I think not. The only reason the Dems are ahead in the money run is that there is no viable Republican yet to declare their intent to run. We need a Gingrich or a Thompson (Fred) to energize the conservative base.
The Story
Thoughts?

You nailed it, Zook.

Hmmm...let's try the bumper sticker on for size! { THOMPSON GINGRICH...for Americans }

...here we have two flawed human men...with character and some courage. I can follow them I think.

The money is there for the right candidates. The question remains though: Have a majority of Americans joined the lunatic fringe...left or right?
Bean

Would vote for Gilliani. Do you think Gingrich would get a following?

Oh absolutely I would vote for Rudy. My goodness! Look at the alternatives!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hillary is a crook.......Period. She was the evil brain behind bubba.
Obama is probably a nice young man who would be crushed by the job......

In these years we need someone with some courage and character.
Ken

what ? like bush no thanks

I could never vote for Rudy Giuliani after his debate performances. I've never seen someone try so hard to appear ignorant. He actually convinced me too! I do believe he's that dumb. The fact that he completely dismissed Ron Paul's accurate analysis of the reasons leading up to the 9-11 attacks.. and the fact that he wouldn't even attempt to better educate himself on the politics and the motivations of the people that he sees as our enemies.. It's mind-boggling. For someone who wants to be President of the United States.. he seems to think that the best way to qualify for the job is to act like a "high school bad-boy."

I see Rudy as the quintessential Neo-Conservative candidate. Just like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, Rudy seems completely deluded and unrealistic about the benefits that can be achieved by military force against a restless, impoverished, oppressed, desperate population. Giuliani would be four more years of insane foreign policy, creating generations of new terrorists, radicals and tyrants.

So.. as it is now about 6 months from the first primary elections and the leading candidate in nationwide Republican opinion polls is still "None of the Above." ...I want to hear some up-to-date predictions for who we'll see at the Republican convention in 2008.

Hey Julian, welcome to the Barepit.
We can agree Rudy is a loser. Fred Thompson will get the nomination.
However if I read your post right you seem to think that fighting and killing the Muslim extremists only breeds more extremism. We were not killing these pigs prior to 911. What makes you think if we stopped defending ourselves these b@stards will not attack us again??

Don't look for a peace candidate among the Republican contenders. Don't mistake Obama or Hilary for pacifists. However, it might be nice to get our military out of the quagmire of Iraq, and bring them home. It would be great to give Reservists and National Guard members a break, too. At least some Republican senators and congressmen are finally waking up to the insanity of Iraq.

Has any of the presidential Republican contenders called for an end to this stupid war?

Thanks!


I don't know how well they enforce "staying on topic" on this forum, but I'll answer the question in the hopes that it won't get the thread locked.

I don't really think it's wrong to pursue a wise and judicious retaliation against those who attack us. But I also think we'd be making an enormous mistake if we were to ignore the motivations that lead to this kind of terrorist violence.

And in fairness, the Christian world has always been perceived as a potential aggressor in the Muslim world -- and the reputation was well-earned in the Crusades. Tensions were only heightened by colonization, Zionism and the Soviet invasions of the past century. When Muslims watch the news and hear stories about American armies on Muslim lands, killing Muslims in the Gulf War, bombing Muslims in the "no-fly zones" they hear the historic reverberations.

Al Qaeda was born from the hellfire of the Soviet-Afghan War. Now, agree or disagree with the Reagan administration's support of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, we saw a clear template in that war for what we could expect to result from an invasion and regime change in Iraq. In Afghanistan, they became well-trained, well-indoctrinated Jihadis against the Soviet invasion. And through the war they picked up combat experience (and most likely PTSD) which would fuel the experience of these individuals for the rest of their lives.

The veterans of Afghanistan returned to their home countries to be jailed or abandoned by their governments. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan. They needed salvation, they found it through Osama Bin Laden -- who had worked on the financial end of the war effort in Afghanistan.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait, Al Qaeda promised that the Mujahideen would take up arms again to defeat the Iraqi invaders (a much better option for Muslims than to invite foreigners onto holy lands on the Arabian peninsula to kill other Muslims). Instead, the U.S. invaded and crushed the Iraqi army, establishing long term bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Dubai, Oman..

