Why they hate us (II): How many Muslims has the U.S. killed in the past 30 years?

Sorry Mr. Sam.

Digest this nuance...

So America is always at fault which is implied by the converse of the COMEDIAN Stephen Colbert? Quoting a comedian who makes his dime ridiculing his country shows me the level of discussion but I'm trying to reach you anyway.

You underscore the problem by drawing attention to the apathy and then you go on to quote one of the main sources of the misinformation and laziness that leads us down these sewers around the world.

Here's your homework assignment since you seem to get your information from the Comedy Channel.

Among all men on this planet the President of the United States of America has has tried to do his best with regard to the Congresses we elect and the policies he want to pursue. I believe that they try. The outcomes are as predictable as the information and product of probabilities of the variables.

I believe there is NOT a delineation between our responsibilities individually and the actions of our elected representatives. That how a representative
We act more responsibly with regard to world affairs since we took the mantle as the sole super power. With our financial capituatlon to communist China, we have given them the peer status that should be inappropriate, in my opinion.

If you personally take responsibility for our actions at the top levels you will find a vested interest in doing the right thing with regard to the troops we put in harm's way. If you've ever played a team sport, specifically football, then you will get a glimpse of my meaning.

I'm sick and tired of the attacks against our country and that means you and me.

Our weakness is at the Congressional level, not the Presidential level in either this administration or the last.

Electing better representatives should be mine, yours and our media's prime goal and not pushing hidden agendas.

We've failed our President, our country and both of us in that regard. That's how a democratic republic works, especially in times of war.

We have less than 11 months before we get another attempt to fix this problem.

John Stewart yes, Colbert - oh so trite.

I am not sure how to understand the term "nuance" here.

Walt is saying we've been waging a ruthless war on Muslims, and if we only stopped doing that, we'd be loved by them.

Earth to Mars - we don't care if you love us. We don't need your camel-#%^% love. We don't care for your hate. Hate us all you want. Please, we aren't Europe yet- we still allow for the free expression of feelings!

That said - Walt is just partisan. Nothing more to it. As always, towing the Chas Freeman, Saudi Wahabia line.

Let me turn the argument around, ever since the birth of Islam, it has been at war with the rest of the world. If it took you 911 to wake up to that, pity the fool.

As for massacres, the Syrians killed more Muslim brothehood goons than we ever did. 40,000 in two raids?

What about all the lives we saved for the Ishmaelite scum in Kosovo, in Afghanistan, our endless aid to Egypt, to Turkey, to Saudi Arabia.

Sure, talk about why they hate us, and then tell us if we care.

What about adding to this list the number of Muslims the US has saved? As in Kosovo, or by removing the murderous regimes of Saddam Hussein and the Afghan Taliban, or via humanitarian aid to various conflict spots like Somalia and Sudan?

And if one interprets this childishly simplistic tally as a “reason” for Muslims hating the US, someone else can just as easily suggest that lethal force has been directed at Muslim populations because of the proportion of lethal threats emanating from those populations.

Not all Muslims are terrorists. It just so happens that a lot of terrorists are Muslim.

From FrumForum.com
December 4, 2009

Why They Hate Us

By John Vecchione

Stephen M. Walt, the famously anti-Israeli Harvard Professor is at it again. Just as President Obama is sending an additional 30,000 fighting men to prevent the takeover of Afghanistan by the types of Muslims who throw acid in women’s faces and kill little girls for going to school, he chimes in with this helpful piece of mendacious agitprop:

The estimable Cliff May has countered some of this rot here but I want to take this on from a different aspect. On its own terms it is idiocy.

First, why was there a war in 1990-1991 when Professor Walt’s death count begins? Did not Saddam Hussein invade Kuwait, an entirely Muslim country, and begin killing men, raping women and exiling the entire ruling class? Did this not offend Muslims? Why, yes it did! Saudi Arabia, keeper of the shrines of Mecca and Medina, invited in the U.S. and a coalition comprising even Syria, to retake Kuwait and drive Saddam out of the little Gulf State. Most of the members of the Arab League backed the war and, as with Syria, participated in it. The main reason we stopped short of deposing Saddam was precisely to stop the ground war in 100 hours, mostly at the behest of those self-same Arabs. So, an international coalition, including all of the Arab world except the Palestinians aided the U.S. in getting rid of the anti-Islamic Saddam Hussein from an independent Moslem country and this is supposed to have increased Arab grievance?

