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Western guilt blinds us to the nature of Islamic extremism
NCfan
Posts: 945
This piece absolutely nails it!!!!!!
Life and Death
Western guilt blinds us to the nature of Islamic extremism.
BY SHELBY STEELE
Sunday, August 27, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
The simple back-and-forth of war can create the illusion that both sides have a legitimate point to make even when this is not so, and it is clear that Hezbollah's cause has greatly benefited from war's "equalizing" effect. This Shiite militia seems to have known that merely fighting Israel would gain legitimacy for its cause. A cease-fire would make it a "partner" in peace. The Goliath Israeli military would make it a David whose passion proved the truth of its cause. But amid all the drama of this war there has been very little talk of exactly what Hezbollah's cause is.
And, of course, it is not just Hezbollah's cause. There is Hamas, one more in a family of politicized terrorist groups spread across the Muslim world. Beyond these more conventional groups there is the free-floating and world-wide terrorism of groups like al Qaeda. In Europe, there are cells of self-invented middle-class terrorists living modern lives by day and plotting attacks on modernity by night. And around these cells there is often a nourishing atmosphere of fellow traveling. Then there are the radical nation-states in league with terrorism, Iran and Syria most prominent among them. From nations on the verge of nuclear weapons to isolated individuals--take the recent Seattle shootings--Islamic militancy grounded in hatred of Israel and America has become the Muslim world's most animating idea. Why?
I don't believe it is because of the reasons usually cited--Israeli and American "outrages." No doubt Israel and America have made mistakes in the Middle East. Certainly, Israel was born at the price of considerable dislocation and suffering on the part of the Palestinians. And yes, there will never be a satisfying answer for this. Yet every Israeli land-for-peace gesture has been met with a return volley of suicide bombers and rockets. Palestinians have balked every time their longed-for nationhood has come within grasp. They have seemed to prefer the aggrieved dignity of their resentments to the challenges of nationhood. And Hezbollah launched the current war from territory Israel had relinquished six years earlier.
If this war makes anything clear, it is that Israel can do nothing to appease the Muslim animus against her. And now much of the West is in a similar position, living in a state of ever-heightening security against the constant threat of violence from Islamic extremists. So here, from the Muslim world, comes an unappeasable hatred that seems to exist for its own sake, a hatred with very little actual reference to those it claims to hate. Even the fighting of Islamic terrorist groups is oddly self-referential, fighting not for territory or treasure but for the fighting itself. Standing today in the rubble of Lebanon, having not taken a single inch of Israeli territory, Hezbollah claims a galvanizing victory.
All this follows the familiar pattern of a very old vice: anti-Semitism. The anti-Semite is always drawn to the hatred of Jews by his own unacknowledged inadequacy. As Sartre says in his great essay on the subject, the anti-Semite "is a man who is afraid. Not of Jews of course, but of himself." By hating Jews, he asserts that his own group represents the kind of human being that God truly wants. His group is God's archetype, the only authentic humanity, already complete and superior. No striving or self-reflection is necessary. If Jews are superior in some ways, it is only out of their alienated striving, their exile from God's grace. For the anti-Semite, hating and fighting Jews is both self-affirmation and a way of doing God's work.
So the anti-Semite comes to a chilling place: He easily joins himself to evil in order to serve God. Fighting and even killing Jews brings the world closer to God's intended human hierarchy. For Nazis, the "final solution" was an act of self-realization and a fulfillment of God's will. At the center of today's militant Islamic identity there is a passion to annihilate rather than contain Israel. And today this identity applies the anti-Semitic model of hatred to a vastly larger group--the infidel. If the infidel is not yet the object of that pristine hatred reserved for Jews, he is not far behind. Bombings in London, Madrid and Mumbai; riots in Paris; murders in Amsterdam; and of course 9/11--all these follow the formula of anti-Semitism: murder of a hated enemy as self-realization and service to God.
Hatred and murder are self-realization because they impart grandeur to Islamic extremists--the sense of being God's chosen warrior in God's great cause. Hatred delivers the extremist to a greatness that compensates for his ineffectuality in the world. Jews and infidels are irrelevant except that they offer occasion to hate and, thus, to experience grandiosity. This is why Hezbollah--Party of God--can take no territory and still claim to have won. The grandiosity is in the hating and fighting, not the victory.
