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Pay this Canuck no mind. He's simply insecure about his own country that he feels the need to condemn everything American.

Pathetic loser.

I read in the newspaper today that there was a recent Islamist militant attack in Nigeria. 100 people died, and more attacks are expected.

Then it hit me: the Islamist terrorists have no intention of fighting for a radicalized Middle East: it's the whole world they're after.
Most smaller scale wars take place in smaller, contained areas. The War on Terror has not. Attacks and battles have been everywhere in the world, be it the US (9/11) Europe (the 2004 bombings) or Russia (the 2010 Chechen train bombings), Somalia (Al-Shabaab) Afghanistan (the Taliban), India (the 2008 Mumbai Hotel standoff) and countless areas in Israel.

The War on Terror has taken place on just about every continent, and I have no doubt there are plans for Australia and South America too. This is not just a war between those in the West and those in the Middle East. This truly is a World War.

Now I admit you can't say that every Islamist terrorist group is united in one group like the Axis. There's a bit more cohesion on the anti-terrorist side, but it'd be a stretch to call us the Allies (since Israel and the Libyan rebels aren't in NATO)

Attacks between Islamist militants and anti-terrorists have gone on just about everywhere in the world, and ever since 9/11 there's been more and more. There's been a wave of terrorist attacks all around the world by Islamist militants, and more and more countries around the world are pitching in to fight the terrorists.

This is not just a War on Terror. It's WWIII. Only this time we are not fighting countries, but groups. Still, the overall events of attacks and battles happening around the world is the same. The whole world is at war, and we need to realize that we are fighting more than a regional battle. We're fighting literally, for the sake of the whole world.

At 11/1/11 02:36 PM, lapis wrote: You know, if you had in your first post given one example of an actual BBS post (from General for all I care)

What about "Americans: Evil or Ignorant?"

At 11/1/11 04:44 AM, lapis wrote:

At 11/1/11 01:01 AM, Camarohusky wrote: The point isn't a bad one,

What is the point? I think that's an even more fundamental problem than the argument. The point seems to be to disprove that "everything bad in the world is caused by America",

That really wasn't my point. I was mocking those whose gut reaction to any problem is "blame America." I wasn't trying to disprove anything; I was just showing how overboard all of this anti-American sentiment is.

At 11/1/11 01:01 AM, Camarohusky wrote:

If you had kept it limited to 1 country, or perhaps to a short period of time in world history (outside of a massive war) the point would have been much more poignant. As it stands, this seems like a weak attempt to respond to nothing specific by cherry picking very few bad acts of others over a very long period of time, to absolve, or deflect whatever we may have done as just one nation in that same span.

The point isn't a bad one, but you're trying to whittle with a chansaw here... (metaphorically)

I wanted to satirize the idea that everything in the world was caused by America. So I told how America is responsible for WWI, WWII, Napoleon, and the thunderstorm last week, because it seems to me that there are a lot of people here whose gut reaction is "America did it!" I was mocking them. I wasn't trying to say "Hey America has done some bad, but look at what other people did too."

It's almost seems to me like people are afraid to publicly speak out against or make fun of the President, for fear of unseen consequences, even on here.

You trying to insinuate that somehow we don't have free speech here? Open your eyes. I guess you've never heard of our current Congress or the Tea Party.

There seems to be this overall idea that everything bad in the world is caused by America, which is filled with Americans, the worst, dumbest, people in the world.

I completely agree. Let's take a look at America's evil, bloody history.

1776: Fought a war against Britain because the British subjects refused to pay their taxes to America. Britain valiantly fought and won independence from America.

1800s: America, under President Napoleon Bonaparte, fought for the domination of all of Europe and was defeated in the Battle of Waterloo by the bold nations of Austria, Russia, and England. The bloodthirsty American Empire was defeated.

1860s-70s: In a series of wars against Austria, Denmark, and France, America gains more land for its imperial conquest. The American states unify into one American Empire, under President Bismarck, who proclaims "America Uber Alles!"

