Actually this is false.
This is true.
Read Milestones by Said Qutb
The problem with the narrative you present is that it completely ignores the explicit reasons that people like the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda have outlined as their complaints against the West. They hate Liberals with the fire of any Evangelical preacher, with the difference that they will strap bombs to their chest to prove it.
We are a bunch of whores to them.
And to broaden your rather narrow and shallow perspective, along with your revisionist apologetics, I might suggest you watch this film: Why We Fight.
Blowback is indeed a bitch.
:rolleyes:
I am kind of tired of people trying to say that the war is about things other than what the people we are fighting state explicitly that it is about.
Not everything in this world can be reduced to Marxist dogma of class struggle. I know people think that’s the only egalitarian way to look at it. I mean of course you can’t insult any religion except for Christianity without being some kind of bigot. The fact of the matter is the Islamists state explicitly and straight up, what their intentions are. It’s not narrow or revisionist. They have been stating it for the record for decades.
I disagree. A foreign culture is being imposed on them. That was the purpose of the war: to impose western style government and culture on them. We do not want to allow them the freedom of choosing their own culture, they must have ours.
They are Muslims fighting Muslims because they are Muslims involved in a civil war which was prompted by the removal of the functioning government by the USA. What’s your point? Some leaders are clerics. So what? Others are tribal leaders, political leaders, warlords, etc. So what?
I have seen George Bush and millions of Americans preching the same shit. Thank goodness reality is beginning to become obvious and America is finally turning around somewhat.
He is not a cleric. And whatever he says is rhetoric. America has actually killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and supported and encouraged Iraq when it attacked Iran. So give me a break with the rhetoric. As long as it is only words I’ll give Ahmajinejad a break. I will never give Bush a break for the death and destruction he caused.
You are wrong. These attacks are part of the problems in Kashmir between India and Pakistan and have nothing to do with Islam except in the fevered imaginations of those who see in black and white.
Saddam Hussein was a party of one. Iraqis didn’t have a choice. He rose to power through force and maintained it through force. The current government is represented by the people of Iraq who were voted in by the people of Iraq. The constitution that followed represents their efforts.
Saddam Hussein was not a functioning government. He was a self appointed dictator who ruled through force which involved killing thousands of his own people.
Lashkar-e-Toiba has nothing to do with religion.? You’re actually saying that the largest terrorist organization in South Asia, founded by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, has nothing to do with Islam?
From Wiki:
**History
Formed in 1991 in the Kunar province of Afghanistan, the Lashkar-e-Toiba is the military wing of the Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad (MDI), an Islamic fundamentalist organisation of the Ahle-Hadith sect in Pakistan. The MDI is based in Muridke near Lahore, Pakistan and is headed by Prof. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, who is also the amir of Lashkar-e-Toiba. He now heads an Islamic charity, Jamaat ud Dawa, which is suspected to finance operations for Lashkar-e-Toiba. Its first presence in Jammu and Kashmir was recorded in 1993 when 12 Pakistani and Afghan mercenaries infiltrated across the Line of Control (LoC) in tandem with the Islami Inquilabi Mahaz, another Islamic military organization then active in the Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir[11].
Following the U.S. classification of the outfit as a foreign “terrorist” organization, which put pressure on the Pakistani government to curb overt activities of the organization, the top leadership of MDI initiated a reshuffle of the parent outfit. Presently, the MDI claims that it has been reorganized into two independent wings, one exclusively devoted to preaching of Islam with Prof. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed as its chief, the other to carry on its violent campaign in Kashmir under the leadership of Kashmiri scholar Maulana Abdul Wahid Kashmiri.
Objective
The LeT’s professed ideology goes beyond merely challenging India’s sovereignty over the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The Lashkar’s agenda, as outlined in a pamphlet titled “Why are we waging jihad”, includes the restoration of Islamic rule over all parts of South Asia, Russia and even China. Further, the outfit is based on a sort of Islamist fundamentalism preached by its mentor, the JuD. It seeks to bring about a union of all Muslim majority regions in countries that surround Pakistan. In its history the organisation has shown scant respect for human life and has carried out terrorist activities of great brutality. Many of its objectives are inspired by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan. With the American presence and military pressure in Afghanistan, the ISI lost its protege organisation- The Taliban’s strategic utility. Organisations like the LeT have been used to absorb the resilient remnants of The Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives in the region and to salvage the strategic objective of using the tool of terror for state purpose, particularly against neighbouring India, by the Pakistani state.[11]
The outfit had claimed that it had assisted the Taliban militia and Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network in Afghanistan during November and December 2002 in their fight against the US-aided Northern Alliance**
It could not be any more black and white.
NO! It’s Poverty and hurt pride!!!
This is clearly and obviously untrue. I’ll start with one- Cameroon.
