Because we’re the leader of Democracy and freedom? That seems to be the opinion of the masses.
I think it’s an important question… especially if we want to prevent such a horrible event from ever happening again.
I personally can’t understand why any people in foreign countries would actually hate the U.S… Is it because some psychotic leader is spreading lies about us? Or did we actually do something to spark this hate?
I thought Steve Chapman, in his Sept. 13 Chicago Tribune column, explained it well. (The link will probably be good only for 7 days.)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0109130089sep13.column
So, they hate us because we’re frivolous, shallow, selfish, and spoiled.
Is it that hard to figure out?
Simply because the US is Israel’s primary supporter - this was taking the existing religious war in the area a little further upstream.
I’ve been wondering about this too. I mean, it’s not just enough to say “they are bad people” – people don’t suicide bomb themselves for no reason. And, if we go to war and smash our enemies, while meanwhile arguing that we had no provocation and that we were blameless, and we (or our government ) weren’t, then we are hypocrites.
The Globe and Mail commentator Mathew Ingram tried to trace the roots of this attack to oil, but I admit that there is not enough info in that article to make a persuasive case:
Darn it. That link didn’t work, and I don’t feel like fighting with it. Sorry.
A very tired,
Me’Corva
Actually, I’ve been wondering about this…about how the Arabic middle east has been viewing American-Israeli and American-Palestinian relations in recent months.
If you had asked me last week, I would’ve guessed:
a) They’d have said Americans are annoyed at Arafat and the Palestinians for not making peace with Rabin when they had the chance. Nowhere near as much liberal American sympathy for the Palestinian situation as there had been; but
b) They’d also say Americans are not particularly happy with Ariel Sharon, whom many perceive as having ignited the current Intifada with his provocative visit to that mosque and then fanned the flames as much as possible since then; therefore
c) They’d say in conclusion, “The Americans are sick of the whole mess and are becoming rather isolationist in their attitudes in general; they’re on the verge of saying ‘Fine, you folks go obliterate each other, we’re tired of trying to make peace’”
My first reaction, aside from things like raw shock and horror, was “What the HELL did they expect to accomplish? Have they lost their minds?”
While I wouldn’t put it in such simplistic terms, I believe that certain leaders likely do put themselves in opposition to the US because they know that they would be out of power in an instant if they allowed their political system to be run on similar lines. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe comes to mind.
Before I continue I should say that while I don’t believe that this week’s attacks were necessarily ordered by Bin Laden, at the very least they were carried by persons who agree with his views and consider him a rallying point for their cause.
What “the masses”, whoever they are, don’t seem to get is that there are large numbers of people in the world who believe that the democratic principles of the US are reserved exclusively for its own citizens; that the US, in its blundering attempts to bring “stability” to populations it doesn’t fully understand, causes large numbers of innocent people to suffer.
Part of the reason we are so mystified by this week’s suicide attacks seems to be that we are assuming the primary issue remains our support for Israel. Thus, we were attacked mainly because it was “easier” than trying to penetrate Israel’s tight security.
Actually, however, Bin Laden has repeatedly stated, as clearly as possible, that his opposition to the US is based on a) continued US military presence on what he deems to sacred ground in his home country of Saudi Arabia and b) continued US support for a corrupt Saudi leadership. Perhaps part of our failure to recognize the seriousness of these issues is that to us they seem, well, a bit daft. Obviously, though, for at least a few muslims they are deadly serious offenses.
As to whether Bin Laden sincerely believes these things or feels it is a useful stance to take in order to improve his position for an eventual takeover of power in his home country, I’ll leave that for others to judge.
I thought it was simply because american represents wealth & thus, the attack was designed to affect that part of us, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s around $1T.
Try to look through their eyes.
I wish I had one of those 10 foot satellite dishes then I could get a raw newsfeed from them & see what they are saying but you can read online websites they have to see what they feel about us.
I’ve seen his phrase and other very similar phrases a few times in the news. As well as the fact that I find it incredulous that millions of people in the Middle East could hate the US simply because it’s too free and democratic for their liking, I also have to confess that I have no idea what it means.
Does it simply mean that the US is the richest democracy?
Does it mean that democracy in the US is superior to that which is apparent elsewhere? A good few of the european continental countries seem to have functioned as democracies for some time now. Are, for example, the French or German democratic systems flawed? Or does it mean that a certain combination (presumably attractive) of freedom and democracy is only available in the US
Sorry to sidetrack, but it does seem an odd phrase (and could be construed as conceited perhaps?). Maybe it’s rightly earned (?).
I hope no-one thinks I’m just trying to bash the states.
I couldn’t do that, I like it way too much.
Or George W. Bush’s speechwriters, anyway. I refuse to buy it, because it’s too simplistic.