1880s: At the Washington Conference, America decides to conquer as much of Africa as it can. The brave nations of Europe try to stop American imperialism and barbarism by colonizing Africa themselves, thus preventing America from taking over the land. In order to prevent the Americans from committing acts of genocide against the Africans, the European nations do it themselves, preventing millions from being killed by American guns.

1914: America fakes the death of Secretary of State Franz Ferdinand, giving it an excuse to present Serbia with an ultimatum: be occupied or death. American then mobilizes against Russia and invades Belgium to get to France. President Wilhelm II declares war on the Allied powers, including France, Russia, and Britain. WWI begins.

1917: The Allied Powers discover the Zimmerman telegram, an American plot to get Mexico in on WWI on the side of the Central Powers. It fails, and only provokes more nations into the war against America.

1918: America is defeated in WWI.

1939: America, under President Hitler, invades Poland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, Norway, Luxembourg, and receives help from its allies Italy and Japan. America also kills 6 million Jews because it is evil like that.

1945: Somehow winning and losing WWII, America occupies Eastern Europe for 50 years, builds the Berlin Wall, and causes the Iron curtain to fall over Europe. The West is left to itself and there is no barrier against communism and totalitarianism.

1980s: Somebody asks America to tear down the Berlin Wall. He is ignored.

1990s: America does absolutely nothing to invent the Internet.

1995: Some guy who is defintely not American invented Newgrounds.

2001: America flies planes into buildings all around the world in the name of terrorism.

All of the above is completely true. America is to blame for absolutely everything, right guys? Look at all the evil America did. America is always to blame for everything in the world, right? Europe never did anything bad, it was all America.

At 10/23/11 08:15 PM, Scarface wrote: Rebuttal

I think Iraq was a mistake too. We should not have gone in. Keep in mind that hindsight is 20/20.
But I still believed we were justified in doing it. However, just because you are justified in doing something doesn't always mean that you should. We should not have gone into Iraq, however, we were justified in doing it.

At 10/23/11 03:00 PM, Scarface wrote: Is it wrong for me to assume the main reason for Iraq was oil? Not to say that Iraq wasn't doing shit it wasn't supposed to, of course, but at the time it didn't pose any threat to the US. Al Queda did, which is why we went into Afghanistan because at the time we knew that the Taliban and Al Queda were linked, and it was believed that the Taliban could lead us to Al Queda. However, Iraq was completely irrelevant to 9/11 (the reason we went into Afghanistan), so why else did we go in?

Saddam Hussein was an enemy of the US. He praised 9/11, failed to convince the UN that he was not building WMDs, shot at US planes in the no-fly zones, massacred Kurds, ran a minority authoritarian regime, tried to assassinate George HW Bush, and supported Palestinian terrorists. He was a bastard, and while he was not actually planning on attacking the US he was certainly a supporter of terrorism.

You also have to realize that at the time we went in, the UN, England, US, Iran, and Russia all truly believed he had WMDs. Saddam even admitted after his capture that he exaggerated his weapons stockpile because he didn't want to look weak against Iran and he thought Bush was bluffing.

At 10/13/11 01:15 AM, Hybridization wrote: Both are responsible, but it's America's fault for the over-exaggeration and propaganda.

The Russians believed Saddam had WMDs. In 2002 Saddam gave "evidence" to the UN that he had no WMDs, yet the UN did not buy it. It's also likely Saddam was lying because a: he didn't want to seem weak against his enemy, Iran, and b: he thought Bush was bluffing.

But as usual, you seem to be the type that thinks Europe is faultless in every way and that America is responsible for everything from 9/11 to that thunderstorm last week. Both Europe and America believed Saddam had WMDs and it wasn't from propaganda. If Britain was so deadset on the idea that Saddam had no WMDs it would've joined France and Germany in refusing to go in.

At 10/11/11 05:48 PM, Hybridization wrote: Which is why I said the intention is not the same as the results. What part of that made no sense?

