Islam in Europe: perception and reality

[paulpablo]

Holy shit, Mudhammam, this isn't hard. NO ONE HERE is saying that there's never a time when the US is justified in taking military action, even when it causes civilian casualties... what we're saying is that the US has not demonstrated that its motives are even a fraction as pure as you seem to believe.

You just said that "a case" could be made for intervening in places like Rwanda, Darfur, etc... yet we only intervene when US corporate interests are at stake (or we're trying to dominate and ensure the Capitalists/Capitalism control a region that's in danger of rejecting the "free" market). If we really were doing what we do to stop the rapes (etc) by religious radicals you describe, we'd be bombing Boko Haram with everything our Air Force and Navy can lift.

The people of the Mideast are not stupid or irrational, except for some radicals. The rest of them grasp the history of Western domination of and intervention in their regions, to ensure our own profits at their expense, and they're furious at us for doing it. Try looking up the number of identified homicide bombers who have degrees in things like engineering, medicine, etc.

And don't you dare fucking say that I'm justifying their actions, or that I dislike the USA. I'm ex-military and I still stand by my oath to protect and defend the US Constitution. I'm simply pointing out that your rose-colored-glasses version oversimplifies both our motivations and theirs, and does no justice to either group of people.

What was our corporate stake in Somalia or Yugoslavia as a recent example? Or our stake, corporately, in Korea? Or WW2? Sure we made some business choices after the fact but going in I don't see how that was a motive. It wasn't what was painted to the public and the public approved. You can't have it both ways. Sure some US wars have been corporate tie-ins. But that doesn't mean painting all US military action as such.

Also I don't know if you were sarcastic when you said America bombs places that reject the free market, America doesn't have a complete free market and a corporation if it's run by the state isn't free market if I understand correctly.  

Additionally when you say "we" profit, I don't know who "we" means but surely it's not all Americans who profit from the wars.  Wars cost the tax payer trillions. If wars were funded by purely free market investments by people who genuinely believed the wars were justified and deserve to be funded I can't imagine people putting trillions in and expecting to get much out.