Just give them some McDonalds, a Disney World, some Blockbusters, and Playstation 2's and all this will come to an end. Although I respect peoples rights to hold onto their culture. The way to beat terrorism is not by direct assault but to let western corporations permeate into their cultures and dull them down a bit. Give them something better to do than hate Americans and I think they will take it. People in America used to be extremely religious, what happened? We became consumers, thats what happened.

-Demosthenes

__________________
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Something they love more then "their" Allah, then maybe ya got something but I just dont see Ronald the Mc or Mick the mouse doin' it.

Why not, it worked on us.

-Demosthenes

__________________
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

It didn't work on "all" of us but if the new governing council would put in Super Wallmarts at ten mile intervals, all bets would be off.

Yes, no religion can stand up to the consumer power of Wal-Mart.

-Demosthenes

__________________
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Why wouldn't they hate us?

Generally, when an outsider invades another group’s space, the inhabitants of that space become, at best, resentful. Take Hawaii for example. There is resentment from the Hawaiians toward tourist coming onto the island to vacation. Do the Hawaiians tolerate it? Yes. Does it bring them income? Yes. But the tourists disrupt their culture, change their society, and tromp on their beautiful environment, etc., so there is resentment as well as an influx of tourist dollars.

Now imagine if outside forces helped prop up a questionable and repressive government? Imagine if someone invaded the United States and changed our culture in an effort to exploit resources. How would we feel? On top of this, our culture in the west is decadent to the people in the Middle East. Look at our television programs; what do they broadcast? Sex, violence and corruption (all the things that make “great” television, riiiight). And then WE come in and CHANGE their culture?

One of the best parallels I can think of is the settlers moving west across the United States. Think of how the Indians felt when the White Man killed the buffalo, destroyed the land and arrogantly robbed the Indians of their resources, land and culture. The Indians fought tooth and nail, but lost because they had inferior technology. Ring a bell?

We propped up the Shah, he was overthrown, we propped up Saddam, he became unruly and now we are trying to kill Frankenstein’s monster – a monster we made.

Why does so much of the world resent the United States? Because we’re the nosy neighbor who meddles in everyone else’s business as if WE have the inside knowledge of what is right and wrong. We are arrogant, we are shallow, we are self-serving, we ARE corrupt and decadent and most importantly, we ARE intruding on their culture.

To believe that our attitude and intrusive actions would not create resentment only exemplifies our arrogance.

It is not hard to understand the terrorists. We have only to put ourselves in their shoes to see why they attack us. The real question is not WHY they attack us – that is easy. The REAL question is: How do we make them stop.

NOTE TO SELF: Please attempt to ignore the Neocons who will attack this argument based on the idea that it is FOR the terrorists.

__________________
"What does a former president's son know about the Iraq war anyway?"
-- GW Bush when asked about Ron Reagan's negative comments, 6/25/2004.
www.BushZombie.com

It's not that. They hate us, most of all, because we support Israel. They hate freedom enough that they are intolerant of a Jewish-Arab state with western values.

Please let me tell u that this is one of the most realistic postings I have ever read on this forum. Congr. for your open view.
Well, this is true, and none of the Arabic people deny it, too. In all their manifestations, they do burn our flag with Israelian flag, and this is simply because we made of their cause our cause!! THe question here is how fair is the Israelian cause sothat we engage our selves so blindly behind it.
When I look at the state of refugees camps after every Israelian military operation, I hardly recognize the freedom u r talking about. Looking at the Arabic-Israelian conflict during the last 50 years, I wouldn´t expect any tolerance from them towards Israel. After all, we wouldn´t accept to give Florida as a gift to Dalay-Lama and the people of Tibet to establish their own country on it because they are unable to practice their religion freely under the Chineese government, would we?
So, according to this logic, why should Arabs accept giving their land to European Jews?
Last info : more than 80% of Israelian people refuse radically the idea of sharing the same country with Arabs. I am not talking about the two-states solution.

Where did you hear that 80% of Israeli's refuse to share a state with Arabs. From what I have been reading and studying, a majority of Israeli's support the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state and are against what is being done by the Israeli Gov't in Gaza

-Demosthenes

__________________
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower