I find it funny how you keep suggesting that killing more people is going to save lives. There is an inherent fallacy there.
And don't play me for stupid or naive: I'm
not saying that just being nice to people, treating them fairly, even if they are obviously less powerful or even powerless, is going to make hatred of America, poverty or terrorism vanish, far from it. But it will definitely do more good than killing more people.
And diplomacy vs, terrorism, you're not that thick, are you? I'm not expecting the UN to go and have a cup of tea with Bin Laden. I'm talking about, for example, showing that America is benevolent in it's foreign policy. That, as "The land of the free, home of the brave", "greatest nation on earth" and all that, they can take a leading role in the world that reflects their ideals, not betrays them. Show that America can do as it says, and not show that America's President tells the world "we don't torture", when, quite obviously, they do, and they support it at the highest level. Show that as the richest country on the planet, the US will actually make sacrifices for the common good, like many other, less wealthy countries do. It could, for example, pay it's debt to the UN. It could value the global environment more than short-term economic benefits, but it doesn't. It (and the EU, for that matter) could choose to trade fairly with poorer nations, instead of forcing them into tariff agreements that artificially lower prices and keep competition down. They could stop destroying entire national economies by stopping their own subventions, which they could certainly afford. They could stop treating the rest of the world like irrelevant pieces of shit and still expect them to adore and follow the US. They can afford to give more foreign aid than any country in the world, but they give less than many poorer nations. They could show that they value human rights for all humans, not just Americans. They invade and bomb sovereign countries for no good reason. They fight a prolonged, unjustified war that cost anywhere between 60.000 and 600.000 civilian lives and then have the unbelievable arrogance to call it a mere "comma" in history. They "want to bring democracy to the middle east" and can't even fix their own. Those things and dozens more. All this falls under diplomacy. All this directly affects what the world thinks of America. All this gives people reasons to disagree with, despise or hate America.
So how do you stop them hating America? Maybe fix those things? Maybe do good things instead of bad things? Nooooo, that would be head-in-the-sand liberalism, because it doesn't involve blowing shit up. No, in fact that would actually be solving problems instead of exacerbating them. I assure you, making trade fair is much harder, takes more commitment, more bravery, more determination, more sacrifices than the war on terror or the war in Iraq. But, as opposed to the latter two, the former will actually help, and not make things worse. And it won't happen, not because it wouldn't work in the long run, but because a couple of thousand Americans would lose their jobs, and you can't run a campaign on that.
Yes, some stupid fuck in a villa in Riad will always want to blow up America, but fuck him. Let him try. If he succeeds, bad luck. Shit happens. People kill, people die. Sometimes that will be your people. Get over it. Iraq has the equivalent of a 9/11 every couple of months, for absolutely no good reason. Just like that, thousands dead. If they're half as pissed about it as the US was, America is fucked forever.
You know what good behaviour in the world will do? It will give people reasons to not listen to the silly bugger in his villa in Riad. It will give them talking points to disagree with him.
With all due respect, fighting terrorism is a little bit more complex than ending a schoolyard duel.
I never said it wasn't, but you seem to think that blowing up a couple of evil brown people will make you safe forever. Good luck with that.
And Snipa, you aren't a "Brain-Washed by Bush, Sterotyping, Patriotic, One-sided, Angry, Hot-blooded, Redneck American." You simply have no clue as to how the world works, and you don't want to know. It's a little more complex than this "good vs. evil", "us against them" thing. I'm not condoning terrorism, believe me, but at least I have an interest in WHY it happens, which you seem to not care about at all. That guy who drives his bomb-laden truck into an American checkpoint, do you really think he's all "allah-uh-akhbar! I'm gonna be a fucking evil badass today! I hate freedom! Stupid Americans with their democracy! I'm so afraid of fighting these much better equipped soldiers man to man! I'll just blow myself up, that's easy! Die!" Do you really think that? Are you really that fucking stupid? Why is that man KILLING HIMSELF? Remember, he isn't launching a cruise missile from a submarine somewhere, he will have his own body torn to shreds, why would he do that? Because he wants to fight back, and he firmly believes a bombing like that is the only way he can do so. And why did they bomb the WTC?
"Lets fight them there so we don't have to fight them here."
It works both ways, you see. And why did Bin Laden think he had to fight the US in the US? Because he fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan. And do you think the US supported the Mujahedin because they were worried about their freedom? Bullshit. They wanted them to kill Soviets for them. They didn't send food, they sent weapons. After the war, did the US actually help Afghanistan? No, they just pissed off. Left a broken, failed state full of people who thought that America cared about them, only to find that they were just tools.
Does it gradually begin to dawn on you that things happen for a reason, that there is a law of cause and effect, that America was not attacked "out of the blue" or without reason, that the US actually carries a degree of resposibility for all the hostility directed against it? Nah, you just believe that "they hate our freedom" and similar fluff. Yeah, your freedom is such a threat to these people. No, they like your freedom just fine, it's your foreign policy they suffer under, your utter contempt for their lives that pisses them off.
Sorry for the rant and the occasional swear word, I just find this "uh, you don't want to see people die, you're a naive wimp"-argument incredibly stupid. And this "terorists are evil cowards"-attitude is so insanely ignorant and short-sighted. It offers no solutions, it's just a lazy excuse for not wanting to deal with the real problems.
Now its starting to sound like WWII.