The U.S. Military had drawn up plans to take out Al-Zarqawi before the war but three times the Rumsfeld-Cheney Cabal said no. See the story here.  The Military knew exactly where he was at that time. Cheney-Rumsefeld thought it would hurt the case for war if the only known terrorist in Iraq was killed before the war started.  Of course, Zarqawi was a declared enemy of Saddam, but that is just nuance right? 

Why is this not a bigger story? We have known this for a very long time.   If I were a Jordanian, this would make me very angry as it is was Zarqawi's group that was behind the bombings.
 

Whatever the foolishness of Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq doesn't the bombings in Jordan demonstrate something really wrong with Sunni Muslim Arabs far more than it does with the war in Iraq?

Purple State

I realize yours is the politically correct view but I believe it is totally mistaken.  It is not that every act by every individual can or should be attributed to the group or groups they are members.  However, it is a bit like saying that it would be wrong to attribute to the Germans the acts of the Nazis.  I think the Nazis very much demontrated a great evil among the Germans.  Thus similarly there is something very wrong among Sunni Arabs.

With all due respect.  It is not just the bombings in Jordan.  What about the bombings of Shia mosques, Hindu temples, clubs in Indonesia?  9/11 were all the act of Sunni Muslims. Then of course there are the bombings in Madrid and London.  Notice I have not mentioned Israel onec.e It seems time to recognize that this group is having a violent temper tantrum and the American Left won't call them to account.  

When we see Sunni Arabs stand up and denounce such behavior I will be a lot more impressed by the comparison between one suicide bomber after another and BTK.  

As an aside if we were discussing the Thirty Years War I would raise questions about Protestants and Catholics as they proceeded to slaughter each other.  Culture matters.

Whatever the foolishness of Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq doesn't the bombings in Jordan demonstrate something really wrong with Sunni Muslim Arabs far more than it does with the war in Iraq?

What is that supposed to mean? Even if there were "something really wrong with Sunni Muslim Arabs", what exactly are we supposed to do about it? Change the culture or political psychology of the entire Sunni Arab world? It's up to us to decide whether to keep our forces in Iraq. It's not up to us to decide what kind of people Sunni Arabs are.

This isn't about deciding whether Americans are nicer people than Arabs. It's about deciding what a rational policy towards the Middle East would look like.

The Germans were evil.  
And are the Germans still evil?  If not when did they stop being evil?  And when they stopped did they all stop at once or did some stop being evil before the others?  Maybe all the ones born before 1933 were evil, and the ones born since haven't been evil? 

Since the Turks killed millions of Armenians were they evil?  Are they still?  Were the Russians evil throughout the Stalinist genocide?  Have they stopped being evil?

Of course those questions are completely absurd - and thus in the context completely appropriate.

Obviously during the Third Reich there was a dominant sociopathic strain that was unprecedentedly unpleasant and that caused vast suffering and horror for many millions.  But to say "the Germans were evil" is to reduce an incredibly complex series of social phenomenon to the level of the playground.

Have you read much European/German history about this time?  I'm very interested in finding out what you are basing your conclusion on.

It seems your idea that Nazism is explained by the Germans being evil, denies the possibility of of a similar evil occurring elsewhere - as long as the population isn't evil, then apparently we have nothing to worry about.

"strength of [US]' global position"

Except the poll results that Bruce posted himself, show the opposite.  The poll results do not show that there is an increase in anti-american sentiment.  It shows an increase in anti-Al Queda sentiment.

Also, such flip flops of public attitude are the open door to bettering a friendship with America, not the other way around.  Which can lead to greater security - financial security, military security (not including isolated cases of bombed weddings), you name it.  And it becomes more acceptable for the leadership of the country to strengthen relations with the U.S. when these sorts of "breakdowns" occur, because of the public sentiment and because of anger being directed towards Al Queda.

Someone else has posted a comment mentioning that someone's argument reduced a complex situation to "the playground."  Yet the playground model does apply.  When the challenger (Al Queda) takes a whack at the big boy on the playground, and then takes a whack at some of the other smaller boys, the smaller boys are both angry at the challenger, and thus an alliance is formed because of the common ground of being angry at the challenger.

.  .  .  doesn't the bombings in Jordan demonstrate something really wrong with Sunni Muslim Arabs .  .  .  .  Daniel A. Greenbaum

Yeah; planning and execution on the level of Rumsfeld, Feith, and Garner. 

Daniel . . . let's accept your premise for a moment that Sunni Arabs are evil. What's next then?




I'll chime in here and say this: Sunni Arabs are not evil because every one of them is a terrorist or a potential terrorist. The vast majority of Arabs wouldn't go near terrorism or radicalism in general. The issue is the quiet acquiescence to the moral monsters in the Sunni Arab midst. Before the Amman bombings, 60% of the Jordanian population supported al Qaeda. 60%!! We keep hearing how the one thing terrorists need to keep going is the sympathy of the surrounding population. That is why I have absolutely zero sympathy for the Palestinians, even though I think they've gotten screwed continuously by everyone around them. Even if most Palestinians are themselves guilty of nothing, they support the death cult, as long as its targets are Jews. It is a moral calamity on a vast scale.