Al Qaeda and their sympathizers began to look on American/Israeli forces as an aggressive, imperialist power, much akin to the Soviets that they'd defeated in Afghanistan. Furthermore, they were convinced by their experiences with the governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the other major Muslim states that no government remaining in the Muslim world was truly representative of Muslim faith -- they were all compromised by U.S. wealth and politics.

The mission Al Qaeda set out to accomplish in the early 90s was to roll back foreign (American) presense on Muslim lands and to overthrow all of the existing Muslim governments. (The second part began with the installation of a "true" Muslim government, the Taliban, in Afghanistan) I don't pretend to know the inner mind of Al Qaeda, but if they were extremely wise and calculating, then their attack of the WTC in 1993 may have been a brilliant ploy to prevent American forces from exiting the Arabian peninsula to soon. The stated goal of Al Qaeda is to remove foreigners from the peninsula, but the removal of those forces also removes much of Al Qaeda's potential recruiting propaganda. America's continued presense in Mesopotamia over the next decade, as well as the continued American bombing of Iraqi lands (which was always spun by the Muslim media as "Americans bomb Iraqi town, 50 children hurt/killed.") was perfect propaganda for recruiting and motivating extremists.

The key to fighting Al Qaeda (and their ideology) is better media relations. Just because we know that Americans don't kill children doesn't make it true in the eyes of the Muslim people. When you get right down to it.. standing on someone else's land and killing anyone who tries to move you is not a recipe for better interaction with your host. The fact is.. there are about a billion Muslims in the world -- we can't kill them all.


Just Congressman Ron Paul. He's the one true Libertarian candidate in the GOP race. I like him a lot.

Julian, welcome to the bearpit that is so unmoderated that you don't have to stay on topic, you may be slandered without recourse, and intelligent posts such as yours may only result in getting called a f'n idiot.

I didn't know that Ron Paul was a presidential candidate. He was the presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party before he became a Republican congressman.

Ron Paul is just kinda this sad reminder of what the Republican Party used to stand for. If they went back to fiscal responsibility and personal sovereignty they'd be a lot better off than if they stick with the massive inefficient war spending and the ridiculous traditionalist talking points. The GOP could use some of Ron Paul's common sense right about now. However, there's no way in hell he's going to win the nomination in the "post 911" Republican party.

Of course. However in the Muslim mind all that oppose or disagree with Islam are the aggressors. Fact is the Crusades were a direct result of Muslim expansionism. Christians by and large are a live and let live bunch. But if you push too hard they will get pushed back harder. If it comes down to kill or be killed the Christians will do the killing and do it well.

I don't know if we want to get into a whole thing about ancient history here, as there was a lot of other stuff in that previous post.. But in fairness to the Muslim armies of Saladin.. they definitely gave at least as good as they got.. and in the end the Crusaders were completely defeated and forced out of Palestine.

Now.. we (Americans) don't live in fear of British aggression, even though we spent the first 50 years as a nation under threat of British invasion. But the British attack of 1814 was the last time that we were ever occupied by an invading army on our own soil. The Muslim nations have had to deal with the problem of invasion and occupation constantly. After the Crusades, the Ottomans came to power. All of Muslim North Africa was later occupied by Imperialist Europe. All of Muslim South Asia was occupied by Imperialist Europe. All of Muslim Central Asia was occupied by Imperialist Russia. The remaining independent Muslim states were in a constant struggle to maintain their territories against encroachments from Western Empires. The Persians had to fight the Russians on the north and the British on the east. The Ottomans had to fight the Austrians and the Russians on the north and the British and French on the south. And these conflicts persisted pretty much right up to the modern era. The Ottoman Empire and the Persian Kingdom were both finished when World War I ended, and this meant one thing -- European occupation. Which continued pretty much unfettered until the end of World War II, at which point Muslim nations were given some level of independence and self-determination.. except for the land reserved for Israel. But even then they again became unwilling pawns in the Cold War struggle between capitalism and communism.

