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What else should they have said? This was useful propaganda. In order to effectively fight the people who had attacked us Al Qaeda the US needed the cooperation of the worlds Muslim governments and the world's Muslims. Obviously the attacks were motivated by an Islamic ideology but equally obviously declaring war on the world's 1.8 Billion Muslims would serve no purpose. You lament that people understood that something "needed to be done about Islam" but what do you propose? What we got was the GWOT with US special forces fighting Islamic extremists globally. What do you suppose should have been done instead the religion has now 2 billion followers and 1.8 billion at the time. What Bush said was strategic to help Americans fight Al Qaeda and channel rage, what good would pograms against Arab shopkeepers in America
Contrary to this belief most Muslims and Islamic governments don't act like ISIS. This is a common insistence among conservatives but the world would look a lot different if they did. Most Arab governments are sluggish and corrupt not motivated by fanatical dreams of world conquest and the democratic Muslim countries also don't elect people like that. In the face of that it would seem that Islam isn't bent on those things even if you think they should be. Now I'm not saying that there isn't a dangerous current of extremism running through Sunni Islam that attracts young men to these Salafist ideologies or that we should let millions of unskilled Muslim refugees into Western Countries. But the average Muslim or Muslim politician is not bent on conquering the world they aren't the borg. Also for an existential threat a majority of Arab governments are American allies and far more concerned about Iran then invading the infidel west and taking concubines.
The Dixie Chicks argued aganst the war in Iraq this is the quote;
And they got cancelled hard for it this was an era when people's blood was up and unmoderated internet comments basically any news story touhgign the wars had people saying we should nuke Mecca and Medina. And the Dixie chicks were proven right,, the Bush administration cynically channeled rage against Islamist extremism into overthrowing a secular dictator do to their own Neocon fantasies. Neocon foreign policy at the time was utterly delusional they thought creating a democratic Iraq based on conservative economics would create a booming new American ally and unleash a collapse of Arab autocracies has had happened with Communism in Eastern Europe. These fantasies were what American rage was channeled towards and the invasion of Iraq ended up being the biggest boon for Islamic extremism possible. It removed a secular check against Iran and provided fertile ground for Al Qaeda and later ISIS to bloom. Introducing any sort of democracy to Iraq naturally made them much more pro Iran, and it had the effect of convincing many Muslims the US war really was against Islam. Not to mention it was an immoral farce a ginned up war of aggression without proper casus belli, and a gigantic waste of taxpayer money.
People were over the wars by 2010 because they realized supporting Shia Islamists and child raping warlords wasn't making America any safer. The American security state has good handle on preventing terrorist attacks at home. Such a good handle most of the people they arrest these days is basically entrapment. The global war on terror was bad enough a global war on Islam like you seem to want would be catastrophic.
I'm guessing OP's point isn't that Bush should have declared a global crusade against Islam, it's that he basically went overboard by calling Islam a religion of peace, that it was needless and there was no political justification to do it. It's best to do anything in moderation even in politics.
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Propaganda that is not true always has costs. For starters, there's the cost of credibility. Just look at how much of a problem we now have forming consensus on facts. We had a mechanism to check facts, that mechanism was abused egregiously for partisan gain (and during COVID, for getting people to do what the health experts wanted, even when that wasn't completely aligned with their interests), and now one side of politics doesn't trust it even when it is telling the truth.
There is also the problem that people might believe the propaganda even after it stops being useful. There is no Door to Nothingness that will erase the idea you've put out and all of its consequences; even an outright "we lied lol", which people are generally unwilling to give for obvious reasons, will by the nature of statistics not reach all of the people who heard the lie, and this isn't even starting on the policies that others draw up in response to that lie, many of which have serious inertia (note that Western society has become more sclerotic over time, so it's harder to get a policy revoked in the future than it was to get it instituted in the past).
To take an example of some of these dynamics, and without even any deliberate deception, nutrition advice. The BMI chart categories are bad; the lowest-mortality group is what are considered "overweight" by the chart. Doctors know this. But the chart hasn't been updated, because we aren't a society that Does Things anymore. The ridiculous "fat-free" craze* also has left a mark; it's been discredited for ages, and yet the "lite" milk section of the supermarket is still as big as the "full"-cream (which generally isn't quite full; AIUI there's more cream taken off for sale as-is and for butter than what compensates for the skim milk). And that's milk, the single worst place to cut calories because most of the vitamins are in the fat part. And, of course, people listen to nutritionists less even when those nutritionists are telling the truth.
Lies are bad. Sometimes they are necessary, but most people overestimate when this is so.
*Please note, lack of essential fats - rabbit starvation - is literally the fastest-killing form of malnutrition; if you were to eat a truly fat-free diet, you'd be incapacitated in a week and dead in three.
Yeah fair I think you a correct in retrospect. My blood was up a bit because of the suggestion that the US launch some sort of war of extermination against Islam. Though also to be fair I don't George Bush said the attacks had nothing to do with Islam either.
Killing all Muslims would definitely have been a bad idea.
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Huh? Is anyone in the USA at risk of rabbit nutrition, no matter how much nonfat milk they drink?
Basically not. Even the people who obsess over "fat-free" do not actually "succeed" sufficiently to be in danger. It's just a funny irony.
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Rabbit starvation isn't caused by lack of fat. It's caused by lack of fat and carbs. Or more accurately, by excessive protein. The body can survive for months and up to a year with zero fat because it makes its own fat from carbs, as well as having stored body fat.
Do you have a source for someone surviving a year with zero fat intake? Polyunsaturated fatty acids are essential nutrients, much like the essential amino acids; humans cannot make them (we can only make saturated and monounsaturated fats from carbohydrates). We don't need much, but we need some (they help keep membranes fluid, and are anabolic materials for making prostaglandins). My understanding is that they also don't tend to have particularly-long biological half-lives, as PUFAs are quite susceptible to peroxidation.
Angus Barbieri survived for more than a year with literally no food. He was obese and lived off his stored body fat, which presumably included lots of PUFAs from all the deep fryer oil (he worked in a fish and chip shop). There's a school of thought (that I subscribe to) that it's actually excess PUFAs in vegetable oil that is causing the obesity epidemic.
IIRC, lioleic acid has a half-life of about two years, which could explain why it's so hard to lose weight through dieting. If your body fat is full of linoleic acid and it has such a long half life, any calorie controlled diet is just going to release a bunch of LA into your bloodstream.
I avoid vegetable oil myself (well, not completely, because lol, but I think it's only bread and occasional ice-cream that have it). Of course, I get PUFAs anyway, just not in that kind of absurd quantity - I eat plenty of butter and fatty cuts of meat.
Yeah, losing the weight would definitely have helped repurpose the PUFAs, but even then that he survived a year is a significant update. Thanks.
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