By “elsewhere” do you mean “not in that letter?” Because it’s an eight page document, and the ranting about American cultural and social values starts at the top of page four.
Of course, all right-thinking people know about the endless wars the US fought against the Arab world in the decades prior to 2001 in which it killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. By the by, Arab isn’t a synonym for Muslim.
I’m not sure “look at all these helpless people we’ve fucked up the arse, and they’ve never even screamed !” is a good argument.
For defending US Mideast policy? Of course not, but that’s clearly not what I’m doing.
No, no.
It seemed to me you were saying “But look, we’ve fucked many people in the arse before who’ve never attacked us. Ergo, if *these *people we’re fucking in the arse attack us it can’t be just because we’re doing reconnaissance by fire up their keister”
Well, it can’t. There have to be some other factors which cause this result. The point is that our policy cannot solely be responsible. Look at it this way: for all our meddling in the Arab world, the UK has been meddling far more and for longer. And yet the UK is a secondary target of Muslim terrorism.
I’m not saying US foreign policy isn’t largely responsible - although that is not to say that some of our meddling wasn’t necessary - but logic tells us it isn’t the only factor.
I don’t think Ron Paul is nuts, just deluded about many things which make his foreign policy ideas look relatively sane.
As to hardcore Ron Paul supporters, I honestly believe they’re nuts. Say folks, if you really want to boost Ron’s popularity, you’ll stop writing letters to the editor of newspapers complaining about the media’s lack of coverage of the Paul juggernaut. The more that sane folks discover what’s he for, the quicker he fades into deserved obscurity.
Who says there’s any need to choose?! 
I agree. I think Ron Paul is an honest man who will say what he believes regardless of the political cost. But I think many of the things he believes are nuts.
Although I think what he said in the quote in the OP was generally accurate. Al Qaeda did not attack America because they hated our way of life. They attacked America because there were American troops stationed in Muslim countries. As far as Al Qaeda was concerned we could fornicate all we wanted back home as long as we left Muslim countries. (And as far as Al Qaeda is concerned, Israel should be a Muslim country.)
Paul should have gone on to point out that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.
It’s not a question of who was present in the Middle East first or who meddled the most in the past. Al Qaeda was looking at who was in the Middle East in 2001. And there were a lot more Americans than Britons.
We aren’t bulldozing them off their ancestral land moving them into ghettos behind barbed wire.
This exactly. I think his username really befits him… I can’t be moderated for that can I? 
I know Arab isn’t a synonym for Muslim, however I don’t think much good comes from bringing religion into it. A lot of people in these countries are atheist today, just like in western society and in Israel.
Of course Islam is used as a rallying cry very often, and I believe the leaders also truly believe in Islam and Jihad. However, (and it’s a big however), they would not conduct this “Jihad” if none of the Arab world was destroyed and if their civilians weren’t slaughtered. People growing up after seeing their families killed by the US can grow up extremely bitter, but it mightn’t be until 20 years later that they get a chance to unleash their bitterness.
In a lot of respects, Bin Laden was quite convenient for the US to pinpoint 9/11 on, because he was very religious and he arguably didn’t have much reason to be so angry with the US (he didn’t want the US in Saudi Arabia and then was expelled himself or something). Bin Laden was considered a trouble-maker in the Arab world also, he wasn’t a poster-boy they could/would put up as a hero from a war-torn life ruined by the US… he grew up very wealthy. But he could only manage to pull it off because of the hatred for the US in many parts of the Arab world and beyond… the US has left dirty bombs, the notorious “Agent Orange” and more in places like Vietnam, causing disgusting deformaties to this day.
Okay, so US Mideast policy is solely responsible for anti-American Islamic terrorism. Got it.
No, wait, that still makes no fucking sense.
What makes you think that power was his main motivation as opposed to a sincere belief in his cause?
People who sincerely believe in their cause rarely reach positions of power.
Why doesn’t it make sense?
You want to know why the Holocaust happened? Because the Nazis really hated the Jews.
It doesn’t have to be complicated just because it’s evil.
In fact, I would tend to believe that terrorists are likely honest people, or they wouldn’t put their life in jeopardy. However, you’re talking more precisely about “terrorist masterminds”.
If it allowed them to funnel quite a lot of money in their pockets, and granted them a rather comfortable and not too dangerous life, I would double-guess their convictions. I understand for instance that it seems to be what’s currently happening with a number of Taliban leaders, who’d rather stay in their nice houses in Pakistan than be on the front line.
However, Bin Laden was a fucking rich guy with quite a lot of political clout. His career choice didn’t exactly improve his lot in life. He might have dreamed of becoming a new Saladin, but yes, I think he was probably more motivated by convictions than by lust for power.
I don’t think it’s true for revolutionaries and such people (and I think that Bin Laden and his followers belong to this category, since their goal is to change the world). They have to believe in their cause to take all the risks associated with their endeavors. And since sometimes they succeed, they then reach positions of power.
By the way, it seems to me that the apparent integrity and selflessness of their members has been a significant cause of the appeal of Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood or the Hamas (though I wouldn’t say so for Al Qaida, for whom, IMHO, the appeal was its ability to bloody the nose of western powers).
But “Arab” isn’t a synonym for “Middle Eastern” either, because not all people in the Middle East are Arab. For example, Iraq and Saudia Arabia are Arab countries. Iran and Afghanistan are not.
What on earth are you talking about? When do you think all this happened?
Explain to all of us exactly when the United States killed “hundreds of thousands” of Muslims (I’ll even spot you the fact that most Muslims aren’t Arabs) in the decades before 9/11. I’ll even give you a whole century. How many Muslims did the United States kill between 1901 and 2001?
I’ll get you started. There were 3,664 Iraqi civilians killed in the Gulf War.