classic, you rule

Making smarty comments doesn't really convince anyone of any wrong doing. So if that is your aim then you might want to take a different tactic. Not that anyone will change their mind on this issue anyway. People either believe that Saddam was a threat (regardless of the evidence) or they (I) believe that 1300 lives were destroyed and our security is increasingly threatened by our presence in that region. My guess (unfortunately) is that this fact (No WMD) will fall on deaf ears throughout the Bush loyals. You could prove that Saddam has been dead since 1990 and the president had personal knowledge and they would STILL come up with a reason that we should've invaded. The bottom line at this point now is who will Bush blame because he sure as hell won't step up and admit HE was wrong. The buck surely stops with someone else in this administration.

One thing is for sure. With Islam being the largest religion on the planet, with probably more than 100 million members, we have completely lost any shred of legitimacy with the largest group of people on the planet.

The insurgents have launched a new propaganda campaign* and now there is no way we can convince the Muslim world that America in general, is good. We might make Iraq democratic, and then they will just vote in an Islamic government. And they will still hate us more than ever and want to kill us more than ever. Which to me means, even if we succeed in giving them elections (we are already saying 'um, it's not going to be perfect') ultimately we have still lost. And the consensus is that we still don't have an exit strategy do we? What is the Administrations idea of winning? Giving them an election?

I would think the strategy of winning the war against terrorism, is making Islam in general condemn attacks against the West. But what the hell do I know?

*(links with questionmarks get corrupted. Here is the link:
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=652858 )

In terms of the cost of the war, is the fact that millions of Muslims may take up the insurgents propaganda idea of shunning the American dollar, possibly costing us additional billions going to be factored in?

Hell, there was a report yesterday on MSNBC that Islam is telling the West to hurry up with the aid to the tsunami victims, then get the hell out (speaking of the West's military). Now why would they be so distrustful?

Steve, I am not sure where your thinking on this came from, but Christianity is by far the largest religion on earth with over 1 billion adherents - here is a chart

Hell, there was a report yesterday on MSNBC that Islam is telling the West to hurry up with the aid to the tsunami victims, then get the hell out (speaking of the West's military). Now why would they be so distrustful?

I guess they want our money, not our love. If 100s of millions of dollars (and it might wind up being more than that before this is all done) is not going to improve their opinion of us, then maybe we should quit trying to get them to be our new best friends.

THAT DOES NOT MEAN WE SHOULD NOT HELP WITH THE ENORMOUS HUMANITARIAN CRISIS --- OF COURSE WE SHOULD HELP!

But I have to wonder if enacting policies to try and tiptoe around the delicate sensibilities of a group (or at least vast segments of this group) of people who seem as though they will always see America as an enemy.

From islam.about.com:

Islam is a major world religion, with over 1 billion followers worldwide (1/5 of the world population).

here is a more recent and specific listing than the one I linked to above:

Christianity: 2 billion

Islam: 1.3 billion

Hinduism: 900 million

Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 850 million

Buddhism: 360 million

Chinese traditional religion: 225 million

primal-indigenous: 150 million

African Traditional & Diasporic: 95 million

Sikhism: 23 million

Juche: 19 million

Spiritism: 14 million

Judaism: 14 million

Baha'i: 6 million

Jainism: 4 million

Shinto: 4 million

Cao Dai: 3 million

Tenrikyo: 2.4 million

Neo-Paganism: 1 million

Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand

Rastafarianism: 700 thousand

Scientology: 600 thousand

Zoroastrianism: 150 thousand

Eric, I stand corrected on the numbers, but the gist of my complaint still stands. 1.3 billion now have reason to hate us more than ever and dispute our rationale for the invasion of Iraq.

(I had no idea that the number of secular/agnostics was so large).

I guess they want our money, not our love.

Unless I misread, they were speaking only of the military and not of organizations like the Red Cross and other humanitarian groups.

It's our military, our government that they distrust/hate, less so the American people. That's my understanding anyway.

I know this post was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the "casualty" figure is wrong, or the wrong terminology is used. Casualty means killed, wounded, and missing, the casualty figure for Iraq is well about 10,000. The KIA figure is above 1,300.

On a different note: with all the talk about "liberal media" and such... wouldn't a liberal/biased media blow Bush out of the water for this announcement? Funny that I'm not hearing many shots fired.

