[Rhodes22-list] Terrorism vs. Radical Islam

[Roger Pihlaja]

Guys, I hear what you are saying about the attitudes of Muslims on the street towards the United States.  But, I have a hard time declaring this a war against Islam.

We're talking about the Fertile Crescent here, the cradle of civilization.  The folks in this area of the world were building great engineering marvels like the Ziggurat Pyramids, aqueducts, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, & living in big cities when my ancestors in northern Europe were barely out of the stone age living in thatched huts.  These folks have a culture that goes back several millennia & gave us some of the 1st known written languages, the legal code of Hamurabi, as well as great literature such as the epic of Gilgamish.  To think that these people with their long tradition of engineering excellence, creativity, & scholarship would not be able to produce their own chemical & biological weapons given the amount of time & resources available is ridiculous at the very least & tends to smell like some sort of racial bias.  Anyone who discounts their capability does so at their own peril.

I think a lot of our problems with the Muslim world stem from our relationship with Israel & with a general frustration with the continuing bloodshed & chaos in the region.  Whether it's fixable is not clear at this point.

Roger Pihlaja
S/V Dynamic Equilbrium