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Originally Posted by Underdog
I know - I'm one of them... I have family in Israel, but I don't think their politics benefit anyone but the Zionist extremists who run that country... The government/clergy benefits at the expense of the common Jew (not a new theme in our history...)
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we're pretty much in agreement, the extemely observant in israel have way too much sway, and have hindered the peace efforts imo.
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Not true - both Osama bin Laden (and to a lesser degree, Saddam Hussein) were on the US payroll up through the 1980s... Hell, radical Islamic groups even helped the Allies drive back the Nazis in the region during WWII... Our leaders and theirs had mutual use for each other until political posturing in Israel started driving an ever-increasing wedge between the two...
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as you point out, hussein was our friend long into the 1980s, and the afganis in the 1970s as well, which is where the 9/11 attackers came from, and of course the 1970s and 1980s were both decades after the formation of the state of israel.
it is the extremism that bin laden later embraced, and that extremism was a rejection of western civilization as a whole, that brought us where we are now. it wasn't until after 9/11 that bin laden found it convenient to talk about the palestinians and how he was fighting for them.