We in the Arab world love freedom and want the chance at a decent life. We are not different from you. We may be just temporarily backward. Working together, our governments must decide how, with what culture and and by what actions, they will combat the influence of those who hate life. I completely agree with that Rs7... But please do not support sharon this guy is a butcher... some israelis people like Rabin really wanted peace and he was killed by a jew not by a muslim... There are fanatics everywhere and I think that today in Israel fanatics are in power not freedom lovers..... Those people want to chase all the palsetinian from their land because it is their land.... I would say no this the land of jews, chiristians and muslims... don't forget that there are numerous christians in palestine and that arafat's wife is chirstian....
1 / Not democratic, have never been democratic, and there are no signs that the people even want democracy or understand what it is. How can you say that. I am Arab, Muslim, African and I understand what democracy means⦠I also understand it took time for European countries to become democratic⦠and even in the US I cannot say that the history of the US was always democratic⦠But what I know is that the Us certainly does not want democracy to be widespread in this region. This will endanger their interests, because they wonât deal anymore with a dictator backed by them but with a democratic elected government and this will change everything⦠all the dictators in this region of the world and even elsewhere are backed by the US⦠A reminder of history⦠one guy named Lumuba In Zaire was a great man⦠this man wanted his people to profit from the wealth of his country ⦠what happened is that Zaire one of the richest country in Africa was very interesting to the US. The CIA simply killed Lumumba and put Mobuto instead, one of the greatest dictator of the history of Africa. he killed millions of people and stealed his country and yet backed by the USA... The Usa did not want democracy they wanted money and that is a shame.. I can understand making money but not by killing , humiliating and spoiling people of planet earth⦠Me myself I donât feel as I am Arab, Muslim, African or anything else.. No.. I believe I am a citizen of the world and I donât hate the Usa like the Americans hate arab people ⦠I belive the USA is a great country and I have great respect for the people of this country.. this is true, but I am also amazed by the lack of knowledge american show when it does not concern them directly. European on that matter are much more open.... Peace
"Patriotism means being loyal to your country all the time and to its government when it deserves it." - Mark Twain
nice essay by a guy in Cairo. I know some egyptian christians and I would say that the egyptians are closer to being our friends than the Saudi's are. But, even in egypt there is growth of islamic fundamentalism. At the risk of being a bigot, we must face up to the fact that islamic fundamentalism is inherently anti-democratic, anti-american, anti-jewish, and anti-christian. If you are an american, a jew, or a christian, they don't like you. Some of them want to kill you. I would think that if these terrorists were white satanists, and Sadam was running a white satanist regime in Iraq, we would bomb them all to hell and everybody would jump for joy. The real reason people object to the attack is that they are scared to death of being seen as bigots or bullies, which I believe is really an effect of left wing propaganda and the evil of political correctness.
traderfut, I said at the beginning of the post you replied to that I was not a trained expert on the middle east, so you are falsely accusing me of pretending to be an expert. I was expressing my opinion based upon the knowlegde that I have on the subject, and my personal life experiences, which is what we all do. If you disagree, then you can speak your opinions, but don't turn it into a personal attack.
Yes, well don't forget that another thing is they (the Iraqi army and their leaders, like the Palestinian terrorists) use civilians as their shields. They use phony red cross vehicles. They use hospitals as shields. They will move POW's into strategic targets. They just play dirty. The leaders are cowards who use the ignorance of their followers. They ARE "dirty". Tradefut2000, I agree that Sharon is a bad guy. But he was elected and he will be defeated next time most likely. But one of the things that got him elected was the fact that the Israelis have come to understand that the Arabs they are in contention with will not respect anything but force and strength. They see negotiation as weakness. I think this is sad, but true. They may fear Sharon and hate him, but he is more like them. So maybe they respect him in their perverse way. And still, he tries to limit (as best as possible) casualties to innocents. Arafat and Hamas try to cause as much death to innocents as possible. Hence the use of the word "terrorism". This is really the definition of what terrorism is about.
