What a steaming load. A highly motivated bunch of nationalist fighters supported by the majority of Afghans managed to wear down a disinterested minority force of foreign conscripts working for a fragmented and ineffective government.
Yes because Islamism is a viable and better ideology than the West holds dear doesn’t it?
Jeez, is there anything you find good with the West?
That pretty much sums up my annoyance with self-loathing Westerners on both the left (“they were driven to it because their nations were threatened by American imperialism”) and the right (“they were driven to it because their culture was threatened by American decadence”). Feh.
Some small number of people will always choose to use it.
I see where you’re coming from though. You seem to be arguing that there is a much larger resevoir of resentment and discontent in a much larger non-terrorist segment of the population which feeds and enables the tiny minority. Thus the elevation of these radicals to a political movement(however fringe) as opposed to isolated serial killers. If there had been widespread discontentment and anger with the US University systems then the Unibomber may have been considered a political figure instead of a nutjob. Just like the terrorists in Northern Ireland were political fighters(and Chechenya) instead of serial killers. They represent a tiny portion of a much larger disaffected class.
My arguement is, there will always be a sufficiently large disaffected class. You can’t have an imbalance of power(military, economic, what have you) like there exists in Chechnya, Palestine, US-Mideast, etc. without a large class of resentful and disaffected people. No emperor has ever been universally loved. I don’t think it is possible on this resource-poor little mudball of ours(barring some kind of Star Trek-ish revolutions in resource production and distribution). Unlike previous eras in history(Roman empire, British empire, etc.) technology has granted the power to make massive strikes like 9/11 to small fringes of even medium-size groups of disaffected individuals.
I’m not saying it is wrong to try to figure out if there is something, policy, economic actions, etc. which is irritating large populations of people. I’m just saying there will always be something that the US(or anyone in a similar position of power) does which pisses off some segment of the population of the planet. As technology and education grow, even the tiny fringes of those segments become empowered to make strikes like 9/11. You can’t please everyone all the time. With the individual empowerment which comes with education and technology, that small segment that you can’t please can still cause major trouble.
Enjoy,
Steven
You seem fixated on this and continue to disreguard any of the OTHER things I wrote…like my actual answers to your OP. Do you agree, disagree, think I’m totally wacked? You don’t say. You want to continue with hammering me on this one chance remark, which I originally just said off hand as the statement vaguely annoyed me. Ok, I’ll play along and hijack briefly to answer you…its your OP after all. 
Is this a joke? No, I read your OP as I read it. I wasn’t joking…I DID think it was a strawman to put together the bored bit with the ‘hates us for our freedom’ thing. Why? Because it attempts to paint with a VERY broad brush by caracaturization when this view, if it exists at all, is from a very narrow and small number of nutballs. Its a strawman to try and say this is anything like a mainstream view. Had you just said the ‘hates us for our freedom’ bit I would have said nothing, as that probably IS a mainstream view…gods help us. If I misread what you intended, if you meant it as a joke or hyperbole then thats fine…next time put a smiley in it and I’ll know.
Am I acting like a total jerk? Well, thats debatable (:))…if the mods think I’m acting like a total jerk they will tell me and I will certainly back off. If you think I am, I’m sorry for that…it wasn’t my intention to act like a TOTAL jerk…just my normal level of jerkishness.
Is everything I read or right completely oversaturated and dripping with political bias? Well, certainly I think MOST of the stuff I read in this forum is oversaturated with political bias. I don’t consider myself to be overly biased of course, at least not as you seem to be implying (i.e. biased towards Bush or this administration), but I suppose that when I’m in this forum I am overly SENSITIVE to an oversaturation of politics.
How about this? I withdraw my accusation that elements of your OP were a strawman. Not because I really believe it but because its getting in the way of further discussion of what could be an interesting subject…and frankly my points concerning your supposed strawman weren’t worth this much attention…they were merely said in passing originally. Just a quibble on my part. Now, any comments on anything else I wrote about your OP, or did you think that my strawman accusation was the only interesting/relevant part?
