Well I had a nice response for the holy war thread and worked hard to put it together. This whole AQ thing really interests me. Unfortunately, Garcia locked the thread. Maybe this one will go better, So is this a holy war and is there a solution short of genocide? My personal opinion is that there is a solution. There are many causes beyond religion. In fact, if there were a million people sympathetic to Militant Islam, there would be a million reasons. However they can be grouped together into less than a dozen. Religious fervor is one, i.e. people grow up from children and think that it is normal for them to fight and die for their religion. However rarely does all but a small minority decide to risk their lives for it. I think that those that do are looking for some larger meaning to their lives. That is they are frustrated being just a date farmer and need more. I would classify the Egyptian militants in this category. Then there are the failed businessmen types like many of the Saudis, especially UBL. I think they do it for religion, or at least say they do, but for the most part their trying to live down their failures. It's a little known fact that most of those who were on the four planes on 9/11 were educated in Europe. I suppose that they came to Europe seeking to better themselves and I read that they were not very religious before hand. In fact, even after they decided their mission they were still not very religious in the sense that some of them went to strip clubs and did drugs. I would call these guys the disaffected youth of Arabia. Then there's the Filipino/Nigera/Algiers, etc. type tribal/religious movements. They are Islamic and fight for whatever reasons they fight for. It's a mix of tribal and religious motivation. The kicker in all of this, is it's all linked by a common religion, in fact, by a place, Mecca. All these anti-hierarchal Muslim sects go to Mecca once a year. There they meet Wahhabism which is of course a big problem. The Saudis created (sort of) their control over the religious sites and give them cash out of some misguided sense of charity. Wahabis point their finger at everyone else as being less than pure. In fact, their influence is the least in those countries surrounding them where they know the Wahhabis the best. It's thousands of miles outside of their Arabia that they have the most influence. One of the big motivations for keeping nukes away from Iran is so that Saudi Arabia doesn’t feel compelled to get them. But what are they really fighting against? Religion? That's what many of them say and why shouldn’t we take their word on it? Well Islam has existed for hundreds of years and it's only the past fifteen that we've had these problems. Most of us know the history of AQ. It started in Afghanistan and was the divisions of foreign fighters armed by the US to defeat the soviets. After they beat the soviets they felt pretty good about themselves but had lost their purpose. Then UBL gets pissed of when his Saudi family has the Americans kick Saddam out of Kuwait. UBL felt the HE should have lead an army of foreign fighters to oust Saddam. Now one could say he was offended by infidels (that's us) doing it but I think it was more personal. He felt that his Saudi family had usurped purpose. He then wanders from country to country as something of a vagabond. He failed at his construction business along the way and afterwards met up with his buds from Afghanistan in Bosnia. This is the part that I don’t think most people understand. Bosnia was a meeting place where UBL was able to reinvigorate his troops and give them their sense of purpose back. Yet now UBL no longer sees his purpose limited to just this or that war but has come up with a philosophy tying religion, regional insurgencies, tribal battles, etc. etc. into one. He tells them that the reason that they fail in Egypt, Arabia, on the date farm, on the construction site, as students in Europe, rebels in Nigeria, Algiers, Philippines, etc. etc. is because of the global reach of Christianity centered in America and, as Guliani put it, in the Capitol of the World, NYC. If one thinks about it, there's a lot of truth to it. Many of the borders in the world are leftovers from colonial times, i.e. Algiers, Nigeria, etc. BP probably has more influence over the Saudi family than the local Arabian village leaders. The money lenders in NYC have more influence over construction contracts in Egypt than the local religious leaders. We in the West kind of take that for granted. Sure we have our Pat Buccanan's or Ralph Nader's who believe in some conspiracy to keeping the people down but for the most part most of us feel like we are in charge of our lives. We understand that it's not the man with his plan that stops us from being successful but the fact we like to put in only forty hours a week. Now this has a religious aura to it. There is some overreaching religious philosophy to it. But it's not really about religion. It's about these Holden Caulfields of the Islamic world finding some purpose in life. This feeling of futility is magnified by oil, or actually it's money. There is nothing the Saud family has done to deserve all it's wealth. They aren’t great businessmen, they aren’t shrewd investors nor are they hard workers. The only reason they have so much money is because they won the geological lottery. The UBLs of the Islamic world really can’t understand what makes the first sons of the Saudi family so special. It's very easy to explain it away with some grand theory that it's the West keeping the Saudis in power. In fact, there's a grain of truth to it. If we couldn’t do business with them, we would have made deals with other local chieftains. We do kind of support the Saudi family or at least our money does. They would love to overthrow their governments and install themselves as the leaders. They surely do have to justify themselves with religion. There sure are some member's whose only motivation is a self effacing believe in Islam. However the solution is to work against those very same governments. We need democracy in the middle east. There were just some threads on Chavez and how we in the US must hate him because he's a socialist and a friend of Castro. ME, I don’t give a rats ass about Chavez and if his voters want to elect him, that's fine with me. We need a few more "Chavezes" in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Sudan, etc. etc. Let them have control over their own governments and they won’t have anyone but themselves to blame. They to will have control over their own lives and the Holden Caulfields of the Arab world will just have to admit they are losers.
