Whatever dialogue could take place between radical and moderate Muslims could only have taken place along the lines I indicated somewhat facetiously above. Dialogue doesn't solve every problem and when religion is mixed into the equation you've got a pretty volatile mix. Why didn't the moderate abolitionists dialogue with John Brown? Probably they did, if only indirectly in the marketplace of ideas - - I'm sure John Brown had heard and considered every argument for moderation it was possible to make in those times - - but at the end of the day, he had to do what the Lord told him to do. As do the Muslim "extremists."
Moderates can't "dialogue" with them - - they have come to certain conclusions about America and Israel and quite frankly, I think they've correctly assessed the situation and the moderates haven't. As long as Israel continues to settle the West Bank and slowly strangle the remaining Arab population to effect a slow-motion ethnic cleansing, and as long as American leadership thinks it's smart to get its oil at the point of a gun, and as long as Israel and America thinks that the Arabs can be brutalized with impunity by outsiders, the radicals have correctly assessed their choices as death or continued humiliation, and they've made their choice.
Incidentally, I notice that the fringe wackos out in the extreme boonies of the far right's alternative universe are asking questions, such as Rich's "Why don't we have a President who can wage total war on the enemy, as FDR did on the Japs and the Nazis?" or sirs' equally naive "If it's really all about oil, why don't they just grab the oil fields and ignore the rest of the country?"
The short answer to Rich is that FDR did NOT wage total war on the Nazis, he and the British in fact delayed opening a Western Front in WWII for as long as possible in the hopes that the Nazis would devastate as much of the Red Army and the U.S.S.R. as they could and only took on a land war against them in France when it became apparent that the Soviets were going to whip Germany on their own anyway. FDR in fact had let the British Empire take most of the brunt of fighting fascism in the west (their casualties were roughly double the Americans') and of course the U.S.S.R. took all of the burden of fighting fascism in the east. Two out of every three Nazi soldiers killed in the course of the conflict were killed by the Red Army.
The longer answer to both Rich and sirs is that in the real world, even the most powerful nations do not act without at least a pretence, or a shred of legality, to cloak their real actions. Even Hitler had to pretend (at least in the West) that he was fighting on behalf of ALL civilized people against the "Bolshevist" threat from the east. Thus puppet governments of collaborators had to be set up in every conquered nation, even though the reality was that the puppets lacked the support of the nation as a whole, and the U.S., which is more sensitive to domestic opinion than Nazi Germany had to be, also needs its fig leaf and prefers not to acknowledge openly to its own people or the world at large that it is in fact operating on the same principles as Al Capone or his Mafia successors. That's just the way the world runs, guys. One day you'll have to grow up and realize that real life isn't the same as comic book life and the U.S. CAN'T do everything its ruling class wants to do and DOES have to keep up pretences, make excuses and observe certain norms of conduct.
Ask yourselves this: how much popular support does Bush have now for his war? It's NOT zero. But he's obviously lost a lot of support for the project. Still, he claims it's all in a good cause, etc. Now, suppose he had not bothered to make the ridiculous claims that Iraq was a threat, that America is fighting for a free, independent Iraq, and instead of all THAT bullshit, had consistently told the American people, "Folks, this is all about oil. I don't give a shit who's legally entitled to the oil, but America NEEDS that stuff and God-damn it, it is just too important to leave in the hands of a bunch of piss-ant sand monkeys," how much support do you think he'd have now for his project? Damn close to zero, IMHO.
It is always good for fascist dictators, even Adolf Hitler, to have as many of their own people behind them as they can. Bush has a greater need for public support than Hitler did, because in Amerikkka, the old democratic system hasn't been completely undermined yet. This is why chickenshit Democrats like Pelosi STILL have to say "Impeachment's off the table" and "cutting funds for the war is off the table." Although they campaigned against the war and won, they STILL can't do fuck-all about it, even with a majority, because there are still enough folks out there who support the war. How many of those dumbass schmucks would still be carrying the banner if Bush had told them the war was for oil? How many Muslim stooges would be able to keep their hold over their own people in Jordan, in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, if everyone knew from Bush's own mouth that he had the right to invade any fucking Arab country he chose for no reason at all but to take their oil, and would do so whenever and wherever it suited him? THAT is why Bush can't just wage total war against them as if they were all just a bunch of fucking Nazis whose lives collectively weren't worth the life of a nest of cockroaches and that's why Bush can't just say, "Hey, nice oil well, it belongs to me now."
