"I have about 20 mosques in my area. I have yet to hear or read of a single one decrying any terrorists act comitted by a fanatical muslim." Don't know where your "area" is, but in mine they constantly decry terrorism as a corruption of Islam. Every chance they can attract the media to say so. Put is another way, are Southern Baptists evil because of the history of slavery in the South? I don't think so. Or, was David Koresh emblematic of Christianity? People often mix up their religion with their politics. Doesn't mean the religion itself is evil or that followers of it are necessarily so...

"Okay, that's nice. Whatever. In other words, you're just another American, an I couldn't care less what religion you follow. There, I respect Islam." There, that wasn't so hard, was it?

"Islam like many religions bases it's power on controlling its beleivers. Christians, Jews etc all fell victim to this a thousand ago or so." You are talking about political (temporal) power. Manipulation of religious faith for political ends has been around as long as religion. One can separate the spiritual life of faith from the passions of politics, and many of every religion do.

"There, that wasn't so hard, was it?" -- rbrooku --- Of course not. Writing out something I've always believed since I was a child is an easy thing--especially when it's also essentially what I'd consider a foundational American principle. And it was easy to write the rest. too. When moslem clergy preach violence, and people act on their instructions, not only should the trigger-pulling and bomb-detonating killers be taken out of action, but so should those who incite them. In Iraq we should not only be killing everyone raising a firearm against us, but also the Imams preaching their holy war encouragement to those who raise a firearm against us. Enemy leadership is a legitimate and vital target in warfare, and in Iraq that often includes moslem clergy. Among others, we should have killed Sadr one way or another, to include flattening the Ali mosque if that was the only way to get him. And none of that voids or invalidates my respect for Islam. Displacedjim

More wise words from military historian Victor Davis Hansom, on the radical Islamic threat to the CIVILIZED world: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200409100700.asp IN Full - angry, like Zell Miller:; The Whole World Is Watching Three years of terrorism since September 11. Chechen Islamicists burn up Russian airliners and shoot schoolgirls — and say they are victims, deprived of the chance for their own autonomous theocracy. Beheaders in Iraq decapitate Americans, Pakistanis, Koreans, Japanese, and Nepalese — only to claim that these are infidels guilty of trying to build roads and bridges. Italian humanitarians and charity workers are kidnapped by Islamicists. In the "holy" city of Najaf, religious extremists bomb innocents, not only without gratitude for those who freed them from Saddam, but full of hatred for those who would bring them consensual government. Islamic terrorists kidnap French journalists and threaten them with execution, demanding that a sovereign nation previously known for its appeasement of radical Middle Eastern rogue regimes overturn a law protecting secular life in its schools. Hamas "freedom fighters" blow up buses inside Israel and call the dead children Zionists who belong in the sea. Islamic fascists incinerate dozens in Madrid, and claim they have a right to do so because of the Spanish role in ridding the world of the Hussein clan — or was the real rub the Reconquista? Australians in Bali are engulfed in flame by car bombers for the felony of being Western visitors in an Islamic enclave. Meanwhile, back in the United States, as in the major capitals of Europe, Islamic terrorists are arrested periodically, seeking to trump the foul work of September 11. Theocrats blew apart General Massoud in Afghanistan, attempted to kill President Musharraf of Pakistan, and now claim that they plan to do the same to our own leaders here in the United States. A few thousand Islamic males made an entire nation take off their shoes at their airports and changed forever the daily routine of 300 million Americans — and promise they are not done yet. Ask yourself: What do a Russian ten-year-old, a poor black farmer in Darfur, an elderly pensioner in Israel, a stockbroker in New York, and a U.N. aid worker in Afghanistan have in common? In the last three years, they have all died in similar ways: Unarmed and civilian, they were murdered by a common cowardly method fueled by a fascist ideology. The recent slaughters in Russia were the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back of excusing or explaining away radical Islamic terror. If the Estonians can break away from post-Soviet oppression and free themselves from Russian authoritarianism without slaughtering schoolchildren and blowing up airplanes, then the Chechens can as well — but only if they wish to create democracy rather than an Islamic fascist state. But there is something else going on here besides the cloak of so-called Chechen nationalism. The perversion not of religion per se, but of Islam; the singular method of suicide bombing rarely found elsewhere; the frequent resort to the unique grotesquery of beheading; the now-common display of abject incompetence on the battlefield coupled with craven slaughter of the noncombatant and civilian aid worker. At some point, the leaders of the Western world (if there are any left besides George W. Bush and Tony Blair) are going to look at all this madness worldwide and come to the bitter conclusion that there is a disgusting pattern: Not every Muslim is a fascist terrorist, but almost every fascist terrorist is a Muslim. Killers are not screaming "Hail Mary" when they machine gun children in the back, slit the throat of airline stewardesses, or blow pregnant women up on buses across the globe. And they are not the subjects of condemnatory fatwas in Iran or Saudi Arabia. Their grievance is not really Russian imperialism, or the 5 to 10 percent of the West Bank under dispute, or black African encroachment on Arab land, or purported French insensitivity to legitimate Islamic pride, much less an American "crusade" to harm Muslims. All these issues and the hundreds of others — from the right to build a reactor in Iran to the desire for a semi-autonomous Chechnya — in theory could be discussed, argued about, and adjudicated through democratic dialogue. But that is impossible. For you see, the real problem is the democratic dialogue itself — unknown in the Arab Middle East and much of the Islamic world, and a hindrance to both sharia and the pan-Arabist thug with epaulettes and sunglasses. Yet consensual government alone is the key to ending failed statist economies, gender apartheid, religious intolerance, state-controlled media, and tribalism. It alone might stop the self-induced misery and with it the tedious scapegoating of "the Jews and America." Much of the Islamic Middle East continues to blame others for its own induced catastrop

