Janko:
BigJetDiver,
(1) You weren't dragged to Guantanamo Bay or held against your will for interrogation like hundreds of other INNOCENT people have been since 2001 and I wasn't blown to hell by airplanes crashing into my city of residence. It's all academic until it happens to you, so for us, hypothesizing is as real as it can get.
(2) How would you like to be taken for FBI questioning for 7 hours because you are an Arab taking photos of a large bridge in NYC? Or because you are a Pakistani young man taking photos of a university campus? (BTW, both these cases are real.) This is outrageous and saving a few lives at the expense of thousands of these innocent people is not just.
(3) America will not win this bitter "war on terror" alone - on its own, the best it can hope for is a stalemate. The US will not get any help from other progressive nations like Canada, Germany, France, dozens of others, until it learns to accept the 3rd party perspectives of those nations, even if Sept. 11 didnt happen to those third parties.
(4) I respect your country, and I don't have a blanket hatred of it in any way. America still is a powerful and incredible nation today; it is a haven for many millions. I have always gone out of my way to defend its international balls of steel and its unmatched patriotism but it's time to step out of the coccoon and accept what much of the world is sees in the United States of America: a bitter, angry, ailing and weak shadow of what the country used to be, and WAS AS LATE AS Sept. 10, 2001. It ain't pretty and much of the world feels sorry America's people.
(5) By the way, "I hate Americans" is something I loathe hearing and fiercely rebut. :42:
Janko,
(1) The interesting part about most of those "innocent" guys at Guantanamo is that they were captured in Afghanistan with weapons in their hand, shooting at our troops. Strangely, most of them were not Afghanis either.
(2) I know those cases were real, but, given what has happened, I would have to say they were very understandable.
(3) "Progressive nations" you say. That would be France, whose leader Jacques Chirac was personally profiting from oil deals with Saddam Hussein. Perhaps it would be Germany, led by Gerhard Schroeder, who allowed his country to traffic in arms with Saddam after Gulf War One.
(4) You describe us as "angry". This is, indeed, quite true. Most of us are extremely angry at the cowardly terrorist scum that attacked us.
You say we are "bitter". Again, true. Many of us are quite bitter over the fact that nations we consider friends, that we have helped over the years, turned their backs on us in this struggle.
You call us "ailing and weak", however, and I must wonder what you can possibly mean by that. Militarily we are, without doubt, the most powerful nation ever to exist on the face of this planet. Yet, our true strength does not lie in arms or weapons systems. Our true strength lies in the hearts of the American people.
We are not a nation of "blue-bloods". We are an amalgam of many peoples. Yet the people of America share an overriding belief in the value of freedom and democracy. That is our true strength. That, and the fact that our people by far and away honestly care about other people.
If that is "ailing and weak" my friend, let me be that way at any and all times!
(5) And for that last, I thank you, sir!
BJD