And death--both homicide and suicide--is the extremist's great obsession because its finality makes the grandiosity "real." If I am not afraid to kill and die, then I am larger than life. Certainly I am larger than the puny Westerners who are reduced to decadence by their love of life. So my hatred and my disregard of death, my knowledge that life is trivial, deliver me to a human grandeur beyond the reach of the West. After the Madrid bombings a spokesman for al Qaeda left a message: "You love life, and we love death." The horror is that greatness is tied to death rather than to achievement in life.
The West is stymied by this extremism because it is used to enemies that want to live. In Vietnam, America fought one whose communism was driven by an underlying nationalism, the desire to live free of the West. Whatever one may think of this, here was an enemy that truly wanted to live, that insisted on territory and sovereignty. But Osama bin Laden fights only to achieve a death that will enshrine him as a figure of awe. The gift he wants to leave his people is not freedom or even justice; it is consolation.
White guilt in the West--especially in Europe and on the American left--confuses all this by seeing Islamic extremism as a response to oppression. The West is so terrified of being charged with its old sins of racism, imperialism and colonialism that it makes oppression an automatic prism on the non-Western world, a politeness. But Islamic extremists don't hate the West because they are oppressed by it. They hate it precisely because the end of oppression and colonialism--not their continuance--forced the Muslim world to compete with the West. Less oppression, not more, opened this world to the sense of defeat that turned into extremism.
But the international left is in its own contest with American exceptionalism. It keeps charging Israel and America with oppression hoping to mute American power. And this works in today's world because the oppression script is so familiar and because American power cringes when labeled with sins of the white Western past. Yet whenever the left does this, it makes room for extremism by lending legitimacy to its claim of oppression. And Israel can never use its military fire power without being labeled an oppressor--which brings legitimacy to the enemies she fights. Israel roars; much of Europe supports Hezbollah.
Over and over, white guilt turns the disparity in development between Israel and her neighbors into a case of Western bigotry. This despite the fact that Islamic extremism is the most explicit and dangerous expression of human bigotry since the Nazi era. Israel's historical contradiction, her torture, is to be a Western nation whose efforts to survive trap her in the moral mazes of white guilt. Its national defense will forever be white aggression.
But white guilt's most dangerous suppression is to keep from discussion the most conspicuous reality in the Middle East: that the Islamic world long ago fell out of history. Islamic extremism is the saber-rattling of an inferiority complex. America has done a good thing in launching democracy as a new ideal in this region. Here is the possibility--if still quite remote--for the Islamic world to seek power through contribution rather than through menace.
Life and Death
Western guilt blinds us to the nature of Islamic extremism.
BY SHELBY STEELE
Sunday, August 27, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
The simple back-and-forth of war can create the illusion that both sides have a legitimate point to make even when this is not so, and it is clear that Hezbollah's cause has greatly benefited from war's "equalizing" effect. This Shiite militia seems to have known that merely fighting Israel would gain legitimacy for its cause. A cease-fire would make it a "partner" in peace. The Goliath Israeli military would make it a David whose passion proved the truth of its cause. But amid all the drama of this war there has been very little talk of exactly what Hezbollah's cause is.
And, of course, it is not just Hezbollah's cause. There is Hamas, one more in a family of politicized terrorist groups spread across the Muslim world. Beyond these more conventional groups there is the free-floating and world-wide terrorism of groups like al Qaeda. In Europe, there are cells of self-invented middle-class terrorists living modern lives by day and plotting attacks on modernity by night. And around these cells there is often a nourishing atmosphere of fellow traveling. Then there are the radical nation-states in league with terrorism, Iran and Syria most prominent among them. From nations on the verge of nuclear weapons to isolated individuals--take the recent Seattle shootings--Islamic militancy grounded in hatred of Israel and America has become the Muslim world's most animating idea. Why?
I don't believe it is because of the reasons usually cited--Israeli and American "outrages." No doubt Israel and America have made mistakes in the Middle East. Certainly, Israel was born at the price of considerable dislocation and suffering on the part of the Palestinians. And yes, there will never be a satisfying answer for this. Yet every Israeli land-for-peace gesture has been met with a return volley of suicide bombers and rockets. Palestinians have balked every time their longed-for nationhood has come within grasp. They have seemed to prefer the aggrieved dignity of their resentments to the challenges of nationhood. And Hezbollah launched the current war from territory Israel had relinquished six years earlier.
