I haven't heard one person ever suggest negotiating with, or appeasing al qaeda. This is the mother of all strawmen.
What millions of muslims are pissed about, is our decades long support and our policy of propping up relatively unpopular muslim dictators and despots. It's got nothing to do with negotiating with al qaeda, it has to do with reality.
If we're going to prop up unpopular, despotic dictators in a bargain with the devil, we're going to piss a lot of people off. That's a fact.
If, however, we end our reliance on the oil these dictators sit atop, we might defuse that wellspring of animosity that exists in the muslim world.
What you have heard is the proposal to open dialog with Hamas and other terrorist organizations. To what end is this dialog? What purpose of talking if not to ask what they want. And what purpose of asking what they want if not to entertain the idea of giving in to some of those demands? The idea of pointing out the errors made by Chamberlain prior to WWII is to point out that some are not worth a dialog because they are all demand and no compromise. At best they need a monologue: straighten up or get your butts kicked.
Ponting out our dependence on ME oil well and good. But what do we do in the mean time? The fact is we ARE dependent on oil, as are the vast majority of our allies. We faced an oil crisis in the 70s, and no one did a damned thing about or dependence on oil imports. We just waited until the economy adjusted to the price of oil and continued to increase our dependence on oil imports. Where was our worry about angering "millions of Muslims" then?
In fact, most of our allies are more dependent on ME oil than we are, since most of our imports come from other places. And another fact is, with the exception of our manipulating Saddam into power to counter Iran, the existence of the dictators in the ME has nothing to do with the U.S. We even tried supporting the Shaw of Iran, who got his butt kicked out in favor of a much WORSE ruler. The only way we are "supporting" despotic dictators is the fact we buy oil from them. Of course, if we were to stop, the same dictators would remain in power because others are also buying their oil in quantities far greater than we are.
Yet others are not being targeted for their dependence on ME oil, whose purchases are also supporting those self same dictators. Care to explain that?
And talking of strawmen arguments, can you point to one manifesto, release or video from AlQueda or others that complain about our support of dictators in the ME? No, their complaint is how we affect the area with our money (ie: buying oil) and the resulting cultural influence (ie: some of the things we buy oil with) and our continued support of Israel. The only complaint about which despots we support is we are not supporting THEIR despots. In case you have not noticed, the people attacked us are extremists who are following an agenda of global domination of Islam.
Yes we have pissed off millions of Muslims. But we are not fighting all of Islam. We have, through the years, pissed off millions of Europeans. (And the actions of other contries have pissed of millions of Americans - it's part of sharing the same planet.) But I do not remember Europeans forming terrorist cells and blowing up our buildings. Being pissed off is not running around killing innocent people to make a political point. Millions of Muslims - whether they are oissed off at us or not - are not our enemy. Only the extremists are.
(Our occupation of Iraq is making an enemy of some non-extremists, but our PREVIOUS actions did nothing of the kind. We had not invaded Iraq when we were attacked on 9/11/01, or any other attacks prior to March of 2003.)
The enemy we ARE fighting are the ones who would depose the very dictators we support by buying their oil, and instill their own version of Islam on the region like the Taliban did in Afghanistan. And when it comes to the REAL enemy, if you think not buying their oil is going to change their minds about us, you need to take off the rose colored glasses and take a good hard look at the reality you are supposedly pointing at. "Talking" with the likes of those responsible for international terrorism has no practical purpose, any more than talking with Hitler would have done any good.
