With all the interesting threads that get generated on the Iraqi page, I'm surprised Nobody (play on all kinds of issues here) wants to touch this with a 10' poll... Holy Jihadi, BlogMan! Fire up a religious experience, right here, right now!

Anybody?

Dave

The first thing that caught my eye when I got here was "Right Thinking From The Left Coast", and having never been there, I checked it out.
Whooooodoggie!!!!
A right thinking blog out of San Francisco, who'd've thought!!!!!? This is great!!
It's like being stranded, alone, on a desert island and one day walking over a hill and finding a thriving town on the other side.
Yeeeehaw!
So I spent awhile looking through it and it is now added to my daily reading list.
Yeeeehaw!

Re the Blogger Symposium, I found a lot of my own thoughts, or close variations thereof, to be shared by the participants.
I disagreed on the concept of diplomacy ending the NK problem, but agree that there's a strong chance of a military coup ending the reign of the evil elf.
I agree that ultimately, given the Palestinians' expectation that Israel should keep making one way concessions as terrorism continues, the only way the Israeli- Palestinian issue will finally be resolved will be via a war between the two, in which Israel would be the victor.
Given the fact that the bulk of terrorists who endanger America are Arabs, I agree that in certain cases racial profiling(Kate cites religious profiling, but I think it comes down to pretty much the same thing) should be permitted when it comes to airport security. That respectable, impeccably attired Yemeni businessman might very well be a terrorist, sadly enough.
The port security issues are tough ones, I know some people in that field, including some Coast Guard people, and that's an area that will take a long time to be truly mastered.
Border security is another toughie, given the length of common border we share with Mexico. The tough part stems more from our form of government than anything else, and the resulting sensibilities; Look how successful oppressive regimes are at regulating border traffic because they have no problem with mine fields, machinegun towers, electrified fences, etc. I'm all for patrolling with drones and increasing our ground coverage, and eliminating water sources for those who make it over the border- why provide even the most basic animal comforts or survival necessities for people who are breaking our laws by illegally entering our country? The harder it is, the more discouraging.
I think we need to train not only an Iraqi police venue, but also a reaction force(like SWAT), comprised of Iraqis, to respond to terrorist attacks in cities like Baghdad. A good source of training for this would be the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team(HRT). They specialize in that which their name implies, but also in the kind of commando duties SWAT teams do, and have a foundation of restraint needed to function in a domestic environment(they are law enforcement agents, not combat troops).
This would relieve our troops, who are trained for combat rather than police duties, of responsibilities that detract from their primary function and, quite possibly, enable us to pull more of them out of the extended tours of duty they are now facing.
I also agree that we need to invest more money in Afghanistan to help their cash strapped government. They need to educate their young and they need to be able to combat their their warlord problem with its inherent, reemerging poppy trade, and neither is easy to do when you're working on a skeleton budget.

Seth, the reason I distinguished between race and religion is pretty simple. Carlos the Jackal, for instance, was not Middle Eastern but he was a Muslim convert.

Agreed, but how do you tell whether someone is a Muslim, then? The guys who perpetrate skyjackings and so forth wear the same clothes as everyone else and the only ways to distinguish them are by Arabic names, when they are showing passports or buying tickets or whatever, and features. Of course, I've met a few Arabs, who retained their Arabic names, who are Christians, so there is still a lot of margin for error.
You just taught me something I didn't know :)
I didn't know Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez had become a Muslim, I always thought the SOB was just a commie trained terrorist turned mercenary.

You're right about the problems determining religion, barring serious - and much needed - changes to the U.S. immigration and visa policy.

OTOH, surnames and appearances aren't always a clue, either. For instance, my maiden name was French and although you wouldn't know it to look at me, I'm part Iranian (along with part Dutch and part American Indian). And, no, I'm not Muslim.

So it really has to be a "gestalt" of various factors that flag someone for profiling, all working in combo with more thorough checks on those wanting to enter the U.S. for any reason. After all, being here is a privilege, not a right.

