feel-good ad hominem.
> > Yet in the gloom over postwar Iraq, ex-CIA agents and moody
> > public intellectuals have recently doubted this "They hate us
> > for who we are" explanation. Instead, they have reintroduced
> > the notion of "They hate us for what we do" -
>
> Hanson again displays his ignorance. It is now the REST of the world
> that "hates us for what we do". That's what changed.
> Just not a sharp pencil.
I doubt that's true, but if the rest of the world does hate us for
defending ourselves, so be it.
> >- as if there are
> > legitimate grievances that logically earn such violent attacks
> > organized by petro-heirs, doctors and crackpot mullahs.
> >
> > Even a toned-down bin Laden is quoted as witness. He
> > recently joked that al-Qaida is going after America, not liberal
> > Sweden: Had we just shrunk to the stature of the politically
> > correct Scandinavians, then our problems would vanish.
> >
> > But would they?
>
> Warning! An avalanche of ignorance approaches:
>
> >
> > Not at all. First, the Islamofascists of the Middle East, like all
> > autocrats, cannot be believed since they neither allow criticism
> > nor tolerate self-reflection. Lying is their bible. Did poor Tojo
> > and Hitler really have cause to gobble up their neighbors? Was
> > Stalin's postwar Soviet Union that overran Eastern Europe
> > unfairly stigmatized because of purported anti-communist
> > frenzy? Of course not.
>
> The question was whether or not Islam would stop hating the US if the
> US stopped antagonizing them? The above response does not address that
> question.
Sure it does. His answer is in the first three words of the
paragraph: "Not at all."
> > Second, alleged sins against Islam transform monthly.
> > Americans have been murdered with near impunity all over the
> > Middle East for a near quarter-century on a variety of pretexts.
>
> Hanson displays his ignorance again. Osama bin Laden attacked the US to
> get American troops out of Saudi Arabia. Bush surrendered to the
> terrorists and pulled US troops out of Saudi Arabia and no more attacks
> on the US have followed.
>
> So nothing has changed "monthly".
> It's the same old game. The US is to stay out of the al Qaida
> revolution or be attacked.
"Al Qaida revolution?" What's that mean?
> > Sometimes fatwas and infomercials cited the "loss" of
> > Jerusalem. Then there were the U.S. troops in the Land of the
> > Holy Shrines or the U.N. embargo of Iraq - such gripes still
> > persisting long after withdrawal of American soldiers from
> > Saudi Arabia and massive aid to, not boycotts of, Iraq.
>
> Notice he cannot provide these "gripes".
> I wonder why?
???
> > Do not forget hurt over the expulsion of the Moors from Spain
> > or the Crusades - as if the Islamicists alone can nurse
> > centuries-old wounds. What unites this tired victimization is
> > never logic,
>
> This is very similar to the oft asked question of what unites the
> Neocons - It is never logic.
>
>
> > but always a pre-existing antipathy toward
> > Western liberalism, tempting and repelling the fundamentalists
> > all at once.
> >
>
> The typical suicide bomber knows nothing of Western liberalism - And
> could care less.
I doubt that. The murderous thug who blew up the mess tent in
Mosul was a 20-year-old Saudi medical student. I doubt that you
can study medicine without being exposed to a fair amount of
western liberalism.
> > Third, bin Laden and various mujahideen distort history. American
> > beneficence - saving Kuwaitis,
>
> Here is, on his third point, and he still hasn't addressed his own
> question, would Islam stop hating the US if the US stopped antagonizing
> them? The above response does not address that question.
> It is simply a mindless Neocon nutcase rant.
He answered the question right at the start. "Not at all." See above.
> > protecting Bosnians, feeding
> > Somalis, or billions in aid for Egyptians - means nothing, while
> > Islamic internecine murder is excused. The unspoken truth is that
> > the killers of the Middle East have mostly been other Middle
> > Eastern Muslims: the Kurdish holocaust, millions butchered in
> > the Iranian-Iraqi war, Iraq's rape of Kuwait, Syrian obliteration of
> > Hama, Algerian massacres or the genocide in the Sudan. Land,
> > oil, religion or ethnic hatred - not America - prompted such
> > slaughter.
>
> Islam has not blamed America for any of the above.
> Evidently, no one has told Hanson that.
> Or perhaps they did tell him and, being a Neocon, he simply didn't
> listen?
That's not his point. His point is that they are singularly ungrateful
when America saves the lives of thousands of Bosnian Muslims,
and gives billions in aid to Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians (and
recently, Indonesians), but always give a pass to Muslims who
slaughter other Muslims. You see, the Great Satan can go no good,
and Muslim "brothers" can do no evil.
> >
> > Fourth, terrorists still imperil liberal Europe
>
> Does Hanson mean "liberal" Spain?
>
> > that subsidized
> > Hamas, armed Saddam and chastised America for its pro-Israel
> > policy. After Spain fled from Iraq, it was rewarded with further
> > terrorist threats.
>
> But the US, after getting out of Saudi Arabia, was not - And the
> question isn't about Spain. It was about the US and whether a change in
> US policy would change Islamic attitudes towards us.
> This loser keeps dodging and ducking his own question.
He answered the question already. "Not at all."
> > France is under intimidation for scarves,
>
> The question was about the US, not France.
