You know it's easy to assume that I'm a red-neck American and blindly believe the party line. I'm not. I am South African and the anti-American sentiment in South Africa is tangible. Our government wastes no opportunity to promote this yet at the same time has a unit dedicated to controlling their own Muslim radicals, PAGAD. - A group that has publicly stated that they owe their loyalty to Allah alone and no government law. (you should know this as you have it first hand in the UK).

The fatal flaw we have in the West is that we like to look for the good in others, accommodate other religions, allow freedom of choice and naively believe that we will get the same in return from Islam. The truth is that in Islam if you are not a Muslim you are doomed. If a person is deemed to have broken the law (had a drink, gamble, affair, gay, etc.) you are warned once, if you are fortunate, and then harshly punished the next time. There is no tolerance of freedom of choice and of only GOD punishing you on judgment day.

I once worked for a Muslim. A kind, gentle and generous man. We got on very well and I fiercely believed that Islam had gotten a raw deal in the West. When I left the company we corresponded by email a couple of times. Somehow I got onto his emailing list and boy you would not believe the hatred and drivel that landed up in my mailbox. If this was what came from a moderate I could only imagine what junk was being sprouted by the fundamentalists. You in the UK, ask yourself "why did the moderate Muslims not turn in the radicals before the London bomb basts?"

My wife and I, we are not Christians yet we don't gamble, don't drink and have not cheated on each other after 10 years of marriage. However, if I feel like taking a lotto ticket, have a BBQ where friends have a beer or two, or my gay neighbor decides he wants a pink car, I know in my heart, without question, that a western democracy would accommodate these actions and Islam does not.

America has it's own Christian fundamentalist problems with loons killing abortion doctors and people voting to ban gay marriage, the Patriot act etc. Yes, there are issues but at least you are free to voice your opinion on these issues. GWB is gone is four years and you can vote in the opposition party if you desire.

Was WMD used as tool to remove Saddam. Yes. The week-kneed liberals would never have voted otherwise. After 17 UN resolutions there was no simple way to promote his removal. It's good for a society to have some people believing that there is only good in others, looking for appeasment and promoting peace. It's also good to have people who can make the tough choices and act when the talking is done.

Just remember this: After GWB the Islamic fundamentalists will still be here, views unchanged.

 

mike, thanks man.


vindiesel: first of all, do you want more information about being a christian?
second of all, i am not a redneck american, i am a redneck texan. lol i am actually from dubya's hometown. we had the highest voter approval rate for him in our congressional district of texas 11. i actually am an intern for Congressman K. Michael Conaway, one of Dubya's close friends in both midland and washington.
third, i like how you called the liberals "weak-kneed" lol

lightning: have you forgotten about spain? london? washington? NYC? PA field? USS Cole? everything these other guys said?

how about OKC? that was a DOMESTIC terrorist. some pissed off okie that didn't want to pay taxed. i have been to the memorial in oklahoma city. it is freaking sadder some memorials in DC, even the vietnam memorail. Vietnam memorail has something like 52,000 names of people the age of my dad, but the okc memorial has names of CHILDREN killed by a former american who commited treason in my opinion.

Remember the Alamo (mexican terrorists)
Remember The WTC (islamic terrorists)
Remember DC (islamic terrorists)
Remember USS COLE (islamic terrorists)
Remember OKC DOMESTIC TERRORIST!

 

or at least he was a domestic terrorist to citizens of these United States of America

 

Nope not forgotton anything, and when it comes to terrorists, muslims are not a special case, and thus crys for them to be wiped from the face of the earth should not be happening, which was the point I was trying to get across. I personally don't like the tag, "Terrorist" as it gives the group the name they want... they then use it to their advantage to strike fear into others. The other problem is, AQ is not fighting on behalf of another country, but a belief that they are right as a group and for their way of life. They did try to take over a country, that of Afganistan, but the more we openly attack countries like Iraq, support for AQ will grow, the problem is, it will grow not in a particular country, but all over the world, in small cells, which means it becomes ever harder to stop them. You only have to look at the recent bombings in London to show that is the case.