>>One thing is for sure. With Islam being the largest religion on the planet, with probably more than 100 million members, we have completely lost any shred of legitimacy with the largest group of people on the planet.<<

OMG we've lost legitimacy with the portion of Islam that thinks genocide, slavery and wife-beating are great ideas. What WILL we do?

If we are known by who our enemies are then I'm proud to know us.

Dave
http://www.elitistpig.com

Actually, it's my understanding, by reading newspapers from all over the world (via their websites), and from reading reports from right here at home, that we've lost legitimacy with all of Islam, not just the terrorist portion. I don't see where you get 'portion of Islam' from my statement.

The fact that their suspicions that the war in Iraq wasn't about WMD can now be justified is just icing on the cake to them.

It's not just Islam either, we're losing France, Germany, Russia, Asian nations, etc. (and I'm talking populace more than governments).

Of course, you don't have to even leave this site to see a great many Americans don't care what the rest of the world thinks of us.

Church of Saleski: 1

what are your core beliefs?

does it matter? there's only one of me!

it matters for that tax exempt standing

I highly doubt that you could get "all of Islam" to agree on anything. That statement is just as silly as saying that all of Christianity supports the war.

You're right, Joe. World opinion of us is nothing to worry about. No WMD? Who cares.

Islam certainly doesn't derive judgements against a falsely labeled invasion. They aren't affected by any of this at all.

If you desire to engage in hyperbole, that's your perogative. I'm surprised to see it from you, though.

this is more comments than anything i've submitted has received. yay me!

yensid, you forgot pants. i make smarty-pants comments. ;-)

eric b, thanks for the clarification. i though casualty just meant kia. i'll fix it in a moment.

everyone else, thanks for reading and commenting.

Steve, that link you put up had some excellent pictures of cute kids in Iraq. I was saddened by the pictures of all of the ones who had been killed or injured by terrorist attacks, heartened to see US soldiers there protecting them in so many pictures, and angered by the pictures of kids being exploited by terrorists.

Dave

I thought these particular smarty-pants comments were particularly effective, CG

The point of my link Dave, wasn't to show anti-American children, as you imply but children who 'aren't affected', giving us the excuse of a 'who cares' mentality. High enough over the head there was no need to duck, I guess.

saddened by the pictures of all of the ones who had been killed or injured by terrorist attacks

Not wanting to be forced to take the anti-American route here, but how do you know how they died?

Zoroastrianism kicks ass. They worship fire--how cool is that?

>>Not wanting to be forced to take the anti-American route here, but how do you know how they died?<<

Apparently my post was just a mite too subtle for you. In that case no point in trying to explain it either.

Dave

I just wanted to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding.

One of our complaints (and a very legitimate one), is that everything that happens over there, coalition forces get blamed for.

So I just saw the assumption that every victim on that page was a victim of a terrorist attack along the same line of thinking. An automatic assumption about who is guilty, exactly what we're complaining about. That would sound awful hypocritical to a third party, would't it?

When you said "had been killed or injured by terrorist attacks", it just read like you were judge, jury and executioner. You already know about how it all happened.

I would certainly hope that coalition forces aren't at fault, but we wouldn't know that, it certainly shouldn't imply it would be intentional though.

Just wanted to point that out, cuz while we might not catch on to this hypocrisy, the rest of the world sure is.

I was just inverting the usual hypocrisy to present the flipside - probably still plenty inaccurate, but less predictable.

Dave

Copygodd, good stuff.

I don't know if you've heard, yet -- but I just saw this 'crawl' headline on CNN:


"Bush abandons search for Waldo after experts determine absence of oil reserves in cartoon land."


(In other news: Jed Clampett just rose to the top of the "International Terrorist" list.)

related story/shameless plug

ElististPig: "...we've lost legitimacy with the portion of Islam that thinks genocide, slavery and wife-beating are great ideas..."

Islam!?

OMG, fer a second there, I thought you were referrring to America's Founding Fathers!

whew!

Nooo....the founding fathers only liked each of those items individually, none of them were actually for all three at the same time.

Dave

small note: that was over 200 years ago

thanks shark. that cnn crawl is great.

as a matter of fact, it was so great i just added it as an update on the story back at the stem. (giving you full credit and a link, of course.)