>
> > Holland
> > for films and England still for Salman Rushdie.
>
> The question was about the US and not Holland or England.
>
> >
> > Fifth, al-Qaida's hatred is opportunistically selective.
>
> Hmmm! You don't suppose "limited budget" has something to do with that?
> This guy is one of the great mental midgets of our time.
Ah, I bet that ad hominem felt good, huh?
> >The United
> > States is slurred with allegations of petrol imperialism.
>
> Which were disproven when?
> This idiot doesn't seem to remember that he, himself, raised the issue
> of Iraq's "three million barrels of oil per day" as a reason to invade
> Iraq back in 2002.
> Small brains evidently have short memories.
If we're stealing the oil, why am I paying so much for gas? I
want my cut!
> > But why
> > no charges against a cutthroat nuclear China that is hungrier for
> > Arab oil than is America and digested Tibet?
>
> Cutthroat? Who has China attacked or killed?
Ask the Tibetans.
> For the curious, Neocon nutcases advocate war with China. Hence they
> become "nuclear cutthroats". In reality they are the second largest
> purchaser of US treasury Bills in the world.
>
> And as for their hunger for Arab oil, they have just contracted with
> Iran for their needs. Something Israel will soon be noticing.
Yeah, they love that Arab oil. Especially the light sweet crude.
Tastes great, and less filling!
> > Israel purportedly
> > occupies Palestinian land,
>
> purportedly?
Yes, purportedly. The matter is a subject of some dispute.
> BTW, for those who don't know, it is Israel that sells China its
> military hardware which, in turn, China will be soon sharing, if not
> already, with Iran as part of its oil sale.
> Oh! And Israel has sold Iran weapons too.
All that may or may not be true. However, it seems something of a
non sequitur for this discussion. Start another thread.
> > but Syria gobbled up Lebanon to
> > the silence of the Arab League.
>
> And everyone else...
>
> > We earn loathing for billions
> > given to Israel,
>
> Who uses it to reverse engineer the weapons we give them, and then
> sells them abroad as copies of their own manufacture - becoming the
> world's 10th largest arms supplier.
>
> And also used it to develop WMD's "purportedly" aimed at Europe's
> capitals.
Huh?
> > but why not gratitude for matching that amount to
> > Egypt and Jordan?
>
> Notice, how he still hasn't answered his own question? Neocons live in
> nuthouses.
He answered it about 4 paragraphs ago, as I've repeatedly
pointed out. Apparently, you missed the first three words he
wrote: "Not at all."
> > It is humane to send massive aid to Southeast Asia after the
> > tsunami. Yet the idea that the fundamentalist Muslim world in
> > recompense will temper its hatred of the United States because
> > we give far more than Saudi Arabia or China is sadly mistaken.
>
> Notice Hanson has not provided a single Islamic country or organization
> critical of US aid for the tsunami?
> And how he still keeps avoiding his own question?
"Not at all."
> > If Israel were to disappear, or America were to give the Middle
> > East $100 billion, the deductive hatred from radical Islam
> > would persist.
>
> Because????
> I don't see a reason listed above.
Check the header of this thread. Because they "hate us for who
we are, not what we do," remember?
> > The United States has adopted a rational strategy against
> > Islamic fascism: Kill the terrorists, remove illegitimate regimes
> > that aid the extremists, foster democracies in their places and
> > alter American policy from tolerance of the corrupt status quo
> > to calls for reform. Yet we cannot finish the Islamicists' war
> > unless we understand why they started it.
>
> What war?
> Hello? Hello? What war did the Islamists start that we don't
> "understand why they started it"?
The one that began at the WTC.
> > For that answer,
> > look at who Americans are and what we represent - not at
> > what we supposedly have done.
>
> "supposedly"?
>
> Remove that one word and try that sentence again.
> Neocons are just dumb as stumps.
"Dumb as stumps!" Wow, I'll bet that felt good. Hope you didn't
soil your keyboard.
> > ===============================================
> >
> > What we represent is liberation.
>
> What we represent is regime change.
Don't you think a regime change from Saddam Hussein to a
constitutional democracy represents liberation?
> That is the CLEARLY stated Neocon nutcase policy. Just look at the
> Neocons own words on Iraq and Iran.
>
> >
> > The Islamofascists do not fear US oppression of Muslims.
>
> ???
>
> > Oppression is something they understand and are familiar
> > -- even comfortable -- with, having practiced it for centuries.
> > They love oppression.
>
> Now there's a prejudiced statement.
> One could say the same thing about Zionists and the West Bank/Gaza.
One could, but one would be incorrect.
> > What they fear is US liberation of Muslims. For them, liberation
> > is the stuff nightmares are made of.
>
> Rather like granting Palestinians equal rights with Jews on the West
> Bank and Gaza is the stuff their nightmares are made of?
>
> And the original question posed never gets answered.
It was answered. Long ago.
> Typical Neocon nutcase.
> All duck and dodge.
>
>
> ::Clark::
Clark, I have a labor-saving suggestion for you. Instead of writing out
Zionist Factory Meathead and Neocon Nutcase, why not abbreviate?
ZFM and NN would save you about 30% of your keystrokes, and we'd
all know what you mean :>)