I'm of the opinion that it is our meddling in the Middle East for many years that has emboldened our enemies, and indeed, made many enemies where none existed before.

It's time to repair the foreign policy damage done by the Bush administration and disengage from the Middle East. (This is a position advocated by Ron Paul and shared, at times, by Barack Obama.)

I have three good reasons for advocating this:

1. The people of the Middle East are basically crazy. If we are not there to stir them up, they'll make war upon one another. In any case, we'll remove the main reason why they hate us.
2. Disengaging from the Middle East will not affect the flow of oil to our country. These people are not stupid; they make $billions selling us oil. Why would they interrupt that profitable realtionship? But even if the worst should happen and they stop selling us oil, that will be an excellent incentive to us to develop alternative energy sources and alternative means of transportation. (If you look at how many Americans are overweight, it would not be a bad thing if they started walking or bicycling, instead of plopping their fat asses into their SUV to go 2 blocks to the store.)
3. Israel can take of itself, as it's shown repeatedly. We can still provide the Israelis with weapons.

Although our continual meddling in Middle Eastern affairs (culminated by our brain-dead president's senseless invasion of Iraq) has made us many enemies, it's not too late to start repairing the damage.

Um they also have Oil which is estential for the Survival of the Western Economies.

[*]These people are that stupid look up the seventies oil embargo.

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"True Freedom is the Freedom to oppress others"

Ideology: Self Preservation.

You're right, we are crazy, and you know what else? We don't give a fck. We also hate you for your freedom, not your foreign policy.


Now on a serious note, I think you raise some important points and there's a need for nuance when it comes to the Middle East, and that is always lost. Historically America was viewed highly favorably in the Arab world, but a number of foreign policy decisions changed that perception. As a Persian, I look at my own countries gains in Iraq, Israels subjugation of an Arab people, and the decade of sanctions that killed 500,000 Iraqi children and the subsequent war that's devestated the country, a long with the Iraqi refugee crisis. I see this and it's easy to see why the Arab world feels under siege. Iran still has a highly pro-American populace, but that's because we've never been under attack by the United States directly or to some extent indirectly. One has to understand the situation of the Arab world to understand the sea of hatred that's emerging, for in large part legitimate reasons.

You can't condemn lung cancer without ever mentioning smoking or tobacco. Similarly, to condemn Arab terrorism without looking at the symptoms and roots of the problem is an exercise in futility.

Tim: You're right about the Iranian people. Most of them are pro-American, and the vast majority of them hate the repressive, tight-assed regime they're forced to live under.

If we disengaged from the Middle East, the current Iranian regime would lose its main reason for staying in power. If it was no longer seen as a necessary buffer against American imperialism, the Iranian people would soon depose it and install a Western-style capitalist government.

You are absolutely correct in that assessment. For example, why were hostages taken in the U.S. embassy in Iran in the 70's?

It was because in Iran, in 1953, the CIA overthrew the democratically elected leader so that British Petroleum could maintain rights to the oil. The oil nationalization bill passed unanimously in the Iranian Parliament. I don't believe in socialist policies - however - that was what their democracy decided. The Shah - the U.S. puppet - had a secret police force that made several people "disappear." And that was the spark that caused the Iranian hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy. Not because they just woke up one day and decided to "hate us for our wealth and freedom."

The CIA's own report, which you can see in the documentary "Why We Fight," stated that the United States should expect "blowback" - meaning violent retaliation - for its role in the coup.

The U.S. has been sticking its nose in Iran and the Middle East for quite some time. It's actions have led to the imprisonment, torture and/or death of innocent people there. In many cases that leads their surviving friends and family to seek revenge. Sometimes this practice manifests itself by the election of radical leaders who preach against the U.S., as in Iran.

