Well, you must remember what strength means to the terrorists. They don't care (obviously) if we have better weapons than they have. They look at our willingness to engage them as strength. Osama stated he knew he could begins to step up attacks on American targets after watching us in Somalia, where we didn't have the stomach to do what was necessary to achieve the objective.

This is just one example of the fundamental difference of how we see things-

You see fear and double speak-I see the reality of the situation given the enemy we face

I see the reality too. I see Bush using this exact kind of double speak, war is peace, to justify expanding this war well beyond the confines of the enemy we face. It's a clear as it gets to me. We, justifiably, go after Bin Laden, his organization, and the regime that directly supported him. Bush goes around equating war with peace, and voila, suddenly we're justified in attacking Iraq. It frightens me. And then you start reading the stuff Rummy said about purposely inciting terrorist acts to ferret them out, and then using that as justification for attacking the nations that were harboring them. All in the name of peace.

Nephy: as does every dictator who ever existed. (I'm not calling you a dictator, of course, just referring to the history of justifying totalitarianism). The only way to be truly free is to accept that such freedom comes with the realization that sometimes bad things will happen. Bad things don't necessarily stop happening when you take freedoms away.

As Franklin put it: "Any man willing to give up personal liberties in exchange for temporary security deserves neither and will probably lose both."

No matter how many x-ray machines we install, even if we did so in every public place in America, there's nothing we can do to protect ourselves from someone willing to sacrifice their own life in order to harm us (eg: suicide bombers). Every attempt we make to stop them (eg: becoming a totalitarian state in order to create a false sense of "security") only helps them win. It's exactly what they want us to do. That's what terrorism IS.

The only way to win the war against terrorism is to refuse to be bothered by their actions.

Oh, and to hurt their recruitment process by bringing prosperity to the places they normally recruit from. Peace through economic prosperity.

That's a myth that's largely being discredited. Actually, quite the opposite picture is being painted. Extremism seems to be born of time and, believe it or not, education. Highly tainted education, but education none the less. Extremists are readers who know their particular brand of scripture word for word. They are people who have the leisure to come up with their extreme world view. Truly poor and destitute people are too busy trying to survive to have the time for that.

The poor masses may cheer them on, but when it comes to the ones acting, the planners, the trainers, the suicide bombers, they tend to be middle class.

I'm sorry- nowhere in the quote being discussed does it say anything about removing our freedoms- so somewhere this derailed into something bigger than just the reaction to the quote.

I didn't imply they weren't educated. What I'm getting at is really that if their countries weren't in that bad a shape, they wouldn't have reason for resentment to grow.

As far as education, I heard an interesting point from someone at a Mensa gathering that I (of course) had no idea about. Apparently (and feel free to confirm or refute this claim) the mere act of learning another language is enough to make the educated middle easterner become "isolated" and "different" from his peers. The reasoning behind this is that apparently the language (I assume he meant arabic?) has no past tense. Everything that ever happened in the past happened "now" in a sense, in the way it's spoken in the language. (This would also explain why they're mad at *us* for Crusades that happened centuries ago). So when someone learns other languages, they have to learn to separate the past from the present in their minds, which makes them different from others in the culture, identity wise. This isolation can cause unhappiness and identity crises for the educated. So they take up a cause.

Anyway, I don't know if it's true or not, but if it IS true, then it's a fascinating insight into the culture. And as I said before... that little language quirk (if it exists) explains why they act like the crusades happened just yesterday.

The link I posted in the OP, as I mentioned a few posts back, goes far beyond the one simple quote. I quoted it as a potent example, but it's just the tip of the iceberg.

Nephy: my bad, I realize you were only talking about what Bush is saying... but understand that what he's saying is part of the bigger picture. He's claiming to be defending freedom on one hand, while taking away our freedoms with the other.

A quick google search shows that, if your Mensa acquaintance was inded talking about Arabic, they were mistaken.