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Originally Posted by willravel
HOLY SHIT IT'S LEBELL!!! Welcome back. 
I don't think Obama will FIGHT terrorism, but rather actually stand a chance of STOPPING terrorism. Terrorism is simply desperate guerrilla tactics against a foe with superior military force. If they don't want to fight us anymore, we won't be in any danger. The idea that they're attacking us because they hate freedom or w/e is goofy. They're attacking us for very real reasons. Our military is in their land. Our corporations are buying up their most precious commodity for relatively cheap. Our leaders come on TV and call them evil and liars and say we're going to attack more and more. |
I think this is a good point. A lot of our problems in the world are self-created, and stem directly from times when We (America) didn't measure up to our own ideals. Our activities during the cold war, where we buddied up with murderous dictators and thugs because they would help us fight The Great Evil Commies. Our past, current, and future support of similar thugs who promise to ensure our access to cheap oil and other resources. We look the other way in regards to China's human rights abuses, yet claim similar abuses are reason enough to continue to shun Cuba.
It's all about compromising our core beliefs for what seems like a temporary gain. How many children are growing up *right now* hating the US because we took their daddies away, locked them up in Abu Ghraib or gitmo for 5 years and counting, with no trial or due process, and then tortured them?
If we start to play nice right now, we of course won't change the minds of all the people who want to kill us. There will always be crazy Muslims (and Christians!) who want to replace democratically elected governments with 'religious law'. But the way things are right now, we've bolstered there ranks because those same crazies can point to the truly reprehensible things we've done and say "See?! I told you! American thugs!"
But we *must* start now. The best way to undercut the terrorists in the world is to remove their support network - by *not* doing things that give people a legitimate reason to hate us.