According to you, America's intention was to colonize Iraq and get all its oil and the Brits' intention was to overthrow an evil dictator. The result was chaos and an unstable Iraq.

So who is responsible for this? Is it the US and Britain? Only one country's fault?

At 10/10/11 04:08 PM, Hybridization wrote: Intentional action =/= collateral / secondary results. There is no contradiction.

You make no sense. Neither Britain nor the US wanted an unstable, sectarian Iraq, so are we not responsible for it? Britain and America went in for the same reasons.

At 10/10/11 12:26 AM, Cootie wrote: Iraq was a mistake.

I am not saying the government had evil intentions, but they were misguided and mistaken. To be honest Saddam should have been taken care of after Iraq's outstanding loss in the Gulf War. We let him stay and then decided to take him out later under terms we were unsure of. Seems like we were wrong, and even though we did away with an awful dictator... he really wasn't our problem.

What we should've done is just step up Desert Fox and the no-fly zones. Maybe even bomb Baghdad like we did in March and just leave. Saddam was a bastard, and we were justified in taking him out, but in a place as volatile as the Middle East there really is no way to topple a dictator and keep it stable.

At 10/9/11 08:23 PM, Hybridization wrote:

Um, same as Britain? By the way, they all knew what would happen if the Petro-Dollar failed (economic collapse).

Ah, but you said before that Britain just went in to topple an evil dictator, not for oil. You're contradicting yourself.

At 10/8/11 09:59 AM, Hybridization wrote: The British went in believing they were overthrowing a tyrannical ruler. America went in pretending to overthrow a tyrannical ruler. It may have been a coalition, but the motivation was much different.

Now you're babbling on about conspiracy theories. Then why did the Polish go in? South Korea? Japan? The Czech Republic? Australia?

We all went in for the same reason: to overthrow Saddam Hussein. You are nothing but someone who has eaten up the anti-American conspiracy propaganda.

At 10/7/11 07:27 PM, Hybridization wrote:

Now look at the proportion of American placements and British. Britain was in Iraq for the right reasons, as far as I am concerned.

British troops and American troops went in with the same goals. It was a coalition, not two countries working separately.

At 10/6/11 07:27 PM, Warforger wrote:

Saddam wasn't in power then, during that time though they had an alliance with the Commies, except by the late 70's that alliance broke and they started expelling Communists, hence the support.

At the time he was vice chairman of the revolutionary council. He wielded power; he wasn't just some goat herder.

....No I'm talking about facts. Saddam did not gas the Kurds in 2003, he gassed the Kurds back in the 80's during the Iran-Iraq war, America worked to block the story as much as possible and it wasn't known until the 90's that it happened.

So? What does it matter? Even if we allegedly blocked that info does that make it ok for him to murder those people? You're trying to say that the US is being hypocritical, but that doesn't change the fact that he murdered thousands of Kurds. It doesn't matter if the info was ever concealed; he did it and he deserved to be toppled.

He just invaded it, there was no actual evidence of anything happening. There was a testimony of a Kuwaiti woman who stated that she was raped by Iraqi troops, but then after the war was over she aitted she was lying.

He just invaded it? Let's see how you'd talk if your country was being "just invaded."

At 10/6/11 02:55 PM, Hybridization wrote:

Hussein was not a fool. No government smaller than Western forces (meaning, no government) has the means or ability to instigate a significant war on the United States. There is no way the former Iraqi regime would have wanted to strike its most religiously loyal export client. This is not to mention the fact that [we knew] Iraq had no weapons capable of striking American soil. Hussein was a cruel dictator, but not one aggressive towards the West (unless you include the oil market, which he wanted to monopolize - the REAL reason we overthrew him).

It didn't have anything to do with oil; Bush was concerned about Saddam and his connections to terrorism. Perhaps he wasn't affiliated with Bin Laden but he certainly was with the PLO and other terrorist organizations.

I believe Britain is just as concerned about the petroleum market as the US. However, I doubt the means through which they achieve economic power is through force. Don't believe the propaganda.