Second, approval of America is usually higher in Iraq than it is in Egypt. It is typically higher in Kuwait than it is in Jordan. We have killed virtually no Egyptians or Jordanians, and a number of people in Kuwait and Iraq. What could account for the difference? You could play this game with many other states in the Arab world. The number of deaths is simply not comparable to America approval.

Third, where are the numbers for the British and French? They have killed many, many Moslems in the last 50 years but seem to have higher approval rates than America. The Danes have killed almost no Moslems or Arabs in the last 50 years but have a very bad reputation in the Arab world. Why would that be? They allowed cartoons to be published!

Fourth, the world’s most populous majority Moslem country is Indonesia. In 2006, while America was preparing the surge and fighting in Afghanistan and George W. Bush was President, America’s approval there was dramatically improved. This is dramatic evidence that it is local factors and press and not some amorphous view of America’s death toll against enemies that drives Moslem approval or disapproval.

Professor Walt puts in the caveats that he was for the first Gulf War and fighting the Taliban but the deaths can’t be ignored as the reason why America is in bad odor in that part of the world. Far be it from me to defend Tom Friedman who Walt is attacking in this piece, but it sure seems that Jordanian, Egyptian, and Moroccan hostility to the U.S. has little to do with how many Arabs have died in wars against the United States. It is support for their governments that drives the popular dislike of us in those places, combined with the U.S. position that Israel be allowed to exist.

Walt, a professor at Harvard no less, makes no effort to test his theory. Where is the graph of Arab approval of the U.S. versus Arab deaths by country? Where is the graph of the Arab/Moslem view of countries besides the United States? Even by its own premises this argument is a bust. I have little doubt the approval of the United States in Germany and Japan was higher in 1960 than in 1939. In the interim we had killed hundreds of thousands of Germans and Japanese. The difference was regime change and a change in the population’s tolerance for tyranny. Mr. Walt might take a lesson.

--Posted December 4th, 2009 at 4:13 pm by John Vecchione

© 2009–2009 FrumForum.com

http://www.frumforum.com/why-they-hate-us

They weren't Arabs.

In terms of the narrative Friedman refers to, the Somalis referenced in his chart don't count either (nor does the much larger number of Somalis saved from starvation during the US-led intervention in that country). The Iranians killed in the Vincennes incident count in Iran, not elsewhere. The Afghans civilians killed during the war there count in Afghanistan, and across the border in Pakistan.

I'm not really a fan of Friedman as a writer, but he does make an important point here. The narrative he describes is primarily an Arab narrative addressing Arab grievances that are assumed by Arabs, particularly those around the Persian Gulf, to be Muslim grievances by definition. Grievances that non-Arab Muslims may have certainly matter to some people, but to Arabs they are matters of indifference (or worse, if, as in Darfur, they are grievances against Arabs).

Of course this is a generalization that is doubtless unfair to many individuals. It also does not explain the undoubted fanaticism of certain non-Arab Muslims motivated by grievances over Kashmir, the Iranian government's long quarrel with the United States, and so forth. With every qualification, though, Friedman is quite right to point out the connection between this narrative and the passionate insistence of people in many predominantly Muslim countries that the many deficiencies in their government and society must be America's fault and are therefore beyond their power to do anything about.

From a realist perspective, there is every reason to avoid the reflexive use of "Arab" and "Muslim" as synonyms and to exploit vigorously the differences that exist between the world view of Middle Eastern and Gulf Arabs and those of other Muslims. In recent years the American government has not done this; as Friedman says, it has allowed an Arab narrative to achieve legitimacy as a Muslim narrative, even though the chief propagators of that narrative have killed a lot more Muslims than they have Americans and hold to views that even most Arabs find unacceptable.

He never claimed that the United States was anti-Muslim. Just that our behavior in certain instances makes it incredibly easy for Muslims to hate us.

Furthermore, let's not insult the memory of those innocents who were murdered by the Serbs by claiming that the United States' sole interest in the Balkans was to protect defenseless Muslims.

NATO acted because the Balkans were an increasing nusance and a PR disaster that showed the impotency of the alliance in projecting power in post-Cold War Eastern Europe. It required a pittance on our part to contain the Serbs.

As for Iraq and Afghanistan... point to ONE SINGLE original source from September to October of 2001 or late 2002 to March of 2003 where ANY government official stated the reason for our going to Afghanistan or Iraq was to (as you put it) "Liberate tens of millions of Muslims."

