If you're interested in this stuff from a less contentiously partisan, more reflectively academic perspective, here's a great place to start.
http://policyreview.org/000/corn.html

I haven't read this one but it looks interesting from skimming it:
faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/merupert/ BACEVICH%20The%20Real%20World%20War%20IV.pdf

This one will make most people's hair stand on end:
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/05spring/payne.htm

I tried the WQ but unless you're a subscriber they wont let you access their archives. A good library should have it. It's a great read for quiet moments on the porcelain throne.

We were not the great Satan until we manipulated Iran for fun and profit in '53 and armed the Shah to the teeth for about 26 years. Our support for Israel exacerbates the sentiment.

Nope, not yet. Work has been sending me on travel quite a bit this summer, Japan, Chicago, Maryland twice and maybe Boston for a day coming up. I'm getting to know the names of folks at LAX.

I'm thinking I might shoot for the train ride some time in the Fall. It's hotter than hell up here now, in the low 100 teens plus humidity. The only thing I want to do is be as still as possible.

The crap I am talking about is their own religious intolerance. Theres no room for that anymore in this world. As far as major supporter of Israel, that started when Europe was gettin back to its feet. I think it has continued much longer than necessary, now that the EU has the ability to kick in a bit more than in the past.

You are (still) missing the point. It's about cultural differences on one level and out and out greed and power on a higher level. The Mullahs and the politicos in charge of groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and so on play on the hatred engendered by the religous zeal according to the Mullahs. Both the politicos and the Mullah's live high on the hog (if one can do that in a Muslim culture) and grow rich off of the pain of their populace. Meanwhile the arab public for the most part don't have things like Greenpeace or Hannity and Colmes to keep themselves occupied; just some bizarre self-propogating hatred of "the Great Satan" nurtured by thier leadership. Great Satan is a job title.

Radical Islamic countries hate us because we stand for all the things that their leadership fear. They do an admirable job of changing that fear of thiers into hatred on the part of the people they rule. It would'nt matter if it was the US as a super power or Norway. Whoever it is will be hated by them simply for the sake of what they represent. When will you catch on that this is a fight between cultures and not because of what one country did or did not do decades or centuries ago?

Your continued excuseing of Muslim violence by blaming it all on the US helps the problem how? Unless your intent is to further the hatred by dredging up every wrong deed done by anyone who has ever associated with the US. What useful purpose that serves is beyond me.

True, a charismatic leader needs a willing audience. I think the general public sentiment has to exist first for the leader's message to be an effective amplifier and enforcer. So now their ire is aimed at the Jews. So what if they managed to wipe out Israel overnight? No more hatred? Hence, no more greedy leaders manipulating the masses, hence, peace in the world? Or do they simply redirect their energies at the next bordering country, or at anyone with an appetite for their oil? How else would the mullahs ensure their dominance with the removal of the enemy?

That begs the important question: If Israel had been wiped-out shortly after it's formation but modern states in the area fought and squabbled anyway, would it still be Dubyuh's fault?

B

Here's a couple of paragraphs from Tony Corn's piece, above.

And this is Corn: Tony Corn served as a political analyst at the U.S. embassies in Bucharest, Moscow, and Paris, and in public diplomacy at the U.S. Missions to the EU and to NATO in Brussels. He is currently the Course Chair of Latin Europe Area Studies at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. The opinions expressed in this essay are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the point of view of the U.S. Department of State or the U.S. government.

Bot

-----------------------------------------

While Islam is undoubtedly no monolith, it is not the pure mosaic complacently portrayed by some, either. In the past 30 years, one particular brand — pan-Islamic Salafism — has been allowed to fill the vacuum left by the failure of pan-Arab Socialism and, in the process, to marginalize more enlightened forms of Islam to the point where Salafism now occupies a quasi-hegemonic position in the Muslim world. The West is obviously not at war with Islam as such and its traditional Five Pillars; but it is most definitely at war with Jihadism, a pure product of Salafism, which posits that jihad is the Sixth Pillar of Islam. From the point of view of threat assessment, the much-discussed theological distinction between a greater (spiritual) and lesser (physical) jihad is utterly irrelevant, and the only thing that matters is the praxeological distinction between three modalities of jihad as practiced: jihad of the sword, of the hand, and of the tongue.

