Well, I really didn’t think you took the “bored” part of that quote literally. Apparently you did. I considered the whole “attacked America because they hate our freedom” thing to be the point of that sentence.
Does not compute. Do you think you could perhaps spell out what the hell you are getting at without the strange pizza reference? Parts and wholes? I really have no idea what you are getting at so don’t know how to respond to this. Are you saying that Bush, by oversimplifying a complex situation into a cute sound bite is…what? Against pizza? Hates pepperoni and all it stands for? Wants to begin a war on Italians?
Its a complex situation with many factors. SOME of those factors ARE that the west, by its very existance and the freedoms granted to its citizens, is a real and direct threat to some of the fundamentalist Islam faction nutballs out there (as far as I know even Bush wasn’t saying that the ONLY reason they hate us is because of our freedom btw…just that its A reason they hate us).
Are there other factors? Certainly. But IMO this is one of the bigger ones. The other really big factor, again IMO, is to create a fundamentalist Islamic super state comprising much of the ME. And certainly the US support for Israel is a big factor in resentment towards the US in particular. I have serious doubts that past US transgressions, with the possible exception of US troops in Saudi, was a major factor in why AQ and ObL launched the 9/11 attacks though…except as a propaganda tool or as an excuse to murder several thousand unarmed civilians.
And see, I read the whole sentence together instead of simply disreguarding part of it and focusing completely on another part…as I think the point of the statement was to caracature the other side in as bad a light as possible (which is why I called it a strawman). However, if you want to disreguard part of the statement then you are right…its not a strawman as you have shown that Bush really did say "There are people who hate freedom. "…which is fairly close to what the OP said.
-XT
Exactly.
In related news, record spin from a SDMB post today destroyed three trailer parks.
And just in case anyone’s going to claim the OP didn’t give an exact quote, here it is:
*Americans are asking “Why do they hate us?”
They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.*
But to answer the OP, al Qaeda has always been pretty clear about what their goals are. They want American troops withdrawn from the middle east.
Why are you limiting your definition of “support” to mere military bases? We’ve been giving political and military support to the Saudis for over 60 years now:
Hey, don’t take my word for it, ask the intellectual conservatives:
In a word? Technology.
Technology has broadened the capabilities of the individual to the point where small groups of them are a force to be reckoned with. A force capable of attacks like 9/11. Airliners, Cell Phones, printing presses, currency transfer mechanisms, personal computers, the Internet. All of these mechanisms enable small groups of determined individuals to do what no other similar groups of individuals have been able to do in the scope of history. Kill 3,000+ of their enemies with only 19 losses of their own.
I hear a lot about policies in the Mid East, and there is some truth to it, as with most things. But the one thing, the one most important thing which made 9/11 happen was the broadening of the possible actions of individuals.
Let’s look at it through a historical lens. Think of the various nations and nation-states which have held positions of influence comprable to the modern US today. Rome, The Huns, The British Empire, or take it down a notch to local disputes where one side was so horribly outgunned. Israel and Palestine(modern times), Ireland and England(Bloody Sunday), Russia and Chechenya, Iraq and the Kurdish Minority, The French and Algiers. In every one of these cases I promise you it would be damn near trivial to find a group of people willing to sacrifice their personal fortunes and their lives to strike a 9/11 style blow against their enemies. What they lacked, what they always lacked, was the means and opportunity. Motive was never hard to come by. Never has been.
Everyone who is approaching the question of “Why did 9/11 happen?” through a lens of “motive” is spoiled for choice. As they always would be when looking at any nation or empire wielding the kind of resources and influence within it’s time and place in history that the US does in the modern world. The question is “what changed to allow these small populations of people who posess the motives to actually make significant attacks”? The answer is, of course, the Pandora’s box of technology. It’s open and there is nothing we can do about it now.
Now the question facing the US, and local players with influence and power like the US within their particular locale, is “What can be done to minimize the ability or motive of the attackers without sacrificing important interests/freedoms?” Nothing drastic can be done to reduce ability. The world is not willing to go back to the days of the horse and buggy.