And after you've pondered that, also think why we chose Afghan and Iraqi Muslims as beneficiaries of our benevolence, and not say... Saudis, or Egpytians, or even those others whose governemnts are hostile to us like Libyans or Syrians to 'liberate.'

To Craig: How fortuitous! You have found a way to save Muslims. So let's kill some more, so we can save a LOT more.

a good number were killed because they were invaders and occupiers in a foreign country. If they had stayed home, they would be very much alive.

"Tens of millions of Muslims were liberated by the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is not to say that either or both were good ideas or bad ideas. It is simply to say that I hope we can all agree that whatever the faults of the current governments (or lack thereof) they are better than the hellish tyranny of the Taliban or of Saddam."

Poll after poll conducted in Iraq show that Iraqis preferred Saddam's rule to the destruction of their nation at the hands of the 'Benevolent European' (often a white Christian, sometimes a white Jew). The Iraqi people have spoken, "Thanks, but no thanks".

The justification you use has always been the hallmark of imperial and colonial endeavors, the barbaric, primitive natives are rescued by the superior, "civilized" white Christian invaders. That theme goes all the way back to the Middle Ages.

I'm not ignoring any number. Please note that I was simply stating the effect of the invasion of Iraq. I was not arguing for or against it.

I recommend that you think this through a lot more. If you do, you will realize that the current situation has been engendered by Muslim initiatives.

We are currently in the third wave of global jihad.

The first followed the rise of Islam in the Seventh Century, when conquest and spreading the religion pure and simple was the motive. This wave took Islam to Morocco and into France in the west and India to the east. It was characterized by extensive pillage, rape, and destruction, all against peoples, many of whom had never heard of Muslims, and had never done them any harm.

The second wave came in the late Middle Ages to early modern times when Ottoman forces destroyed the remnants of the Byzantine Empire and then invaded the Balkans. The objective this time appears to be more imperial than religious, but imposition of Islam was a major part of it.

The current wave has four threads: First, the Iranian revolution gave Shi'ite terror a base. Second, the vast run-up in oil prices provided a source of limitless funding for violence and propagation of Islam, through madrassas and al-Qaeda. Third, extensive Muslim migration into the West gave them direct access to Western societies. Fourth, the Internet provided a venue for recruiting and indoctrinating jihadis.

Until these four developments, the West had a very clear military advantage, and Islam does not require jihad when the other side has such an advantage. With the sides more equal, the call to jihad applies once again. And now, we either defend ourselves or the same destruction, rape, and looting that marked the earlier waves of jihad will be on us once again.

They hated us before we killed Muslims, so killing Muslims provides no explaantion for why they hate us.

Just like underestimating the Iran Iraq War with over 1.5 million casualties

And while we're at it, let's look at Christian-on-Christian violence too. The numbers would put any Muslim to shame:-

Over 70 million White Christians killed by White Christians
during the two World Wars.

Good night.

Intra-Muslim violence is not really relevant. The issue is not whether Muslim antipathy is rational, but whether it makes sense TO THEM.

Why not? Then we could also have a fourth column showing the amount of aid from the US to Iraq in order for it to fight the Iran/Iraq war. And prior to that, aid to the Shah after he replaced the elected government of Iran in a British/CIA organized coup.

Etc.

As President Reagan said, "too bad both can't lose."

CIA's asset Saddam Hussein attacking the Iranian mullahs who dared to overthrow the CIA's planted dictatorship of the Shah of Iran...

Obviously, the U.S. is not solely to blame. Yet another instance of American meddling that has not been forgotten. ;p

Not knowing who this British journalist is, Dude13 reaches into his box of quote marks to suggest, well, something about the man. Remarkable. Good book about this: Pity the Nation.

As to Dude13's Indian repression of Muslims, there's a good book about that, too: Freedom at Midnight. But evidently, Dude13's tools are slurs and jests, why should he take the trouble that he claims Mr Walt hasn't?

I think their point is that their atrocities weren't in the NAME OF Christ.

But our's are "fee sabeelil Allah."

A more accurate comparison would have been that of the Crusades.

Lest we forget where our Ummah derives its 'Izza...

"Par tere naam pe talwar uthai kis ne?
Baat jo bigri hui thi wo banai, kis ne?" ...

? Wow using your logic I can see how racism existed for centuries. Insert any group for completely manufactured "facts" ...wow. Can you let me know when you are in my area so I can take a vacation?

Flag? Common sense says you might be a threat,....not sure what to do.