The more likely reason is that many Muslems in the middle east hate the United States for a variety of actions. Here’s a short list off the top of my head:
[ul]
[li]We have been – and continue – supporting Israel with money and weapons, with which they use to oppress and attack the Palestinians.[/li][li]We are allied with Saudi Arabia and continue to have a military presence in the area, which some Muslems feel is intrusive (and the Saudis get some flak for this as well).[/li][li]We overthrew the democratically-elected Iranian government with our support of the Shaw.[/li][li]We supported Iraq when it suited us to have them attack Iran, then turned around and made Iraq our enemy whey they were no longer politically useful to us.[/li][li]Our movies and media continually depict Muslems and Arabs as either crazed terrorists, amoral oil-rich sheiks, or foaming religious fanatics who kill people for spitting in public.[/li][/ul]
And that’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure a political history expert can provide more examples.
Bottom line: the militant Islamic extremists aren’t pissed off at the United States because they’re bored, but because they see it as getting justice/revenge/whatever for our own past indiscretions to themselves, their beliefs, and their nations. If we really want an effective end to terrorism, we’ll have to address these points.
Adding to rjung’s list:
Because our continued military presence in the area is being paid for by a significant portion of each country’s oil revenues.
Because that presence is ostensibly spurred by the threats posed by Iran and Iraq, countries that the U.S. supported militarily and economically at various times in the 70s and 80s. (rjung made this point, but I’m expanding on it in suggesting–according to a Muslim Palestinian law professor of mine–that the Arab nations feel that the U.S. is partially to blame for Iran and Iraq becoming a threat in the first place.)
There are several different questions being posed in this thread, I feel: Why is there anti-American sentiment in the Middle East, why do Arab (and other Muslim) terrorists target the United States at all, and why did these terrorists specifically decide to target the U.S. in this instance. It’s important not to conflate them–when AHunter3 asks “What the HELL did they expect to accomplish? Have they lost their minds?”, the answer is obviously YES, when referring to the terrorists themselves; we should be careful, though, in linking the goals and rationales of the terrorists too easily to those of ordinary citizens or even of policymakers in the area. In other words–which “they” do you mean?
American foreign policy doesn’t always embody “democracy” and “freedom,” and it’s made a lot of enemies in this world: let’s recognize that not all people in other nations who are critical of the United States are necessarily irrational or jealous or crazy.
I’ve read/heard this too. Bin Laden and those of his ilk, do not like the fact that we are in Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that the leaders of that country have INVITED us to be there. If this is their main beef, which I’ve heard it is, then was 9/11 basically their way of saying, “Hey you kids, get off my lawn!”? As sick as that is, I’m puzzled as to why we didn’t take their greivances more seriously.
I can’t help but wonder if we’ve moved around like a bull in a china shop, trampling on the religious feelings and ideals of others without any regard as to what the reprisals might be. I wonder if, when we are in other countries, we act more like a landlord and less like a guest.
We need to bring the perpetrators of this tragedy to justice, no doubt about it. Afterwards however, we need to clearly re-think the way we act in foreign lands. If we could reduce the probability of this or any other type of attack happening again by merely minimizing our presence, or just being more respectful of their cultures and beliefs, then why not do it?
This is much more believable… I figured it would come down to foreign policy, but didn’t know enough about foreign policy to make a valid opinion. Hell, I still don’t know enough to make a valid opinion.
So, should the U.S. change it’s foreign policy?
Of course we do
Do you honestly think we would be there at all if it weren’t for our oil interests?
We’ve been overtly and covertly manipulating the middle east for decades to our profit.
Is it any wonder that people who live in abject poverty as a result are filled with rage and a desire to strike back?
Agreed, the primary way we could do this is to reduce our dependance on oil by seeking
and exploiting alternative energy sources.
As I stated in the Afghanistan thread, the only way to make these people leave us alone is to become an isolationist third world backwater.
By the very nature of our open society, the US and other western countries are going to produce offensive filthy blasphemous movies, TV shows, books, magazines and websites. Every exercise of free speech is an offense to them. So, in order to reduce terrorism we would have to impose censorship.
We also support Israel. If we abandoned Israel they would be much happier. Unfortunately, the most likely thing that would happen if we abandoned Israel is the continuation of Hitler’s plans for the Jews. Abandoning Israel would be to step aside and let the genocide begin. Israel might win the next couple of wars, but they cannot win every war every time. If they lose, they will be exterminated.
We also buy lots of oil. The money from oil purchases leaves some people rich, while others without oil are impoverished. People can stand poverty if everyone around them is poor, but it rankles if your next door neighbor is rich but you are not. The only solution to this is to stop buying oil. But we did not create the income inequality caused by unequal distribution of oil reserves, and it is not unethical for us to purchase oil. And do you think they would be happy if we stopped buying oil? Of course not.