Honestly. I think there's enough historical evidence for Muslims to look to just within the last 100 years that they can rightfully be suspicious of any Western interference in their politics. I think it's a terrible mistake to underestimate the paranoia that could exist in a society that has literally been under foreign occupation or threat of occupation for their entire cultural history.

So this suspicion and paranoia justify the acts of 911? Justify the the train, tube and night club carnage as well?
Fact is the Muslims were in a conquest and expansion phase that ended with the ottoman empire. It was the Muslims that were the foreign occupiers for centuries before they were beaten back. And they will be beaten back again.
Odd that an educated one such as you will distort history to favor a dark ages cult called Islam that has contributed absolutely nothing to the advance of civilization.
Curious indeed.

Who's talking about justification? I'm just talking about motivation. If we want to know why (and we should) we need to realize that the answer is a whole lot more complicated than "They hate us for our freedom."


Beaten back again? They'd need to go on a conquest phase first.. which I don't foresee happening.

But no doubt, Islam's armies conquered all of Arabia, then all of Syria and Persia, then all of Turkey and northern Africa, even into Spain and Sicily. It was pure aggression for the first 200 years, which was slowly rolled back over the next 800 years. But those events are not an immediate cultural memory. What Muslims of today remember are the most recent generations -- their parents, grandparents and great grandparents under the oppression of imperialist Europe, or imperialist Soviets, or warring global economic factions.

And no culture in all of Humanity looks at their past in just or objective terms. Islam looks back and remembers the Crusades, they don't say "We were wrong to violently expand our religion to other areas." Just like Americans don't look at our history and say "We were wrong to violently seize this land from the Native Americans and Mexicans." It's a cultural history, not an objective history. We see our ancestors as justified in their actions. No doubt the Muslims see their ancestors the same way.

Was it wrong for Muslims to invade other nations to spread Islam? Muslim's Answer: "Well, today most of those areas are still Islamic, their souls are helped by the actions of their Islamic ancestors."

Was it wrong for European/American colonists to seize the land of America? American's Answer: "Well, today America is a great place to live, and one of the greatest nations in the history of Human civilization."

When it comes to cultural history, the good things in the present are always used to justify the bad things done in the past. But this doesn't work when you review the motives of your past enemies. Your average American can't come up with a good justification for Pearl Harbor, or Oklahoma City, or 9-11. Your average Muslim most likely can't come up with any good justification for the Crusades, or Imperialism, or the powerful nations' actions to bring the Islamic world into the Cold War. The cultural history demands that the reasoning behind the "enemy" actions must make their actions more unreasonable and more insidious.

American justification for Pearl Harbor: "The Japanese attacked us because they were allies with Hitler, and everyone knows Hitler was evil."
American justification for Oklahoma City: "Tim McVeigh bombed that building because he was an insane, evil person."
American justification for 9-11: "Al Qaeda carried out 9-11 because they hate American freedoms, y'know rock music, dancing, naked women, etc."

Islamic justification for Crusades: "Christians crusaded against Islam because they want to convert us."
Islamic justification for Imperialism: "Westerners conquered our territories because they want to control us."
Islamic justification for Cold War: "The two sides forced us to fight each other because they want to destroy us."

In America we don't understand ourselves as the weak, rebellious, upstart liberals who fought for an independent nation in the Revolutionary War. We define ourselves as the powerful, liberating, world-shaping 'defenders of freedom' in World War 2.

It's the opposite for Muslims. They want to define themselves as the jihadis who stood up against the Crusaders, but they're stuck in their unpleasant reality -- an impotent population that has been dominated by one foreign power after another for the past 200 years.


Well, let me know when I'm distorting. I think it's a bit distorting to say that Islam contributed nothing to civlization..

Also. The term "dark ages cult" seems somewhat improper. I mean.. I think of all religions as "cults," but really the Islamic phase was only taking place during a "dark age" for Europe. It was really a golden age for the Islamic world.

In the text of the New Testament, from which comes the phrase throughout Western (European) Civilization, the words just and justify mean holy righteous, to make holy righteous. By Christian definitions, we cannot justify 9-11 or any other act of terrorism. We also cannot 'justify' Christian participation in warfare. End of argument, right?