From The Atlantic [Monthly].
Lama Pacos, I hear you. And I think you are right. But what happens when one feels empathy for all sides? I resent how the Palestinians have had their land taken from them and been impoverished and persecuted. And who has been more persecuted on this earth than the Jews? They should have been allowed access to a “homeland” and to Jerusalem – peacefully. And you would think the Jews would have more empathy for the oppressed!
Meanwhile, Americans and Arabs have too many misconceptions about each other to ever be making war. But there we are!
I think I can buy into the “bunch of guys” theory. Sometimes you will get suicide bombers. Sometimes you will get soccer players. Sometimes you will get a White House Staff and Cabinet.
And sometimes you will be able to tell the difference.
Tris
But the “poverty” explanation is all wrong. How many terrorists from Africa are there? How many terrorists from Bolivia? How many terrorists from Haiti? How many terrorists from Guatemala?
The guys who pulled of 9/11 weren’t poor, they were wealthy. If you’re a Haitian who’s wealthy enough to fly to the US you aren’t blowing up skyscrapers to protest the poverty of Haiti, you’re living the good life in America. And if they’re poor, they’re stuck in Haiti. And if they’re violent, they strike against the local elites, not America.
I think a big problem is that wealthy people in most poor countries have the idea that they deserve to be wealthy. They like being wealthy and want to stay wealthy. They buy into the system, they don’t want to destroy it. And if you don’t buy into the system you stay poor. But the oil wealth of the middle east creates an imbalance. You have cash flowing in that people don’t see as earned. You have people with the money to travel to the west who don’t buy into the system.
Poor people in the Middle East don’t travel to the US or Europe to become terrorists. They carry out attacks locally. The terrorists bombings in Europe were carried out by people who had lived in Europe their whole lives. The 9/11 attacks were done by middle class people, not oppressed peasants or proletarians.
Aren’t most ‘revolutionaries’ middle class? Che Guervara and Fidel (who was a lawyer) springs to mind, both were in professions or families who were wealthy. Same with Lenin and Mao. Most poor people are more concerned with getting food or providing for their families, so don’t have the time (unless it is an exception to the rule) to go out and bring down the government/s. It seems those from the middle/upper class have an urge to help their poorer brethren and are usually the only ones with the means and ability to do so. Pretty strange though, if you take the middle class in Egypt and compare it to the one in China, which one is going to be more inclined to attack the establishment rather than joining it?
Just because they don’t strike at the United States doesn’t make them not terrorists. You missed the point entirely. Poverty breeds the seeds for terrorism. Poor terrorists attack where and what they can. Those who have the resources and free time to plan more elaborate attacks do so. Those large attacks also continue the cycle of attacks.
Just because your news broadcasts don’t report on bombing, killings, hostage takings, in Africa or South America doesn’t mean they don’t happen regularly. Just because they don’t strike at the States directly doesn’t mean they aren’t terrorist attacks.
One of the major terrorists has been quite clear about why he hates us. Straight from the horse’s mouth.
Briefly, it is because we support Israel, and are not a Islamic theocracy. He lists many of the details (we have a stock market, buy and sell liquor, allow gay rights, have a secular government, etc.). At least for him, “because he hates our freedom” is not too far off. Why he gets any traction is another matter.
Regards,
Shodan
Well be happy in the knowledge that gay Muslims will bring down any totalitarian religious order 
I think FormerMarineGuy has it partially right. Troops in the MidEast region represent Democracy and a lifestyle that is not compatible with Islam (as they practice it). We whine about the right to see Janet Jackson’s harpooned nipple while they put sacks over their women and restrict them from any public appearance without a certified chaperone. In the age of atomic weapons that’s one hell of a cultural gulf.
The fuel to the hatred has many components:
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While most religions rely on repetitive affirmation to reinforce a belief structure Islam takes it to a new level by insisting it be done 5 times a day. Fundamental belief is easier to manipulate into violent action at this level.
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Islam has retained a feudal hierarchy that most religions have outgrown over time. Instead of a top-down power structure it has a flat level of multiple leaders who in turn maintain a military style fiefdom. Each capable of waging a holy war through individual interpretation.
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The feudal nature of Islam maintains a cultural acceptance of Taliban schools where education consists entirely of learning the Quran and historical rejection (hatred) of everything else. These are literally military camps that train children from birth to follow the religious directives of the school. Much of this is done in regions of extreme poverty so there are no alternatives to survival.
Interpreted as shorthand for “they fear that the example of Western freedom will be more attractive to their children and grandchildren than their own ways, leading to the decline of the latter”, it makes perfect sense to me.
Actually now that you put it that way it does. Too bad Bush doesn’t articulate that well.
The terrorists have a clear political objective: they want all non-Muslims to leave Muslim countries. They want Americans and our allies out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia. They also want Israel cut off from foreign support so the Israelis can be driven out. And they want to overthrow governments in Muslim countries that they feel are supporting a non-Muslim presense in the Muslim world.
They attacked the British back when they were a major presense in the Middle East. They attacked the Israelis ever since Israel became a country. They attacked the Soviets when they occupied Afghanistan. And they began to attack us hardcore after we based troops in the Middle East in 1991.
Um… right. And if they get what they want they’ll never dream of thinking that Spain used to be a Muslim country 1000 years ago. And that many European countries now have sizable Muslim minorities that must be at a minimum “protected” from corruptive infulence. No, all that has to be done is for the West to pull out, sacrifice Israel, and they’ll just rest on their laurels and let the rest of the world continue leading its life.
