I have to confess, I'm with those who are against the speech....I found it just left me with an icky feeling.
I understand what TEd is saying he thinks the speaker is saying about fighting for Western "civilization" at home - however, I don't think the speaker himself made that point terribly clearly. I'm with shona, mav, vika and t'others: 'tis divisive, and a tendentious (had to look that up!) pile o' doo-doo.
IMHO, radical Muslims aren't any worse than radical Christians or radical Jews or radical anything/anyone. If you know anything about Islam - and I must confess I know very little, but enough! - you know that, as with the other two "book" religions (Judaism and Christianity), peace and peaceful actions are basic tenets of the Word of Allah, the Lord, Yaweh - whatever you want to call Him. (Her. It.) To pick on Islam because of Osama bin Laden is to tar all Muslims with the same brush - and the vast majority of them don't deserve that.
As for defending Western "civilization" - well, some of it is okay, but a lot of it ain't that great. Do we really want to pat ourselves on the back for things like the space programme (come on, how has it bettered life on Earth? if each nation with a space programme cancelled one project/mission per year and diverted the money to more appropriate causes, I bet we wouldn't have any starving people on the planet any more); pharmaceuticals (doctors get their info on drugs from drug companies - and drug companies just want to make money - look at the recent horrifying revelations about female hormone replacement therapy - go natural as much as possible, that's my motto!); finance (Enron, etc.); pop culture (Britney Spears, boy bands, what so often passes for "art" or "performance art," rap "music," what so often passes for "literature," etc); environmental practices (tearing down forests at a rate of knots, polluting lakes and other waterways, culling animal populations that would do fine if left to their natural cycles, introducing species where they don't belong, destroying habitat, etc); and much, much more? Where do we get off, holding ourselves up as examples to the world?
No, really?
Let us go in peace to love and serve the board.
