We oppose force with force, take an eye for an eye, revenge our dead by creating more. Instead of perpetuating the endless cycle, why not try combating hate with love, war with peace?
Because it's know as "appeasement" and it never worked. The sole result of "loving" and "understanding the motives" of terrorists is more terrorism.
Remember Hitler? Only when he was opposed by "an eye for an eye, revenging the dead by creating more", was he stopped. As long as Chamberline&co. tried "understanding" him, he just got stronger and of course created ever more mischief.
Why do the terrorists hate us? Because for the last hundred years, we've been at nearly endless war, trying to impose what we think is right on the world,
Indeed. What right did the US have to tell Hitler that killing millions of people isn't right, or to the USSR that trying to take over western europe and enslave it as well is bad.
Who says that a world-wide rule of radical Islam, setting it all back to the 7th century, is "bad"? What is "bad" anyway? Who knows? Who decides? This is SO philosophical...
The truth is, this attitude is--in a word--racist. It is of course horrible and evil for Hitler or Stalin to butcher and enslave, and it was fine for the US to stop them--since the victims were Europeans. But when it is Saddam or Ho Chi Min that murder and enslave, it's suddenly just "part of their culture" that the US has "no right" to stop, because it's just "imposing what the US considers right" on the world.
Why? Because, you know, Bin Laden & co. are just opressing foreigners, people with dark skins and fuuny clothes, that don't speak anything LIKE English. Who knows if these weird people don't ENJOY being ruled by dictatorial madmen? Perhaps they like it? The madmen in charge keep telling us that they are ruling by their people's will, so it has to be true!
sowing the seeds of hate and pain all around us. Don't delude yourself by saying that they "hate that we have a free society".
It's not a delusion.
There is nothing more dangerous for dictatorships than the free exchange of ideas and criticism. This is why the USSR, for example, used to improsion and kill, not only those who forcefully opposed it, but poets and writers as well. The fact that, in the US, people can actually criticize the religion or beliefs, or the actions, of those in charge without being shot dead is something Bin Laden and his friends fear far more than they fear the US military force.
It was often the case that a dictatorial regime was bombed or had its citizens killed by an opposing force and survived to tell the tale (the Iraq-Iran war, or for that matter, most "third world" wars, such as those in Africa, are between two dictatorships.) But not ONE dictatorial regime EVER survived giving its people the freedom to vote and speak their mind more than a couple of weeks. Once you get that, it's OVER.
THIS--the freedom America represents--is what they hate the most, not because of philosophical differences, but because it is the democracies' secret weapon, the trump card that will destroy the Bin Ladens of the world, like it destroyed Stalin's USSR, if the people they opress ever get a whiff of it. They have good reason to fear American freedom more than American bombs!
They hate us because of our heavy handedness, our willingness to f--k with other nation's affairs, to create little Alis in the name of our values, to bomb cities and wedding parties.
Funny, though, how the Afghanis--despite having a wedding party bombed by mistake by American troops--still welcomed the Americans as Liberators in Kabul and were quite glad that the Taliban are out. Perhaps it had someting to do with the fact that, as sad as the bombing of the wedding party was, it was accidental, unlike the Taliban's killing of anybody, in a wedding party or not, who dares not to agree with them.
They hate us because we presume that our way is best and that everyone should be like us
Yes, a free country where criticizing the government is possible without getting your hand cut off or worse. Disgusting, this awful cultural imperialism.
Of course, nobody ever complains that the US decided in WWII that the Germans and French DO need to "be like the United States" and be released from Hitler's opression. It's just when the US tries to help non-Europeans that the left protests: for all we know, these little brown and yellow-skinned people actually LIKE living in opression and fear, as their government's official propaganda repeatedly says.
Remind me to use the same principle if I ever witness, say, a husband trying to kill his wife. If he is white, I will call the cops. But if he is (say) Indian or Morrocan, I'll just move on; after all, who am I to impose MY western values on HIS traditional ones? Who says it's BETTER not to kill your wife than to do so? I don't want to be accused of "cultural imperialism" here, you see...
The only way out is peace. If the entire war budget had been devoted to building universities, schools, infrastructure, and perpetuating love, the world would be a better place.
...until some Bin Laden or Hitler who DID spend his money on weapons smacks his lips and decides to take over the now-defensless country. (Jesus Christ, how naive can you GET?)
The war hasn't changed anything but a regime. Why not change the minds and hearts of millions?
Changing the Regime DID change the hearts and minds of millions. It freed the Iraqis of living in daily terror and squalor, and their relief is quite visible as they kiss US troops. Building schools and hospitals for the Iraqis without changing the regime would have done nothing, since Saddam would simply have stolen it and used it to buy tanks and pay his secret police, as he did with most of the aid he got from the "oil-for-food" program.
Why not fund AIDS treatment for all the infected poor of Africa?Why not send our nation's youth out to do service work in less fortunate parts of the world?
The US IS doing that. Of course, not being a socialist country, it cannot FORCE anybody to go, which is why the peace corps don't include many people.
But a much, MUCH more important reason why not too many people are doing that, is that these areas are usually ruled by despotic regimes, which means that every aid given to the counry--any help against AIDS, for sanitation, etc., and all these other noble ideas--is simply stolen by the ruling regimes and used to buy them luxury mansions and pay for their military's weapons as their people starve.
You REALLY want to help Africa? Start by changing "only the regime" in about twenty countries. Send in the Marines, hang the local dictator from the nearest lamppost, to make sure nobody steals the food. THEN you could start talking about helping the poor, since then there is a chance the help will actually reach them.
Let's promote an open and tolerant and free society.
But you don't want to do THAT. That's cultural imperialism,
remember? Besides, promoting tolerant and free societies usually involves getting rid of the local despot first, which usually requires force, which of course is a no-no.