Right :dubious: :rolleyes:
Yeah, having troops in the middle east must be why Theo Van Gogh was stabbed to death for making ‘Submission’.
Standing up for Israel must be why the Netherlands is terrified of its militant Muslim population.
Supporting the war in Iraq must be why Muslims are rioting and burning cars in France.
Supporting the U.S. must be why there’s such a big Islamist terror problem in places like Indonesia.
Why is it so hard to accept that there is an ideology at play here, which is fundamentally opposed to our values? There is a large radical Islamist movement throughout the world which seeks to impose its culture and value on everyone else through violence and force. You guys are insisting on viewing this through the prism of, “It must be something we did.”
Yeah, if ‘what we did’ is simply to exist and be successful.
To a certain brand of fundamentalist nutjob, our very existence is a threat to what they believe is the proper way to live. They see their kids listening to western music, their women shaking off the burkas, and they don’t like it. They believe that we are infidels, unclean animals who don’t deserve to exist and who’s culture is intruding on them, and they are fighting back.
That’s what Bin Laden says is going on, and he’s the big cheese. Why is it so hard to believe him?
Here are Bin Laden’s demands, in his own words:
blah blah blah… He even managed to get Clinton’s BJ into the act.
So there you have it. All Bin Laden wants is for the U.S. to abandon its constitution, take up sharia law, forbid gambling, homosexuality, ‘debauchery’, and the banking system.
Oh wait, there’s more:
Gee, it took him quite a while to get to the part about getting out Muslim countries. Oh, and no support at all for Israel, and keep out of the way as Islamist terrorists seize power wherever they can.
Oh, I guess we don’t get to pick and choose which things to give up. Too bad for those who think abandoning Israel and withdrawing from the Middle East will fix things up. There’s still that pesky banking system and those obnoxious human rights for women and homosexuals that can keep this Jihad going indefinitely.
damn, Sam Stone - that saved me about a weeks worth of carefully worded debate. You drove that nail clear to China. I suspect Europe is in the middle of a major wake-up call.
I don’t agree that it is the fault of The West or that it is (some vague) “our” fault. However, lumping all sorts of disparate actions together under one big umbrella as if there was some monolithic belief driving each event means that we will respond to various events incorrectly. (In this case, we simply use “Islamism” (or even Islam) to replace our old bugbear “Communism.”)
For example, the riots in France were not carried out by Muslims crying “Allahu Akbar!” It was a series of riots of disenfrachised second generation immigrants, generally poorly educated, overwhelmingly not religious, and opposed by the leaders and the people of the mosques which their grandparents attended (because their parents had, in many cases, also fallen away from Islam). They were only culturally Muslim because they was the role assigned them by the French society.
Similar analyses can be carried out in other Muslim “problem” areas. In the Philipines, the “bad” muslims are the grandchildren of the “Communists” who sought independence for their islands in the middle of the 20th century who were, in turn, the grandchildren of the “Muslims” who sought indepenence for their islands at the beginning of the 20th century–the consistent thread being their perceived oppression by the majority and a desire to separate themselves, using whatever movement would best bring them support from the outside.
Chechnya fought desperately to avoid conquest by Russia, resisted inclusion in the Soviet Union, and finally attempted to break free, again, when the U.S.S.R. dissolved. Its Muslim population is at odds with the Orthodox Christianity and secular humanism found throughout Russia, today, but they are only an “Islamist” problem in that they can get help from other Muslims (and the Islamists are the best organized and funded), not because they have a deep desire to spread Islam across Russia. (Of course, the suppression by the Russians, to the extent that it is linked to Islam, will provide a repeat performance of Iran and Indonesia in the future, creating the impression among the Chechnyans that only the Islamists were willing to support them in their fight for freedom, thus winning more converts to that cause.)
Even in places where Islam actually appears to be at the root of many problems, a simplistic declaration that it is religious in nature misses a lot of context. Indonesia and Iran had fairly small Islamist populations that were suppressed by governments that were authoritarian. When the people at large began to look for ways to remove those authoritarian regimes, it was the oppressed Muslim groups that provided organized cores of resistance so that when the authoritarian regimes were finally overthrown, they had both the organization to bid for power themselves and the popularity that attends the image of resistance fighters.
The Islamist movement, particularly in its Wahabbist manifestation, is very much a serious problem in the world. Treating every situation in which Muslims are involved as a problem of “Islam” will simply send more converts to the cause of the Islamists.
Obviously there are nuances. But Islam is a thread that weaves its way through all of them. And Bin Laden and his ilk seek to use it as a unifying force.
This is no different than what happened in WWII. The Axis wasn’t all composed of Aryan anti-Semitic goosesteppers working to build a 1000 year Reich. Rather, it was built up of people fighting many conflicts for many reasons, who all decided to ally on one side because they thought it would further their goals.
And even though some members of the Axis may have had lesser goals, once they joined the larger movement, there could be no victory until the core movement was smashed.
Damn, I knew the Senate should have convicted Clinton in his impeachment trial.
Now we know 9/11 really was Clinton’s fault!
No -
It was Janet Jackson and her wardrobe malfunction.
Regards,
Shodan
Except in WWII those who joined the Axis did so with their entire nation’s population. This is in no way like what happened in WWII. Not a single nation-state has sided with “terrorism”. WWII was nation against nation, population against population; this is nation (the United States) declaring “war” against (population) whomever it deems to be sufficiently opposed to its agenda.
Their is no way to smash a core movement if the movement itself doesn’t have a core.