Today, the most effective jihadist networks are precisely those that — from Hamas to Hizbullah — have combined these three modalities in the form of urban warfare, relief work, and hate media. At the theater level, the best military answer to this three-pronged jihad to date remains the concept of “three-block war” elaborated by the Marine Corps, which posits that the Western military must be ready to handle a situation in which it has to confront simultaneously conventional, high intensity war in one city block, guerrilla-like activities in the next, and peace-keeping operations or humanitarian aid in a third. Yet, the West’s answer cannot be mainly military in nature. When, as in the aftermath of the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, 45–65 percent of the Muslim world ends up having a positive image of a Bin Laden, even a U.S. military victory at the theater level can lead to a political defeat at the global level. Since the end of the Cold War era, the U.S. has enjoyed an unprecedented “command of the commons,” but as the 2003 Iraq war made painfully clear, in contrast to the 1991 Gulf War (during which CNN had a global monopoly), the U.S. no longer enjoys the “command of the airwaves.” Throughout the 1990s, the emergence of global satellite televisions in Europe (Euronews) and the Arab world (Al-Jazeera) have combined to create a new correlation of forces; and while the Pentagon has recently traded the traditional concept of “battlefield” for the more comprehensive concept of “battlespace,” military planners and commanders alike have yet to fully realize that ours is as much the age of the “three-screen war” as that of the “three-block war.”6

You ask that question as if you actually believe that anything isn't!

Are you aware of the difference between a supported state and a puppet state?

Excellent article Bot, one hell of a long read but well worth it. Try as I might I can't really disagree with anything Mr. Corn said.

I have seen first hand the inter-agency squabbling that he describes. It even happens intra-agency via stovepiping and kingdom building. One ray of hope, however, is that over the last year I've been involved with several multi-agency programs. My peers in different agencies seem to understand as well as I do that cooperation is a neccesity for the countries survival. You can't see 9/11 and the Katrina response and not realize that. As a result I think the next generation of agency leaders will be less likely to squabble and more likely to work together. Hope springs eternal.

I wonder what the next administration will do? Mr. Corn lays out some good suggestions. I wish the Democratic party were not is such disarray and was able to produce a leader with some vision beyond getting elected. Now would be a good time for a new Kennedy or Roosevelt.

well, we'll see. Thanks for the link.

We did nothing compared to the Nazis. Hitler almost sucked the Iranians dry of their oil during WW2. Not only that, but he got it for free. The U.S.' involvement in Iran during the Shah's reign was primarily to monitor the Soviets during the Cold War.... not to ruin the country. I beleive the Shah did that himself by imposing a totalitarian regime, using his SAVAK secret police as executioners. This led to the 1979 students' revolt, when the U.S. Embassy was seiged for 444 days. During that seige, the Iranians managed to get their hands on classified CIA documents detailing the Mossad's operational and organizational structure. The Israelis were pretty pissed about that one.
The problem in Iran, is that 1979 coup led to an Islamic revolution that was led by Ayatollah Khomeini (Shiite Leader), who was able to overthrow the Shah's government and imposed a rule of Islamic Law that lasted to this very day. With Iran being 90% Shiite, and neighboring Iraq being 65% Shiite, I think that the US government may have created a second evil twin brother with Iraq. I have a feeling that the "insurgents" are just trying to create chaos in Iraq, so the Shiite powers will be able to come together. Hussein was Sunni, and that was why Iran and Iraq never got along. Only time will tell what will happen in Iraq, but from my perspective, I don't see that we have a choice in pulling out from the Middle East anytime soon... we have to stick around and wait until the Shiite and Sunnis Kurds all start talking to each other. It's ugly, but (from my POV) that's the reality of it all.

Slow news day? The 'all Dubya's fault' line gets one HELL of a lot of mileage. What he does lamely is his fault. Fair enough?

I agree up to a point that they hate us because of who we are. But that hatred didn't arise up in a vacuum. Kinzer's book "All the Shah's Men" has some interesting info you won't find in the British Royal History of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.

The Brits discovered the oil and built the refinery it's true but they then proceeded to treat the Iranians like sand monkeys. I've read accounts from Iranians of the time that state they looked to the U.S. as the great country, based on justice and liberty, and hoped for some wise intervention or guidance from us in their growing hostility with the Brits. When we accepted the baton from the Brits, we also assumed the legacy of bitterness towards them.

I focus on these things because it's useful to know how the knot was tied if you want to untangle it, and to avoid repeating the same heavy-handed crap as we're doing now in Iraq.

In a previous post, you mentioned that you watch BBC News. It seems funny to me that you're criticizing Fox, when the very information YOU absorb is taylored to Europe's overwhelming Muslim population.

People should follow their own advice. :rolleyes: