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A battle of wits between elaborator and Moxie. This is kind of like watching Belgium and the Netherlands declare war on each other.



Yeah, my request for "rational political argumentation" never really took hold.
I only wanted to debate the notion that as the United States have meddled with impunity into the internal affairs of quite a few nations over the years, it's not entirely unexpected that some bad karma might come home to roost.
This doesn't justify the slaughter of 3,000 innocent Americans on 9/11 by any means.
The containments of the Cold War and the formation and continuation of the nation of Isreal have been the obvious mitigating factors in relations between the U.S. and the Arab block, and the U.S. has done plenty of dirty and spooky shit when it has suited our interests. One cannot deny the odium this has reserved for the United States in the eyes of the Arab world. It has become a tool for the corrupt and despotic leaders of that region, to blame the U.S. for damn near everything when their shitty governments can't maintain basic services and protections for their own people.
I think the U.S. could gain a lot of ground on the Arab street through some high profile benevolent foreign policy, stealing the wind from the sails of the various nihlistic insurgents and fire-eaters like Ahmadenijad. Call it a hunch, but I don't see the current administration taking such a leap of faith.
Iran is really the problem over there, right? How much would an earnest apology for our previous meddling really cost us? Fewer lives than an invasion, I'll wager. Would it not be more logical to trade a short term perceived humiliation of an apology for the long term prospects of a pacified region?
Perhaps such a notion is simply to be dismissed as anathema by any self-respecting neocon. Perhaps Amhadenijad and his nuclear issues have pushed Iran too far away already. I don't know, but since we are dealing with a culture that are sticklers for hisorical precendents and holding grudges, some persistent good will seems to me the logical tack and the cheapest way to engender good relations.