Don’t Protect the Banks, Protect the People!

Nunya, while you have managed to get the odd thing right, i am afraid your response has shown that you are neither a student of history nor someone who understands human nature very well.

If you were seriously asking if America had bases in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan (before some unnamed war) and not then showing mock surprise to find out that they did, the answer would be yes, yes and no in the case of Afghanistan, unless the war you alluded to was the Viet Nam war, in which case the proper answer would be that i do not know and am not about to look it up. America would have had troops in Saudi Arabia to protect the royal family in exchange for the feudally run kingdom continuing to price oil in American dollars and nothing else. And America would have had troops stationed in Pakistan at the behest of their military,for the cold war was raging and India was tending to side with the Soviets. But they would not have been in Afghanistan in the years leading up to what you have called the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. In those years the country was actually ruled by a communist government under Amin. As you could imagine, that did not go over too well with the populace, especially the more religious among them and so consequently, the country was embroiled in a civil war. With things not going too well for Amin anywhere outside of Kabul, he called on his Soviet allies to send help and send help they did. As Amin was the internationally recognized leader of the country, he had about as much right to invite the Soviets in as did he the tyrants who remained in power by agreeing to host American troops.

You hit the mark with your statement that America is hated for a number of reasons, but so very little of it is tied to religion and that part which is exists only among the tiniest subsect.
You listed 3 of the reasons you believe America is hated by Muslims. The first was that they hate your freedom. That statement illustrates just how very poorly you understand human nature. People who do not have their freedom do not wish that everyone else suffer the same fate. What they do is work toward the day when they will be free. If you do not believe me, just go to your local jail and ask any prisoner if he would rather have everyone in lockdown or have the jail house door hit him in the behind on his way out.... Your second reason is precisely correct and it backs up my contention that American foreign policy should be seen as a contributing factor for the tragic events that unfolded on 9/11. America has long had a pro-Israel foreign policy that has served to squash what most of the world consider to be the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians. To the Muslims of the region, the hatred of America over this matter is not about Christians backing up Jews with muscle in their never ending dispute with Muslims. Indeed, anyone with a sense of history would find the assertion rather funny given that there has been a long history of Jews living in peace in Muslim ruled lands while Christians have a centuries long history of expulsions, forced conversions, instutionalized discrimination and pogroms aplenty for their Jewish populations. America could be chock full of Muslims; were they to maintain the same eneven-handed foreign policy in that part of the world, believe me, the Muslims there would have no trouble hating America....As for your last reason given, it is not that America is hated because it is not Muslim. As i pointed out in my initial post, there are many countries that are not Muslim and they are not targets for extremists, the ones i mentioned being predominately Christian, just like America. You have not dealt with that fact whatsoever. If America is hated, it is for its actions in the world and not the particular deity the greatest number of its citizens pray to each day. i mean, if they do not like who you are praying to in America, don't you think they would still consider that better than those godless Communists in China dedicated to eradicating the opium of the masses? They should have some very intense hatred for China if what you assert is true and yet China is not a target and it is not one because its foreign policy in the region does nothing to hurt the legitimate aspirations of the people living there.

What you next say about the "fanatics of Islam" is true, but it would also be pretty much true for the "fanatics" of most every religion. For Jewish fanatics that would be somewhat different in that conversion to the religion is supposed to be discouraged and so they would not hate someone not born a Jew. But if they come across a Jew who is not obeying the law as they believe it should be, they are not at all shy about letting that person know just what they think of them. Fanatacism of any kind is probably not a good thing and assuredly not so when it leads to violence.

And now to your final point on what led to America becoming the Great Satan. Your amalgam of supposed facts leading to a conclusion that is a non-sequitor leaves me shaking my head at what must be the quality of an American education. To begin with, the term Great Satan was famously first uttered by Iran's Ayatollah Komeinei in November of 1979. As you should have known, that was a full month before the Soviets, being invited, entered into Afghanistan to help the government there fight a civil war against what were considered to be Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. It would take 10 years before the Soviets got themselves out of there. That the Americans did not remain in the country after the Soviets were forced to withdraw or go bankrupt was in no way seen as a bad thing by anyone in the Arab world. Indeed, it would have been seen as a good thing, for who wants foreign troops on their soil when they are no longer needed? And really, it was not like America sent its army to help win the war. It was mainly some CIA types providing intelligence along with businessmen who had connections to American armaments manufacturers that were deployed. As stated, America became the Great Satan long before you claim and for reasons having nothing to do with what you have been going on about. The Ayatollah hated America because he considered it to act as an imperial power. England would later on come to earn the same title of disrespect from the Ayatollah and for the same reason, not because it was also a nation composed mainly of Christians.

You must come to understand this basic law of physics which states that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. This fundamental law may not work quite as precisely in the world of real politik, but make no mistake, blowback is inevitable.