The fact that we as American’s need to realize is that not all Muslims are “evil”. Only 5% of the entire religion are made up of Shia’s which is the radical faction responsible for the terrorist actions. They believe that the holy war the Muslims are fighting is in fact occuring now and that the “Kill/Convert” form of warfare needs to be enacted. They attacked us because to them we are seen as “the Great Satan” which I apologize for because I can’t explain why they see us as that, I just know that is the term that the Shia’s use for our country, and we us.
With that said I have to ask everbody and the rest of the Shia’s in the world that could read this and that partake in these horrible acts. Did those pilots try to convert those people on the plane or anybody in the WTC or Pentagon. How can you enact the “Kill/Convert” ideal without trying to convert we Americans, and if you did where’s the evidence? I just feel their taking the pussy way out of fighting your war.
Well…you got it wrong. Shias are one of the two main muslim religious groups, with the Sunnis. More or less like there are catholic and protestant christians. The majority of muslims are Sunnis.
Iran is a Shia theocracy. That’s probably why you believe that the muslim fundamentalists are Shias. But actually, the terrorist groups we hear about are Sunnis. So are the Talibans, so is Bin Laden, so is the reactionnary Saudian state whose officials often founds them, so are the fundamentalist murderers in Algeria, etc…
Actually, the Shias have fought the Talibans in Afghanistan. And on the overall, Bin Laden and his associates would certainly be happy to get rid of the Shias.
By the way, I didn’t mean that all the Sunnis are fundamentalists. Just that the terrorist groups we’re refering to are Sunnis.
The fact that so many people seem to think that wiping out Osama bin Laden is going to put an end to this problem is the best evidence of the profound lack of understanding of the underlying political situation in the Middle East.
The situation is complex and multifaceted and involves the totality of US involvement in the region in the postwar period. It boils down to the fact that public opinion in the region is overwhelmingly negative vis a vis US policy in the region. This extends not only to US policy vis a vis Palestine, but to the repressive political forces which the US has supported in individual states in the region.
It is a mistake to believe that the people of the region are unsophisticated people. They live there and deal daily with the consequence of US policy in the region. They are increasingly angry and the moderate leadership in some of these states is increasingly isolated and discredited as a large section of public opinion has concluded that it is powerless or unwilling to resist what is seen as US meddling in the affairs of the region to the detriment of the people who live there.
Increasingly, the third or fourth generation of this region reject the calls for moderation of their elders as treason and are increasingly drawn to the call of the fundamentalists for a holy war against the US. It is an extremely dangerous situation, and has been so for some time. It is a hard mouthful for Americans to swallow but eventually they will have to confront this fundamental reality.
Grave and unpredictable consequence could result from any massive US military operation in the region. So-called moderate government could fall to be replace by Islamic fundamentalist regimes. It’s very difficult to imagine what the US could do to prevent this once the momentum develops. In the case of Pakistan, there is the very real possibility of a Taliban-type regime coming to power and having access to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
Bottom line. We’d better know what the possible consequence of military action can be.