-XT
Hey, I’m just one of those people who has the ability to see both sides of every issue. I believe this is a valuable ability, and I’m glad I have it. It has served me well for many years. Without people like me it would be impossible to negotiate anything.
About Western Civilization: It has collapsed at least twice* before, and probably will collapse again at some point. Nothing lasts forever. I don’t particularly want it to happen in my lifetime, but if it does I’ll just take my rifle and disappear into the Florida swamps.
*Greek Dark Ages c. 1100 - 700 BC, Medieval Dark Ages c. 500 - 1000 AD, and both times we came back, caught up with and surpassed, the rest of the world.
I prefer the ability to recognize when one “side” of the issue is undeserving of serious consideration, and not worthy of “negotiating” with (except as a stalling tactic while you find a big enough rock to crush it with).
The drive for violent jihad, like the drive for Aryan lebensraum, is such a case.
Heh. So, you seem to be admitting that you never considered “Why did 9/11 happen?” at all seriously.
The irony is bittersweet.
Surely you realize the exact same sentiment is what AQ and other organizations are spouting?
And the death of 15,000 innocent Iraqis isn’t?
I must have missed it where it was declared that an Iraqi life is worth less than an American one. Must be one of them “compassionate conservative” things.
Saddam was an asshole. Nobody is disputing that. But just because Saddam was an asshole doesn’t make it okay for Bush to be one as well.
I wouldn’t bet on it. I continue to be astonished at the ability of Bush apologists to blithly ignore the parallels between the positions they support and those of their opponents (see above).
Hey, there’s good and bad in every culture. But that’s not what the OP asked. He wanted to know why 9/11 happened, so I gave my answer. You are welcome to start another thread about “What’s good with the West” and I will be happy to contribute.
The problem is that by claiming the issue is freedom we’ve pretty much closed off any further discussion of the issue: we’ve got freedom, they hate our freedom, so our only choices are to give up our freedom or to fight them to the bitter end. If this were the case, then fighting is the sensible course. But if you recognize that the terrorists has specific goals the situation is less clear: we’ve stationed troops in the Middle East, they want our troops out of the Middle East, so our only choices are to withdraw the troops or fight to the bitter end. When this is the case, some people are going to suggest there are two possible courses.
Its funny how you associate “West” with “USA” isn’t it ? The US is but one western nation… and other western countries like my own feel pretty offended that americans think of themselves as the pinnacle of western civilization. Especially since they resort to some pretty gruesome stuff like torture and death penalty.
Very few Americans (at least until recently - it’s starting to catch on) call themselves “the West”.
To my knowledge, it’s a nickname that most of the rest of the world has given us. Sometimes England is included, sometimes Germany and France, and sometimes Canada, but never South or Central America in my experience. You should be glad, “the West” is just as often an insult as anything else.
Nonsense; I have quite clearly explained otherwise. To recap, 9/11 happened because a cadre of religious totalitarians concluded (correctly) that Western civilization was a threat to their power merely by its continued existence (through its glaring example of how little they themselves offered to their people by comparison).
I’m not sure exactly what Ryan_Liam meant (I think you are reading too much into his statement that he was ONLY talking about the US), but when I say ‘The West’ I mean western civilization…of which you are right, the US is but one nation, though an important one. As to the ‘pinnacle’…well, I’m not sure how true or untrue that is, but certainly America is currently the most prominent of the nations we consider ‘The West’…don’t you think RM? That doesn’t mean the other nations that make up ‘The West’ aren’t important mind you.
BTW, IMO ‘The West’ also includes several asian nations (Japan and South Korea spring to mind, as well as several others), as well as nations like Israel…and of course including many Central and South American nations…including your own RM. All make up the collective entity I personally think of as ‘The West’.
