[Justin27092]

Does anybody here see any of these gripes as legitimate? Is it bad that we support Israel, the only democracy in it’s region? It’s often claimed that it’s about the occupation, but you’d have to be amnesiatic to pretend that the West Bank and Gaza Strip were taken for ‘colonialistic’ purposes. And if it is about occupation, why no intifada against Syria? There’s no basis for hating the U.S. for it’s support for Israel outside of an openly expressed and unapologetic hatred of jews. People keep forgetting that the sanctions on Iraq — administered by the UN not the U.S. — are in place as an alternative to continuing the Gulf War over Iraq’s borders and into Bahgdad. That is why the U.S. ‘hypocriticly left their puppet Saddam in power’, because the UN thought it would be too ‘imperialist’ to actually do the job we gave the arab world the impression we’d do. Westerners seem to want to blind themselves to the fact that the Shah was moderate compared to his peers in the middle-east extending some equality to women, and then go completely mute on the Ayatolla who murdered more people in his first year in power than had been in the entire 25 years preceding his theocratic rule. If that’s arab self-determination, then I hardly see how U.S. involvement in the region could make things worse. With regard to Afganistan, the U.S. weren’t the invaders. Like nearly everywhere else the Cold War was fought, Soviet agression preceded U.S. involvement. Our help in protecting Afganistan’s sovereignty was readily accepted and when the Mujahadeen and the U.S. had completed our shared goal of repelling a Soviet invading force, did we demand to set up shop in Afganistan? Did we attempt to annex the country for ourselves? Did we do any ‘nation building’? No. We went home and left Afgahnis to determine their own destinies. What did we do wrong? Would it have been less imperialistic to reorder their country in our image? I think the respondents here wrongly assume that the reason people in the U.S. are baffled by the hate directed at us from the middle-east emanates from an ignorance of U.S. involvement in the region. At least that’s the tone they take.

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Name : Justin27092, Gender : M, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Atheist, Age : 28, City : Chicago, State : IL, Country : United States, Education level : 2 Years of College, Social class : Lower middle class, 

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