> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Dave Land > Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2007 2:58 AM > To: Killer Bs Discussion > Subject: Re: Barack Obama > > > I had a conversation with a smart Silicon Valley type yesterday who > said that the US has chosen to project the wrong "brand" to the Middle > East. That's not so very different from what you say here -- give 'em > hospitals and the Internet and project a brand of "helper" instead of > "invader" and you're likely to win more hearts and minds, and at the > cost that I would wager is quite a bit smaller than the brand we're > projecting now at the point of our many guns and missiles.
How would this work? We've been giving billions to Egypt for decades...with no real effect. The Saudis, the Iranians and Iraqi governments had been getting tens of billions from us, in payment for oil. These billions have made a number of families very rich...including Bin Laden's. (as an aside, the typical member of AQ, suicide bomber, etc. is not one of the dirt poor barely making it. Rather they usually come from middle to upper class families. Given the relatively small fraction of these families in the Middle East, this is rather telling. I'm not arguing for the virtue of Bush II's Iraq war. I opposed it from before the start. Rather, I'm arguing that, before that war, the US muddled through in a difficult Mid-East situation. I'd argue that the first Iraq war was a good idea, as well as the invasion of Afghanistan. I don't think that the non-representative governments in the Mid-East are the responsibility of the US and Europe. Tyrants and murderers have existed for millennia, and are not simply the result of Western meddling. Arguments that state that AQ is a US creation give far too much control over world events to the US. I see a consistent theme in writings by a number of list members....that the cessation of US "meddling" in the rest of the world would turn things around. AQ would fade away, governments would better server their people, and the US would be much safer. I'll address this a bit more in my response to others in this thread. If I'm wrong on this, I don't mind being corrected, but I am trying to give my best understanding of the meaning of the posts I am reading. > And it wouldn't have cost us the growing shame of the Pat Tillman > story, which is starting to smell more and more like they shot their > own hero because he wouldn't read from their script. Do you have any evidence supporting this hypothesis that the friendly fire incident was deliberate murder and ordered from on high? There is a wealth of evidence, including the original transcript, that this was a fairly typical friendly fire incident that wasn't properly acknowledged by higher ups. Included in this was an early "oh shit" by people involved. There is overwhelming evidence that a command level decision was made to get a good story out as soon as possible, without bothering to check the facts....and then an attempt to keep that story going even after it was known to be counterfactual. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
