You are correct, chaaban, it must be Islam which overcomes terrorists in the end, but neither the US or Russia(even more brutal) have any intention of allowing these guys a safe haven from which to operate. So let us see if Iran walks into a meat grinder named Iraq when US troops pull out. Frankly, I`m weary of proxy wars, as the rest of the world should be by now. Except for the nuclear option, a knockdown jaw breaking slobberknocker war would restore the peace better than most of the political foolishness going on now.

If there weren’t so many innocent people getting killed it would be funny. The US lost the war in Vietnam, but at least they had an enemy. They are about to lose the war in Iraq, but there is no unified Iraqi enemy – just a few lunatics and, as you so correctly pointed out, a whole lot of formerly normal civilians who have understandably become violent after their friends and families have been blown up or shot.

Concerning the stupidity of Americans, several things might be relevant;
1) Human stupidity is a world-wide phenomenon,
2) American television, massively dumbed-down, seems more to be spreading ignorance and insularity rather than knowledge,
3) The US education system is a poor joke, made worse by the facts that classes often start at 7:30 am – way to early for many adolescents, and there are poorly-paid and ignorant teachers and stupid syllabi aimed more at making children appear to be educated rather than spreading knowledge and getting them to use their brains.
4) There is a culture of naivete, wilful ignorance and passiveness in the USA, which worsens the already bad situation that many people on earth do not use their brains. Many of these unthinking people are arrogant, which makes their stupidity worse.
5) Americans work too hard and are too busy. This leaves them little time to think.
6) Endless advertising seems to impede the thinking process, and the rampant consumerism generated means that the US citizen feels the urge to race out and buy a whole lot of useless crap. They all want big houses and huge boring floppy thirsty SUVs, and all this nonsense has to be paid for. It could be said that many americans and other first-worlders have become enslaved by their credit cards and debt levels.

There are intelligent people in the USA, just as there are religious people who are wise, kindly policemen, and army people who don’t like unecessary killing. Unfortunately, there are not enough of any of these groups, as we all know.

To be brutally frank, I don’t think any of this really matters. Mankind is facing a huge environmental catastrophe brought on by overpopulation and overconsumption and massive environmental damage, often for short-term gain. Sooner or later I expect that there will be famines and massive shortages of all kinds of things. Global warming is just the start.
If millions of people get killed because George Dubya and Osama bin Laden (and heaps of other people) are crazed idiots and violent lunatics, then this will barely be significant if billions starve in their own excrement. I hope I’m wrong about this.

Anyway, good luck. At least you have a brain.

P Buddery