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Tell me, who is surprised?

Reader comment on item: Innocents Abroad Build Foreign Armies

Submitted by Mark Werfel (United States), Feb 12, 2013 at 20:17

How could ANYONE truly believe that the results occurring in the Middle East from our adventures there (and everywhere else for decades) are or were unexpected? We lost lives and treasure for nothing, and the people there are unchanged. Our only interest is protecting the USA, and we did not apply military power in any way that could achieve the objective of defeating the enemy's will to inflict harm on us. Why so? Because we didn't identify fundamentalist Islam as the enemy; and we did not attack THEIR symbols of power with our military. The claim was to fight them there instead of here -- we fought some of them ineffectively there, and they're here anyway -- one in a US Army major's uniform -- on trial after murdering fellow soldiers. Some patriotic Americans died, and some got rich. Instead of "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute," we pay OPEC and fund the terror war against us.

In March 1785, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went to London to negotiate with Tripoli's envoy, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman. Upon inquiring "concerning the ground of the pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury", the ambassador replied:

It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise.

American Peace Commissioners to John Jay," March 28, 1786, "Thomas Jefferson Papers," Series 1. General Correspondence. 1651–1827, Library of Congress. LoC: March 28, 1786 (handwritten).

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