elcid, slavery was not just a profitable way to use prisoners-of-war in ancient mesopotamia. People could go into slavery through unpaid debt. My immediate source for this is "The Babylonians" by H.W.F. Sagg The Jewish administration of slavery was much more humane than that of surrounding cultures.

You don't get it. The first problem with your emotional proposal is that you cannot make them dead. You don't know who they are? You don't know where they are? And you can never know who all of them are? The only way to be sure you get them all - even those in US cities - is to wipe out every place people live. Which is quite literally throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It is not a viable policy option. In the second place, it is a principle of that great strategist Liddle-Hart that you must never forget, whatever war you are fighting, that it will only end when you make peace with this enemy. It is anything but clear how to do that with radical islamic terrorists? There is evidence that disenchanted communists are joining them - complete with conversion to Islam because of political necessity. It may be that they will never negotiate with us - forget our attitude about negotiating with them. In that case, our best hope lies in their being isolated and betrayed by people around them. Which in many parts of the world means betrayal by members of the Islamic community. It is in our interests to behave better than our enemies do, to make the choice of what kind of world you will get clear depending on who leads it - us or them? In the end, few Muslim women like the idea of no school, no jobs, being beaten for showing an ankle, etc. We do have a salable product IF we allow them to buy it. It is really just applied Ceasar: "Divide and conquer." If we do not learn how to do this, the war will go on. I don't think we can actually lose it, but it will not end until we so isolate the radicals that they are usually caught before they can act. This requires lots of help from everyone, Muslims first of all.

It does not sound like you know who they are? It sounds like you want to lump a whole lot of people together - by nationality and/or by religion and say you know they all are your enemies. And, no matter how emotional you are about it, it is objectively false. In any large body of people there is always a diversity of opinion. Note, however, I do not advocate that you "turn the other cheek." I am not a pacifist. I have "shown a sense of closeness in our hour of national crisis" according to the President of Israel (who could not say why he said that for security reasons) - and I would do so again if there was something I could contribute in a similar hour of crisis. When an army is invading - or a terrorist vehicle is inbound - I have no problems authorizing weapons free - or pulling the trigger myself. Thinking about current events in Russia, I had an overwhelming desire to say to someone "welcome to the war." I am used to fighting ruthless enemies who do not honor the rules of war, who torture and kill and use innocent people in many ways. I am not ashamed to have opposed the ruthless regime in Hanoi even in circles where it is regarded as shameful to have volunteered for service against it. But I never saw the atrocities committed by the enemy as an excuse not to be civilized myself. I never saw it as an excuse to hate Vietnamese people either. In fact, the more I learned, the more sympathetic I became for the situation of people who live in undemocratic situations. I found that the Marines were right, and that respect generated valuable information flow, in the military sense, as well as in other senses. I submit that treating badly informers who came forward after 911 was bad policy. We need to learn to cultivate more of them, not reduce the number to almost zero.

Why should you honor our enemies? Why should you accept their false perversions of Islam? Why not tell the truth in ways everyone can agree with - including even devout followers of Islam. In a debate of this sort with a US Army officer who served with the Egyptian Army (and who learned Arabic), I asked him what would the Prophet himself rule, if he could be asked to try OBL et al? The officer replied that the Prophet would surely condemn them to death, and on more than one grounds, of Islamic law. My answer is that you might respect Islam because IT condemns rapists and murders, just as you do.

What if the preachers are not endorsing the things you object to? After 911 there was a period when Islamic women didn't feel safe in public (the time when a Sikh was murdered for wearing a turbine - even though he was not Muslim). Some Christians began escorting these ladies to places like stores - and otherwise attending Mosque and social gatherings - for a variety of reasons - including to become regarded as safe escorts. I must report to you that not one of these escorts I know in the state I was in at that time (Washington) reported a single instance of either a formal surmon nor a personal statement along the lines you seem to think are normal. While there is evidence on the record of such things in some locations, including one in Portland, they seem quite the exception in our country. Suppose the norm is statements that, had they been submitted to you before being made, you would have cleared?