Why the Taliban and Other Extremists Hate Us.
See also www.antipeonage.0catch.com
It is with great reluctance. I have decided to support President Bush in his decision for war. Here is why.
In President George W. Bush's speech on the evening of September 20, 2001, he told of how Americans wonder why we are hated. It is a good question to ask. A few nights before, when the late night talk and comedy shows returned to the air, comedian-actor Ben Stein gave some opinions on what is eating these people. Ben Stein is the dumpy professor type whose dry wit is marked by an apparent lecture style guaranteed to put the highest energy audience to sleep. You've seen him in the "Clear Eyes" commercial and in similar parts in many movies and television shows. To provide a low key type of comedy while we were still grieving he said that while these people don't like our support for Israel, their real problem with America is that we allow women to be sexual beings. That frightens them even more than flying an airplane into a building.
I think Ben Stein is on to something. We allow women to be sexual beings. If a woman wants to disrobe in front of a camera for fun and profit, even to create images of a disgusting variety, we allow that. Browse the Internet, you will find some of them. But it is much more than that. We allow women almost equal rights before the law, and sometimes more than equal rights, at the expense of the Constitution. We allow women to decide whether to risk pregnancy while making love with a choice of contraceptives. We allow them to make the Second Decision with the right to an abortion if they want one. We would NEVER require an abortion by government fiat of any sort. We allow women to enter the workforce for almost any job they wish to do. Some are very prominent in their fields. A First Lady can be elected Senator, a conservative Christian woman can be elected to the House of Representatives, many of our state legislatures are almost 50% female, Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals. It is no longer unusual to see female lawyers representing men before female judges. Some women run large corporations. Some command the Space Shuttle while in flight.
In other words, we do not require women to be modest. We only require them to be free.
Even while I assert my rights and argue that the legitimate needs of my children do not create an interest of government that supersedes my Constitutional rights, I celebrate the freedom and liberty of women. I thank women for their contributions, from Betsy Ross to the Rosie the Riveters who labor in our factories to this day. Indeed, this freedom of the female supports my arguments.
Now let's consider the position of these radical and angry extremists. They have a fantasy: Living within their culture and lifestyle, practicing Islam the way they would like to, with their women cloistered from public view, covered from head to toe in abayas, chadoras, hejabs, and veils, or burkas, living off the land, following the Five Pillars of Islam, praying to Mecca five times a day, with nothing but a Koran to read, all without any influence from anything foreign to their way of life and beliefs.
And that is the rub. With electricity, radio, television, movies, newspapers, books, trade, and the Internet; the culture, clothing styles, music, stories, and sheer raw power of the outside world reaches even the remotest villages. What can anger a traditional man more than his own son wearing blue jeans and a shirt emblazoned with the logo of UCLA or some other American university? His daughter dreaming of driving her own car down Interstate 90 at 75 miles per hour or even faster on a German autobahn? Free from the tight controls of her own traditional society? And knowing that if she just makes it out to where Western values dominate, the Western governments will actually protect her right to make her own decisions in life? Whether to marry and to whom? Even to convert from Islam to Christianity, Judaism, Wicca, "New Age", or to abandon religion altogether?
How dare we! We do not force anyone to adopt our lifestyle or beliefs. But we make the suggestion of our lifestyle and beliefs available. The success of our way of life is represented by the Twin Towers over 1360 feet high! The money that we can pay for the petroleum we use that makes the likes of Osama bin Laden rich.
They just can't stand it.
President Clinton and Ehud Barak bent over backwards a few years ago in trying to negotiate a peace agreement with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians. I have many reasons to be embarrassed by President Clinton, but that is not one of them. The attempt to make peace is always a worthwhile project, as long as those who try act in good faith. But Arafat and the Palestinians proved to the world that they would rather send their own children to suicide than make peace with Israel on ANY set of conditions. Had they done so, and if the Palestinian people embraced it and enforced it against their malcontents, all that they complain about as to Israeli tyranny would go away. The Israelis would not close down their houses, imprison them, or restrict their movements if they did not HAVE to.
