http://www.propeace.net/node/1442 Comments for "American Gulag" en http://www.propeace.net/node/1442 What a tragic day in America, when Republicans ignore the Constitution and the Bible in their zeal to fight a worldly crusade, and Democrats ignore these same documents in their single-minded focus on reelection. Machiavelli taught that "the ends justify the means," and this is the creed now embraced by Americans in place of their once Christian value system. The only effective counterforce for terrorism is to undermine the conditions which feed its existence. Instead, this administration consistently feeds the infection of Islamic extremism, dishing out the exact recipe to strengthen and enrage these people: unilateral support for Israel as it employs excessive force in Lebanon and Gaza "defending itself"; an attack on Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11; the use of torture, which has included the inflammatory practices of using women as interrogators, and of desecrating the Koran. Americans quickly dismiss these concerns, judging these offences by their own rather than their enemy's standards. Yet whose hearts and minds do we seek to win? To Arabs who are not currently al Qaeda operatives, America increasingly looks worse than the terrorists, and if nothing else America will lose the sympathies or support of Muslim moderates. Arabs are increasingly inflamed to anti-Americanism because of these policies, and yet our president tells us the terrorists "hate us because we're free." Only the simplest of minds can even consider accepting such tripe as truth. These unchristian policies will turn more and more in the world against America and against Christianity (for we pretend to a Christian faith while we institute patently unchristian policies). This will only feed the flames of Muslim extremism, just as Jesus taught: the only way to end cycles of violence is to reach out in Christian peace, and reverse decades of failed imperialistic American policy: Americans have everything to gain from this, but our corporate dominators have everything (in profits) to lose. http://www.propeace.net/node/1442#comments Sat, 30 Sep 2006 15:18:00 -0400 John Klar 1442 at http://www.propeace.net