[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by regular.joe

What? Is it your age that is giving you these inacurate, and ridiculous ideas? Is it your teachers at the university? Is it that you are an American? Reread history about Islam. The majority in many geographic areas of the world will most certainly not embrace western culture, at any cost.

I disagree. I am seeing a very conservative Islamic society turn Western, or at least pick up many Western influences, as we speak. I used to live in a Somalian neighborhood and I also had some Somalian friends, all of whom were Muslim. You would NEVER see any of them drink, smoke, or do any drug in public but once they had privacy I only saw them follow one Islamic "rule" and that was not to eat pork. They smoke, they drank, they watched porn, they did every vice Western children, especially African American (that is the culture they are picking up), did. They reason why they never did any of those vices in public was because of the tremendously strong social forces. If one of them got caught they would be ostracized. Once they did not have to follow their parent's and culture's rules they acted no different than non-Muslims do. Many women, the ones with that cover their heads, would be very sexually active as well. Some of my friends actually tried to hook me up with a Somalian woman.

Western culture, both "white" and "African American/others", is tremendously attractive to many non-westerners but their culture and social forces prevent many of them in fully participating in it. If Iraq does become stable and westernized, I would expect to see them start to embrace Western culture or their own version of it whether they like the United States and the West or not.

Yes many people of Japan would have fought to the what we would see as the "bitter" end. Yes, even in light of what we might call the invevitable victory. They were not cowards, in any sense of the word. They did not have your intelectual surrender in mind, you know, when you can see the end is near so you quit. I don't think that was going to happen.

Three of the seven main deciders in Japan were for surrendering and Japan did surrender in the end. And yes, many Japanese would have fought to the bitter end and many Muslims will blow themselves up to fight imperialism but that doesn't mean the majority will. If you would read up on the Pacific War you would see that Japan went the Soviet Union to try to negotiate peace. It wasn't the "fight to the bitter end" that kept the Japanese fighting but the conditions we gave them if they did.

"His Majesty the Emperor, mindful of the fact that the present war daily brings greater evil and sacrifice upon the peoples of all the belligerent powers, desires from his heart that it may be quickly terminated. But so long as England and the United States insist upon unconditional surrender, the Japanese Empire has no alternative but to fight on with all its strength for the honor and existence of the Motherland."[13]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrend...e_Soviet_Union