Discussing Tilam's point(s)...

When I hear him say the word "honesty", I actually believe that is nearly the right word. Certainly I think he is referring to "self-awareness of the real issue(s)". Frankly, people are lousy at looking in the mirror and telling the reflection the God's honest truth. It doesn't matter whether it's the war on terrorism, our weight or physical appearance, we stink at self-analyzation and honesty with the person in the mirror.

I have stated before that we are a quick hit, immediate gratification, results NOW society. That pervasive outlook in all our facets of life permutates its way into the view that we have on the war on terror. "What have we accomplished?". The honesty that WE as a society has to face (and even if you dispute the dates that Tilam states, i.e. the 43 year cold war) is that this will be an ongoing thing. We HAVE to face that and not expect it to be over quickly because the US kicks ass.

5 years after 9/11 and I believe we are safer in the air, but ultimately NOT AS SAFE in our buses and trains. And as a whole, we are not as safe in general because of our lack of self-honesty. Frankly, as a society, we "remember the attack" but seem, for the most part, to have forgotten the lessons. We are back to the stupid inconsiderate ignorant selfish group of people we were before the horrendous wake-up call. We are not honest with ourselves: just because the people being killed and attacked are thousands of miles away, that doesn't mean we are not in danger!. And we don't consider it an issue because it doesn't DIRECTLY affect us. So our self-delusional dishonesty is "this war on terror doesn't affect me", so we don't have to worry about it as much. The other side of the coin is that the leaders don't do a good job in convincing us a) of any progress we are making with CONCRETE examples, and b) speaking of the true, long ugly drawn out nature of this issue.

I need some info on the "demand side". Are you saying that the primary source of hate propoganda from the Immams are the facts that a) our females can choose their own mate, and b) our men can work where they want and earn what they want to attract a mate? I'm not sure I understand that point. Tilam says "without female empowerment and economic liberty, we will continue to have disgruntled men willing to wage jihad". You gotta 'splain Lucy. Are you saying that the men are willing to wage holy way because their women are not free and they themselves are not able to establish their own career? Yer shitting me, right? OMG it is SO much more than those 2 points, and can frankly be summed up in one word: FREEDOM. I can walk down the street and burn the US flag and not get in thrown in jail. I can stand up in a park and say "president bush is an asshole" and not get shot. They cannot stand our whole society, where we can do almost anything we want and not have the night police break into our homes and drag us to an internment camp. They resent that all encompassing freedom, and despise us for it and all that it represents. And the fact that THEIR people are a bit jealous of us and might be tempted to look at their regime a bit differently forces the leaders that be to denounce us and preach hatred towards us and incite this jihad. I'm not sure I'm getting your point correctly, but I will not limit it to those 2 items.

Tilam's clarification post is a good one, kudos to him for his coherent thoughts.