Christ, this is the same puerile crap that the resident trust-fund Marxists used to spout during my undergraduate days at Antioch. (They’re all lawyers, accountants and dentists now).
Please, stop. It’s embarassing. You’re merely projecting your own ill-founded and poorly-understood world view into the mouths of a bunch of despicable, murdering scumbags.
Shodan has nailed it ( I like that boy!). The events of 9/11 have nothing to do with multinational corporations plundering the globe, the overthrow of Latin American governments, genetically-engineered food, the Dewey decimal system, daylight savings time, or any of the endless evils perpetrated by the US. You seem to be heaping the blame on anyone but the perpetrators, are blinded by your assumption that poor and backward = “pure and noble”, and appear to be totally pissed off that the world does not operate by your own utopian (and therefore impeccably correct) ideals.
Terrorists such as bin Laden object to having non-Muslim soldiers in Saudi Arabia. Those soldiers were first stationed in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. The first Gulf War started when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait - one largely Muslim country invaded another largely Muslim country, and the secular US and its coalition allies drove Saddam out. In the course of which, US soldiers set foot in Saudi Arabia. And the Saudi government allowed this.
In other words, bin Laden doesn’t object that the Saudi government is totaliarian, but that it is not totalitarian enough. It tolerates non-Muslims on its soil. bin Laden also objects to the US because we are not totalitarian enough, in that we do not go by Sharia law, but by our Constitution. I am sure bin Laden would classify the US as corrupt, but that is largely because of what he calls corruption, normal people call freedom - allowing women to work outside the home, gay rights laws, allowing the sale of alcohol, and the other examples I mentioned earlier.
Also mistaken. It was not wrong to drive Saddam out of Kuwait. Most non-fundamentalist Islamics recognize this. So does most of the rest of the civilized world.
Similarly, allowing US soldiers in Saudi Arabia is not wrong. At the very least, most rational minds recognize that compared with allowing Saddam to invade Kuwait and to threaten Saudi Arabia, it is a very minor pecadillo. And as has been stated, the Saudi government is generally recognized as the guardians of the sacred sites of Mecca and Medina, and it was OK with them to allow US and coalition soldiers to assist in their defense. bin Laden disagrees with this, to the point that he feels it justified to murder thousands of uninvolved innocents in order to punish the US for what he imagines are sins. But he is wrong.
There is no duplicity involved. Except, I suppose, in the notion that Saddam invading Kuwait is nothing, but actually allowing US women to walk the sands of Saudi Arabia is a crime worthy of genocide. Which is a determination you have to be a complete moral idiot to make.
A complete moral idiot like bin Laden and everyone who agrees with him.
I think you are confusing understanding with agreement. I understand that many people agree with bin Laden that the US is the great Satan, and deserves to be attacked. But the US is not the great Satan, and bin Laden hasn’t got the moral sense of a pound cake, and his notions of right and wrong are stupid.
Yes - obviously.
Yes, I think we understand terrorism, and how badly terrorists reason.
The problem is that folks with a general hard-on for the US are raking thru the past hundred years or so of US history to point to things that have nothing to do with 9/11, and saying, “Sure, America deserved it because of this”. Which is very poor moral reasoning if you want to understand the motivations of the terrorists who actually attacked us.
bin Laden was motivated by a general hatred of all non-fundamentalist Islamic thought and practice. The immediate cause of his attack was the US soldiers setting foot in Saudi Arabia, while driving Saddam out of Kuwait. Therefore he chose as his targets, the World Trade Center, symbol of American business and American power (the “usury” he objects to), the Pentagon, symbol of the US military that defiled Mecca, and another target that we will never be sure of because of the heroism of the passengers of Flight 093.
Did we deserve it? Only if you agree that allowing soldiers to be in Saudi Arabia to defend it against Saddam Hussein, and to assist in driving him out of Kuwait, and being the world’s only superpower and non-fundamentalist Muslim, constitute crimes against humanity. And even if you do think that, killing thousands of innocent people makes you a terrorist, which is worse than a moral idiot.
We have two groups shouting past each other here, and I finally figured out why.
The “Orthodox” group is taking the OP literally: “did America deserve to be attacked by Al Queda on 9/11 for the reasons expressly articulated by Osama Bin laden himself?”