My original post was admittedly over the top, but it served its purpose quite well: it exposed the fact that many Americans (although this was exaggerated by the fact that the BS politics board is hardly representative of Americans as a whole) simply do not take fundamentalist Islam's evil seriously. Too many view it as a legitimate ideology, even if they disagree with it. While I would agree with the statement that Islam is a legitimate ideology used by some as an excuse to commit evil acts, there are clearly those who believe (even if they wouldn't admit it) that fundamentalist Islam is a legitimate ideology used by some as an excuse to commit evil acts. And they are simply wrong here--fundamentalist Islam, in all its forms, is evil, just as evil as Nazism. Now, do the Chechens and Palestinians, among others, have some legitimate grievances against the West? Yeah, probably. But then again the German people also had legitimate grievances about their treatment at Versailles (and, it should be noted, the cruel punishments imposed on the German people were spearheaded by European leaders over the strong objections of US President Woodrow Wilson). That sure as hell does not legitimize Nazism as an ideology. A number of people who responded to the original thread accused me of advocating that all fundamentalist Muslims be killed (a couple even implied that I was advocating all Muslims be killed)...that's not what I said. All fundamentalist Muslim leaders and all those who actively take up arms in the name of fundamentalist Islam need to be killed or imprisoned. I also said that such harsh measures might not be neccesary with those who simply cheerlead, such as the life forms in the West Bank who were celebrating on 9/11 or dancing among the wreckage of the van carrying 4 American contractors in Fallujah. If they, having not made the conscious decision to take up arms in the name of fundamentalist Islam, can be shown the error of their ways and induced into converting to a more moderate brand of Islam, then I see no need to kill or imprison them. Then again, I won't be shedding any tears if they're killed or imprisoned either. The fact of the matter is that, at the end of the day, we are at war with fundamentalist Islam. While we have the advantage in money and technology, they make up for it with their tenacity, their will to fight, and frankly their sheer lack of moral conscience. Quite frankly, right now they want it more than we do. This war will end sooner or later, but it will end only when they stop attacking us. And they will stop attacking us either when they are all gone or when we are all gone; not a moment sooner. That is, they will not stop until every fundamentalist Muslim in the world is either dead, imprisoned, or moderated; or until every man, woman, and child in the world who is not a fundamentalist Muslim is dead. It's probably not going to be over in my lifetime. It may not be over in my childrens' lifetime. But it will end sooner or later. Someone will win, and someone will lose. And, for the first time in our country's history, we are embroiled in a total life or death struggle. Even the Nazis and Imperial Japanese, had they somehow managed to occupy the United States, would likely not have murdered every man, woman, and child in the country. As horrific as 9/11 was, Beslan was in some ways even more so, despite the lower body count. This was a school. These were children deliberately murdered by these subhuman beasts (children died on 9/11, but the hijackers were not targetting children on that day, and the selection of the targets as well as the timing of the attacks--early morning on a Tuesday in the first week of the school year--assured that probably >99% of the dead were adults). They have targeted children before, of course, notably in Israel, but never on this scale. Any shred of hope, any remaining notion that these might be people we can negotiate with, that they might have some sort of conscience or qualm is gone. Hell, these animals didn't even have the emotional blindfold that the 9/11 hijackers had, of being able to shut the cockpit door and fly planes into buildings, killing a bunch of strangers whose faces they would never see. The creatures in Beslan looked each one of these little children individually in the eyes and murdered hundreds of them. Someone will win, and someone will lose. Whoever wants it more, whoever does not underestimate the enemy will win. And, more so even than in World War 2, we can't afford to lose. Today it was Beslan; tomorrow it might be Altoona, or Palm Springs, or Lubbock, or Santa Fe, or Peoria, or Santa Rosa, or Islip, or Macon, or Billings, or Brookline, or Hilo. We can't afford to lose.