So what the Hell is the problem? The above described fantasy is simply impossible with 4.4 million Jews living on the eastern end of the Mediterranean. A Jewish woman who is modest is like the Loch Ness Monster. There are those who claim to have seen it. Jewish women do not wear veils, hejabs, or chadoras. They even wear string bikinis on the beaches of Tel Aviv and Haifa! 2000 years among the Europeans, and in North America, has made them Western in culture and outlook. They are still Jewish and they don't eat pork, but theirs is a free, vibrant, and enthusiastic Judaism.
That is why the extremists hate us for supporting Israel, in addition for being so American that we cannot help it.
Allow me to suggest an alternative vision that might interest the rational Palestinian. And if the rational people among the Palestinians can embrace it, perhaps they can convince other Arabs and Muslims to embrace it as well, and enforce their acceptance against those who are as fanatical as the Nazi SS. How is that for a strategy? The vision is like this:
Along the West Coast of Canada, the United States, and Mexico, is what is sometimes called the "I-5 Corridor". Named for the highway that runs from Blaine, Washington to San Ysidro, California, it is actually several roads and railroads running in parallel from Vancouver, British Columbia to Tijuana, Baja California. It connects the major and many of the minor seaports along the Pacific Coast of North America, including Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Through these ports flow the exports of a continent and the imports of the world. Rotterdam is famous for leading the world in tonnage of material shipped through its facilities. But Los Angeles and San Diego are each not far from second place in tonnage! Tacoma, Washington dreams of challenging the California ports in tonnage. The prosperity of this corridor is due in large part to the absence of war and fanaticism among the people who live there. There is friction, of course, but we do not have Mexican suicide bombers or Canadian terrorists, and the Ku Klux Klan has the loyalty of 0.00000001% of the white people it claims to represent. While there are those who say "Make love, not war", we would rather make money, not war!
There are those who criticize this attitude because it leads to exploitation of the workers, such as the Mexican crop pickers in California and Washington. But what is it that the crop pickers want? More money for picking the crops! (Better living and work conditions, less exposure to the pesticides used to keep the bugs from eating the crops, yadda, yadda, yadda.) Well, shucks, that sounds like a problem that can be resolved with negotiations and making a deal.
Now imagine if the Palestinians took that same pragmatic attitude toward the Israelis that crop pickers take toward the farmers. A corridor of prosperity, similar in function to Interstate 5 but not nearly as long, could run from Iskenderun (Alexandretta), Turkey through Antakya, (Antioch), Latakia, Beirut, Saida (Sidon), Sur (Tyre), Acre, Haifa, Netanya, Tel Aviv, Ashdod, Ashkelon, and then Gaza City! And on to Cairo and Alexandria. Through these ports can flow the products of the Desert Blooming. Earning all of the nations thus served, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Palestine, and Egypt hard currency to purchase the products of the world.
That is what peace can bring!
I know, it is not quite in keeping with the Spartan simple life of a religious ideal, but hey, it has its advantages if one is concerned about providing for his family. If I were a Palestinian, I would be thinking: "You know, most Jews are not Shylocks, they would not be so successful if they were. There is something to be said for capitalism, for all of its faults, and if we truly want a better life for ourselves, we should be friends with these Jewish businessmen, not their enemy. There are the Saudis, the Sultan of Brunei, and other extremely wealthy Muslims who could invest in our Palestinian areas, so that we are not dominated by the Israelis, just partners with them. But no one in their right mind will invest in Gaza City if there is no end to the fanaticism, racial hatred, and violence. Not even Osama bin Laden or the rest of his family would make any investment beyond payments to the families of suicide bombers."
But then again, I am not a Palestinian. From my perch on the other side of the planet, I see blind, unreasoning hatred leading to gunfights at the church in Bethlehem built above the place where a man was born who advised against such blind hatred. He expelled the money changers from the Temple. But frankly, I would rather see the money changers there than the fanatics who threw rocks because Mr. Sharon showed up for a visit.
Make money, not war. Think about it. Please.
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