They are unhappy that we help defend Saudi. But we were invited there by the Saudi government for assistance against Iraq.
We fought against Iraq. But they had invaded Kuwait, which asked us for help. It doesn’t matter that the governments of the surrounding countries recognized that Iraq had to be defeated, and supported the coalition efforts. It still left a bad taste in the mouth of the anti-Westerners.
Oh, but we created Iraq in the first place? Not really, but think about this. In order to get the current batch of terrorists, we are going to need the help of Pakistan. Pakistan is an obvious thuggish dictatorship. But, should we refuse to deal with Pakistan because of that? If we refuse to deal with Pakistan then it is very likely that most of the terrorists will escape. Which is more important? We cannot do both. Sometimes solving one problem creates another. Sometimes you have to pursue goals that will have bad consequences because they are too important to ignore. Yes, we’ve allied and helped support countries that have poor records. But the alternative would have been worse.
Even if the US had a spotless diplomatic history, we would still be hated. And perfection is impossible, because US diplomacy is run by human beings. We will make mistakes. We will take actions…such as opposing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan…that will turn out to have negative consequences…such as creating the Taliban.
But, was it a mistake to oppose the Soviet invasion? Should we have stayed out? Should we have let the Soviets conquer the place? No matter what we do, either through action or inaction, we are bound to cause outcomes that other people dislike. We can try to minimize that number, but we cannot eliminate it.
We cannot change our deeds of the past, but we can work today to make amends in the Middle East and stop the hatred tomorrow.
If there’s one good thing that can come from the terroist attacks this week, this is the one I’d like to see come to fruit the most.
Many of those “anti-Westerners” are unhappy because of the United States’ continuing presence in the area, rather than our helping the Saudis or fighting against Iraq in the first place. Like I said, they’re subsidizing our presence with oil revenues; some of the countries, as a result, are a lot less prosperous than they otherwise would be were we not encamped in the area.
Perhaps, but it’s downright silly to think that the hate would be as great, as widespread, or as rationally derived.
There are many countries who support this group or that group, there are many who have supported the factions fighting in the Middle Easr. If the US is the Great Satan for supporting Israel, what about the Soviets and their support of the Arab nations (against Israel). I don’t see Israelis highjacking airplanes and crashing into the Kremlin.
Why would it be any different?
If the feelings run so strong against the U.S. and the West, why are these countries so ready to accept money, technology, aid, and anything else that comes their way from the West? Why do business with the Devil? Same goes for us - if we clearly see that there is a history of people turning their back on you, and using your own technology against you, why should we continue to do business? I know we are capitalists, but we should recognize when we “sell our enemy the rope to hang us with”.
I would say (as I did in another thread) that complete isolation from the world community should be applied to those nations who have beliefs that lead them to these actions. Stop everything the west sends there and stop buying Oil and other resources. They can’t even manufacture a gun, so if we stop supplying them I think we’ll have less of a problem getting shot with our own weapons.
Lock 'em down, let 'em stew a while. Like a few hundred years.
I ran across this interview with Bin Laden on ABC News’ website.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/dailynews/terror_980609.html
This is his reasoning for the “fatwa” against all Americans:
It’s rather chilling to think that our Country could drive someone to such strong beliefs… whether those beliefs are well founded or not.
The most succint answer would be : because the US aren’t considered in the middle-east as the leader of democracy and freedom. But as the leader of the imperialist opressors with depraved morals who back and support corrupted government and kill innocent muslims everywhere out of pure greed. Something like that.
And obviously, there are some reasons for that. If you have genuinely no clue about the US policies in the middle east (or more generally in muslim countries), you should check them closely. The US definitely didn’t act as a generous freedom-lover, there.
Since it seems there is some confusion in some answers given, I’d like to point out that one should make a clear difference between muslim people/muslim governments/muslims fundamentalists/ennemies of the US. It’s way more complicated than that.
For instance :
-Saudi Arabia has a fundamentalist government.Yet, it’s one of the closest ally of the US in the middle east. Yet an important part of Taliban’s funding come from this country. Yet Bin Laden hates the Saudi government.
-Iran certainly isn’t a friend of the US. Yet it’s possibly the worst ennemy of the Talibans. Yet it has a sort of fundamentalist government.
-Pakistan used to be a close ally of the US, and never was an ennemy. Yet, they armed/funded the Talibans.
-Hussein’s Irak was a secular country and used to be armed by the US. It’s now a major ennemy.
As a general rule, most muslim governments have major troubles with the fundamentalists.
So saying things like : “we give them money” makes few sense. If the government is corrupted, backed by the US and fight the islamists, it’s very unlikely that the fundamentalists or the general population will be grateful. At the contrary, actually.