Enjoy,
Steven
The problem in Saudi Arabia, rjung, is that the real alternatives are worse than the present reality. The Sauds are certainly a brutal religious dictatorship. But the people who will replace them are also brutal religious dictators. The main difference between the two sides is that one side favors the US and the other side doesn’t. So the US supporting the Sauds certainly makes pragmatic sense. It also makes some moral sense - because the Sauds want our support some of their worst instincts are modified. An anti-American state would have less limits on its actions. And there is the virtue of stability - if the Sauds collapse (although realistically it’s probably more like “when”), Arabia is going to experience a lot of suffering.
I think that Bush is certainly right when he says that Al-Quedah “hates our freedoms”-OBL would like nothing better than to impose a Taliban-like regime over Saudi Arabia. Reactionary Islam (of his brand) has no use for human rights, or the rights of women, or any western values. Remember Knomeini in Iran? he vowed to take Iran “back to the 13th century”-and in fact, in many ways, he did.
Let’s call a spade a spade: reactionary islam is a backward, intolerant, and ignorant creed. There is a reason why the islamic world is poor, dangerous, and generally unproductive…and it has a lot todo with that faith.
I neveer said they wouldn’t. But – and this is the key – ostensibly the new brutal religious dictators would be the ones placed into power by the Saudis themselves, and not “imposed from the outside” as the current Royal Family is perceived as.
There are a lot of pragmatic reasons why the US wants to maintain the status quo in Saudi Arabia, but that doesn’t escape the fact that from the locals’ POV, it’s a situation imposed by outsiders. You don’t have to be a radical religious fundamentalist to feel resentment at having your nation’s fate dictated by somebody else.
Just out of curiosity, ralph, have you ever considered that maybe calling folks derogatory names might not be the best way to get them to stop hating you?
We must be careful of who “they” are in this thread. The 20 or so guys who lived in tents and caves who actually carried out the Planes Operation are all dead. It is believed that at least some of them didn’t know it was a suicide operation. That leaves the few who did know, the rich Saudi former CIA associate who funded them, and the guy who conceived the atrocity in the first place, whoever that was. It is entirely possible that nobody else had the slightest clue what they were planning.
Why did this handful of muslims do this? The BBC made an extremely powerful documentary called The Power of Nightmares which charted the rise of Islamic Militancy in tandem with the rise of US NeoConservatism: watch out for a repeat on BBC America. It seems that the ultimate “reason for 9/11” began with the Muslim Brotherhood of Sayed Qutb, who travelled to America and saw the great, tempting dangers which liberal social freedom threatened. Seeing this as a threat to Islam, he founded an ideology rejecting Western liberalism: some of his followers had varying degrees of what they considered justified action in such a cause. One of them, Ayman Zawahiri, became strongly radical, advocating literal jihad against non-Muslims. His follower, Osama Bin Laden, took this fight to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. When that fight had been won, he took it to his former allies, the US. His specific reason was that US troops occupied the holy Arabian peninsula, but “because he hated our freedom” is perhaps not too absurd a summary either, really.
Again, this was a few guys who managed to cause an international war of muslim vs non-muslim with some penknives: they could arguably not have been happier with the results. We should keep this in mind if anything like it happens again.
Well, I think we’re all agreed that the al Qaeda sympathizers don’t like us much, agreed? That’s the simplest answer to Cisco’s question. Going up a level, we can ask why al Qaeda sympathizers hate us. The standard soundbyte reply “because they hate our freedoms” oversimplifies a complex situation to the point that it impedes any understanding of why we were attacked.
How useful would it be to claim that someone who dislikes pepperoni “hates our pizza”? Not very. Would such a gross simplification aid us in figuring out how to get said pizza hater to have a slice? Not at all. Likewise, picking one from among many possible reasons why al Q sympathizers do not like us, and bandying it it about as a complete explanation, is not helpful in understanding the situation. Granted, it’s not quite as useless as merely saying that the terrorists are all raving lunatics, but it’s not that big a step up either.
