Please try to keep this on a level of civil discussion, with assertions backed up by references, and no insults or name calling.

I have noticed reports on FoxNews, CNN, etc...that besides the other targets here in the
U.S., the European Parliament and NATO HQ were targets of the Terrorists.

My question is this- if the sole motivation for this as espoused by those trying to justify the mass murder of our Citizenry in the act of War on September 11 was a product of U.S. Foreign Policy, why were there targets OTHER than U.S. assets? As far as I know, Europe in general opposes anything that America does, and generally supports the Arab/Muslim/Islamic theocracies/dictatorships against Israeli and American interests.

Thanks for your replies,
Don Out

btt

Good question. Too bad it got buried, but I'll have a go at it.

I have long held that one of the basic beliefs of the Clintonites and their type is a deep embarrassment that they are Americans, a feeling of shame that America is the most powerful nation on the planet. The United States has no real competition on the world stage [b][i]other than that which we allow[/b][/i].

No European nation, no former Soviet Republic, not even China, can project the combination of political, economic and military force that the US can. They can try in one area or another, but not succeed in all at the same time, We can and will, every time our national heart is in it. Only our lack of will limits our influence.

The basic philosphy of liberals like Clinton is that they have a moral responsibility to bring America down to the level of other nations, to "bring us in line with the global community".

The professional media has acted for so long as shills for this agenda, being populated as they are with mostly liberal, leftist social engineers, that they also feel a responsibility to bring the US down to it's "proper place".

The only way to do this is to criticize the way we relate to the rest of the world, our foreign policy. That issue becomes the boogey man for loading all kinds of other sins and misery on Americans, and accepting it as just desserts for what we have "done" to the rest of the poor, helpless world.

So, there it is, my view on the issue.

Let's see: Nomex suit, check. Gloves, check. Water bucket, ready. OK, flame on [flame]

Good points! I personally believe that the attacks are based on our foreign policy are debunked as further info comes to light. Apparently, the chemical plant bombing in France has also been tied to "Islamic Fundamentalists", and this is furthering my opinion that these extremists are more against modernization, human rights, and Western Civilization in general. I.E. these people want the world to be an Islamic State, rooted in the 15th Century. (Further info gleaned from FoxNews, CNN, BBC websites, as well as the site (and links from the site) posted earlier regarding the Islamic point of view [url]http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?id=57584[/url]
Edited 'cause I couldn't get the board code right!!!

Okay, I'll take a swing at this.

Assessing blame is always a difficult thing to do.  It is always easier to find external reasons why things happen rather than looking inward at one's own actions.  In terms of the individual American, there is a distinct lack of a sense of responsibility and maturity among most American adults.  I don't know if it is due to too much easy living, too few challenges, the nanny state giving too many handouts, or what, but the reason we have such terrible, awful leadership in this country is because the people have let themselves be led down the primrose path of hollow promises.  The average American embraces socialist values and cheers for every crisis to be solved by government action.  A lot of what has happened is due to the sad state of foundational American values.

We are our own government, supposedly.  Well, then while we were busy chasing down people who take drugs or maybe own certain types of weapons, or basically trying to enact social justice, the real dangers were growing all around us.  Unfortunately, there isn't as much money or praise for the doing the hard work.  Instead, we've focused on all the wrong things--are the kids wearing helmets?  Are adults wearing seatbelts and not driving drunk?  Is everyone paying their "fair share" of taxes?  Is everyone saying the right things and not committing hate crimes?

While America was busy second-guessing itself, the politicians were busy grabbing more power for themselves.  Meanwhile, they forgot to do what they were elected/appointed to do.

Which brings us right to foreign policy.  I'm not sure I understand your question. Why weren't foreign nations also targeted?  I would ask where have you been?  They are targeted all the time.  The Europeans are on constant alert for whatever the latest terror threat is.  Unlike Americans, Europeans do not enjoy the equivalent of a 4th Amendment or a 5th Amendment.  It's a lot easier to set up dragnets when you are part of a repressive socialist regime.  Europeans act all superior, but they have few individual liberties.  They're the same serfs who lived on the continent during the Middle Ages.

I also think that America has the big bullseye painted on it.  Europe has been through hell and their empires are dead.  The American empire is very much alive and continues to throw its weight around at every opportunity.  In the past decade, the US has placed troops in dozens of countries and killed tens of thousands of people.  Any one of those actions could have been the justification for Sept. 11.  The only thing I'm wondering is why no one attacked us sooner.

