Stand up and take a bow...wow

It seems that the average arab-on-the-street in the Middle East admires Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his standing up to the West (i.e., the USA) and Israel.

So, DocBrain wonders...standing up for what? Standing up against what?

Israel has the audacity to want to remain in it's territorial borders and conduct business and life. The USA wants to remain in it's territorial borders and conduct life and business. Both the USA and Israel provide charity (i.e., foreign aid). Neither has any great desire to prostelitize to those of other religions and cultures. Both do desire, however, for economic growth through trade and have somewhat materialistic societies.

One can throw out the catchphrase "Imperialism" which has no meaning. We all live under mathematical imperialism. It is undeniably wrong to say that 2 + 2 equals anything other than 4. We live under social imperialism. Try to light up a cigarette in a restaurant! Just because something becomes a Juggernaut doesn't necessarily make it Imperialistic. Our culture, system of social contracts, language, industrial might and intellectual prowess is copied, admired, reviled, but rarely surpassed by other countries.

If the USA makes any mistakes, it is assuming that other people want our type of freedom, which has lifted us from a country of outcasts, refugee immigrants and primitive natives to world dominance. If Israel has made any mistakes, it has been in the belief that the world would not become polarized by a few million people escaping from a continent that would have seen them all slaughtered and setting up their own country in a New Jersey-sized semi-arid undeveloped part of Palestine.

So, I get back to...standing up for what? against what?

Based on what I read, they stand up for:

• The right to take the land occupied by Israel by force, since kindness, cooperation, shared and mutual goals, and a spirit of good will would be a sign of weakness.
• The right to terrorize, maim and kill the citizens of and visitors to Israel, because the rightness of their cause trumps all else.
• The right to attack US soldiers, civilians and targets because the US culture is decadent, because the US supports Israel, and because the US uses it's economic leverage to buy off some Arab leaders so they won't condemn Israel and US decadence.
• The right to have nuclear weapons to attack the US and Israel.
• The right to attack the US if we do not behave as a proper Muslim country should behave.

Just because their are two sides to a story doesn't mean that both have merit. One cannot escape the fact that the key component of the dispute is the existence of Israel, with materialism and cultural influence a secondary issue. It is used as the glue that holds together the tribal groups of the Middle East.

So, here is a quick question. If all Muslims in the world renounced Islam and became Jews, what would happen? What if all Jews renounced Judaism and became Muslims? Which one would leave the world a calmer, safer place?