I wrote back and explained that as I was a long time fan, and someone who had bought both his books and his videos, that I was a customer and he should therefore keep a civil tongue in his head.

For years, my neighbor – a little old man, named Al – would bring me a bouquet of sweet pea and freesia flowers on my birthday from his garden. Since he would spend nearly every moment of daylight tending to his flowers, I would often visit him. We usually spoke about his garden and my child – but the last time I went to visit him, I learned about his past.

I asked Al, after all these years, “Where are you from again?”

And he told me how he and his family had to flee Iran after Khomeini came into power. He was a well off business man, who lived in a nice home with his family, and often flew to the United States. Because of these visits to America, Khomeini thought he was a spy and put a death threat on his head.

He and his family were able to escape and move to the U.S. where they started their lives over again.

“Jimmy Carter is nothing but a damned peanut farmer!” Al yelled.

Because I knew more about him, we began to discuss the fact that so many people here in California will act horrified by our own Government yet seem to glorify – if not ignore – dictatorships like the one Al left, or Cuba, Iraq (ala Michael Moore), North Vietnam, etc.

“Doesn’t it drive you crazy?” I asked.

Al, walking ahead of me in the garden, stopped and looked me in my eyes, “Why do you think I spend all my time here?”

He began walking again, shook his head and said, “Those people are so naive.”

He voted for Bush.

Here’s hoping for a revolution in Iran!

So tell me again…who are the idiots? I have an idea these young Iranians are not the people who are calling Middle America morons, like most on the coast here in our own land of the free.

I can live with being called a moron as long as freedom spreads from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran…throughout the Middle East and over the world. If that’s moronic…well, I’m the biggest moron there is!

Nice try Charlie but do you really think that we can eliminate all possible harbors for terrorists? Do you think we could afford (with lives and money) to eliminate all possible harbors for terrorists. We have been 1.5 years and $1.5B and counting trying to shut down Iraq, multiply that times ???? to eliminate all of the others.

If we can’t eliminate all “harbors for terrorists” then why bother eliminating any (or the largest/deepest/most active)?

Do you really believe the point you are making has a shred of validity?

If we can’t arrest all murderers/rapists/thieves then what’s the point of tracking any of them down and arresting them? We’ll never cure cancer so what’s the point of all the surgeries and chemos and radiation treatments?

I do believe we will find ourselves in the same boat as the Soviet Union, bankrupt and no longer a power at all.

Geeze, we’ve been at this a whole 1.5 years and have spent BILLIONS, BILLIONS I tell you. How can this end as anything but a replay of the collapse of the Soviet Union and backruptcy and no power at all? Good grief, Bill, surely you can do better than this.

Could you at least tell us how the current US situation in some way resembles the Soviet Union? How does the past three years equate to the 70 years of the Soviet Union? How is spending a few hundred billion over several years going to backrupt us when watching several hundred billion evaporate out of our economy in one morning didn’t bankrupt us. Are you even vaguely aware that the Manhattan Project consumed something close to 10% of our nation’s GDP when it was ongoing? Not 10% of our government budget – 10% of our GDP! We’ve spent TRILLIONS fighting “poverty” yet poverty still exists and we aren’t bankrupt. Why not just recognize that we’ll never eliminate all poverty and trying to will run us into bankruptcy and, well, just leave the poor to perish. Are there no work houses!

Why not take the logical way and just let the troubled parties fight a fair fight amongst themselves and winner takes all. That’s the way it had always been done in the past.

The “logical way”?!?! Who’s logic is that? Would you care to give us some example of this historically proven method of “let the troubled parties fight a fair fight amongst themselves and winner takes all”? I’m thinking Third Reich vs. Poland, Third Reich vs. Chechloslovakia, Italy vs. Ethiopia sorta examples but maybe you better ones in mind.

Why must we side with Israel? What is so important to the U.S. that there be an Israeli state? What is so important to the U.S. that there not be a Palestinian state? Why do we supply guns and munitions and subsidize the economy of one nation over another?

Ummm… geeze, those are tough questions, Bill. How ’bout because Isreal is the only democracy that has ever taken root in the totalitarian cesspool of the ME. How ’bout because the world has already allowed too many sick and twisted mudering scum to pursue their Final Solutions by slaughtering every Jewish person they can round up.

It could be that. Then again, maybe we just want to save the Palestinians from their own stupidity by not letting the “winner take all”. If recent history is any guide it could be that the Israeli’s would mop the floor with the Palis.

And where does this claim that it is “important to the U.S. that there not be a Palestinian state?” come from? Have you paid any attention during the decades that this has been going on? A “Palestinian State” has been out there on a hanger, dry-cleaned and pressed, for quite some time now. All the Palis had to do was put on the clothes.

You can tell me we have an interest because of 9/11 but how many times were we terrorized prior to 9/11 of 1960? The terrorists don’t hate Americans they hate American foreign policy.

it just goes to show that I just can’t keep the promises I make to myself. I swore to myself that I’d be kinder and gentler here at Roger’s Place. That I wouldn’t start screaming at other people who just wanted a place to chat. But I can’t keep the promise. Bill, of all the stupid crap you had in your idiotic post, those final two sentences really take the cake.

I was not well verse in politic until I have my 2 sons. I realized that I do not want my children to learn the hardship of a communist regime and I do not want them to make the hard decision of leaving the country not knowing if they will live or die. I will continue to put my vote to whoever makes freedom and not to those that just talk about it.

Ambi:

All we need to do is push them deeper into hiding as we offer our seductive notions of modernity and freedom as a viable option and a hole in the bucket will take care of the problem for us.

Yes.

Neither American foreign policy nor Isreal are the true issue with the Jihadists. In fact their movement predates the existence of the state of Isreal and America as a major player on the world’s stage. The Wahabis were founded in the early 1700s. Precursors to the modern Islamic states reach all the way back to Al Mahdi in Sudan during the mid 1800s. That same century saw the birth of the concept of pan-Arabic movement which shaped the Moslem debate over the relationship between Islam, religion, and the West for over a century. The Moslem Brotherhood, which is one of the main intellectual sources for current Jihadism, was started in the 1920s.

All of these movements spring from Islam’s decline from being the premier world political power to the complete dissolution of the Caliphate. Now, not only politically, but also culturally, the West continues to make even greater inroads. The Jihadists, who speak of regaining Andalusia and the lost Caliphate, are seeking to regain a lost world and reacting against the encroaching Modern World. The logic they use to return to their glory is a return to their “true” religion.

As for the endless hoards of Jihadists, consider this quote from a Moslem living in the U.S., “How many Muslims have been lost to Islam in the last fifty years here? Tens of thousands have been lost. The only reason Islam is still growing here, by large, is because of a steady stream of immigration. But when that dries up, the assimilation will dwindle our community down to nothing. It’s like we have a bucket with a hole in the bottom. We keep pouring new immigrants in, but so many are leaking out are lost forever.”

[source]

There is the answer. The U.S. doesn’t need to dry up every haven. We don’t need to play whack-a-mole with every terrorist. All we need to do is push them deeper into hiding as we offer our seductive notions of modernity and freedom as a viable option and a hole in the bucket will take care of the problem for us.

The longstanding position of the US is that there should be a Palestinian state alongside Israel, just not on top of what once was Israel.

The terrorists don’t hate Americans they hate American foreign policy.

And that’s why they kill Dutch filmmakers and Russian schoolkids.

Brilliant.