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Dave the Wonder Boy said:
But again, what I consider anti-American is that you seem to (as many others here on the boards and elsewhere are doing) blame America first and foremost for the state of the Middle East, and be less cynical of what, say, the French and German governments, and activists throughout Europe say in criticism of U.S. policy in the Middle East, while not giving the same cynical scrutiny to what is said against the United States.



I wouldn't say I blame the United States first and foremost, but I do think they were a contributing factor. Afterall, we put Saddam Hussein in charge, and we were funding him for a while(the situation does, to a certain extent, resemble the U.S's relationship with the Viet Nam government 40 years ago).

At the same time, I think that because the common perception of the United States is that we are the "global bully", we are blamed for a majority of the world's international problems, and often unfairly so.

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Arab governments dislike U.S. assistance of Israel, are hostile to the U.S., and paint the most demonized portrayal of the U.S. possible in their state-controlled media.

Independently owned arab news network Al Jazeera panders to existing Muslim hatred of the U.S. to get maximum audience.

Review of any Arab media coverage from during the Iraq war last year shows just how absurdly innacurate their "news" is.



Interesting. I'd say this would support my theory on the Arab masses' perception of the United States being the creation of the media.

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European governments are hostile to U.S. action because the European Union is struggling to take the U.S.'s place in the Middle East, both economically and diplomatically.
Arabs welcome this courtship by Europe, because they know that Europe would negotiate a Palestinian/Israeli peace deal more to the advantage of the Arabs than the Israelis.



That seems awfully simplistic. You don't think there might be a little more to it than that?

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And leftists in the European and global media have their own self-serving reasons for bashing the United States for its middle East policy.



By "leftists", do you mean the liberal factions of the European government, or just the left leaning people in general?

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Saddam was evil. Despite any U.S. action and/or inaction in the Middle East in recent decades, Saddam did these things:
  • Genocide of his own people.
  • Mass graves.
  • Mass torture and rape of his citizens.
  • Aggression against his neighbors.
  • Pursuit of WMD's (whether or not he actually had them at the time of his fall, U.N. military inventory records from Iraq, not just the scouts-honor word of the U.S., show Saddam actively pursued, and had, these WMD's at one time, whether or not he still had them.)
  • Setting aside a division of his army to secretly develop WMD's, and assigned to hide them from the U.N., as Iraqi military defectors began reporting in 1995.
  • Non-compliance with U.N. weapons inspectors, and terms of the 1991 peace agreement, finally throwing out weapons inspectors in 1998.


And on and on.



Saddam's violent and murderous exploits are certainly well documented. I don't think anyone questions that. From what I understand, the opposing viewpoint is centered more around the nature of the invasion(and any possible alterior motives Bush may have had) rather than the necessity of Hussein's removal from office.

Of course, we've already covered this before.

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I fail to see what you have left to ponder, when that fact is so obvious.



I don't think Saddam and the Iraq War has a whole lot to do with whether or not Islam is a violent religion. I think you and I have said just about all we can on those subjects. If I've caused this shift in topic I apologize.

MisterJLA is RACKing awesome.