A Clash of Civilizations?

    I should preface this essay by saying that I find Islam repugnant as I do all religions. I may find Islam more repugnant than Christianity and Judaism but that is a matter of degree.

I would have to agree with the Republican morons that what we have now is a clash of civilizations; however, it isn’t the West against Islam but educated Americans against slogan-driven bigots who have no knowledge of history and no common sense. The clash of civilizations is about those who think that our failed occupational wars in the Middle East were mistakes from the outset against those who seem to lack any sort of memory of our very recent past.

Listen to this interview with Robert Pape, author of Dying to Win which explains how suicide bombing is almost always about a reaction to occupying forces. Saddam Hussein was about as hated in his country as were the American occupying forces, the difference being that word “occupying.”  No matter what we have been told over and over again, the attacks of 9/11 we the result of our occupation of Saudi Arabian territory. It wasn’t because they hated our values. They may hate our values but that has nothing to do with suicide bombings.

From The Atlantic Monthly:

The leading GOP presidential candidates reject that. They believe defeating the Islamic State requires some dramatic, if vaguely defined, new military and ideological exertion. Obama, by contrast, thinks America simply needs to not screw up. That means not being “drawn once more” into an effort to “occupy foreign lands,” thus allowing the Islamic State to use “our presence to draw new recruits.”

We need to pull out of Muslim countries. Immediately! We should never have invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and our presence only made matters much worse in both countries for almost everyone involved. And now Republican idiots want us to go into Syria?