No Appeasement

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Bill Glasheen
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Joined: Thu Mar 11, 1999 6:01 am
Location: Richmond, VA --- Louisville, KY

No Appeasement

Post by Bill Glasheen »

Threads like these tend to be divisive. Certainly it's unpleasant to have racial and religious intolerance thrust upon you. Most of us would rather pretend it doesn't exist. Sadly, this view is naive.

It's fine when we can keep the whackos down to a powerless minority. But when you have whackos who have hijacked a government, we have problems.

Here is the present leader of Iran.

Image

Here is a picture of a U.S. hostage being displayed to the press during the Carter administration. Does that circled face look familiar?

Image

Many hostages who were badly abused by these facists - however justified these hostage takers believe their behavior was - have not forgotten that face or the cruel treatment directed by him. And they have vowed to keep the world's attention front and center to this man and what he does.

So should we be surprised when we see something like the following story? I am not. If we just walk away from the Middle East and tell Israel to behave, will there be peace? If you think that, IMO you quite possibly are a fool.

Yes, it isn't comfortable facing the fact that some fanatics would rather see you dead. But it is the truth. There is no reasoning with these people; there can only be confrontation and "management" in whatever fashion puts them back in their Nazi caves.

- Bill
Iran's president: Israel must be 'wiped off the map'

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's hard-line president called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and said a new wave of Palestinian attacks will destroy the Jewish state, state-run media reported Wednesday.

Image
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks at
a conference in Tehran, 'The World without Zionism.'
By Behrouz Mehri, AFP/Getty Images


President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also denounced attempts to recognize Israel or normalize relations with it.

"There is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will wipe off this stigma (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world," Ahmadinejad told students Wednesday during a Tehran conference called "The World without Zionism."

"Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury, (while) any (Islamic leader) who recognizes the Zionist regime means he is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world," Ahmadinejad said.

Ahmadinejad also repeated the words of the founder of Iran's Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who called for the destruction of Israel.

"As the imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," said Ahmadinejad, who came to power in August and replaced Mohammad Khatami, a reformist who advocated international dialogue and tried to improve Iran's relations with the West.

Ahmadinejad referred to Israel's recent withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as a "trick," saying Gaza was already a part of Palestinian lands and the pullout was designed to win acknowledgment of Israel by Islamic states.

"The fighting in Palestine is a war between the (whole) Islamic nation and the world of arrogance," Ahmadinejad said, using Tehran's propaganda epithet for the United States and Israel. "Today, Palestinians are representing the Islamic nation against arrogance."

Iran does not recognize the existence of Israel and has often called for its destruction.

Israel has been at the forefront of nations calling and end to Iran's nuclear program, which the United States and many others in the West say is aimed at acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Iran says the program is for generating electricity.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Ahmadinejad's comment "reconfirms what we have been saying about the regime in Iran. It underscores the concerns we have about Iran's nuclear intentions."

French Foreign Minister Jean-Baptiste Mattei condemned Ahmadinejad's remarks "with the utmost firmness."

Harsh words for Israel are common in Iran, especially at this time of year, the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. In Iran, this Friday — the last Muslim day of prayer in the Ramadan holiday — has been declared Quds Day, or Jerusalem Day. Rallies were slated in support of Palestinians — and against Israel's occupation of parts of the city and other Palestinian lands.

Other Iranian politicians also have issued anti-Israeli statements, in attempts to whip up support for Friday's nationwide Quds Day demonstrations.

But Ahmadinejad's strident anti-Israeli statements on the eve of the demonstration were harsher than those issued during the term of the reformist Khatami and harkened back to Khomeini's fiery speeches. Ahmadinejad was a longtime member of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, which even operates a division dubbed the Quds Division, a rhetorical reference to Tehran's hopes of one day ending Israel's domination of Islam's third-holiest city.

After his election, Ahmadinejad received the support of the powerful hard-line Revolutionary Guards, who report directly to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Last year, a senior member of the guards attended a meeting that called for and accepted applications for suicide bombers to target U.S. troops and Israelis.

Iran announced earlier this year that it had fully developed solid fuel technology for missiles, a major breakthrough that increases their accuracy.

The Shahab-3, with a range of 810 miles to 1,200 miles, is capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to Israel and U.S. forces in the Middle East.
Gene DeMambro
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Joined: Sat Dec 12, 1998 6:01 am
Location: Weymouth, MA US of A

Post by Gene DeMambro »

The US State Department has stated that the new President of Iran is probably not the man in the photos. And there is dispute among the hostages themselves as to whether President Ahmadinejad was a hostage taker or not. I dunno....

But I too find it disheartening and makes me wicked pissed off that after having a moderate (by their standards) as President, Iranians elected this fascist. I wonder when Iran will ever "get it". Probably when we make them "next".

Gene
Stryke

Post by Stryke »

So should we be surprised when we see something like the following story? I am not. If we just walk away from the Middle East and tell Israel to behave, will there be peace? If you think that, IMO you quite possibly are a fool.
I wish the superpowers had stayed out all along ... the region needs a really good war to sort it out once and for all .

But unfortunately technologys progressed to far and such war could be WMD time ....