Of course, if you are just going to define every incident of conflict involving a Muslim as terrorism, why are we even talking? Obviously Muslims haven’t perfected a perfect peaceful world any more than we have.
No; it’s a collaborationist government, created under the guns of America, in accordance to American dictates, and illegitimate. Not to mention near powerless.
Rather like we are in Iraq.
The difference between Saddam’s regime and today’s government is that people risked their lives by not voting for him versus risking their lives TO vote for the current elected body. Today there is representation from all 3 major regions which did not exist under Saddam. This is the first time Iraqis have ever had a voice in their government. It couldn’t be any more legitimate.
Yeah, right. I recall reading at the time how they were told “vote or else”. If they have the choice of voting or we cut off their food, they’ll vote. That won’t make them respect the government we foisted on them.
I just love it when Saddam Hussein or Hitler or Franco are depicted as single-handedly, with the brute force of their bare hands, subjugating millions and millions of people. That is just not so. Saddam Hussein had a huge following. I am not here to defend him but (1) his government managed to function better than the present puppet government and (2) in any case, it is not the legitimate business of America to go around the world toppling governments it does not like. It was wriong when the soviets did it and it is wrong when America does it. It is against the UN charter which was written by America. Which just shows that what it really means is that others shouldn’t do it but it is OK when America does it. Because America is spreading democracy, freedom and apple pie which is clearly superior to Islam.
The notion that people want to vote above everything else is just so stupid that it is beyond words. Ask people if they would rather vote or have much less risk of losing life or limb or home and most people will forgo voting without a thought. Hell, most people in America don’t care to vote. Why would they in cultures where voting is even less in their culture? The argument is stupid.
The idea that people want to vote above everything else or that they value it so highly is just so stupidly simplistic and so obviously against observation that it is just pure propaganda. In countries where people can vote large numbers abstain voluntarily. Now say you offer them something else in exchange. Say you offered Americans $100 in exchange for their right to vote. I bet large numbers would take it. Now offer them $1000. I bet a very substantial number would take the money rather than exercising their right to vote.
Millions of Mexicans do not seem to value their right to vote so highly when they would rather live in America illegally where they can’t vote but they can eat. And they are leaving Mexico, a country which is way better shape than Iraq.
Not to mention that the whole voting thing is a western thing which has little or no tradition in eastern cultures where people had other means of feeling integrated, like family, clans and tribes. Trying to impose on them our style of doing things is a futile as them trying to convert us to Islam.
So just give me a break with this voting stupidity. Iraqis would rather have food, electricity and security than vote for a bunch of clowns who can’t get anything done and who have no effective power beyond what America gives them and allows them.
Watched a documentary recently on the post-communist changes in Russia and China and what was striking among the new middle and upper classes was the lack of interest in democracy.
So long as they had the trappings of the good life they simply didn’t care. Behind it all was the understanding that there was a tacit bargain going on. They left the old power elite in its new capitalist friendly guise get on with running things and they in turn would leave you alone to enjoy your new wealth and opportunities.
And yet they did.
Sailor already covered why. Apparently you skipped over that part – rather convenient I must say.
Meanwhile, here is a cite for his assertions: Many voters may have been coerced to the polls
Sham it was, sham it remains…
Uh huh. They risked getting shot at for voting which is the exact opposite of what Sailor said.
As much as I’ve enjoyed this hijack of the thread it doesn’t change anything related to the ongoing Islamic connection to worldwide terrorist attacks. It is the direct result of training and support provided by private armies of Islamic leaders.
Now is the dangerous part. The Indian people will want to get some retribution. To have a terrorist event that caused the city to shake like that and then let it go would be hard. But we do not even know for sure who did it and why. But,damn it,many will want something to be done. The potential for escalation is there. It is hard to keep a cool head when you are a politician and your people have been killed. Like the Bushwacker after 911. The people wanted somebody to pay . The people could have been talked into going after damn near anyone.The people rallied around BUsh like he had a clue.
WTF? I just gave you examples that prove the contrary.
Ask pretty much any Iraqi if he would rather live in America without the right to vote or in Iraq with the right to vote and see what they say. There has been a mass exodus of refugees leaving Iraq (of which America has taken ridiculously low numbers and other countries have had to take them). It seems they value their lives over the right to vote.
But I guess it is a nice fiction to think we gave them something in exchange for all the misery we inflicted on them. Sort of like the Spanish Inquisition could know they were ultimately doing it all with the prupose of saving souls which was so much more important than anything else. Now it is the right to vote. The rest, including life and limb, are insignificant when you consider the importance of the right to vote.
And the invasion of Iraq as well as countless other wars and attrocities done by America were done by American Christian leaders. Which proves what? That American Christians are awful people?