They don't understand, or don't believe, posts like this.

This is getting ridiculous. How can Rand make such a blanket, sweeping statement about the Dems? It is an established fact that Clinton was obsessed with Bin Laden and that Bush let this slide, until 9/11 at which point he woke up to the fact and wound up invading the wrong country. The point to note that the Dems stress is that Iraq had nothing to do with Islamic terror until Bush stirred the pot with his ill-reasoned invasion. That has made this whole Islamic terror problem far worse and has compromised our efforts at curbing its growth around the world. It was clearly the worst possible move in terms of stemming a Islamic fundamentalist tide. American forces effectively ruling a nation in the heart of the Islamic world - a move designed to feed the monster named in the article. Now we are stuck having to deal with it.

It is an established fact that Clinton was obsessed with Bin Laden

What planet are you posting this from, anonymous moron?

And just how is that my site has attracted so many anonymous (and therefore cowardly) morons?

Note: that's a rhetorical question. I don't expect an anonymous moron to answer it.

There are people out there who hate us intensely, but frankly it's a fair question to ask, "To what extent to these people matter?"

It's very clear that there are people in the Islamic jihadist tradition who say all sorts of appalling things, but I don't worry about them any more than I worry about the Kach party people in Israel or the white supremacists here in the US, or the National Front in France or any number of other groups who blather intensely but ultimately don't matter much.

Other, of course, than the extent to which they are used by people with different agendas as representatives of an inflated threat.

See, just as I have been saying for years -- buying Saudi oil is like sending LendLease to Hitler.

Remove the Saudi royal family? I'd support that:

But he's determined to tell a complacent North America what he knows about fundamentalist Muslim imperialism...His analysis is fascinating. Muslim fundamentalists believe, he insists, that Saudi Arabia's petroleum-based wealth is a divine gift, and that Saudi influence is sanctioned by Allah. Thus the extreme brand of Sunni Islam that spread from the Kingdom to the rest of the Islamic world is regarded not merely as one interpretation of the religion but the only genuine interpretation. The expansion of violent and regressive Islam, he continues, began in the late 1970s, and can be traced precisely to the growing financial clout of Saudi Arabia.

One problem is this: Link

By the way, the Iranians are not Sunni.

= = =

Solution? Get the US off petroleum and then WE close the Straits of Hormuz.

[i]And just how is that my site has attracted so many anonymous (and therefore cowardly) morons?

[/i]

It's kinda like Whack-a-Mole Rand,sometimes amusing but mostly annoying.

It's kinda like Whack-a-Mole Rand,sometimes amusing but mostly annoying.

Perhaps, but at least they read the site. I find spammers much more annoying. I really do delete their posts, with extreme prejudice, and blacklist the URLs that they're hawking.

And I like to let the anonymous moronic comments stand for themselves. As Lileks once pointed out, their posts are self refuting, like the organic self-decomposing crap bags that environmentally conscious campers take into the wilderness.

I think an intelligent, sane antiwar movement would sound a lot more like Jane Bernstein and a lot less like "".

The Hamid interview is phenomenal, and quite reminiscent of (among other things) Heinlein's If This Goes On --, but I would quibble with dating the phenomenon to the late 1970s. A close reading of McNeill suggests that it goes back three centuries.

Thanks, Jay, that's very flattering. There's actually a lot of good commentary out there that I find reasonable - this piece, in particular, set out a good argument for the view that

civil wars end in one of three ways: (1) negotiated settlement; (2) partition; or (3) military victory. U.S. support for any of these options comes with considerable costs and only a slim possibility of an outcome that advances U.S. interests beyond what they were at the close of Saddam Hussein’s rule in April of 2003.

I found the piece intriguing and don't observe many points upon which to disagree.

You mentioned Heinlein - anybody else reading the new one, Variable Star? Pretty good so far.

The Sunni Wehab's may want all the world to be Muslim,
but, more particularly the want all the muslim world to
be Sunni Wehab's. They have a lot of work cut out
exterminating the shiite, the Bahai, the Druuze.

There is a reason why the Druuze work for the israeli border
police.