It was not so long ago the UK was having a problem with the IRA, who used the Catholic religion as an excuse to rally support behind their cause, to remove British rule from Northern Ireland, with chants about removing the british protestants, as though all the people who settled there were not catholic's. That has changed now, simple through the work of the so called weak knee liberals that has been mentioned, peace is now starting to happen in Ireland. The point been, religion was just an excuse to rally support, just like AQ use the Muslim religion to rally support, and the more you attack the muslim religion, the more support AQ will get.

This generalisation is where the problem comes in, already mentioned, don't forget 9/11, nope wouldn't forget that, but it has already been proved, Iraq had nothing to do with that, Afganistan did, action carried out there was justified, and supported by the majority of the world, including middle east countries. Iraq was different, and this is something people seem to forget, Iraq was a country that was in the reign of a dictator, who was in power for the wealth, and status. He couldn't give a fig about AQ, all he wanted to do was run the whole of the middle east. Hence his original attack on Kuwait. Stating he supported AQ, well any country can be shown as supporting AQ, even the UK, for example, the fact some the the radical Clerics that have just recently been expelled where receiving state benefits...

With regarding me assuming your a red neck american, nope sorry, you missed the mark on that one... I don't assume that red necks are going to follow the US government media wagon anymore than a Aussie or russian. Just that the propaganda is still going strong in USA, as it has to, to help justify the large number of dead American Soldiers been shipped back home from Iraq. Remember Vietnam, and the US government propaganda at the start of that war, and how they tried to justify to the people why so many dead were coming home. Eventually the people had enough and put a stop to it. Is iraq going to be different or is it going to be the same sort of thing, I personally am hoping that the liberals will again win the day, in helping the Iraq's set up a government and return to self rule and have the USA and all the other countries that are in there, come home. Forcing our ways, and our belief's on the muslim's will not mean we have won, and as a South African, that is something you should know, after all the violence the country has gone through because of it's attempts to segregate a section of it's population, simple as they were different.

 

If gaining peace was a simple as pulling out of a country then the UK should pull out of Ireland. The only way the British have kept northern Ireland is hammer away at the "terrorists" and not back off. Why is appeasement with radical Islam an option to you and not appeasement of the radical Irish?

My wife is black and I am white and I think I know something about reconciliation. Unlike the Sunni in Iraq, and the British in northern Ireland, the white minority in South Africa came to realize that denying the majority would lead to years of bloody civil war. Even a legitimate piece of land in Namibia, Walvis Bay, was handed over to Namibia. Why is it possible for the UK to hand over Hong Kong to China even when the majority of it's citizens wanted to reamain part of Britain? Is it possible for one country to "own" a piece of another county without there being conflict?

Yes. It is possible to negotiate peace if you have the will and the leadership but let's not confuse the two issues. The people of South Africa and Ireland were in conflict over who owned the land and ultimately if the majority of the inhabitants would have freedom of choice. The conflict with Islam is that freedom of choice is seen as evil and our western-ways, haram. Do you see these as two separate issues?

No, I do not want Muslims wiped off the face of the world. However, If you think that backing away from Islam will produce less radicals you are wrong. What standing up to it does is force them to show their true colors. I welcome the freedom of religion a western democracy brings and this is what is worth fighting for. Please don't demean those brave soldiers deaths by questioning their goal. Saddam is gone and we don't miss him. Democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East is worth as much as it is in Britain or America. Or do you think we are special?

Yes, 1800 soldiers have died liberating Iraq. About the same amount of people killed in a month by drunk drivers in the US, or about the same as the number of people killed by tobacco a week in the US. Which one of these deaths is acceptable to you and which are you protesting?

NOTE: Before I have our British friends here go off at me about Ireland and the IRA please understand that the questions I have posed are meant to be thought provoking and are posed with reference (or lack thereof) to the radical Islamic situation. Thank you.

 

I know it is nothing personal and you are after thought proking, which is good...


