Fear

Submitted by j (United States), Feb 20, 2007 at 07:37

I think you hit the nail on the head, many of us are afraid. In response we could have been authentically afraid and said we were going to search for Osama bin Laden, but that our fear of upsetting the fragile balance of the world we were not going to do much more than that. Instead, we took the bully approach, which has so far made things definitely not better.

The bully approach is to rant, rave, indiscriminately make the proverbial heads roll, enact all sorts of legislation and empower leadership among police and the armed forces to the point where they can pretty much act with immunity. In the end, only the weakest and most obedient are bullied and as we are seeing, the true terrorists are proceeding with business as usual, including Iran's President getting an interview with Mike Wallace in the US.

We are afraid but it is obvious that the time for the Presidency of the US being used as bully pulpit at the expense of US citizens should end. In Africa, developing countries had aid hinged to meeting thresholds of democratic government, no progress, no more money. What's different here is how badly we've handled things thus far and oil. Everyone is afraid because of the oil. Meanwhile, Middle Easterners rich with oil money, can not only tell us what to do, and get us to tell Israel what to do, they can give more ultimatums, such as the Hamas Fatah agreement stating that they will never recognize Israel but expect recognition as a legitimate government and by the way, they want more of Israel's land, or else. And let's not delude ourselves, the situation in the US is NOT a lot better, look at the owners of some of the best real estate in the US, look at stockholders of some of the biggest US companies, that's right, Middle Easterners with loads of oil money, now that's working the system.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".