[dogscoff]

or calling any one person a Hitler, I was just stating my opinion that the people in power in the muslim world use hatred to stay in power.

Just as the Western leaders have been benefitting from the anti-muslim sentiments that are emerging now among their own populations. After all, it's easier to justify the war in Iraq if your people think all Iraqis are terrorists. The tactics and methods used by Hitler for influencing his population and persuading them to hate the so-called enemy have been used by dozens of world leaders of every persuasion before and since. I mean if you want to talk about using hatred to stay in power, look at leaders from either either side in the N.I. troubles, or either side of the Israel/ Palestine fight. The leaders in these conflicts feed off hatred like vampires. The Islamic fundamentalists are doing the same thing, but so is the West. However as soon as you use the word 'Hitler' automatically associates your target with such emotive images of demonic evil that any rational debate can only suffer.

I don't think we can win the peace in the east because there is simply to great of a divide in fundamental beliefs in religion and values of human life and liberty between the west and the east. By east I mean areas of the world that are deeply Islamic.

This is where we disagree. This idea that all Muslims are oppressive, fundamentalist killers is a myth. That's what I've been arguing against in this thread. However the idea that more and more of them are being converted into psychos is one I happen to think is true, and perhaps I haven't yet said so in this thread. Sorry about that.

If Bush were truly a Hitler, then why hasn't he acted like one by having all of his enemies either jailed, killed, or both?

Well, first he'd need to get around certain constitutional safeguards. Things like trial by jury, access to lawyers, freedom of speech, privacy, all that. While he has already done a great deal to erode these things (Patriot Act), he still has the eyes of the world and of his own country upon him, and there are enough people that don't believe his lies to challenge him if he were ever to be undeniably linked to something undeniably monstrous. I mean it's one thing to quietly scoop up a load of random arabs and ship them off to guantanamo bay, abu ghraib or some 'client' nation for behind-clsed-doors incarceration, torture and execution, but he'd need quite a bit more support and power yet to start doing the same to those americans or europeans who opposed him.

I don't know that much about the religion of Islam except that I am told that it is a religion of peace. Yet all I see is what the world media is showing us, and that paints a very negative image of Islam and I think that is the real victim here.

This I can agree with, as long as you can accept that the image being painted is not necessarily complete or accurate.

We are not calling Islam the religion of terrorism, that distinction, I am afraid, is being made by the followers of Islam. All because we are, rather were, aggressively going after radicalized terrorist who claim to do the heinous things that they do in the name of Islam, we are now being branded as the haters of Islam. The world’s efforts against Terrorism are not a war against Islam. That is the message that needs to be put out there and reinforced.

The West might be fooled into thinking that the war on Iraq had something to do with 9/11, but the people of the middle east aren't. So what's left? If it wasn't a war on terror, what was it? They see it as a war on them, on their country and people and, with a little blood-sucking propaganda from certain radicals, a war on their religion. Just as predicted from the start, the invasions have done infinitely more to recruit terrorists than dissuade them. It's the hate-vampires at work again. The more corpses they can pile on the bonfire the better they'll feed.

[quote]

With Iran leaders acting the way they are acting, one really doesn't know what the future holds. If Iran were to use a nuke against Israel, or other nation, then what would the response be? Whatever the response, it will only be viewed one way by the Muslims; as an all out war against Islam, a Holly War. It does not matter that the response was triggered by a nuclear attack perpetrated by Iran; it will only be viewed as an attack against all of Islam. The real victims will be the inocent people on all sides who die because of this.
[quote]


That guy in Iran is scary as hell. Then again, there's nothing ususual in that as far as world-leaders are concerned, imho.

To a certain extent I think I'm in agreement with you At. You seem to think that there's little hope left for a peaceful resolution, and I tend to agree. The point of debate is just how we got here in the first place. I'm inclined to believe that a few fundamentalist dickheads in the middle east and a few more in the whitehouse antagonised one another to such a point that and sucked so many normally rational people into hatred and ignorance that only warfare can result. When it's all over, maybe the survivors can take a look at one another, realise that we're not so different after all, and chalk yet another few million deaths up to experience. Not that we ever seem to learn from it.