But you are accusing a whole population of being anti democratic and violent... Just to remind you that The USA is inhabited by people that escaped their countries because they were prosecuted and because they were hungry... They wanted to live freely and I can understand that... But I want you to understand that muslim chinese, black, white, martians are no different .... WE ALL F.... WANT TO LIVE IN A FREE PLANET... And what is scaring is that you are using arguments that sucks ... and I take it personally.... Niw of course you will find terrorists fanatics people that hate americans ... but you will not only find them in muslim countries... go to mexico go to africa go to asia etc etc .... Please understand my words ... I really appreciate american people but also I have friends from all the countries of teh world... But I am scared when I read such things as muslim are bad and american are good.... BULLSHIT... There are criminal americans as well as criminal arabs... BUt because an arab is a criminal does not mean that the whome arab world is criminal.. the same applies to an american ... there are real crazy up there... that does not mean that all the american are bad... this notion fo good and bad is often misinterpreted and I don't like that.... Now about the attacks.... If the US attacks Irak they will create a whole generation of people hating the US and americans... that does not mean that they are bad... but that these attacks are injust.... and are a nonsense
Where are you getting this from? Who said these things? I did not see anything like this here. US attacks on Iraq certainly pose dangers like you describe. But would a pre-emptive attack to prevent a madman from attaining (and certainly using) weapons of mass destruction be justified? This is the question we Americans are divided on. It hasn't been decided one way or the other thus far. But Saddam is certainly a danger to the entire world. No doubt about that at all!!! How would you suggest dealing with this?
http://www.notinournames.org/iht/statement.html NO MORE ECONOMIC SANCTIONS. THE IRAQI PEOPLE HAVE SUFFERED ENOUGH! We, the undersigned, representing a wide international consensus, demand the immediate lifting of economic sanctions against Iraq. The sanctions regime imposed on the people of Iraq for over a decade is one of the great injustices of our time. It has brought starvation and disease to millions of innocent Iraqis. UNICEF has shown that economic sanctions have contributed to the death of half a million children. For the period 1990 to 2000, UNICEF found that of 188 countries surveyed, Iraq suffered the worst change in mortality levels amongst children under five years old. Child mortality rates in Iraq actually more than doubled during the decade. This is not simply a crime against the children of Iraq and millions of Iraqi families. It is a violation of internationally recognised human rights and humanitarian standards. Plunged into mass poverty, Iraqis need jobs and living wages. The UN Security Council's own 'Humanitarian Panel' concluded in 1999 that the humanitarian crisis in Iraq will continue until there is a 'sustained revival of the Iraqi economy'. Yet the sanctions are designed to damage the Iraqi economy and prevent such a revival. The 'smart sanctions' proposed by the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States, and the latest Security Council resolution on Iraq, are still economic sanctions . Although they are claimed to ease restrictions on humanitarian imports, they do not allow the economic revival so desperately needed . No foreign loans, no foreign investment, no access to foreign exchange, and no Iraqi exports other than oil are permitted under the resolution. Nor will resources become available for teachers and civil servants, or for the rehabilitation and upkeep of the shattered infrastructure, hospitals and schools. The proposed 'smart sanctions' are not the solution to the economic and social catastrophe facing ordinary Iraqi citizens, but a grim perpetuation of a failed policy. We demand an end to the suffering. The global conscience demands an end to the economic sanctions NOW. ://www.notinournames.org/iht/statement.html
Nineteen years ago today, the greatest act of terrorism â using Israel's own definition of that much misused word â in modern Middle Eastern history began. Does anyone remember the anniversary in the West? How many readers of this article will remember it? I will take a tiny risk and say that no other British newspaper â certainly no American newspaper â will today recall the fact that on 16 September 1982, Israel's Phalangist militia allies started their three-day orgy of rape and knifing and murder in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila that cost 1,800 lives. It followed an Israeli invasion of Lebanon â designed to drive the PLO out of the country and given the green light by the then US Secretary of State, Alexander Haig â which cost the lives