You've been reading propaganda of your own. Britain doesn't achieve economic power through force? I suppose in 2003 their soldiers were planting flowers in Baghdad, right?

All in all, justification for war and the reason to go can be two different things.

As I said before, Saddam was a true S.O.B. He deserved to be toppled. But let's face it, no country ever goes to war to "protect" the people being oppressed. The crimes against humanity are reasons that justify the regime change in Iraq. But that's not why the US did it.

At the time, the US, UN, Britain, and Russia were all convinced of Saddam's WMD capabilities. With 9/11 still fresh in our minds, and Saddam's ties to Palestinian terrorism, support (in word only) of 9/11, and flouting of UN and international laws, he seemed very likely to strike the US next.

The fact that he was a murderer and a barbarian helped make the fact that we took him out seem better. Many Iraqis being persecuted by Saddam welcomed his demise.

We were justified in taking a bloodthirsty dictator out of power. But why did we do it? We feared that Saddam would strike the US in revenge for the sanctions and the Gulf War. So we attacked first.

We can argue about why we went into Iraq and the justifications. But when you look at the fact that the only reason states go to wars is to protect the homeland, justification for the war (however much there may be) is different than America and Britain's reasons for going to war.

At 10/3/11 08:24 AM, Loiarlyritpyat wrote: "Supporting Dictatorships"

Right, in the name of fruit.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e n/wiki/Edward_Bernays#Overthrow_of_gover nment_of_Guatemala

I'm not denying that we supported dictatorships. I just disagree with this prevailing "logic" that if the US supports one dictator we should support them all.

Invade the privacy of citizens, but protect the privacy of the dreaded terrorist who could just attack any of the numerous places that aren't 'secured'.

I'm not arguing for that. This is about justification for Iraq, not black spots.

Isn't that user above Jewish?

Yes

At 10/2/11 12:20 PM, Warforger wrote:

Because they were the enemies of the Communists and they expelled many from Iraq?

You mean the same guy who signed a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union in 1972?

.......Or they could censor it to keep support for Saddam.

You're talking about conspiracy theories. I'm talking about facts, and the 2003 War. I don't see your point. Even if we did censor it, so what? Then does that mean we should have kept Saddam in power?

Yah there are territorial claims everywhere, but that doesn't make you a bloodthirsty dictator.

It does if you actually invade and rape a country, like Kuwait in 1991.

What? His country still ranks 3rd in least transparent countries behind Burma and North Korea and according to Freedom house still has a 7/7 ranking the same ranking as North Korea, Tibet and Uzbekistan. His succesor remains just as oppressive but not weird.

What does this have to do with Iraq being justified? So in your logic if we support one dictator we must support them all?

Mubarak was a bastard to his people but he was a moderate voice on OPEC, opened the Suez to shipping for the War on Terror, and kept the peace with Israel.

Exactly and that's why we supported him.

I'm not denying we supported Mubarak. I wish he hadn't left either.

Yah, but after the Cold War he went back to our side and started getting thumbs up from us all the way until 2011 i.e. like being the human rights council.

You're not making any sense. Why would we put in a dictator who would allegedly start "being a friend" 40 years after being in power?

I'm saying how your points don't really apply since there are alot more dictatorships that we support that were worse than Saddam.

Your points make absolutely no sense. You delve into conspiracy theories and get off track. My friend, do not go up against someone with facts with your American Jewish Illumanti conspiracy theories. They just don't work.

At 10/1/11 11:20 PM, Warforger wrote:

Funny part is the USA is responsible for not only installing him as leader but also supporting him.

Why would the US install a member of the Socialist Ba'ath party? I understand we supported him in the 80s because he was fighting Iran.

And the USA also helped censor this report for awhile for people to find out later.

The US supposedly censored this report; therefore Saddam should've stayed in power?

Invaded Kuwait in 1991 to annex it.

Big deal.

Not if you're Kuwait, the UN, and the Arab League.

That doesn't make him a blood thristy dictator now?