Artificial peace doesnt have much hope , and has been shown time and time again to fail .

I dont think there is an answer ... Both sides seem to be a lot in the right , and most deffinatley in the wrong .

Israel is without a doubt a artificially created superpower in the middle east .

And religous extremeisim , communist influenced hate , and traditional rights all fuel the other side , not to mention persecution and killings .

Can such Ignorant masses ( educationally and culturally (culture of hate) really rise above this ?

Another Reason iraq has to be a success , and the US then has to get out once Iraq (read not the us) sets an example .
MikeK
Posts: 3665
Joined: Wed Oct 27, 2004 9:40 pm

Post by MikeK »

I don't fully trust what the State Department ever says.
I was dreaming of the past...
Stryke

Post by Stryke »

but you guys wear the white hats yes ?
MikeK
Posts: 3665
Joined: Wed Oct 27, 2004 9:40 pm

Post by MikeK »

Marcus, Not white hat/black hat but State has their own view of the world and ways of dealing with it. Ahmadinejad is a very bad man that needs to go meet God and have a one on one with Him.
I was dreaming of the past...
cxt
Posts: 1230
Joined: Wed Sep 10, 2003 5:29 pm

Post by cxt »

Iran is no more liked in the ME than they are by us.

They are Persian not Arab---a slight distinction that matters ALOT to the Arabs and Persians.

And the thought of a nuke armed Iran probably gives there "brother" muslims more night-sweats than it does us.

My bet is that at least some of the harsh speech is calm down the other muslim states that Iran is "right in step" with them rather than having designs on being "first among equals"

Then again it was speech similar to that which served to kick-start a generations long Cold War.
MikeK
Posts: 3665
Joined: Wed Oct 27, 2004 9:40 pm

We can Only Win by Appeasement?

Post by MikeK »

Experts say US is losing war on terror

By David Morgan1 hour, 5 minutes ago

U.S. terrorism experts Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon have reached a stark conclusion about the war on terrorism: the United States is losing.

Despite an early victory over the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the two former Clinton administration officials say President George W. Bush's policies have created a new haven for terrorism in Iraq that escalates the potential for Islamic violence against Europe and the United States.

America's badly damaged image in the Muslim world could take more than a generation to set right. And Bush's mounting political woes at home have undermined the chance for any bold U.S. initiatives to address the grim social realities that feed Islamic radicalism, they say.

"It's been fairly disastrous," said Benjamin, who worked as a director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council from 1994 to 1999.

"We have had some very important successes getting individual terrorists. But I think the broader story is really quite awful. We have done a lot to fuel the fires, and we have done a lot to encourage people to hate us," he added in an interview.

Benjamin and Simon, a former State Department official who was also at the NSC, are co-authors of a new book titled: "The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right" (Times Books).

Following on from their 2002 book, "The Age of Sacred Terror" (Random House), Benjamin and Simon list what they call U.S. missteps since the September 11, 2001, attacks on America.

The Bush administration presents the war on terrorism as a difficult but largely successful struggle that has seen the gutting of al Qaeda's pre-September 11 leadership and prevented new attacks in the United States over the past four years.

Bush said last month the United States and its allies had disrupted plans for 10 al Qaeda attacks since September 11, including one against West Coast targets with hijacked planes.

The White House describes Iraq as a central front in the war on terrorism and says the building of democracy there will confound militant aims and help to propel the entire Middle East region toward democracy.

Benjamin and Simon's criticism of the Bush administration in Iraq follows a path similar to those of other critics, including former U.S. national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke.

"We may be attacked by terrorists who receive their training in Iraq, or attacked by terrorists who were inspired, organized and trained by people who were in Iraq," said Simon, a Rand Corp. analyst who teaches at Georgetown University.

"(Bush) has given them an excellent American target in Iraq but in the process has energized the jihad and given militants the kind of urban warfare experience that will raise the future threat to the United States exponentially."

For Benjamin and Simon, the war on terrorism has cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars and failed to counter a deadly global movement responsible for attacks in London, Madrid, Bali, Indonesia, and Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

And not even al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, they say, could have dreamed the United States would stumble so badly in the court of Muslim public opinion.

"Everyone says there's a war of ideas out there, and I agree. The sad fact is that we're on the wrong side," said Benjamin, now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

U.S. fortunes could improve, the authors say, if Washington took a number of politically challenging steps, like bolstering public diplomacy with trade pacts aimed at expanding middle-class influence in countries such as Pakistan.

Washington also needs to do more to ease regional tensions that feed Muslim grievances across the globe, from Thailand and the Philippines to Chechnya and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In a Muslim world of 1.2 billion people, as many as three-in-four hold negative views of the United States.

Because anti-U.S. rhetoric often appeals strongly to impressionable youth, Benjamin and Simon believe many of today's young Muslims will harbor grievances against the United States for the rest of their lives.

The authors believe there is little prospect for fundamental improvement in U.S. policy under Bush "There are resource constraints, there are constraints in the realm of trade, there are political constraints," said Simon.

"These are not the kinds of circumstances that favor bold new policies that require spending political capital that it turns out the White House just doesn't have," he added.

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I was dreaming of the past...
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