of 17,500 Lebanese and Palestinians, almost all of them civilians. That's probably three times the death toll in the World Trade Centre. Yet I do not remember any vigils or memorial services or candle-lighting in America or the West for the innocent dead of Lebanon; I don't recall any stirring speeches about democracy or liberty. In fact, my memory is that the United States spent most of the bloody months of July and August 1982 calling for "restraint". America's failure to act with honour in the Middle East, its promiscuous sale of missiles to those who use them against civilians, its blithe disregard for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi children under sanctions of which Washington is the principal supporter â all these are intimately related to the society that produced the Arabs who plunged America into an apocalypse of fire last week. America's name is literally stamped on to the missiles fired by Israel into Palestinian buildings in Gaza and the West Bank. Only four weeks ago, I identified one of them as an AGM 114-D air-to-ground rocket made by Boeing and Lockheed-Martin at their factory in â of all places â Florida, the state where some of the suiciders trained to fly. It was fired from an Apache helicopter (made in America, of course) during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, when hundreds of cluster bombs were dropped in civilian areas of Beruit by the Israelis in contravention of undertakings given to the United States. Most of the bombs had US Naval markings and America then suspended a shipment of fighter bombers to Israel â for less than two months. The same type of missile â this time an AGM 114-C made in Georgia â was fired by the Israelis into the back of an ambulance near the Lebanese village of Mansori, killing two women and four children. I collected the pieces of the missile, including its computer coding plate, flew to Georgia and presented them to the manufacturers at the Boeing factory. And what did the developer of the missile say to me when I showed him photographs of the children his missile had killed? "Whatever you do," he told me, "don't quote me as saying anything critical of the policies of Israel." I'm sure the father of those children, who was driving the ambulance, will have been appalled by last week's events, but I don't suppose, given the fate of his own wife â one of the women killed â that he was in a mood to send condolences to anyone. All these facts, of course, must be forgotten now. Every effort will be made in the coming days to switch off the "why'' question and concentrate on the who, what and how. CNN and most of the world's media have already obeyed this essential new war rule. I've already seen what happens when this rule is broken. When The Independent published my article on the connection between Middle Eastern injustice and the New York holocaust, the BBC's 24-hour news channel produced an American commentator who remarked that "Robert Fisk has won the prize for bad taste''. When I raised the same point on an Irish radio talk show, the other guest, a Harvard lawyer, denounced me as a bigot, a liar, a "dangerous man'' and â of course â potentially anti-Semitic. The Irish pulled the plug on him. No wonder we have to refer to the terrorists as "mindless''. For if we did not, we would have to explain what went on in those minds. But this attempt to censor the realities of the war that has already begun must not be permitted to continue. Look at the logic. Secretary of State Colin Powell was insisting on Friday that his message to the Taliban is simple: they have to take responsibility for sheltering Mr bin Laden. "You cannot separate your activities from the activities of the perpetrators,'' he warned. But the Americans absolutely refuse to associate their own response to their predicament with their activities in the Middle East. We are supposed to hold our tongues, even when Ariel Sharon â a man whose name will always be associated with the massacre at Sabra and Shatila â announces that Israel also wishes to join the battle against "world terror''. No wonder the Palestinians are fearful. In the past four days, 23 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and Gaza, an astonishing figure that would have been front-page news had America not been blitzed. If Israel signs up for the new conflict, then the Palestinians â by fighting the Israelis â will, by extension, become part of the "world terror'' against which Mr Bush is supposedly going to war. Not for nothing did Mr Sharon claim that Yasser Arafat had connections with Osama bin Laden. I repeat: what happened in New York was a crime against humanity. And that means policemen, arrests, justice, a whole new international court at The Hague if necessary. Not cruise missiles and "precision'' bombs and Muslim lives lost in revenge for Western lives. But the trap has been sprung. Mr Bush â perhaps we, too â are now walking into it. Independant, London (UK)