The thing that we can do in response to this is to stop indulging them. Make it clear that unless Arabs take concrete steps not only to crack down on militant groups, but also to shut down the pro-terrorist media and political indoctrination, there will be no sympathy whatsoever for Arab grievances, no matter how legitimate. People who act like barbarians and condone barbarism should be treated like barbarians.

I do not know when Germans ceased to be evil.  Perhaps when those who voted Hitler to power, those who manned the concentration camps, those who were part of the German war machine and those who failed to smell the burning bodies had children.

That's not even close to making sense.  I need not try to address it.  I whole-heartedly reject the notion that anyone who voted for Hitler or who fought in the Wehrmacht was intrinsically "evil".  And to lump those millions in with concentration guards is beyond facile.

What is absurd is your casual attitude toward evil.

No.  What's absurd is responding to racism with racism, while at the same time being so clueless as to believe one holds the high moral ground. 

And I notice you failed to list the European history you've read - an unsurprising ommission.

The conduct of Germans en masse through the Third Reich is characterized much more accurately as ignorance (wilful and otherwise), moral cowardice and well-grounded fear. 

The lefts ridiculousness is why we continually get Republicans as Presidents.

Just like it was the fault of the Weimar Republic that Hitler came to power, right? ;)

I don't find it terribly harsh . . . it seems to amount to completely disengaging from and ostracizing the Middle East.

We could try it and see what happens. My thought, though, is that what we'll end up with is a Middle East in a close alliance with Russia and China.

Purple State

You make sound like I am indicting them as individuals.  What I am saying their is some major flaw in their culture as it now exists which cannot just be blamed on Israel or the United States.  

As the United Nations reports on developement in the Arab World indicates there are a number of liberal voices among Arabs.  My cousin has spoken to a number of Arab women who would like to see reform and reformation in their culture.  We should encourage these people.  We should get out of the stability versus revolution dichotomy.  

We should recognize that societies built on oil and suicide bombings are not good for us or themselves and reach out to the reformers as we did for Solidarity in Poland

After 9/11 I read John L. Esposito's Islam: The Straight Path at the suggestion of my cousin.  Esposito who heads the Georgetown Chrisians and Muslims institute at Georgetown is very sympathetic to Islam.  However, after reading the book I was very depressed. Many efforts at reform within Islam have been defeated by a call to look backward.  Islam also seems to have a very pick problem both in having nonMuslim living within their countries and themselves living in nonMuslim countries.  Is this always the case, undoubtedly no, but I was left with the clear impression that it is true often enough to require us to reach out to any and all forces for reform and given them any aid we can.

But like many Germans during WWII, they do not mind evil things being done in their name.




Agreed. As long its done to someone else.

I would like to avoid something like a clash of civilization.  There are bombings around the world.  I would like to see a cessation of the violence and for there not to be and endless war.  The only way to avoid this it seems to me for their to be a need for a reformation and an intergration of the Muslim world into the rest of the  world.

Can we agree that Americans were intrisically evil when native nations were being erradicated and exterminated, and Africans were being kidnapped, bought and sold?

Anyone?

This idea, apparently shared by you and Daniel, that when evil acts occur on a wide scale in a nation, this means the nation is intrinsically "evil" strikes me as somewhat odd.

Because the obvious corrolary of that is that, as soon as the evil acts subside, then the nation is no longer "intrinsically evil".

But if something - a person, a nation - is intrinsically evil then it is not defined purely by its currents actions.  Intrinsically evil is its core nature, its irreducible identity.  So to suggest that Germany 1933-45 was intrinsically evil, but then it just stopped being that way once it was defeated is completely illogical. 

Had Hitler survived and escaped would he have no longer been evil because he could no longer carry out the Holocaust?  That is absurd.  And yet Daniel apparently believes that the millions who voted for Hitler and/or who fought in his armies did just that.  They were all evil, but then they stopped being evil on May 8th 1945. 

What actually happened is that the corrupt power structure, led largely by evil men was decapitated and the broad majority of weaker, self-serving, ignorant elements it had so successfully ensnared were released from their grip.

But bear in mind even Hitler's own generals were plotting against him throughout the war, and they feared they could not succeed.  What options did the common people have?  And also bear in mind even when Hitler won elections - and not on a mandate of war and Holocaust, I might add - he never won an overall majority in the Reichstag, and was roundly beaten in the Presidential race against Hindenburg.  So what does that say about the "intrinsic evil" of the Germans?

This idea, apparently shared by you and Daniel, that when evil acts occur on a wide scale in a nation, this means the nation is intrinsically "evil" strikes me as somewhat odd.

Odder still, is the way you approach a question as a declarative statement.

Can we agree that Americans were intrisically evil when native nations were being erradicated and exterminated, and Africans were being kidnapped, bought and sold?

I wouldn't agree to this. Americans (of European descent), like all other people, had a great and idealistic spirit but were also capable of doing things that were truly bad to other people. This is human nature. All peoples (regardless of race) have this (as Dostoevsky said about the Russians) "peculiar broadness"--the ability to be good and bad at once.

Jefferson was a great example--he was a slaveholder, yet he did much to advance the cause of liberty and human freedom. Was he good or bad? Neither or both, I guess--but mostly he was human, which means full of contradictions.