One of the thoughtful and complete written respenses to my essay on American foreign policy, America Does Not Go Abroad in Search of Monsters to Destroy, was from the father of a dear friend that I would like to share, “Well, I read your entire e-mail. Quite a feat; I was exhausted by the time I finished. I see things very differently.”
“Arabs hate us and want to kill us. That includes the ones in Iraq, the ones in Syria, the ones in Saudi Arabia, and the ones in the United States. We are going to have to get them before they get us. While their mindset is simple, the means of accomplishing their goal is complicated. It takes a lot of money to finance their killing.”
“The prevention of another attack within the United States from 9/11/2001 until now has to be one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of our country. Apparently attacking them keeps them too busy to organize an attack against us. Their most virulent leaders are either dead or in hiding where their ability to organize is limited. This strategy combined with a lot of surveillance and covert actions right here in the United States has kept them at bay. They have loads of cells here in the United States with the sole purpose of killing and wrecking. The one thing I would not worry about is taking actions that will cause them to hate us. That is impossible; they can’t hate us any more than they already do. That applies to all of them.”
“This is not a rosy picture of the problems we are facing for the next 100 years or so. We are in a World War. There are 1.2 billion of them although they have not progressed since the 13th century. They are trying to return us to a 13th century lifestyle. They are a culture of hate, and a substantial part of it does relate to envy and their own lack of progress.”