Kate;
I wish someone had told the Clinton Administration about privilege vs right, LOL. Since the early- mid 1990s, it's become such in U.S. coastal cities that one begins to feel like an immigrant or tourist in the land of ones birth. And half these newcomers not only scorn the idea of learning English, but treat native born Americans as though we were trespassing on their property.
It aggravates me to no end; My grandparents were Russian and Polish immigrants in the late 20s and early 30s who met at school, learning English, and after they learned it and were married, allowed only English(as they became more fluent) to be spoken in their house("We are Americans now, we must speak the American language"). They were proud to be Americans.
During the Clinton years, our frontiers opened up in "come one, come all" fashion. There were previously quotas that made it easier to keep track of immigration, but during the Clinton admin those quotas, along with the ability to keep track, seem to have gone by the wayside. Lost in the general confusion was also a rise in illegal immigration.
Today, while the Bush administration is trying to fix this problem, all sorts of liberal advocacy groups are screaming "persecution", as though it was perfectly okay that our immigration standards became so lax in the 1990s. Now, rather than advocating fixing the problem, they are pushing to accommodate illegals and make things easy for them to remain here.
There are millions of Arabs in this country now, many of them here well beyond the expirations of their visas, working in "under the table" jobs at small businesses owned by other Arabs(enter a small grocery store, liquor store or smoke shop here in San Francisco and 99 -1 odds are you will find it is Arab owned, and the employees are off the books).
Some of the guys I've seen working in these places are scary, they have a look in their eyes that does not conjure up thoughts of peace and tranquility.
I'd hate to be the INS exec charged with the ultimate responsibility of straightening out the entire mess.

Seth: The "come one come all" attitude was in place long before Clinton. He merely federalized it. Remember Carter's invitation to Cuban refugees? (Never mind that Castro took the opportunity to dump his worst psychopathic murderers on our shores.)

California's policies towards illegals didn't happen overnight. The pro-Mexican attitudes have been building over a long time.

True, Gus3,
Federalized or not, however, we did see, during the 1990s, a larger than ever before physical influx of immigrants, both legal and illegal.
I don't know if you live and work in a (large) major city or not, but I have for most of my life, and in such circumstances one would have to be deaf and blind not to have noticed the difference between the pre Clinton years and the Clinton years in terms of immigrant populations, particularly north African(Arab) and Asian.
As far as the Mariel Boatlift was concerned, I was in Miami right afterwards and met a few of the psychos, up close and in person, that Carter allowed Fidel to contribute (to add diversity, no doubt) to our inventory of formerly tired and mostly still poor.
I saw a lot of tee shirts that said, "Will the last American to leave Miami please bring the flag" as the crime rate abruptly reached new highs and a lot of lifelong locals moved out of the city.

Interesting reading, folks...OBTW, Venemous - I thought you didn't fuckin' care! LOL.

If you think we've got an in-migrant problemo NOW, just you wait! CA is a very large hurdle in this assimilation thingy, and it is by choice, thanks to lax enforcement, and easy naturalization processes. They 'don't fuckin' care', to steal a line from Kate, and they're not assimilatin'. Some activists are OPENLY advocating making CA a Mexican state, and they are serious. Out-migration from CA is on the other end of the ethnic scale. Why is this happening? Ask the Democrats. Forget I said that. They have no clue. Must be the air. Why is there air? Forget I said that. I have no clue.

Course, some of em may have a point:

A couple of years ago, I told a Mexican(we were joking around) "Esta Estados Unidos. Aqui, tu habla Ingles."
He said:
"No, esta Mexico! San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Monterrey, San Pedro, San Luis Obispo...."

You can almost see where he might've gotten his geography a bit confused, LOL.

Dave;

Also note, you're talking democrats, here. For them, today's illegals can become tomorrow's "downtrodden" voting constituency. They don't mind overcrowding the country with immigrants, as long as they get first dibs on their votes.

They DO get them! Take CA as an example. I take that back. The Dems already have it. Uhhh. Texas? Whoa. Careful. FLORIDA?

Hmmm. Interesting, isn't it? Damn Pass has me usin' that well turned phrase WAY much...

And there's a major difference between the dems and the Republican party: The Republicans try to fix existing problems while the dems do everything they can to add more problems or increase those already there. They sabotage the GOP's efforts to better the country, then yell that the GOP's efforts didn't work.
What a bunch of contemptible slimeballs!