But you miss the point with the IRA situation, the British Government went in with it's army to protect the innocent, and it went in with force, that force resulted in the IRA bombing campaigns, the peaceful solution, showing willing to meet half way, showing that the British Government did not want to fight, is what showed the IRA supporters the true colours of the men who went out and bombed innocent people. The IRA did this in the name of the catholic religion, yet if a catholic Londoner had moved to Northern Ireland and stated publicly that they did not support the IRA, they were just as much a target as a Prositant, the problem is, because they were Catholic they would get no protection fromt he prositants either. This is the problem, even in Iraq, how do you get people to stand up and state that they beleive that what is happening in the name of their religion is wrong. You grouped everyone that is Sunni as having the same attitude, but do they, or do they feel repressed from actually standing up and saying what they really think. Bombing the **** of of a country is not the answer, but likewise if I had the answer, then I would be very special person indeed.
If you saw how things progressed during the war of Iraq, the British Soliders had less problems, and less injuries than the US, the simple fact is that the British Troops had the experence of Northern Ireland to use, the lighter approach to it all, the more explained approach, the we are here to help, not take over, where as the US army at the start was just intent on taking Bagdad, but liek all things they learned how to deal better with it, which is a good thing. With regard to the 18,000 dead, the innocent citizen's of Iraq have had more killed during this conflict, more by people claiming to be from their own country than the invading force, but no doubt you will have seen that the properganda by Saddam during the early stages of the war was to highlight every single death of an Iraqi civilian than to tell the truth about how many had been killed by Saddam;'s own forces..

Remember, the Iraq problem was caused by firstly the British, by actually forming the country of Iraq just after the first world war, by forcing several different cultures and countries to be one. Secondly, remember it was the CIA who providing the finance that put Saddam in power in the first place. (something about avoiding the country becoming communist) Also see that Afaganistan was also a country which had a lot of money pushed into it by the CIA to war lords and such like again to prevent communist rule. Once people get use to free hand outs which are suddenly taken away, they look for other ways to fund their needs. If we had never interfered in the we are in now, and in fact, that would have solved a lot of problems around the world if the European countries had not ventured out and tried to take over the world.

Personally, I beleive it would have been far easier to have just taken Saddam out during the first Gulf War, still not sure why they stopped when they did, even taking Saddam out using special forces may have saved a lot of lives, after all, if special forces had been used to take him out, who would have known, then the UN would have had to deal with the Iraq problem that would have followed, then how would AQ been able to use it against the world... AQ only use Iraq as an excuse when they are doing bombings now to justify it to their followers. Get the followers to give money, they have people who follow them like sheep. They have people who will kill themselves for them. But notice that an AQ leader is never a Suicide bomber, why don't we ask that question out loud, make people think about that fact.

With regard to South Africa, I don't know the situation there in detail, but could it not be argued you were in civil war, the difference was simply that instead of the army it was the Police which was fighting at the front line.

With regard to backing off from Islam, again you are using the thing that groups like AQ want you to use, to group everyone of that relgion into the same pot, even though you are only dealing with a minority. We should be using every effort to find those minority people, and kick the **** out of them, give them a name, something other than a religious name, then we may start getting somewhere.

By the way, you may find this interesting to read through.. http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/ a bit of back ground to Islam, so you understand that like 99% of religions, Isalm promotes peace to all mankind, not war. But like all things, a fundalmentalist in any religion can take what they want from any text and twist it to meet their own needs.
Also a bit of history reading as well.. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/ira..._iraq_01.shtml

The concluesion I come up with from history is the more we try to impose a particular way for doing things, the more they will resist.

 

kind of reminds me of the weavers in idaho and the incident in waco, texas

 

http://www.apologeticsindex.org/b10.html

i didn't read it all, so i don't know if it is for or against the Davidians, but this is about waco, pronounced WAY-CO

 

i dont have time to read all of this, but i worry about things getting unfriendly, so lets try to keep everything on a professional level..thank you..

 

thanks patrick,

God bless America

and more importantly:

GOD BLESSED TEXAS... with his own hand, brought down angels from the promised land, and gave 'em a place where they could dance, if you wanna see Heaven brother here's your chancE, i've been sent to spread the message.... GOD BLESSED TEXAS!

(COUGH)Little Texas-Greatest Hits(COUGH)


ha ha ha[sm=admin.gif][sm=patriot.gif]<--replace with Texas Flag over the Alamo