What good do you see in it all?

First of all, Jane don't worry about it. LJ loves to fan the flames sometimes, but he's an alright kind of guy (we all have our little idiosyncrancies). SM and UT come from the right side of the board, but even they can sometimes see reason. We all have fun pulling one another's tails. Don't take any of it too seriously, and stick around. We can always use another intelligent liberal around here.

Now back to my analogy with the Chinese. Western culture, religion, and political systems are as foreign to the Arab world as Chinese thought would be to us. Let's say in our little hypothetical future scenario that the Chinese came in with hearts of purest gold - no ulterior motive for their intervention. How many of us would really believe this? I know I would be hugely skeptical of their motives. Why? Because historically the Chinese have never been friends with the West. Because they DO have a very different system of government than ours. And that's just for starters.

The Western and Arab world have been at loggerheads every since the Crusades if not before. We have different systems of belief. Our cultures are very different, as are our systems of governance. Of course any Arab nation is going to be at best suspicious of us and skeptical of our motive.

I am skeptical of our motive. We don't intervene in the internal affairs of other third world countries where something as valuable as petroleum is not at stake. I hate to be a broken record, but once again "It's the oil, dummy!" No wonder that the people of Iraq do not greet us with open arms. And we have made their lives worse, not better. At least under Saddam they had electricity. Now they are most likely to see electricity when they're being tortured with it.