That itself doesn't make him one but it does bring into question his truthfulness.

Kept the Shia majority under minority Sunni rule

Because he was Sunni himself?

And because he kept the Sunni minority in power while taking away rights of the Shia majority.

Except there are alot more dictators we support than oppose. Like say those of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, formerly Mubarak, formerly Qaddafi (which is ironic as he committed terrorist attacks against the West), China etc. Iraq is only different because very few nations supported it and those that did were already open enemies so it was no-risk turning hostile.

Turkmenistan's Niyazov died years ago, and he wasn't evil, just strange. The worst he did was forbid the country to smoke and told his people to chew dog bones.

Mubarak was a bastard to his people but he was a moderate voice on OPEC, opened the Suez to shipping for the War on Terror, and kept the peace with Israel.

And how the hell did we support Gaddafi's rise to power? He is the founder of the Arab Socialist Jammarihya, and we bombed him in the 80s and in the present. During his time he buddied up to the Soviet Union. The US is also friendly with Israel. King Idris, the former King of Libya, didn't like Israel but wasn't going to war with it anytime soon. Gaddafi wants Israel blown off the map. Again, why did we supposedly put him in power again?

And funny how you completely missed how I said we should NOT have gone into Iraq. Just because you're justified in doing something doesn't always mean you should.

Yes, it was justified.
Let's look at Saddam Hussein's glorious background:

Massacred Kurds in Northern Iraq. Coalition troops found mass graves.
Paid the families of Palestinian suicide bombers
Praised Al-Qaeda on 9/11
Invaded Kuwait in 1991 to annex it.
Expelled UN weapons inspectors in 1998 and 2001
Kept the Shia majority under minority Sunni rule
Slashed the tongues of political opponents
Abused the Oil for Food program, made sure the money went to his cronies, not the people
And who can forget him terrorizing a little boy when he was held hostage in Iraq in the 90s?

As for the WMDs, what people forget is that Saddam Hussein admitted that he lied to the world. He did not want to appear weak to Iran or the West. He thought Bush was bluffing. And when he did try to submit evidence in 2002 that he did not possess WMDs, the governments of Britain, the US, Russia, and the UN denied that Saddam was telling the truth.

I don't think we should have invaded Iraq. We should have done a better job securing it. But Saddam was a bastard. A terrorist. A murderer. It was bad timing on our part, but we were justified in taking out a murderous dictator.

No, I'm not talking about his comment on taxes

A few weeks ago Warren Buffett proposed an idea to solve the problem of our growing debt:
-If debt grows to 3% more than our GDP, all members of Congress are uneligible for re-election-

Given how our Congress works in such a self-serving way, this would be a perfect law. It sounds cynical and humorous but I think it would really work. The reason Congress spends so much is because it's popular. Too many people want spending cut, but want their benefits to remain. They want someone else's spending cut. Unfortunately, since there is no such thing as "useless spending," Congressmen fail to make the tough but right decisions because it would cost them re-election.

What do you think?

Remember kids, it's cool to be leftist! As long as you say the words "equality," "justice" "free-thinking" and "anti-imperialism" enough, you can do whatever you want.

It blows my mind how communists say that the US is an imperialist nation. They forget that our country was founded on the principle of NOT having colonies. They forget the Monroe Doctrine, or how when we got new land we actually made it states instead of colonies. They forget how in WWI when Britain and France claimed new colonies we abstained. They forget how after WWII while the Russians colonized Eastern Europe we freed Western Europe.
Communism is just as bad as Nazism. Granted, they weren't AS bad as the Nazis during WWII because at the time they were too busy killing Nazis to kill their own. But during the 20s, 30s, and the rest of the Cold War (until Gorbachev) they were just as bad as Hitler was.

Still, in school we learn that the Communists had a utopian dream that sounded good but oops, just didn't work out. We learn about the Nazis as brutal bloodthirsty sadists (and rightly so) but the Soviets are spared the harsh judgment they deserve.

Israel is absolutely legitimate.