On the other hand there are those who interpret the OP as "Does American (insert pet peeve here) merit an attack such as 9/11?
Both sides have said pretty much all there is to say, with the expected result.
I’d like to change tack here and turn the topic on its head. People Like Zagadka and Wisernow keep harping on American misdeeds as vallidation for some sort of punitive attack. To them, this is all about payback.
Fine. I understand that now, and no longer wish to debate whether 9/11 was deserved or not. No more strawmen, no more red herrings, please.
Bear with me for a minute, please.
When a country, or an organization or a person commits an act, it’s usually for a purpose. Sometimes governments (or people) do bad things for good reasons or good ends. Sometimes governments (or people) do bad things for bad ends…
Generally, (and I know this is debatable but humor me), doing bad things for good ends is a lot better than doing bad things for bad ends.
So. I ask you guys. What did 9/11 actually accomplish? What good came out of it? What end-goal did it advance?
Extra points if you can answer without using the words “America”, “American”, or “Chile.”
I’m serious. What lofty purpose was served by the murder of thousands of innocent civilians
First, thanks to bizzwire and gum for the warm fuzzies.
Second, what 9/11 accomplished was simply to focus world attention on bin Laden, al-Queda, and their brand of fundamentalist Islam.
It doesn’t even matter if that attention makes it more or less likely that fundamentalist Islam spreads. The one thing the terrorists cannot bear is to be thought unimportant. The Great Satan basically ignored bin Laden, even when he had his first crack at the WTC. Yes, we were trying to catch him, but on no more serious a level than we did looking for any other crackpot criminal. But if he can reach some level of geopolitical significance, by killing a few thousand people, then he and al-Queda can serve as a focal point for any disgruntled Third World type who looks at the dazzling prosperity of the West and feels like he has been left behind or ripped off.
So even if 9/11 means that his training camps and support base in Afghanistan is smashed, even if he is on the run for his life and will be until he dies (may Allah haste the day). He still is now important in [ul][li]his own eyes []the eyes of his fellow dissatisfied and violent losers, and especially []the eyes of the great enemy who he has hated for years and who was generally unaware and uninterested in his existence.[/ul][/li]
It is very similar to Lee Harvey, or Chuckie Manson, or Ted Kaszinski. Insignificant losers, with no way to attract the attention of the heartless world who overlooks their specialness. Until they hit on the idea of targetting those more successful than they. Of course they have some imagined grudge against their target, or some idiotic scenario of triggering Helter Skelter or freeing Cuba or something. In bin Laden’s case, it is his laundry list of non-negotiable demands, from implementing the Kyoto treaty to putting women in burqas. As if he gave five minutes’ thought to the plight of the Palestinians before issuing his manifesto. He just needed the political cover.
But that is not really the point. The point is to set yourself up as the vanguard of the proletariat, or the head of Islam United. The point is to scream, as loudly as possible, “Look at me! Look at me!” And if you kill thousands of innocent people, well, that just makes for a louder yell.
Extremists are always trying to jump to the head of the line. And if they can’t get the attention they feel they deserve by acting decently, they are perfectly willing to try something else. And keep trying, until they are killed. Because they don’t seriously commit to achieving any long-term goal. Attention is the goal.
I agree with that part. I always thought that 9-11 for ObL was simply a PR stunt. All those people had to die simply because ObL needed publicity.
However, there is a certain ruthless logic in why 9-11 had to happen. It has to do with a struggle for power inside fascistic totalitarian movements. It was documented again and again, at least since Great Terror after French revolution. When society is thrown in turmoil and various thugs get a grip at the power, when any constraints of legality and public decency are abolished, those thugs begin competing between each other who is the most ruthless of them all, killing more and more innocent people on the most idiotic pretenses. Such was a story behind Jacobin Terror, Stalinist Terror, Nazi Terror, Saddam Terror, finally Taliban Terror. The earmarks of them all was a complete apparent idiocy in the choice of targets. However, the real reason was an internal power fight. Triumph of totalitarian ideology makes such power fight inevitable. I never imagined the possibility of 9-11, but I knew that fascistic power fight was going on in Afghanistan when Taliban started destroying Buddha of Bamiyan. From there it was on to murder of Shah Massoud and 9-11, as we now know.