Thankfully, Jourles expressed very well some of what I was trying to formulate in my mind.
It really worries me when I see people viewing "them" as so fundamentally different than "us" that atrocities against "them" can be justified to protect "us" or "our way of life." Pre-emptive war, ethnic cleansing, genocide, it has been done before--to Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Christians, Muslims, Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, Palestinians, Blacks, and on and on. This attitude must stop.
Do you really think that if what was done to "the East" politically by "the West" then (from a hundred years ago to now) had been reversed that "we" would still be somehow superior in our reactions and behaviors. It would just be the same beast in a different set of clothes. I think America and Britain and the newer Israel are just terrified that what they have gotten away with doing to "them" for so long is going to be (or is being) reversed. What I hear "them" being accused of wanting to do or threatening to do is, quite oddly, what "we" have already done to "them".
Insanity. Don't let it spread. Whatever can be said against "them" can also be said against "us."
As to one of the specifics of the Iraq situation (used to draw attention away from the culpability of America and its allies imo):
However, particularly in Iraq, Sunnis and Shiites have not always been at war with each other. While Shiites have periodically been persecuted in the modern period, particularly under the rule of Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid (1876-1909), on a personal and communal level Sunnis and Shiites have long intermarried. Indeed, it is quite common to hear Iraqis proudly describe their families as having members of both sects, or being "all mixed up," as one friend described his family to me. And during the Iran-Iraq war most Iraqi Shi'a fought for Saddam Hussein, choosing their national identity over their sectarian one. But the repression of Shiites by Hussein, which had more to do with power politics (his power base was among Sunni Arabs, particularly from his home town of Tikrit) than any religious convictions on his part, created a system of relative privilege for the minority Sunni population that Shiites have naturally wanted to end now that they have assumed power as Iraq's largest community. The two groups could have worked out some kind of arrangement but for the fateful decision of conservative Sunni leaders to tolerate and even encourage the entrance of foreign Sunni fighters, or "jihadis" into Iraq as part of their insurgency against the U.S. and coalition forces. http://www.beliefnet.com/story/186/story_18621_1.html
~Merry
