US/Middle East Relations and Terrorism on the Home Front

Tonight, three of my friends were discussing the motive of terrorist groups in attacking the United States. One said "It wasn't right of them, but it is our fault."

I feel that one of the best ways to deter terrorism in the future is to try to understand their grievances to begin with. I'm pretty sure Sun Tzu and Machiavelli would agree. Now, there's a big difference between understanding their grievances and tolerating them. Looking at history and determining what policy decisions may have provoked the Islamic people to take up arms against the US or possibly how the US executed said policies should help us in the future to understand what both the aggressive and the passive nations of Islam would like to see in US/Islamic relations. We can then determine which of those desires we'd be interested in granting and which ones we'd prefer to tell them to stick in their collective ear. It's entirely possible, in my opinion, to accomplish this while still maintaining a hardline stance against certain Islamic states and conveying that there are some points we are entirely unwilling to negotiate, for instance our stance on some nations' decision to harbor terrorists.

I think events like September 11 occurred because we have a history of going into the Islamic world and pulling strings for as long as we need them, and then as soon as we no longer need those strings, cutting them off entirely without trying to tie up the loose ends. Early on, it was Imperialism and that's the fault of Great Britain, not us, but in the modern world they are our lapdogs. Thus, the Islamic world sees us as one in the same. In more recent history, we started out against the creation of Israel in the Palestinian state and quickly fell behind Great Britain and France in support. Now, we've supported them militarily so much that the Palestinians can't help but see us as a direct ally. To the Islamic world, we raped the Palestinians' religion. That's holy land and various landmarks have cultural and religious significance to the Palestinians, and those people, who have been natives of the area for much longer than the Israelis, can no longer access some of those monuments safely.

More directly related to Al Qaeda and Afghanistan, the United States supported the Taliban during the Cold War to empower the people to drive out Soviet occupation. Once the world changed and the Western vs. Soviet spheres of influence era ended, the US no longer had a reason to support Afghanistan. I can understand an end to military aid at that point but, similar to what has occurred in Iraq, there was no humanitarian gameplan. Afghanistan was destroyed by the battle with the Soviet Union and likely an economic shift to war time monetary policy and the US did nothing to correct that. Thus, give it a few years to fester into aggressive animosity, and you have Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

To conclude, I'm not trying to justify Al Qaeda. There's nothing right about driving planes into office buildings and killing a bunch of people, most of whose greatest tie to the Federal government is the paper clips they put on TPS reports. However, I think it's important for the progresssive future to take a look at the policies of the past, apply them to the post-Cold War world, and see what we can do to keep our iron fist clenched with regards to existing terrorist coalitions while preventing the creation of more enemies.

Social Darwinism Rocks! Thanks, Porn!

On March 17, Ron Jeremy came to our campus and debated the societal issues surrounding the adult film industry with a woman whose first name alludes me, so I'll just call her Ms. Cole. I posted the following paragraph on my LiveJournal entry about my St. Patrick's Day...

"Then we went to the Ron Jeremy vs. Some Femmenazi debate on the ethical issues surrounding pornography. I'm not really a porn watcher myself but my opinion on the matter is that if guys want to watch it, and girls for that matter, let them. By the time you're in college (which was the audience of the speakers), you've been exposed to it in some form whether you've walked in on your guy friends watching or you've received one of those annoying e-mails with the images embedded. We all know it exists and MOST people are mature enough to handle it. Also, you can't blame people's behaviour on pornography. Men are going to be pigs whether they have something to masturbate to or not. It's just a fact. By the way, I mean "men" in the general sense. I know a couple of upstanding male individuals, which brings me to my next point. We're all individuals. If an individual you're acquainted with has a negative outlook on women, it's not because he's gotten such a bad example from the adult media. If he's stupid enough to have that outlook, you should disenfranchise yourself from him."

I got three responses from friends. They attacked me because I called the anti-porn activist a "femmenazi."
Sorry, that's the first word that came to mind! Control of the media in favour of women! Sounds like
femmefascism to me....

And then they attacked me for not staying for the whole debate. Sorry, 10 minutes was PLENTY for me. In that 10 minutes I saw the female anti-porn activist bring up issues that really don't count in female domme pornography or gay porn where women are not an element. An acquaintance of mine voiced a question to the speakers about individual responsibility over society imitating media and I don't remember her having a very good response to it except to continue to say that in porn, a woman saying "no" really means "yes" and if a guy pushes harder, suddenly the woman's going to start to like it. My take on that is that if you make yourself into that kind of woman and associate yourself with men who will take advantage of you, that's not porn's fault.

I'm just so tired of people finding a scapegoat!
Don't blame mainstream media.
Don't blame porn.
TAKE SOME RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR ACTIONS.

If you're a woman, and you stay in a hurtful relationship far longer than you should, you learn something and if you're smart, you don't make that mistake again.

If you're a woman, and you treat a man like shit because that's what pro-women media has told you to do, and he leaves you.... bitch had it coming.

If you're a man, and you treat a woman like shit, and she leaves you, maybe you shoulda wised up and treated her with respect.

If you look at the media and decide it's true that "nice guys finish last" and decide to be someone you're not to get a lady, when the facade drops and she leaves you because she sees who you really are, you're going to hurt a lot, and that'll teach you to follow what 80% of the populace thinks instead of 20% or perhaps that 7% category I fall into on the Myers-Briggs test.

And if you're part of that 7%, have decent grooming skills, some social normalities, and some things in common with me...here's my phone #.