Lock The Door To Islam || Geert Wilders

[The Grand Nudger]

Kind of a chicken or egg question, isn't it?

LOL, absolutely.  Thing is, it doesn't matter which came first back when...we have both the chicken and the egg before us now and so they must be confronted.

By most accounts Bin Laden and followers only got to the point that culminated in 9/11 by American troops being stationed in the vicinity of the most holy Islamic sites. I don't have to agree with Bin Laden's agenda to see that this is kind of a provocation. It's a no brainer.

The most holy islamic sites being referred to are in a client/ally states borders.  We didn't invade them, and put the guns there.  What provocation, to whom, someone we give a shit about provoking?  Who would that be?  People can feel offense where none was sent.  

Same with Iraq. The most holy sites of the Shia are there. So the whole invasion and occupation had to backfire at some point.

Of all of the reasons we may have invaded, the location of muslim holy sites must have been at the very bottom of the list...but more likely, not present at all.  The presence of religious buildings doesn't ensure "backfire"...there's nowhere in the world that doesn't have some super holy site attached, for somebody, and that alone does not and cannot guarantee the sort of reaction we got in iraq.  In any case, we do make attempts to accomodate the local populace and their religious proclivities...which is a rare mercy in context.

I for one couldn't care less who's parking their ass at some religious site. But religious people might, and there are always some taking it to a more radical level.

Right, and neither in my opinion, does the US government.  That religious radicvals might take something to the next level doesn;t depend on any reality to their greivance...obviously, they more than willing to act without necessity of reality...they're religious radicals.  

So, yes, the sheer presence is bound to create some enemies.

Those are the sorts of enemies I, personally, don't mind us making.  In truth, they make themselves and then smash against the rock that is the US. They positively -need- for there to be a great satan as an opponent of their great god.  No need to thank us, yet another service we provide.  

But I was more referring to the new cold war between Russia and NATO. That's what I observed since 1989. NATO moved closer and closer to the Russian borders and I was always thinking, for fucks sake, give them some time to breathe and to find a new identiy before you put them into a stranglehold. That's the ticket on which Putin rose to the level of power he now holds.

They couldn't afford, in their estimation, to give them room to breath.  Room to breath was room to engage, and that;s the opposite of what they wanted or thought best for themselves and the world.  Ideologically, it;s seductive...but practically, it was (and stilll is) a non-choice. That is the ticket Putin rode, though, that is a consequence. I think that the possibility that a politician like putin might rise to power, someday (chiefly, decades later) would not have been a consequence that, if known, could override their compelling reasons for what they did, then. Compelling, to them, ofc. Now that a politician like putin -has- arose....they might find those same policies as compelling as they did once before.