And then Ghouliani gets on TV today repeating his usual 9/11 mantra.

These guys are sooo predictable.

Comment by Kilo

you must mean poland?

The President and Richard Cheney need to be put on trial immediately and be prevented from hatching any more imperialistic wars. Failure of this Congress to impeach these criminals will come back to haunt us all if we don’t do it soon.

But @#309 you say that the majority of Muslimms around the world support OBL (wrong again)

I guess a majority is some, but really now could you do some splainin and tie these disjointed thoughts together for us all?

Yes, I knew what you meant. I was only bothered by your parenthetical definition after the term “jihad” — stated as if that’s what the word means.

Unfortunately, there are too many people who believe this is THE meaning of the word, and this is a major hassle to Muslims who freely use the term in the way they worship, with no violent meanings whatsoever. A friend of mine was harrassed coming back to the United States from hajj (the annual pilgrimage most Muslims take at some point) because he had religious pamphlets in his carry-on luggage containing the word “jihad”. The pamphlets talked about the struggle to get closer to God, not about waging any kind of war.

It is for this reason that I take every opportunity to educate people about that word (and about Islamic practices in general) so they don’t go berzerk if they hear a Muslim use it.

Now to your questions:

1) “Why do some people in the U.S. try to discount the fact that some muslims around the world want to destroy our way of life?”

I think it’s because there’s a big difference between a small percentage of a major world religion out to “get us” and all one billion practitioners of that religion doing the same. Al Qaeda represents a very small percentage of Muslims, and the only reason they are growing greater in number is because of our actions — we’re the best recruiting tool they have. Remember that most Muslims have no desire to destroy our way of life — anymore than we wish to destroy theirs. It’s not discounting so much as regarding it as less a threat than our fearmongers have inflated it to be. Naturally, we should do what we can to prevent those who wish us harm from harming us. This goes for Al Qaeda, Timothy McVeigh, crazed gunmen in general, people who wish to bomb abortion clinics, racist hate groups of ANY kind within our borders (KKK, Aryan Brotherhood, etc.), and anyone else who advocates violence against us — regardless of nationality, race, or religion. But we should be able to protect ourselves without invading countries who haven’t attacked us, or keeping the American people in a constant state of fear.

2) “And why is it when you bring up 9/11, some people don’t seem to care about it anymore?”

This one’s easy. The simple answer is that the term “9/11″ has been so cheapened and exploited for political purposes (yes, Rudy, Bush, Cheney — I’m talking about you) that a lot of people are just plain weary of it. Which is a shame, because 9/11 was a significant event that deserves to be remembered, not cheapened. However, let’s put 9/11 into some perspective. In 2001, about 3,000 people in the United States died as a result of terrorism (9/11 deaths, plus I’m throwing in the anthrax victims as well). You probably agree with me that’s tragic. That same year — 2001 — 17,448 people were killed in the United States (almost 6 times as many!) as a result of drunk driving. This is also tragic. Yet we haven’t gone to war over this, have we? Do we live in cowering fear of drunk drivers? Do we invade other countries over drunk driving? Of course not. But we do work to eliminate the problem where we can in order to make our streets safer. So should it be with any threat that affects our safety.

Comment by Southern Man

Oh my god…..the fear….danger will robinson

you just remain calm southern man and the adults will be back running things soon so it will be ok.

Um. If we follow Southern Man’s “logic”; Iran has the right to use military force to insure that we will sell them commodities, including nuclear technology and weapons, at a “fair market value”. And they have the right to establish bases, in foreign lands, to insure their defense and access to these markets.

NEWS FLASH: No country is beholden to sell anything to anybody. If the world decides that we should “starve in the dark” we would have no legal recourse.

Comment by missmolly — January 7, 2008 @ 5:19 pm

True.

I don’t pretend to understand the complexities of “territorial waters”, “contiguous zone” and “international waters”; and things get really complicated in narrow seas. However, countries do have the right to challenge foreign naval vessels which approach their shores within weapon range. It would be silly to consider the straits equivalent to “the high seas”.

In fact, they have an implicit right to approach, challenge, and even search merchant vessels under some circumstances; though they are not allowed to halt legitimate merchant traffic.

I can’t help but wonder what the U.S. response would be if Cuban naval, or merchant, vessels decided to pass between Key West and the tip of Florida. Or, if Russian vessels tried to pass between the Offshore Islands and the California coast.

The point is that countries have the right to approach and challenge foreign vessels which may be considered a threat. Though, if accurate, threat’s to blow up said vessels is provocative.

Comment by Impolitics — January 7, 2008 @ 5:05 pm

Iran making such a claim may lead to a border war of sorts. About 20% of the world’s oil goes through the Strait of Hormuz, and for Iran to lay claim to that area (and the control of the flow of oil it implies) as their property will get a great deal of argument from other countries in return.

Yes, if it’s theirs, they do have every right to approach and challenge anybody in the strait. They also will have the right to grant or deny passage to any craft going through the strait. I doubt seriously this “right” will go unchallenged.

The US says it won’t protest the incident, which means that they concur it wasn’t an intentional provocation from Tehran.

It’s a non-story.

Comment by Southern Man — January 7, 2008 @ 4:32 pm

This may sound like nitpicking, but “jihad” is merely the Arabic word for “struggle” or “strive”. It doesn’t mean “kill non-Muslims”. Admittedly some dictionaries list that as a meaning, but real Muslims will tell you that the term is used to describe one’s personal struggle to “go in the way of God” or to improve oneself on a daily basis in the manner that God wants one to be.

There are a few extremist crackpots (such as the 9/11 terrorists) who have their own peculiar meaning of “jihad”, interpreting it as a “holy war”. These are not views of mainstream Islam.

I say this only because the term is used frequently by Muslims, even here in the United States. If you hear a Muslim speaking about their “jihad”, they are speaking about their own internal struggles. They are NOT speaking about blowing you up.

No. Only in Farmer’s Markets in Indiana.