John F. Kerry

A lot of people have made observations like this before. But I was reading some news today and really am amazed by the tone from the middle east these days and how similar it sounds to things Bush and Obama have said for the last 10 years.

Many younger people dont remember how the narrative went, pre-2001. Israelis had to deal with crazy violent muslims, America didnt. Terrorists lived in the middle east and shit.... very few could get to the west to do damage... and so when Israel talked about "the need to fire at protestors" etc etc.... a lot of the opinion in America was more neural or less supportive of the violence....simply because America couldnt empathize with Israel as much because they didnt have suicide attacks and terrorists of their own to deal with.

Fast forward to Osama bin Laden. Now America has tasted the steel and fire of terrorism on its own soil. It has suffered the same fate, for the same murky, bizzare, and seemingly unjustifiable "reasons" that Israel has been suffering for 60 years. When Bush said that israel stands 308 million strong because America stands with it- that kind of idea is a post-9/11 idea. Clinton said a lot of things pro-israel....but it wasnt the "brothers in arms against terrorism" that it is today.


So, nowadays a statement like the one made by netanyahu "“Unfortunately, extremist forces around us are trying today to breach our borders and threaten our communities and our citizens. We will not let them do that,” he told his Cabinet." is taken in stride and like as an obvious thing to do. Israel used to have to accept that it got attacked and was treated like shit "because it stole the land"...etc.... now, americans see al qaida attacking america, even tho we have nothing to fucking do with their land. and its like, the underlying violence and just psycologically the arab "issues" they have, are pretty profound, and lead them to be, it seems at least, a violent radical people. Perhaps economics is the reason, I dont know, but its pretty widely held now that these guys are a powder keg that doesnt just blow up and hurt israel, but it blows up and hurts london, madrid, nyc, etc....

Americans used to be able to be apathetic about radical islamic violence. They could imagine reasons why some people suffered it. Russia? oh it cracks down on its minorities. Israel? oh it puts them in pens and treats them like animals.... but when America was attacked it made us first go- What did we do wrong? but as time went on, more and more people realized that its like a part of bedoin culture to be warlike and they just like being militant and praying 5 times a day and then going off and shooting kalishnikovs...its like a psycological thing with them, and the fact that they just kept picking new targets, even when the rationale was no where near as strong, showed them for what they are.

Obviously not even a majority, let alone all, are like that, obviously. But the ones that are, are.

thoughts?

__________________
Nasa under Obama

The Don

There's a difference between understanding something, and accepting it.

If you can't even understand why someone might just hate these 2 countries to a point where they'll say fuckit, cash in their own lives and then do some harm, why should I listen to anything you say? You clearly don't seek to understand the conflict that your country has in large part fueled.

Thoughts? You're a racist, trying to cover it with political fallacies.

__________________

John F. Kerry

thats pretty rude of you, but not surprising. Its so much easier to type the word racist then respond with 5 paragraphs of thought. I wont go into any more ad hominems than that, although I think I pretty easily could, Some of you guys think using personal attacks helps your position....I expect you to disagree, the interesting part would be hearing why, not just hearing that you are self righteous but cant explain why.... Like, I dont necessarily expect anything different from you, but its just funny to me how even a balanced comment like the one i made above, with disclaimers about how all muslims shouldnt be unfairly grouped together, and how its a small percentage that are like that.... I put those in there for people like you, but evidently, you either didnt read that far, or process what the point of me putting that in was.... omgzzorts racistttt.. lol. I can see you've never been in a debate club.


fyi it wasnt me who voted it five star... every time a thread of mine gets one o those i have to assure everyone that it wasnt me lol.

__________________
Nasa under Obama

The Don

Just the fact that you use those "quotation marks" around the entire argument FOR attacking the US shows how little weight you actually put on these peoples' experiences.

And this is you at a balanced level eh? I'd love to see you write out 5 paragraphs of your must unbalanced.

And no we don't have faggy ass debate clubs over here.

Your post is basicly, when we weren't hurt, we didn't care, when we where hurt, we retaliated a thousand fold, and we don't care. Why do you think that is?

