What was that core movement that had to be smashed, though?
Certainly not genocidal behavior - primarily a German hang up (though the ustashi did their thing too).
Militarism? - common though not universal throughout the axis, but also common outside the axis
Vicious and virulent nationalism? - hardly universal within the axis nor scarce outside the axis nations
Fascism? The Iberian nations were allowed to continue business as usual throughout and after the war.
Anti-Communism? This is the biggest common thread throughout the Axis. Almost none of the axis minor allies had any beef with or any desire to fight the western allies at all but were all very concerned about the dangers of Bolshevism. Propoganda used to induce non-Germans from the occupied regions to enlist in the SS was centered around the European fight against the savage Bolshevik hordes. So was WWII a crusade against the anti-bolshevik front?
I didn’t think so.
Treating Islamism as the common thread (or worse, as the common threat) just ain’t useful. The problem in the Phillipines will not be helped by laying waste to Tehran. Eliminating the Wahabists in Saudi Arabia will not solve the ethnic problems of southeast Asia and Indonesia. Treating Islamism as the core movement also requires incredible care so that the anti-Islamist actions are not perceived as anti-Islam.
Like Bolshevism in the 1930’s, Islamism (as an ism) thrives only due to a lack of apparent alternatives to a miserable status quo.
About the only theory I’ve heard that makes no sense is “they hate our freedoms.” I’m reminded of the Confederate soldier being asked by a Yankee why he was fighting them. “Because you’re over here.”
Poverty plays a part. The despotic governments in the region have an interest in fanning the anti-west flames in order to keep the heat off themselves. Better for them that the poor masses riot against the US and Israel than against their own corrupt government. The only way that the despots stay in power is keep the poor focused on something else. The west is just a convenient target.
They haven’t forgotten the Crusades. Forces from Christian-dominated nations setting up shop in their corner of the world isn’t something that they accept. I think they see the west as a threat to their religion and way of life, and based on past (distant past, mind you) one can hardly blame them.
Except that (until after 9/11) the US only maintained a presence in Muslim countries in which the governments invited us. Saudi Arabia being the prime example.
I wonder how much Osama would have liked it if, in 1990, Saddam had overrun Saudi Arabia and kept Kuwait. Thank Allah there were no Americans there!
…which pissed off a sizable number of the Saudi citizenry, who – already convinced that the Saud Royal Family were a bunch of corrupt pigs who hoarded their nation’s oil profits for themselves – saw our presence as an affirmation that the United States merely paid a lot of lip service to freeing repressed people, but would gladly help the repressors remain in power when it suited us to do so.
Oddly enough, given that one of bin Laden’s original demands was for the US to withdraw its forces from Saudi Arabia, it almost seems like the Bush Administration’s subsequent reassignment of US forces to Iraq was a way of “giving in” to the terrorists. Almost enough to make me wonder if the Bush and Bin Laden families were really in cahoots here…
And by left alone you’re referring to the entire planet? Can we go a month without a major Islamo-terrorist bombing somewhere in the World? Maybe the religion of peace isn’t an oxymoron but a simple translation error and it’s really the religion of pieces.
Not all of them. Just, you know, freedom to have same-sex partners, freedom to be a woman and have equal rights of men, freedom to drink alcohol if you choose, freedom to charge interest on loans, freedom to speak out against Islam, freedom to depict Mohammed, freedom to live your life outside the strictures of sharia law…
“They hate us for our freedoms” can be translated as, “They hate us because we refuse to live by their nutbar fundamentalist religious code, and we have the temerity to be proud of our culture, and we’re so successful that other people want to be like us - including the kids in Muslim countries.”
In other words, we’re winning the war of ideas, so they’re fighting a war of terrorism. Poverty doesn’t enter into it. There are plenty of rich Muslim terrorists, and even more desperately poor people who don’t engage in terrorism at all.
It’s funny how twenty years ago, when the Soviets were the ones in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden was fighting them instead. I guess back then the Soviet Union must have had more of those freedoms he hates than the United States had.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we should pull out of the Middle East just because the terrorists want us to. We can’t let the worst elements of society dictate what the rest of us are going to do. But denying the terrorists have an actual rational political goal is just another one of the lies that’s being fed to the American public.
On a further note, most terrorists are attacking us for the same reason most people do anything - because they’re doing what their leaders told them to do. So the question isn’t why are the terrorists attacking us, it’s why did the leaders decide to attack us.
And as for other reasons that get put out there - there’s a thing called propaganda. If you know there are issues that will motivate your followers, you throw them out there. Bin Laden knows that claiming the west is trying to export decadence will motivate Muslims to his cause. Bush knows that claiming Muslims hate our freedom will motivate Americans to his cause. But each man has his own cause which can be determined by his actions not his speechs.
What hasn’t been discussed is the case of muslims who live in liberal, western democracies (like denmark). They are free to follow their religion, and dress their women the way they want to, but they cannot seem to accept the idea that government should be independent of religion. It seems to me that they want some of the west but not all. Just wondering how islam will evolve in western countries-I’m quite sure that its adherents will become secularized, as nobody wants a religious-based government. I can’t imagine Denmark allowing sharia law to replace its legal system.
Well, of course not. The Western world has had better munitions to impose their will on the Muslim World for a bit over 300 years. No equal footing, at all.
Ryan, do you think Indonesia and Turkey are bigoted, poor, backward, and violent?
Would you say that Nazi Germany was a representative example of Christianity?
I don’t think that folks who are championing the notion that Islam=violence have much ground to complain about “simplistic” comparisons, especially when then invoking “cultural and economic implications.”