[haku]

Originally Posted by simon

Oh dear, we're getting into a discussion about Islam and the United States. haku - your argument seems to be that everything in the world is the fault of the United States and Israel. Your comparisons are grossly unfair. The US is far from perfect and I'm very critical of it, but this idea that the US is worse than Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein would be laughable if it weren't so sick.

I never said that the US was worse than Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, i never even mentioned those names. I was replying to a post stating that "Arabs are evil", my reply meant "Americans are no angels". President Bush and many American citizens seem to think that their nation has been chosen by God to enlighten the world and cleanse it from evil. The US keeps saying "This is a fight of good versus evil", this biblical rhetoric is totally insane and leading us toward a frontal clash of civilizations that is in no way the right strategy to defeat Muslim extremists, quite the contrary, Muslim extremists are thriving on it! But yeah, i'm clearly the one who's sick.

Saddam Hussein murdered 300,000 Iraqi citizens (UN estimate); it is indeed possible that 5000 Iraqi civilians died in the US invasion of Iraq, which is less than the number of people that Saddam Hussein murdered every year during his rule. The ten Iraqis who have died under US interogation in the last year is less than the number of Iraqis who died under torture every week under Saddam. United States personnel have tortured suspected insurgents at Abu Ghraib. The Baath Party had regularly and officially committed far worse tortures on a far larger scale than anything the Americans have done to people who simply expressed a contrary opinion. In fact, all Arab states routinely torture political opponents. This does not excuse what was done, but it's important to keep it in perspective.

When terrorists murder people, that's expected, that's what they do. When dictators oppress their people, that's expected, that's what they do. When a so-called democracy tortures prisoners of war and bomb entire civilian areas to kill a few terrorists, that's unacceptable. And most importantly, why is the US even there? The fact that a country is run by a dictator does not allow another country to invade it. The US is saying that they are there to "liberate" the Iraqi people. Why? What gave them the right to invade a country and change its government? Of course the dead of the 9/11 attacks had to be avenged, it doesn't matter that Iraqis had nothing to do with the attacks, any Arabs would do, they are all evil. And let's not kid ourselves, the Iraqi people won't be free for a long time, they won't have more freedom under the puppet government the US is going to install than under Saddam's regime.

The fact that the US has executed several hundred convicted murderers over the last 30 years is neither equivalent nor comparable to stoning women to death for adultery in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan or Afghanistan under the Taliban; nor is it equivalent or comparable to the mass murder of members of the "wrong" ethnic group, as happened in Saddam's Iraq, Taliban Afghanistan or is happening now in Sudan. The human rights abuses committed in these Muslim countries are far worse and on a much larger scale than anything the US has done in recent years.

Yeah, it's a well known fact that all people that have been executed in the US were guilty without a doubt, and it's only a coincidence that most of them were black.

I do not support Guantanamo Bay, but keeping supected terrorists under detention is not worse than keeping peaceful political opponents in prison and torturing them, which happens in every Arab country.

Again, when a dictatorship imprisons opponents, that's expected, that's what they do. When a so-called democracy imprisons people for years with no formal charges, no proofs, no trials, no defense, that's unacceptable. I stand by my point, when a democracy infringe human rights, it's worse than when a dictatorship does.

Israel's driving Palestinians from their homes in 1948 and its occupation since 1967 of the West bank and the Gaza Strip are wrong, but they did not cause or justify the dictatorships in Arab countries. What Saddam did to the Iraqi people is far worse than anything Israel has done to the Palestinians. The way the Saudi regime treats women is also worse than the way Israel treats the Palestinians. The Sudanese government has massacred tens of thousands of its non-Arab citizens in the last few months. What has been the reaction of the Arab states? They helped elect Sudan to sit on the UN Commission for Human Rights. The only country that protested against this travesty was - the US.

The US were saying that the Berlin wall was a shame for humanity, but the Israeli "security fence" is a great idea? Double standards.
Each time Israelis are killed by Palestinians, the US is outraged, but when an Israeli helicopter launches 3 missiles on a group of palestinians just to assassinate one Palestinian leader, the US says that it's ok. Double standards.
And if the Sudanese regime is so horrible (which i don't doubt), why didn't the US invade them already since it seems that suddenly the US want to overthrow every dictatorship in the word (expect Libya that seems to be a "good" country now).

I remember the millions of people who marched against the overthrow of Saddam. I don't remember them protesting when Saddam was massacring his own people. I don't see them protesting about what is going on in the Sudan. Indeed, haku claims that the root cause of the problems of the Middle East is US support for Israel. I'm not clear why that makes it necessary for Sudan to massacre its black citizens.

I never said that either. When i said that the unconditional support of the US for Israel was the root of the problems in the Middle East, i was talking about international insecurity and terrorism. The fact that most countries in the Middle East are dictatorships is obviously not the fault of the Israeli/palestinian conflict, and i never said it was, but that's not an international threat either, that does not concerns us. What concerns us is that the Israeli/palestinian conflict has caused Muslim extremists to thrive and is the reason of international terrorism. If the US had had a more balanced attitude in this conflict, the situation wouldn't be nearly as bas as it is today.
I don't see why you keep bringing the fact that most countries in the Middle East are dictatorships. We all know that and it's not our problem, western countries don't have any legal rights to change regimes in other countries even if we don't like them. As long as they don't pose a threat to our security, it's none of our concern.

Now, i'm perfectly aware that Muslim terrorism is a threat that has to be dealt with, and like i said two posts earlier, i've explained in another thread why i think that starting an open front in the heart of the Middle East was a strategic mistake, ineffective and counter-productive (meaning that it's going to cause more terrorism, not less). The war against terrorism has to be led in a much more subtler way: intelligence, infiltration of enemy networks, selective assassinations. Barging in a country and blasting away not wondering who you're killing may be the American way, but it's not going to lead us anywhere, except more senseless bloodshed.

10% of the French population is from Arab origin, terrorist networks are at work in this population and those networks are infiltrated by our intelligence (and having French people who look and speak Arabic perfectly is an asset here). French people may be stupid and traitors according to the Americans, but we do have a fairly good knowledge of Arab culture and how to approach those populations, and we do fight against terrorism in our own, more discreet way.