You'll get no flame from me, my friend. Ya'll are both right as rain when it comes to figuring out this mess!

I believe that America is an embarrassment to folks like Clinton and the liberal chattering classes for all the reasons ya'll have cited.

I also believe that a whole lot of people would like to think that the US is to blame because they know that the US can change its ways.

If it's Bin Laden and the Talibans of the World who are at fault, then we're doomed because we know that they're not gonna change anytime soon!

But if we continue to go down this road of 'can America change?' then we're all gonna be in a mess of trouble. The Bin Ladens of this world don't worry about how something plays in the press, whose dinner party they're invited to, whether they're on the 'A' List for Washington parties, whether they get 'face time' on the evening news, what their poll numbers are, how something plays in Peoria, [b]what their wives think[/b], and all the myriad of other considerations that affect our leaders.

Their world is very simple. They live, they die, and there's not a whole lot going on between those two dates on a stone in a miserably bleak cemetery.

Eric The(What'sToLose?)Hun[>]:)]

Cerberus' New American Foreign Policy, revised to be sensitive to the current global situation facing the many poor and oppressed nations of the world community:

[b]"You ask, what is our policy? I will say: it is to wage war, by sea, land and air, and with all our might. . . .

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory. . . .

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival![/b]

Due credit given to W.S. Churchill for this brilliant concept in foreign relations.

Trickshot, good points also. The question does not (by my intent) address the homefront social issues, but the specific "justifications" given by extreme left-wingers in our school systems and some of the newspaper editorials. I agree that we neet to evaluate the hatred that others feel toward us, and that we need to again become a moral country and Citizenry who are in charge of our direction.  

This last statement in NO WAY justifies what was done to our country, nor should it be interpreted that way.

The question was asked to point out that this has little to do with our foreign policy, as the reference to the bombing and targets in Europe show. I did point out this as the reason for debunking the rather odorous "we deserved it" so-called reasoning. I too am surprised that we have not been attacked with much more frequency and effect before this.

The reason that I brought up the European targets is that they have been linked to the attack here specifically- I know about Europe, their socialism, have had friends stationed in Germany that were severly injured in terrorist attacks in the '80s.

Edited 'cause I can't spell "foreign" correctly twice in the same post

Good one cereberus, I like W.C. a lot! Whoever said in another post that someone dug his spine up and transplanted it in Tony Blair was "spot on"!

Hay trickshot what tens of thousands are youtalking about?  the ony way thet can compute is desertstorm,  vietnam and korea.
   I dont' think letting sadam take our oil supply would hae been wise.    In nam well that was a goat fu@$%^ from the beginning.
   I dont think we've ever been anyplace that they didn't gain from it.
 Hell look at the Teleban gov.  It's a bunch of thugs ruleing total dominance.  The wemon are slaves.  That country is very ver old and look at it, it's backward assed.  What have they achived.  They can't even feed themselves.  This whole region can't get along with themslves.  rich Americans, hell yes were rich,  weve worked for it, weve built it and we didn't blow everything the hell up.  I belive every where we went we were ivited.  We haven't invaded and conqured that I can remember.  Seems to me we help build em better.  JB
   

Eric(ComesUpWithMoreGoodPoints)TheHun:

Now we are getting to the meat of the matter.

We do need to change our ways.  We need to finally learn (not the choir here) that this liberal socialist crap is NOT American- Carl Marx has been proven wrong, the only thing that has been proven is that for the most part of 230 years, Freedom and Liberty (both individual and National) has been the only truly successful way of life.

If our support of Israel against genocide pisses off the Arab world- SO BE IT. If our policies of gun ownership and individual freedon pisses off the Socialists, SO BE IT.

I personally have thought that if one wants to subvert and change the Constitution, MOVE SOMEWHERE ELSE where you can be controlled.

I personally am less stressed out by the possibility of death by terrorist than I am about those who would make excuses for those who commit mass murder in the name of (insert religeon here).

You want body counts?  I don't have specific numbers (I'm a busy man), but here's where I'd look:

Panama

Haiti

Serbia or Bosnia or whatever the hell we bombed over there

Post-Gulf War Iraq--I've read that 500,000 Iraqi civilians are dead in large part due to sanctions.  That's another whole can of worms, but you asked what I'm talking about here...
We still bomb Iraq almost daily to enforce those pathetic "no-fly" zones.  I have a friend who is a Kurd who lives in the states, but what the hell are we thinking?

