Ray Fischer wrote:

The key fact you ignore is that the invasion of Iraq had nothing at
all to do with "the menace of terrorism".

Well, Iraq *did* have missiles, and poison gas.

And it engaged in
evasive tactics with respect to UN weapons inspectors.

Yes, in hindsight, the U.S. drew false conclusions from limited
intelligence on the threat of WMDs in Iraq. However, the *possibility*
of al-Qaeda getting its hands on them is intolerable.

And that the US's
continuing support for the persecution of Muslims has created a lot of
hostility.

The U.S. continues to ignore the persecution of non-Muslims by Muslims.

Ray Fischer wrote:

The key fact you ignore is that the invasion of Iraq had nothing at
all to do with "the menace of terrorism".

Well, Iraq *did* have missiles, and poison gas. And it engaged in
evasive tactics with respect to UN weapons inspectors.

Yes, in hindsight, the U.S. drew false conclusions from limited
intelligence on the threat of WMDs in Iraq. However, the *possibility*
of al-Qaeda getting its hands on them is intolerable.

And that the US's
continuing support for the persecution of Muslims has created a lot of
hostility.

The U.S. continues to ignore the persecution of non-Muslims by Muslims.
It has not marched into Indonesia to separate the people of Bali, the
people of Chinese ancestry, and the Christians there from their Muslim
overlords. It has not marched into Egypt to protect the Coptic
Christians in that country from persecution. It has not marched into
the Sudan to put an end to the Janjaweed depredations.

That the Sa'udi regime has its failings, and the U.S. has supported it,
is *one* al-Qaeda charge that has some validity, but if the alternative
is having Sa'udi Arabia ruled by a more fanatical crowd of Muslims, I
fail to see how that would be an improvement.

Now, let's see... where *in the world* are Muslims a persecuted,
mistreated minority?

Is there one country where a peaceful population of Muslims is hated
and persecuted for their personal relgious beliefs?

Well, there *was* Kosovo. And we all know how the U.S. supported the
Serbian persecution of Muslims there.

(I am not, of course, trying to give George W. Bush credit for the
decisions of Bill Clinton.)

And there *is* Uighuristan - where greed for oil keeps these people
under the heel of a cruel Communist dictatorship run by foreigners
(since, of course, the Han Chinese are not ethnic Uighurs). And we all
know how the U.S. supports that regime; why, they used U.S.-supplied
missiles to overrun Taiwan last week, didn't they?

Ah, but if I change the search parameters from "regime supported by the
United States" and "regime that unjustly persecutes people just for
being Muslims" to "regime supported by the United States" and "regime
under which Muslims are admittedly at a disadvantage"....

why, a card *does* pop out of the computer!

And the winner is...

Israel!

If you think that those Zionist Jews are racist, I would suggest that
you pause and reflect on how your fellow Americans might behave if each
of their major cities had dozens killed by suicide bombers on a weekly
basis.

And don't give me crap about how Israel's own crimes are coming around
to haunt it.

A Muslim community that thinks that it's their God-given right to let
their young men rape Jewish girls when they feel like it - and if the
Jews complain, then they're showing they don't know their place - and
Muslim nations that defy the United States and the civilized world with
weapons obtained from the *Union of Soviet Socialist Republics* - while
the world's democracies were locked with that evil empire in a
death-struggle for the preservation of freedom - are the ones whose
fate is a manifestation of the law "what goes around comes around".

And their fate was but to lose territory. The Israeli government
doesn't think that raping Muslim girls is fine sport for young Jewish
men. It has, in fact, a good record on respecting the human rights and
religious freedoms of Muslims... except where terrorists among them
create an intolerable problem.

Yes, fault can legitimately be found with the settlements in the
occupied territories... but, for example, after terrorists took a
pregnant woman and her four daughters from a settlement in Gaza, and
killed her daughters before her, and then her - and cheerfully
videotaped their crime - I am frankly amazed that this settlement was
given back, rather than being maintained eternally as a shrine to her
memory, however many Palestinians in Gaza might have to be displaced to
ensure its future safety.

I think it's time to end the persecution of Coptic Christians in
Egypt... and to ensure that the Maronite Christians (and refugee
Armenians!) of Lebanon don't face consequences from the crimes of
Hezbollah. Let there be two *more* "Israels" in the Middle East as a
commemoration of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

And, incidentally, don't give me any nonsense about "do as I say, not
as I do", either. At least when the United States was importing slaves,
or enforcing Jim Crow laws, the world's only superpower wasn't a
nuclear armed black-ruled independent African country. The United
States may have sinned... but it wasn't *dumb*. Persecuting Christians
for their beliefs in a world in which the world's
predominantly-Christian nations (still) hold a near-monopoly on
technology and military force (the latter, at least, excludes Japan)
_is_ just dumb.

I have to admit that while we still can, putting back into place a "new
world order" after the fall of the Soviet Union that looks a lot like
the world order of the Victorian Era looks more attractive every day.

John Savard

Yes, in hindsight, the U.S. drew false conclusions
from limited intelligence on the threat of WMDs in
Iraq.

However, the *possibility* of al-Qaeda getting its
hands on them is intolerable.