Agreed. Have at it ladies and gentlemen. If it turns into a attack thread, it will be closed again and you will see bans from the forum. Gawd, I hate acting all hard on the internet.
Alex, when you call these people subhuman(see the locked thread), there's nothing that you can't do. Killing subhuman will make you feel less guilty as killing human. Nice theory for anyone who wants/prepares to kill.
That's precisely what you said. I can understand if that's not what you meant, but really, you need to be more careful in choosing your words.
I don’t like to use the word evil. When we label something as evil then whatever we do is justified. Let's use the word "wrong". These people are wrong. Now how do we fix that? Germany is a workable example. We could have surrounded Germany, put up a big fence then nuked the country as we made more and more nukes. That would have solved the problem of Nazism. No more Nazis. However that would not have been a good solution. Instead we kept going with what we had, liberated as much of the country as we could, made compromises with France, Britain and Russia then got down to work on the problems we could solve. We lost more men that way but I think we all agree that that was a better way to do it. Agree and the argument today that "Oh you Americans trained UBL so you get what you deserve" would be like saying "You westerners created Hitler so you get what you deserve." But Americans and others learned their lesson from the 1920s. The Russians and the West used different extremes but neither one expected Germany to be free to make choices but forced to pay reparations. Please alert the Joint Cheifs when you know where all the Fundamentalist Islamists are. They'll need real time targeting information. Until that time we have to work towards the long term solution of having the Arab on the street help hunt down AQ. That won’t happen until they have a reason to do so. Right now and for the next few years these guys have every reason to look the other way. When a neighbor is willing to call the police to tell them about another neighbor building bomb in his back yard then we in the west will be safe. Wrong. They will stop attacking us when they decide to make peace. Someday that will happen because we won’t give up. The question is, will that be a hundred years form now and after a few nukes or in twenty years when they decide to argue with each other over their own problems.
Islam is fundamentally against the West. That makes it our greatest enemy. Their goal is to make everyone either Islamic or dead.
AM: Been watching the History Channel and the Discovery/NYT channel. There of course some blame to corrupt governments of the Middle East who create a lot of problems then tell their people that the West and the Jews are to blame for all their problems.
That is what we have been hearing over here. We even had a cleric who consistantly blamed the West for everything.
"The United States may be able to defeat al-Qaeda, but it cannot rid the world of terrorism, much less evil." Jeffrey Record Strategic Studies Institute U.S. Army War College
Has anybody ever asked him, if the West is so bad why so you live in it. Well, maybe I should say leach of it.
That would spoil Abu Hamza's fun. There are some clips here . I just did a google search so I cannot comment on how good they are.
It looks like America wants him. "Hamza was arrested at high-security Belmarsh Prison, where he has been since his arrest in May on separate allegations brought by the United States government which wants to extradite him to face trial there. He denies the 11 charges brought in the US and is fighting extradition to America. Police in London said that their investigations were unrelated to the terrorism charges brought by the US government. Hamza, who emigrated to Britain from Egypt as a civil engineering student, has a missing eye and an artificial hooked hand. He says he received the injuries while clearing landmines in Afghanistan."