Colombia--We're pissing off people there to no end by spraying defoliants on them and their crops.  It's causing all kinds of sickness and generally a bad attitude regarding Americans.

Somalia--in 1993 the misguided peace mission there resulted in thousands of casualties.  I know the troops were only acting in self defense, but they should not have been there in the first place.

Is that enough for you or do you want more?  These are just the ones off of the top of my head.

Eric, as far as us changing our collective ways, I wouldn't hold my breath.  You can only control yourself and your own thoughts and actions.  The only hope I have is that someplace, somewhere, a bunch of liberty-minded people get together and become a majority.  I've heard talk of a "Free State Project" where libertarians agree to all move to a certain state so as to effect change by becoming the majority.  It's a longshot.  It's better than the man-made islands and other wild ideas.

The problem with telling people to get out is that they believe everything they do is justified in the "living document" that is the US Constitution.  They've perverted it to their own ends.  

Trickshot,

Keep 'em coming. As I stated in the original post, this was a specific question regarding the excuse that our foreign policy is justification for the mass murder of our Citizens.

Not being a Foreign Policy expert, I will say that isolationism is not the answer. Getting out of UN "Peacekeeping" addresses most of your "body counts"

Saddam agreed to a set of rules for cease fire, and has not obeyed them once. He shoots at us, we bomb him. As far as sanctions, I DO know that they are not for food restrictions. Again, Saddam sells the food rather than giving it to the peoples, murders Kurds, etc... and spends the money on arms.

Should we perhaps imprison all drug users to stop demand, thus negating Columbia's cash crop?

America makes mistakes, and maybe does things
I might not be proud of, but we don't kill like how  they did on September 11th.  We don't deal
with prisoners like Japan did in Bataan, or the
North Korean's in 1950.  We are not perfect, but
our goal is not to exterminate an entire culture, like the taliban seems to have in mind.
John

Mr. Clean, exactly!

Government is a human invention, thus by definition flawed.

The difference is that America tries to learn and do better each time.

Our Representatives WILL do our bidding if they know what we want.

Its kind of fun reading all these posts so completely in DENIAL about what has happened to us. For 45 years we pursued an INSANE anticommunist foreign policy and allowed our main intelligence organization the CIA to become an adhoc ideological organization which misled our leaders and dealt drugs to boot- anything to kill a commie. They went to bed with every little fascist dictator in the "free world", set up the Shah of Iran, supported unconditionally a state where black-clad radicals started wars of territorial expansion for "living space" (no, not the Nazis- the Israelis), sold arms to the Ayatollah, invented crack cocaine to help the Contras, executed hundreds of thousands of people by proxy (especially in Guatemala and Indonesia) and yet failed to predict the fall of the Soviet Union thus actualy failing their most crucial mision. If we want to "win" this war on terrorism we need a new reality-based foreign policy which will reign in the Israelis and give us physical control of the oil which is the reason we're in the region in the first place. We also may have to pursue and exterminate Islamic Fundamentalists with the same vigor with which we tried to exterminate commies. Ironically we find ourselves in the same boat as the Soviets who fought to control Islamic Fundamentalists in the Afghan War and now the Russians in Chechnya. Any serious student of history will find it hard to deny alot of this we brought on our own heads. The first bombs we drop on Kabul should have some of the CIA and State Department geniuses who got us here strapped to them.

What happened three weeks ago is the result of the banishment of Ishmael over three thousand years ago.  For much of the time after that moment, Judiasm has suffered.  Today, the zionist own their asses and they (fundamentalist, militant "islamics") are a little pissed.  The solution is to give their people a taste of the west other than Bay Watch and Hollywood.  Give to them food    and access to prosperity.  Give their soldiers a soldiers death and extend to the terrorist a death by burning pig fat.

Uncle Joe, you're full of shit.  Doesn't that tin foil hat tickle when you're head's so far up your ass?

Double-tap- server is acting strange

Uncle Joe-

I asked for references. I asked that this stay an intelligent discussion/debate. I have yet to result to baseless accusations and name calling in my posts, even when impassioned. Hell, even trickshot and myself, who disagree on some major points here (and all of us are having trouble keeping this focused to the limited scope of the question) are being civil and respectful of each other. I ask that all do the same.[8D]

Don Carter

My country, right or wrong.

My personal feeling exactly!

And if wrong, we, (The People) have a responsibility to correct it.