As to the death penalty…different strokes for different folks. The people of the US CHOOSE that freely…its not forced down the throats of the majority but CHOOSEN by the majority. Personally I agree with you its distasteful, but imprisoning people for life is distasteful to me also…its just necessary sometimes. And the key here is that in a democracy the majority rule. Perhaps in the future the US will (once again) decide not to allow the death penalty…and Europe will (once again) decide TOO allow it again.
As for ‘torture’…well, I’m not going to get into that hijack here. I think you are greatly exaggerating the US’s use of ‘torture’, especially if what you have in mind is what happened at Abu Ghraib…which if memory serves wasn’t official policy, and many of the folks who did that are currently serving time…or on trial. Rule of law and all that.
-XT
I was thinking of Guantanamo too and prisoners being left in the hand of certain allies where human rights abuses are overlooked… and there is a torture policy even if its not open… and just recently read about how it was the french of all people who made up some nice doctrines on using torture vs insurgencies and then passed it along to americans.
No ones disputing the fact its terrible 15k Iraqis have been killed, but you have to look at the circumstances of how and where they were killed, you know wars are fought with violence, but you knew that already didn’t you? They didn’t die in vain either, as Iraqis are taking important steps to achieving whats been denied to them for generations, a truely representative and accountable government to the people
Yeah, because thats how all conservatives think, don’t give two shits about anyone but themselves right?
Conservative = Evil yes?
Bush invaded Iraq, and has Saddam, the man who lead a regime which murdered and destroyed whole lives for the sake of his own, and we’ve gotten rid of that, its commendable, and its right, regardless now of the pretext because you can’t change it.
To be honest, our terror is better than their terror. For instance, we don’t beat criminals with electrical tape or copper wire, and thats just for common criminals, we don’t rape en masse and systematically abuse prisoners until their bones break, we don’t leave them permanently brain damaged, much of which I can say Saddam did. Oh, we don’t amputate limbs either. The torture the Bush admin uses, though not right and deplorable, and utterly useless, is the lesser of both evils you’re describing.
What would you do, if we couldn’t torture them? By what means would you get information from them if you knew it would be vital for progress on the war? Even if they were unwilling to budge and proved uncooperative? What would you do?
Yeah. “We want to invade Iraq to get our mitts on all that lovely petroleum, but there’s no way the voters would ever approve of a war for that, so we have to lie about secret caches of WMDs and scare them into supporting us.”
The 9/11 excuse didn’t work; the WMD excuse didn’t work; the only fig leaf this Administration has left is some nebulous bushit about spreading democracy, which is convenient because they don’t have to produce any results until decades after this fiasco is over.
I wonder how many Iraqis went to the polls in January going “Thank Allah my family got blasted to bits so I can vote today.” :rolleyes:
Don’t look at me; you’re the ones writing this stuff.
The Bush Administration: Sucking Slightly Less Than Saddam!
Well, for me, I’d remember that we’re supposed to be the Good Guys and that there are certain moral principles we won’t compromise on.
If I were you, however, I’d probably just do whatever the hell I want and come up with some bushit justification for it after-the-fact…
My emphasis.
Ya gotta love someone who points out the massive glaring and fatal fallacy they are committing at the commencement of their post, don’t you?
Why did you bother?
Strange, I knew I learnt that from the SDMB, but from who I don’t know 
Iraqi petroleum we pay for and which is owned by the Iraqi government, yeah a real bargain there :rolleyes:
Yes, a real fiasco now Iraq has democracy, yes,I can see your logic :dubious:
Erm I don’t know but 8million went didn’t they?
Quit avoiding and answer my question.
Too laughable to reply back too.
When was that, the dawn of human civilisation? We are the good guys, but you’re so blinded by your hatred of this administration, you fail to see it.
Rjung 8million people voted in Iraq, they’re on their way to democratic representative governance, Lebanon has reacted, so have the Palestinians and the Egyptians the Libyans in their arms reductions, and even the Saudis have approached some small scale change. You’re the type of person like someone said before, who would piss on a campfire because it wasn’t warm enough.