http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22369-1690089,00.html some of it went through one ear and out the other but it was still a little interesting
"if we don't provoke them..." is exceptionally stupid. Being more powerful is a provocation. Loads of minor and major economic and political policies are provocation. Think of islamic terror as a big hornet's nest. The flowers you put in your garden increase your risk of getting stung. But you do it anyway, because you like a nice garden. Maybe if the african killer bees are coming, you get an isolated greenhouse instead. But the funny thing is - you don't go around deliberately poking the hornet's nest with a short stick. Unless you're prepared with a lot of cans of RAID and long-sleeved clothing. And don't expect sympathy when you climb the fence into your disagreeable neighbors yard and start smacking the hornet's nest over there. Liberals don't think the hornets are less dangerous - their criticism of the war on terror is more about criticizing a stupid little boy with no clue and a small stick.
doesn't bin laden say one of the main things that pissed him off was US troops stationed in Saudi Arabia after the first gulf war was over??? that and our support of Isreal
POOR excuse. I seem to remember the Muslims venturing into Europe. You don't see the Europeans using that as an excuse.
"Why does bin Laden hate America? Bin Laden and other militant Islamist leaders issued a 1998 manifesto denouncing the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia, U.S. support of Israel, and sanctions against Iraq. “To kill Americans and their allies, both civil and military, is an individual duty of every Muslim who is able, in any country,” the manifesto reads, “until their armies, shattered and broken-winged, depart from all the lands of Islam.” Bin Laden regards Western institutions—coed schools, MTV, Rotary clubs, democracy itself—as depraved." http://cfrterrorism.org/groups/binladen.html i'm just quoting what the guy said.
Well, having money helps. Western economic imperialism of foreign lands is often unwanted and does have dangerous consequences, like the formation of terrorist groups and resultant attacks, but its damn hypocritical given Islam's history of foreign conquest.
Except the four that bombed London were Brits, probably from a middle-class family. The great majority of the suicide bombers in Iraq are Saudi, educated middle-class Saudi's. Bin Laden and the leaders of AQ are all well to do. What's their excuse?
I guess they are sentimentalists - suffering on others' pains. Living in the west, one can only through education to understand the poor and the sick.
Well the smart idea was to keep the UN weapon expectors in there, look at them as people who clear out hornet nets or something, let them do it for you to see the problem and let them fix it for you, not go in there and try and sort it out yourself and putting yourself in danger like bush did with Iraq if you know what i'm saying.
Sorry, I didn't mean that they themselves weren't well-off. As a population, the peoples of the Middle East aren't very well-off though, and being sucked into religious extremism can convince these typically well-adjusted young men that taking part in a war to help their people will turn them into martyrs. What their specific motives were is still unknown. But it wouldn't be difficult to make a hypothetical guess, and the one I posted seems to be the best I can come up with. Heck, my parents come from a pretty poor part of the world, and I myself wish there was something I could do aboutthe plight of the people living there. Fortunately, my ideas don't involve blowing people up.
Well, I wasn't using it as an excuse, and I certainly wouldn't dream of saying it justifies a single thing anyone's done over the past thousand years. Just an overbroad and mildly flippant way of saying that the metaphorical "beehives" have been built up, knocked around, and built up again for a very long time - georgeplmr's question about who was stirring things up before Iraq sounded either insincere or naive to me. I think you have to take history into the reckoning, because it appears the people who attack us are doing so. You know, I'm sure, that there's at least this theory that OBL, and a fair share of his followers, dream of restoring the Caliphate, seeing that as their Golden Age; there was that thought-provoking article last year (from the New Yorker? I can't remember) after 3/11 in Madrid, talking about the hold that the concept of Muslim Spain has on some in the Islamic world, at least among fanatics and idealists. It might all be specious to our minds, but we risk leaving ourselves with a big big blind spot if we don't take it into account. Besides, Europeans use history to prolong (rhetorically, if not always materially) their insane feuds and bloodshed all the time. The Irish still go on about battles fought and lost centuries ago; the Poles' distrust of the Russians (with good reason, you might say) is only increasing these days (see the article in the NYT last Monday), and while a lot of the causes can be chalked up to recent history, that's really rooted in a more distant past. I need not even mention the Balkans
I think this is a simplistic anti-characterization of the "poverty" argument. When a bunch of backwoods terrorists tossed a bunch of tea into Boston harbor - a) the cause was economic (not "poverty", but a protest against heavy-handed economic injustice) b) the leaders were not dirty-handed farmers, but instead were middle class merchants - or better off. Leaders are almost always middle class or better. the poor are too busy trying to scrape together food for their family. Its the middle class who see such poverty, and have the time on their hands and some schooling, who think they would make a better ruling class - who are the dangerous ones. I'm not saying poverty definitely causes/provokes things. But the argument you seemed to give as opposition does not seem to prove much.
If we kill them, they will also leave us alone. When we say "find out why people are supporting them," it isn't with an eye to changing our policies, but with finding out a reason to prevent them from getting support. "We know who you are and where you live, and we'll kill you if you don't cut off Bin Laden" is such a reason, and one that might be used on, to pick an example at random, the House of Saud. The civil rights crackdown and racial animosity in Great Britain is going to be tragic and oppressive. However, there are unquestionably people in England who helped the bombers, and they must be found. I don't envy the Blair government the task of doing things the way Ashcroft didn't - jailing the people who really are a threat, while preserving some semblance of civil rights for citizens. If nothing else, grabbing everyone who flunks the paper bag test is horribly inefficient. While we're sorting through the people who are simply the wrong color, that gives more time for the guilty to hide. Still, we seemed to have cracked down on our homegrown militia to some extent after Oklahoma City, and that's what's going to have to happen in England. They'll also have to deal with the outraged citizenry who have to worry about fellow Britons. It's easy - very easy - for an outsider to say that people in the British Muslim community will have some hard choices to make. But they will have to be made. The United States, with far, far less domestic provocation, built internment camps. Great Britain, with much more provocation, helped make Northern Ireland a hellhole. Muslim communities in Britain are in for a terrible time, and they need to quickly choose the right side. Yes, that means rolling over on their friends and relatives. To them, I offer the Kramer solution. When asked by Jerry "What kind of friend are you, to rat me out like that?", Kramer correctly responded, "What kind of friend are you, to go around killing people?" To reiterate, the Iraq war is as close to separate from all this as can be. Britain should withdraw for the same reasons we should withdraw - because we can serve no useful purpose in Iraq. These attacks should not factor into them, any more than if the terrorists demanded the British government withdraw from East Anglia.