Did Osama slip away from us?

[anastrophe]

bin laden will be captured in mid- to late october. that's my gut feeling. just in time to sway the election.

[anastrophe]

actually, you've got that backwards - the bin laden family members were ferried *out* of the US shortly after 9/11. and it was done after airspace had been cleared, so it was perfectly legit. michael moore's film is propoganda, so 'facts' are precisely that - 'facts' in quotation marks, i.e. not necessarily the truth.

[Tombstone]

Nice analysis. My feeling is that we can't win for losing. No matter what we do, we are still going to be targets for all of these militant Islamists.

I'm cynical enough now to believe that even if we went into a complete isolationist state, the Islamic Nations would still have a bounty on our heads.

Western "Culture" just doesn't jive with fundamentalist Islam. It's their duty to rid the earth of infidels. And believe me, they are going to try.

It's a depressing thought, but the next big battles will most likely be Islam vs. Christianity. Islamic Nations vs. Western Civilization.

[capt_buzzard]

Tombstone wrote: Nice analysis. My feeling is that we can't win for losing. No matter what we do, we are still going to be targets for all of these militant Islamists.

I'm cynical enough now to believe that even if we went into a complete isolationist state, the Islamic Nations would still have a bounty on our heads.

Western "Culture" just doesn't jive with fundamentalist Islam. It's their duty to rid the earth of infidels. And believe me, they are going to try.

It's a depressing thought, but the next big battles will most likely be Islam vs. Christianity. Islamic Nations vs. Western Civilization.


Its not going to happen just yet. Wait until after 2007 when the bold Iran unites the Arab countries/nations into one. Then we might see something like we never seen before.

[anastrophe]

plazul wrote: Iranians are Persians, not Arabs, though many Americans tend to lump Iranians and Arabs together as "towel heads" and "camel jockeys." The Iranians and Arabs are beautiful people who have made major conrtibutions to human civilization. We should remember the Babylonian Empire and that the Fertile Crescent is the cradle of civilization. Arabs and Persians were very far ahead of the west in just about every area of human endeavor for much of human history.
indeed - and as well ahead in brutality, cruelty, and horror.



let's not forget the assyrians, the hittites, and the chaldeans, who also ruled the fertile crescent at various times, and ruthlessly.



the persians at one time ruled into egypt and palestine, so it's hard to make raw distinctions between iranians and arabs - all of the cultures of the middle east are intermingled tremendously.



lest my opening comments be mistaken, i very much agree that our western civilization owes its very existence to those who inhabited the fertile crescent.

[anastrophe]

plazul wrote: I am guilty of making generalizations too but remember that most Iranians and Arabs (agree that they're intermingled) are peaceful people with the same aversion to bloodshed that most Americans have. They have families, and aspiratiions, and feelings just like us. Don't succumb to the propoganda that puts them all in league with terrorists. It just isn't true.you'll get no argument from me. but i don't agree that there is that much actual propoganda suggesting so. there's a great deal of public ignorance that leads people to believe so, however.



i have a hundred year old persian carpet in the bedroom. and a persian miniature on the wall. my maternal grandfather brought the carpets back with him after missionary work in the region nearly a hundred years ago, and the persian miniature was a wedding gift to my parents from a persian friend. i have a great appreciation for the cultures of the fertile crescent and beyond.



the problem, in 2004, is islamic fundamentalist extremists. period.