First off, as regards to its creation, the Jews and Muslims were to split the land, as organized by the UN. Neither of them had their own country for hundreds of years. From 1920-1948 it was owned by the British, and before, since the 1600s, it was a province of the Turkish Empire.

As to regards about "but the Jews immigrated with Zionism," Jews had been living there for centuries. All Zionism did was spur immigration, not occupation. The Jews did not come in with guns and armies; they had none. They just came to the land of Palestine like immigrants to other countries. For many years, even before Zionism, Jews were the majority in Jerusalem and other cities in the land.

After 1948, a Jewish state was necessary because the Holocaust wiped out most Jews in Europe. Many fled to their families in Palestine because there was nowhere else to go. It was obvious that Europe was no longer a home for the Jews there. Not that the Holocaust created Israel, because in 1917 the British Government passed the Balfour Declaration, supporting a Jewish state, long before Hitler's rise to power.
In addition, WWII brought anti-Semitism to the Middle East. In addition to pure Aryan Germans scheming to kill the Jews, the Palestinian leadership took a pro-Axis stance during WWII. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and other Palestinian religious leaders pledged support for Hitler. Nazism did not die in WWII; it only changed forms. Future rulers like Anwar Sadat, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hassan Nasrallah, and Hafez al-Assad were all influenced by Nazism. With such a pro-Nazi Palestinian population, how could the Jews living and fleeing to British Palestine be safe in a Palestinian state, where they would undoubtedly continue where Hitler left off?

In 1948, when Israel was established, it was the Arab armies who attacked Israel. Israel reacted in self-defense and was victorious.

Last, let's get to the most crucial point of all; Israel has been here for over 60 years. They are not European. In fact, about 70% of Israel is racially Arab (and I'm talking Israeli citizens, not the refugees).
The Israelis of today were born there. Their parents and grandparents were born there. They have their own life and culture. They are a stable democracy in a land of autocrats. If Israel was liquidated, where would they go? They're here, get used to it.

At 8/15/11 05:38 PM, Angry-Hatter wrote:

Your implication being that every member of Al Qaeda suffers from an irrational hatred of American culture so strong that they'd all be willing to kill themselves to bring America down? And nothing else? No other motivation? Just, "I don't like your religion, therefore I will sacrifice my life to bring you down"?

When you're raised in poverty and the people who give you food and money tell you to kill the infidels, you kill the infidels. These people haven't been raised like your or me. This hatred is all they know. They suffer from no education and a backwards culture.

First of all, were you really helping out the Afghanis, or were you sticking it to the Soviets?

The Muhajideen didn't seem to care.

The Swedish Empire ended more than 200 years ago. The American Empire is still going strong though, with a widespread presence throughout the middle east which really started to expand after the Gulf War ended in 1991.

Will you quit calling the United States an empire? How can we debate when you're going to insult America right off the bat by calling it an empire? We are not one and never were.

I'd just like to point out that I never mentioned occupation of middle eastern countries by the US. You were the one to bring that up, so before I answer your question, I'd like to ask you one first: you seem to be implying that nothing short of complete occupation of a country by the United States is motivation enough to take hostile action against the US; would you then consider such action against the US understandable, now that such occupation exists in both Iraq and Afghanistan at present time?

Now that we are in Afghanistan, yes, I can understand why Al-Qaeda is attacking us. But we were not in Afghanistan before 9/11.

Now then, some of what the US was ACTUALLY doing which might have garnered quite a bit of ill will among muslims in the middle east during the 1990's.

1. Trade embargo on Iraq.

After Iraq invaded Kuwait, the UN security council (of which the US is a permanent member) passed a resolution which imposed a trade embargo on everything going into and out of Iraq. All exceptions had to go through the so-called 661 Committee, where the US commonly used it's veto power as a permanent council member to deny essential supplies such as food and vaccines from being sent into Iraq, on the basis that they might be used to create weapons. This embargo, which wasn't lifted until December of last year, led to a crippled Iraqi economy, hyper inflation, and a skyrocketing infant mortality rate, essentially pushing Iraq back into the pre-industrial age.