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

There's a lot of truth in those words, although I think you might have an exaggerated view of how bad the regime really is. Through the end of the 1990s and the begining of this century there were mass protests against this regime, I know cuz I was involved in them, and there are plenty of pictures and video online from those events. After 9/11 a few hundred thousand Iranians held a candle light vigil in sympathy with American victims. We're the third biggest blogging country on earth. There's a genuine desire for change. But I must admit that this desire has been to some extent repressed because of the heightened tensions between the US and Iran. Anytime there's an outside threat, people rally around the flag. This has killed the pro-democracy/pro-reform movement in Iran, of which I'm a part. There's no time to be self critical when you're under threat. I may hate the regime, but I'd be it's biggest defender in the event of an attack and so would 80 million other Iranians.

Tim: I hear talk of the U.S. possibly mounting an attack on the Iranian nuclear installations between now and election day. I guess I wouldn't put it past the Bush people to do this, but I'm hoping they're intimidated by Bush's microscopic poll numbers and they won't want to do anything that would jeopardize McCain's election chances.

There are two very different perspectives on Middle East foreign policy. The George Bush/GOP school of thought believes we need to get in there and fight until everybody who is against us is either killed or intimidated. This school of thought believes that we have a right to manipulate events in the Middle East to bring about an outcome that's favorable to our national interest. The problem with this school of thought, even assuming that it is correct, is that most of our meddling in this region has not had the outcomes we expected and most of our efforts there have actually been counter-productive to our interests. Look at how we've tried to influence events in Iraq and Iran for the last 50-60 years and how we've wound up screwing things up worse than they were before. We installed Saddam Hussein in Iraq and then we deposed him. We installed the Shah in Iran and then we stood by helplessly while he was deposed by a coup led by anti-American wackos.

The other school of thought, which I subscribe to, believes that just about all our problems with the Muslim world stem from our interventions and imperialistic meddling in the region. If we would disengage from the region, and announce publicly that we're letting events there run their natural course, much of the rationale for anti-American sentiment would be removed.

I don't see an American attack on Iran for a number of reasons. For one, the Bush administration isn't staffed by the irrational and fanatic neoconservatives like it was until 2006/2007. The people that drove the administration into the Iraq debacle have been purged for the most part, or have resigned. The neonservative element would be a key component in the event of an American attack on Iran, and it's largely absent at the moment. The other major advocates of a war are a few ethnic lobbying groups, and of course the Israeli government which has been desperate for an American war with Iran. Pressure from the latter is still real, but I think an attack on Iran would simply be politically impossible at this point. Bush is a young guy after all, and I doubt he'll want to be blamed for the rest of his life for crippling the Republican party.

As for the rest of your post, I think people in the Mid East tend to understand the United States far better than Americans understand the Mid East. Iraq has never had a history of democracy, and you simply can't come in and impose democracy from the top down. In Iran, as controlled as our democracy may be, we've had a long history of bottom-up democracy. On the grassroots level Iranian democracy is as strong as any in the world, although it's certainly a tougher challenge as we have to maneuver within the confines of a controlled system. But in terms of grass-roots democratic institutions, there's probably no other country in the region with a comparable activism. There are more womens rights movements for example than you can count, and this sort of thing has always been absent in Iraq, a country that's always been under dictatorship.

As for your school of thought on foreign policy, I think there's a lot of truth to it. Of course, your description of the Bush administration view that America should "fight until everyone is killed or intimidated" is sort of a mirror image of Al Qaeda's backward Wahhabi Salafist thinking. Al Qaeda, like the Bush administration, justifies its aggression both to itself and the world by striking a defensive pose. It's natural for any person or entity to do this. But one would only have to listen to the grievances of the terrorists and their sympathizers to find what you have, namely that a lot of the resentment they feel is explained by them through what they consider to be American aggression. Even Bin Laden justifies his attacks by referring to the 500,000 Iraqi children who died under what he terms the "US imposed sanctions" on Iraq. And he routinely says that he has a right to "lay waste" to American cities just as for instance when he watched Lebanese cities being "laid to waste" by Israel with American political and military support.

Future administrations should take this statement to heart, our meddling is what makes people continue to hate us.

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Because you know how to government do/
they never snitch on themselves, but they want you to snitch on you/

The biggest reason I see to disengage, actually, is that it's financially completely stupid. How many trillions of dollars in debt are we from this "war"? We could have friggin terraformed Mars with all of the money we lost.