| | It was easy to agree with the problem, but harder to accept the proposed solution of nuclear strikes on Teheran and Islamabad ... and don't forget Riyadh.
US government involvement in this region was the promixate cause of the attacks of 9/11. But the US government ignored the Saudi Connection. The 9/11 terrorists were Wahabbis. Wahabbi fundamentalism comes from Saudi Arabia, our ally, just like the USSR was our ally when we bombed Hiroshima for them.
The USA actually sent its armies to fight against Saddam Hussein in Iraq specifically to defend Saudi Arabia. When Iraq invaded Kuwait - with US compliance at first: "not our problem" the US ambassdor to Iraq told them - the royal family of Kuwait fled. There was no resistance. As a nation of guest workers from India, Pakistan, and Palestine Kuwait had no one to fight for it. The royals ran off to the casinos of Cairo and Monte Carlo. The handwriting was on the wall for Saudi Arabia. Iran stopped Iraq's invasion, but Saudi Arabia could not. As Stephen Colbert quipped: What is the national anthem of Saudi Arabia? "Onward Christian Soldiers".
Why did the Iranian radicals seize the US embassy in 1979? Because the US propped up the Shah. Nice guy, a bit of a torturer, but a university-educated wife, son of the man who was put there after the USA intervened in a popular election that did not fit the Realpolitik of the time.
And then there is Israel... If the Europeans were so darned guilty about the holocaust, why didn't they give the Jews Liechtenstein instead of Palestine? (As Pat Codell noted: if there were any cosmic justice, the Jews would have taken one-fourth of Germany.) Oh, but God gave them that land... Just like the US supported the Taliban against the godless communists...
If the USA were a capitalist nation, we would indeed win the Arab/Islamic world to friendship based on trade because the government would mind its own business while merchants extended world peace through world trade.
Bomb Teheran, bomb Islamabad, bomb Riyadh, and some damned fool kids will put firecrackers and ball bearingn in a cooking pot at the Boston Marathon. You cannot stop idiocy, but you do not need to encourage it.
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