Coolrider, I'm beginning to wonder whether what I am posting somehow magically gets translated into something else when you read it, because you are answering different points to the ones I have made.
But to deal with the points you have raised:
1. I happen to think the Patriot Act is a healthy thing, so long as it is healthily opposed, so that when the threat is gone, the act gets repealed. And as for the world, we should have done a much better job in building bridges rather than destroying them. This whole sorry situation which we have now is, IMO, just an extension of the history of foreign policy that the west has conducted in Middle East affairs, probably going back to the Crusades.
2. You have no idea how heart-broken the world was when 9/11 happened. Let me give you a few examples. In London, on the way to work the next day people were reading the newspapers and openly crying on the tube. Never seen that before. My relatives in Malaysia called me, they were in tears too. There was lots of empathy for America then.
3. I am not anti-US. I just think you have a schizophrenic idea of human rights. Yes you are an empire and yes, it won't last forever, but have a horrible suspicion that mankind might not last the course (for ecological reasons) over the next 100 years or so.
Ravs
