Depends on what you poke it with. I'm not sure who you are saying should have a fence but Israel was trying to build one to general international condemnation when they were attacked by the dog.

And no it doesn't.

I wonder what the status of the Americans that are in Lebanon is? Ralphie watched a TV news special this weekend saying that there were about 25,000 of them there. Bush can be supportive of Israel's right to defend herself, but what of the US citizens there?

And thus it is with the world of international relations and domestic politics.

Political opponents will do their best to downplay the threat that was posed by those who, though our actions, no longer pose a threat at all, even when those same political opponents trumpeted the danger looming on the hoizon by said threat.

Any new threat will be said to be out of control because the proper attention was not paid to it.

What was a threat doesn't matter. What is a threat doesn't matter. What matters is that they can be the ones in power to ignore or deal with the threat as they see fit. And often times, sadly, those threats are aided in the name of reaching out or understanding or compromise, making the elimination of the threat that much more complicated and difficult.

When religion leads, we fight.

Not sure I follow that, GC.

It feels like when leaders of countries are motivated by religious belief, that there are more wars. You know, like the Crusades etc. I always felt that the source behind religion is enlightenment and healing and paths to heaven and all that. But the disagreement of what is and isn't right leads to fighting. That's kind of sad.

Like Bush. He said God put him there. But he's also said that he's a war president. In fact, in his war on terror, he used the word crusade to describe what we were doing.

People don't like to touch the subject of religion when it comes to 9/11, but wasn't that a key factor in why it happened?

I'm just thinking out loud after reading this whole thread. That's all...
:)

Religion has certainly been the cause of many wars, but I don't now that you can make an argument it produces more wars.

Excessive nationalism and ethnocentrism, at least over the last 200 years has been far more frequently the primary cause of wars.

I hear ya.

Is the current situation in Israel and the region more racial or religious? Do radical Islamicists want to eradicate Israel because they hate Judaism or they hate Jews? If a Jew converted to Islam, would that be OK with a radical Islamicist, or would that Jew still need to be eradicated?

I have no idea.