As I noted earlier, this is a simplification of the situation, but is basically correct. Just take it from the horse’s mouth:
Heheheh, you owe me a new Ironyometer.
The point is, at its very heart, fundamentalist islam does not admit of any valid government, except by God. So yes, to a muslim fundie, democracy is evil. I have a problem with that. Frst, everybody is free to believe what they wish. But don’t ask me to accept something that denies freedom to others. To accept Khomeini’s view of things is not just ignorant, it is dangerous to people who like their own philosophies.
The OP asks **“Why did 9/11 happen?”. ** And Steve responds:
This reminds me of the following Q&A
Q: How can the mighty US invade a little country like Iraq
A: Because we can
So, a bunch of “individuals” kill over 3,000 people because they simply can? … Due to today’s “Technology?”. This is as absurd as saying “People don’t kill people, guns do”.
So, Mtgman, here is my response to the OP.
As of today, we do not know the answer. We can all hypothesize, depending on whether we believe in the current mainstream media in the US, listening to the Europeans’ POV, or whether we are simply in love with conspiracy theories. But, we don’t really know “the truth”. However, I believe there are a few people who really do know the truth, including the masterminds of the event itself. Whether they are alive or already dead, we don’t know either.
I suppose my answer is: The history will tell, many decades from now.
Remember the Time Magazine of 1953, interpreting the events in Iran as a “popular uprising” against Mossadegh to bring back the Shah. It took 40 years until the CIA papers became public, and finally in the 1990s, then US Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, had to formally apologize to the Iranian people for what the US did to Iran’s democracy back in 1953.
Maybe in the 2040s, we’ll be able to finally answer the OP’s legitimate question of why the 9/11 happened in 2001.
Why did 9/11 happen?
Perhaps you could ask yourself “What would make me do what the 19 hijackers did?”
Suppose the U.S. was a small, weak nation and Saudi Arabia was the superpower that was staring to throw it’s weight around and talking about bringing Islamic law and culture to the rest of the world. Would you feel threatened?
To bring American culture to the Islamic world means a destruction of their culture. I don’t blame them for not wanting their girls to grow up idolizing Britney Spears. I don’t blame them for not wanting their sons to grow up listening to gansta rap. I don’t blame them for not wanting their political dialogue to be dominated by Ann Coulter and Al Franken. I don’t blame religious people who don’t want to see their entire belief system mocked in their children’s classrooms. I don’t blame them for not wanting to see their heads of state subjected to political witch hunts and hampered at every turn by political obstructionists (like every damn U.S. President in my lifetime). I don’t blame them for not wanting to go to a movie about an serious, important subject and having it turned into a fucking soap opera (Pearl Harbor). I don’t blame them for not wanting their 12-year-old daughters talking to sexual perverts on the internet, or getting pregnant at 13. Oh, God, I could go on and on, but I have to end this rant somewhere. Anyway, this is what American culture represents to them. They don’t want it, and (if you haven’t already guessed), I don’t blame them.
That is, they have a fear (consciously realized or not) that their culture simply cannot compete with ours on its merits. Some of them draw the inference that the only way to preserve the former is to destroy the latter. Some of the ones who reach that conclusion are willing to act upon it.
I don’t blame us for being able to have the choice to do all those. What choice do people in a culture such as Saudi Arabia have eh?
I don’t see a culture where women can’t drive can’t vote, can’t be seen in public as anything to be preserved, and that generic view of Western culture, which you show in the worst possible light, is anything to go by. Plenty of Muslim girls are sold off in Afghanistan for basic necessities such as wheat or money, why the hell should that be tolerated?
And if you hate it, then leave, go to Saudi Arabia and see how that tolerant enlightened culture welcomes you :rolleyes:
Some people seriously don’t have a clue.
You’re joking right? Please say you’re kidding with that statement. In much of the Middle East, voting is a farce, or a joke, and hey some don’t even get to vote at all! Problem solved eh?
Its strange how you think its only Muslims who feel strongly about this, whats the President of the United States a born again?