“Paying others to wage Private War on your behalf is still waging war, and worse war than any other kind.” Hmmm, your referring to the iran-contra imbriglio? Our policy toward Saddam for 15 years until we gave up and invaded? Our current attempts to support opposition in Iran?
This conversation really is polarized beyond recognition. Islam tolerated other faiths before Christians were finished with their Holy Wars and Inquisitions. Israel as an extension of Western imperialism is often demonized in the Middle East. Most Middle Eastern countries have indigenous Jewish communities who are far from threatened with anything like extermination. In fact **Iran** has the largest communities of Jews outside Israel in the region:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5367892.stm
Many of you have simply swallowed a certain partisan rhetoric and are perpetually in the sort of psychological state that supports war – utterly convinced of the righteousness of your cause and the evil of your enemy. History teaches us, time and again, that that is a state of distorted perception and high affect and that it leads more often to tragedy than to glory. There is another psychological state possible — it’s the one that we’ve struggled most of our history to create the mechanisms in our institutions to achieve. It’s the difference between a lynch mob and a court of law. And it is truly the only way *forward*.