Did we? I mean, sure - we didn't make the same mistakes we did post-WWI. In fact, I would say that we did an excellent job post-WWII in both Japan and Germany. But the lesson most certainly did not stick. We continue to ignore the long-term results of policy decisions that often come back to bite us in the ass, and we are continuing to do so now. We are reaping a lot of what we've sown. That doesn't somehow excuse it, or anything of the like. But it's a pretty strong sign that we need to change the way we do business. Until we begin to act with a real long-range vision, we will continue to make the same mistakes in spirit that we did in 1919. If we want to be a world power, then we really have to do it right, and we haven't done such a hot job of it so far, other than Japan and Germany post-WWII.
I'll admit I didn't bother reading the other thread, nor the rest of your post for that matter. But, seriously, Alex - who has ever called fundamentalist Islam a legitimate ideology?
I saw but didn't respond to the "holy war" thread but I feel compelled to respond here. One cannot brand all followers of Islam as terrorists. But I would go further and say you can't brand all fundamentalist Muslims that way either. I would say SPECIFICALLY that those Muslims who interpret the Qu'ran in a way to justify violence against non-Muslims or other Muslims should be dealt with severely. I hope that this is what Alex meant. But if, as others suggested, he meant that all fundamentalist Muslims - people who believe the Qu'ran is the word of God and all its tenets must be followed strictly - need to be killed, then we would need to start setting up prison camps here in the United States and start rounding people up. There are a lot of deeply religious Muslims (i.e. prayer five times daily, headscarves, the whole nine yards) one would consider "fundamentalist" right here in our country. Furthermore, I don't think you can lambast fundamentalist Islam without a serious look at fundamentalist Christianity. I would say the majority of Christians who see the Bible as the literal truth - "fundamentalist Christians" - are good, honest and decent people. There are certain Christian churches and church members, however, that take the "true path" thing a step too far, IMO. If you are not a Christian or were not "born again" as a follower of Jesus Christ, you are pitied and/or scorned because you are going to hell. Then they do everything they can to convince you that theirs is the only way. While the Catholic Church which spawned the Crusades would like to forget that unfortunate part of the history of Christendom, the Crusades and Crusaders are glorified by a number of fundamentalist Christians. Why? Because the faith - and the sites in the Holy Land cherished by the faith - were defended by force of arms against the hordes of Islam. I'm sure that's on the mind of many Muslims who are not taking up arms or preaching violence against Americans.
I don't think Bin Laden was a failed businessman at all. I recommend reading "Through Our Enemies' Eyes" for a well documented refutation of that point. I think we should take the militant Islamists at face value when they say they are religiously inspired to wage jihad. Sure, some of the 9/11 hijackers went to strip clubs but "the spirit is willing and the flesh is weak" applies to all religions. Some of Bin Laden's followers are probably impressionable enough to sign up for the cause without really understanding it, but does knowing that bring us any closer to a solution? I agree though that we need to examine the motivations of the leaders. Bin Laden's writings and pronouncements are consistent. He has demonstrated that he's willing to live as an ascetic. He has shown courage in battle against the Soviets in the 80's. Many in the Muslim community regard him as a saint. He could have lived a very cushy life in Saudia Arabia and never gotten involved in jihad. But he didn't. He went to Afghanistan in the 80's and funded the jihad with his own money and even fought in it. He's clearly not an opportunist. We should take their word for it and here's why. Their perception is that up until the fall of the Ottoman Empire the Muslim lands had been ruled by "good muslims" under a succession of caliphs. Since the Ottomans the muslim lands have been ruled by corrupt governments that don't truly represent Islam. So Islamism as a movement didn't need to exist prior to the 1920's. And it's not true that Islamism has only existed for the last 15 years or so. The Muslim Brotherhood was established in the 1920's and one of its main goals has been to restore the caliphate. The writings of Sayyid Qutb, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and considered by many the father of modern Islamic fundamentalism, were a huge influence on Bin Laden. It is about religion -- see my points above. Yes, they would love to overthrow their governments and restore the caliphate. It almost seems like you're distinguishing between religion and politics in your analysis which for al-Qaeda doesn't make any sense. The two are inextricably linked. One other important point: a big debate among the Islamists in the 90's was whether to fight the "near enemy" (the Egyptian government, the Saudi government, etc.) or the "far enemy" (the US). Bin Laden convinced some of the various groups that they should be fighting the US because it is the "head of the beast" and if you cut off the head then the body (Israel, the corrupt Arab governments) will also die and the "good muslims" can retake their land. Ok, you make some good points. But here's the sticky part: what happens if you establish democracy and an Islamist party is voted in (like Algeria in 1992)? Chavez poses no threat to the US, we probably couldn't say the same about an Islamist elected in Egypt or Saudi Arabia.