Then maybe we should stop the no-fly zone on Libya. We are preventing food and humanitarian aid from getting to the people of Tripoli.

Dictators like Saddam have ways of controlling the imports and exports of their country. Do you honestly think that Saddam, a man who gassed his own people and oppressed the Shi'a majority wanted to help his people? The embargo prevented him and his cronies from getting richer. Yes, embargoes hurt everybody but should we have just turned the other cheek after 1991? What message would that have sent to Saddam? In fact, the embargo didn't do enough. In 1998 Bill Clinton said that Iraq had WMDs, which the embargo tried to prevent.

2. Permanent US troops in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia, the home of the holiest of all muslim places; Mecca and Medina...I'd also like to remind you that 15 out of the 19 September 11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.

It's completely irrelevant that Mecca and Medina are considered holy. What does it matter? If I see French soldiers in Tahiti, should I crash planes into France? And I don't get your point about the Saudi nationals. I know that Saudi Arabia funds Al-Qaeda. Why did bin Laden bomb us, because we were in Saudi Arabia or by his holy cities?
Keep in mind that the Saudis were glad we were there to protect them from Iraq.

3. US support of Israel.

You wanted an example of American occupation in a middle eastern country? Well, American support of Israel's occupation of Palestine will have to suffice I guess. It did for Al Qaeda anyway.

I support Israel but let's stay on topic.

At 8/15/11 09:02 AM, Ranger2 wrote: What did Norway do to deserve Anders Breivik's actions? They must've also been stepping on his toes.

Now, just let me reiterate; nothing excuses the mass murder of thousands of innocent civillians. That's the most obvious thing in the world. The people who died on September 11 had done nothing to deserve the fate that Al Qaeda imposed on them, but their reasons for targeting the US were clearly stated, and based on actual events and actions taken by the United States government in the middle east. This is what separates Al Qaeda from someone like Anders Breivik, who is a different animal altogether. His reasons for committing his crimes were based on paranoid delusions and wild conspiracy theories based on absolutely nothing; he might even be suffering from a mental illness of some sort, so your comparison doesn't really hold water.

This is where I disagree with you. Both of their attacks were based on conspiracy theories and hate. Remember, it's not something that America did to deserve 9/11. It's their own hatred of our culture and our ideals. Bin Laden hates us because we do not espouse his ideology. You think wars based on religion are only in the past? For the West, yest. But they are still going on in the Middle East.

At 8/15/11 01:28 AM, SteveGuzzi wrote:

it's pretty obvious that if you step on someone's toes long enough then you're probably going to incite them to act against you in some way, but even knowing that much doesn't inform you of the exact methods they'll use to act against you.

What did Norway do to deserve Anders Breivik's actions? They must've also been stepping on his toes.

At 8/15/11 12:16 AM, Angry-Hatter wrote:

You don't travel across state lines to kill somebody just because disagree with the way they're raising their kids, or how they practice their religion; if you did, then you'd really be a complete nut.

Hi there, my name's Al-Qaeda, nice to meet you.

If, however, that person is responsible for robbing your home town and killing a bunch of your relatives, or you at least perceive it that way, then you are much more likely to take action.

Funny, because we helped out Osama and his friends in the 1980s in Afghanistan, so still not seeing your point.

"Free people do not relinquish their security. This is contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom. Let him tell us why we did not strike Sweden, for example." ~~ Osama Bin Laden, 2004

Because it would send a deeper message to strike America. Bin Laden would have no problem with striking Sweden; it just wasn't the right time. Remember, jihadists are not content with only the Middle East.

but one thing is certain; if you walk around with your chin stuck out and acting like you own the place, you're far more likely to get punched at some point than if you just keep to yourself.

Yes, because we were definitely being snobby bastards when we rescued Kuwait from Iraq or Afghanistan from the Soviets. Remind me, what country were we actually controlling and occupying in the Middle East before 9/11?