A good point is like jam. When you don't have much of it, you gotta spread it.

__________________

stoneric

Yeah, the u.s. was just innocent bystanders when out of the blue the mooslims attacked us because mooslims are like that, it's in their genes. We didn't have troops stationed on holy mooslim soil for 12 years or we didn't kill 500,000 mooslim children with our brutal sanctions. And of course israel's innocence is unquestioned and if it isn't, we'll veto the truth.

The Don

It was me.

__________________

cantSEEme

c'mon now. the middle east is the united states chess board.

in this statement, i see you condemning all the people.


an extremely small fraction is like that. just like with any ethnicity/race/group of people. crazy ppl r crazy.


well, if this post is basically saying that israel was helped by the extreme prejudice and bigotry towards muslims in general expressed by the united states post 9/11 all the way up to now, then i agree with you j.

__________________

Captain Cannabis

i have a lot of trouble saying this as diplomatic as you don.

this pisses me off and, j, i hope that someday you realize that your words of poison can hurt people. your insistence on spreading your garbage everywhere is going to leave you living in a world of garbage. i hope you like it.

__________________
fuck the monkeys

Mafoo

i liked learning about the good ol days of washitonian isolationism. i think as a country wed be better off if we had just kept to ourselves. ya life may not be as comfortable with respect to consumer items but i feel like most of our problems stem from the ammount of entanglement that our government has allowed to happen. now before we do anything we must consider which of our friends its going to piss off, which of our enemies its going to piss off, which of their friends/ enemies. its a big mess, or at least thats how it looks where im sitting.

im not one to discuss politics too much just because im not well versed on the subject, but this is a part of us history i feel that i learned about fairly extensively. its like we're too tangled to do anything without it causing problems directly or indirectly

__________________
PLUR
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return

mothernature

I found this while Googling stuff:

Arab-Israeli Fatalities Rank 49th :: Daniel Pipes

It's a chart of all the world's fatalities, since 1950, from conflicts.

Now, to be fair, I don't know anything about these guys or their mag, but I did think it was interesting.

__________________
Sometimes sleep is the best revenge- Luke

SageTree

How in THE world does the US get attached at the hip to Israel?






Who knows?

__________________

zerodown

Question:

Answer:

Alan Greenspan has dual citizenship with Israel, when you control the economy, you can pretty much serve yourself and your friends.

__________________
"I've seen people so poor all they got is money."

We have to learn to unlearn
Its not contradiction, its amendment
Not everything we see is reality
Not everything we hear is the truth
Not everything we're taught helps us grow
~Cultura Profetica

"La locura se lleva en la cabeza y las drogas en los bolsillos"
~Roberto Iniesta

stoneric

When was that? Or do you mean relative to now?

Terry

The war on Terror helped Israel invade Lebanon and destroy civilian infrastructure, gave Israel a reason to further subjugate Gaza and the West Bank, and gave Israel a free hand to continue to use outlawed weapons, to continue to engage in armed conflict with the esoteric goal of "stopping terror" and has continued to allow Israel to do anything in her power to make sure her Arab citizens live as second class citizens.

So yes the War on Terror helped Israel a great deal, but it sure hasn't made me feel any safer.

__________________
I don't know but I've been told,
If you never die you'll never grow old

cantSEEme

@mothernature

daniel pipes is a well known islamophobe and muslim basher. supported the vietnam war, still thinks obama is a muslim, thinks all muslim-american soldiers should be removed from their ranks and from the military all together, the list goes on....

i didnt read that article yet, but daniel pipes is a piece of work. going to have to check his sources carefully, that's for sure.

__________________

Mafoo

that was the diplomatic policy when the united states were formed. hence washitonian.

i learned about it in highschool. i think the US's role WWII officially marked the end of that way of doing things

__________________
PLUR
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return

mothernature

damn...thanks for the heads up.

edit: I looked him up. He's even worse than that!

__________________
Sometimes sleep is the best revenge- Luke

stoneric

Yeah man, for some reason I missed the word "learning" in your post when I read it. Changes everything. Sorry about that.