If you change the term "fundamentalist Islam" to "militant Islamism" then I agree that many Americans don't take it seriously enough. Fundamentalist Islam, like fundamentalist Christianity, is not necessarily militant and certainly not, IMO, inherently evil. Fundamentalist Islam is the belief that the Koran, as the literal word of Allah, should be adhered to strictly and that life should be lived in accordance with its teaching. Muslims correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that within fundamentalist Islam there is still enough wiggle room to interpret the duty of jihad without resorting to violence. Militant Islamism is somewhat different. It's a movement to establish Islamic theocracies through violent overthrow of non-Islamic or corrupt Islamic governments. That being said, I agree that militant Islamist groups like al-Qaeda are evil. There's a time to be nuanced and equivocate and there's a time to be a moral absolutist. When it comes to Bin Laden, I'll take moral absolutism. Well said. I agree. There's only one problem. Like Superdave wrote in the other thread, we don't have a strategy to defeat this enemy. The Bush administration is stuck in the outdated mindset that terrorist groups can't survive without state sponsors so they want to defeat what they believe to be those sponsors. But al-Qaeda has shown that it CAN survive without state sponsors. As for Kerry, well, I'm not sure he's got a strategy either.
This is an important point. I think Alex was probably referring to the militant extremists, not simply "really devout Muslims." That's why the term fundamentalism is problematic. Anyway, Attacking Minded started this off with a long post questioning where this type of hatred comes from. I've posted this short essay by the famous Pakistani secular historian, Eqbal Ahmad, before, but it's useful here again. Roots of the Religious Right THEY belong to differing, often contrasting religious systems - Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yet their ideas and behaviour patterns bear remarkable similarities. In India they have burned down churches and destroyed a historic mosque. In Palestine they describe themselves as 'pioneers', desecrate mosques and churches, and with state support dispossess the Muslim and Christian inhabitants of the ancient land. In Algeria they are engaged in savage warfare with a praetorian government. In Serbia, they attempted genocide and ran rape camps. In Pakistan, they have hit Christians, Ahmedis and Shi'a Muslims and also each other. They wage holy wars, and commit atrocities sanctimoniously, yet nothing is truly sacred to them. They spill blood in bazaars, in homes and in courts, mosques and churches. They believe themselves to be God's warriors, above man-made laws and the judgment of mankind. They are the so-called 'fundamentalists', an epithet reserved by the western media for the Muslim variety who are invariably referred to as 'Islamic fundamentalists'. Others of the ilk are assigned more neutral nouns. The Jewish zealots in Palestine are called 'settlers' and, occasionally, 'extremists'. The Hindu militant is described as 'nationalist', and the Christian is labelled 'right-wing' or 'messianic'. The bias in the use of language obscures an important reality: They are reflections of a common problem, with shared roots and similar patterns of expression. Here we briefly review first the environment which gives birth to these political-religious movements, then the commonality of their style and outlook. The capitalist and industrial revolution started from Europe. European responses to its dislocating effects offer meaningful variations which scholars have not yet examined with sufficient rigour. The western and non-western experiences are, nevertheless, comparable in that they reveal that when faced with a crisis so systemic, people have tended to respond in four ways. We might call these restorationist, reformist, existential, and revolutionary responses.