If this war makes anything clear, it is that Israel can do nothing to appease the Muslim animus against her. And now much of the West is in a similar position, living in a state of ever-heightening security against the constant threat of violence from Islamic extremists. So here, from the Muslim world, comes an unappeasable hatred that seems to exist for its own sake, a hatred with very little actual reference to those it claims to hate. Even the fighting of Islamic terrorist groups is oddly self-referential, fighting not for territory or treasure but for the fighting itself. Standing today in the rubble of Lebanon, having not taken a single inch of Israeli territory, Hezbollah claims a galvanizing victory.
All this follows the familiar pattern of a very old vice: anti-Semitism. The anti-Semite is always drawn to the hatred of Jews by his own unacknowledged inadequacy. As Sartre says in his great essay on the subject, the anti-Semite "is a man who is afraid. Not of Jews of course, but of himself." By hating Jews, he asserts that his own group represents the kind of human being that God truly wants. His group is God's archetype, the only authentic humanity, already complete and superior. No striving or self-reflection is necessary. If Jews are superior in some ways, it is only out of their alienated striving, their exile from God's grace. For the anti-Semite, hating and fighting Jews is both self-affirmation and a way of doing God's work.
So the anti-Semite comes to a chilling place: He easily joins himself to evil in order to serve God. Fighting and even killing Jews brings the world closer to God's intended human hierarchy. For Nazis, the "final solution" was an act of self-realization and a fulfillment of God's will. At the center of today's militant Islamic identity there is a passion to annihilate rather than contain Israel. And today this identity applies the anti-Semitic model of hatred to a vastly larger group--the infidel. If the infidel is not yet the object of that pristine hatred reserved for Jews, he is not far behind. Bombings in London, Madrid and Mumbai; riots in Paris; murders in Amsterdam; and of course 9/11--all these follow the formula of anti-Semitism: murder of a hated enemy as self-realization and service to God.
Hatred and murder are self-realization because they impart grandeur to Islamic extremists--the sense of being God's chosen warrior in God's great cause. Hatred delivers the extremist to a greatness that compensates for his ineffectuality in the world. Jews and infidels are irrelevant except that they offer occasion to hate and, thus, to experience grandiosity. This is why Hezbollah--Party of God--can take no territory and still claim to have won. The grandiosity is in the hating and fighting, not the victory.
And death--both homicide and suicide--is the extremist's great obsession because its finality makes the grandiosity "real." If I am not afraid to kill and die, then I am larger than life. Certainly I am larger than the puny Westerners who are reduced to decadence by their love of life. So my hatred and my disregard of death, my knowledge that life is trivial, deliver me to a human grandeur beyond the reach of the West. After the Madrid bombings a spokesman for al Qaeda left a message: "You love life, and we love death." The horror is that greatness is tied to death rather than to achievement in life.
The West is stymied by this extremism because it is used to enemies that want to live. In Vietnam, America fought one whose communism was driven by an underlying nationalism, the desire to live free of the West. Whatever one may think of this, here was an enemy that truly wanted to live, that insisted on territory and sovereignty. But Osama bin Laden fights only to achieve a death that will enshrine him as a figure of awe. The gift he wants to leave his people is not freedom or even justice; it is consolation.
White guilt in the West--especially in Europe and on the American left--confuses all this by seeing Islamic extremism as a response to oppression. The West is so terrified of being charged with its old sins of racism, imperialism and colonialism that it makes oppression an automatic prism on the non-Western world, a politeness. But Islamic extremists don't hate the West because they are oppressed by it. They hate it precisely because the end of oppression and colonialism--not their continuance--forced the Muslim world to compete with the West. Less oppression, not more, opened this world to the sense of defeat that turned into extremism.
But the international left is in its own contest with American exceptionalism. It keeps charging Israel and America with oppression hoping to mute American power. And this works in today's world because the oppression script is so familiar and because American power cringes when labeled with sins of the white Western past. Yet whenever the left does this, it makes room for extremism by lending legitimacy to its claim of oppression. And Israel can never use its military fire power without being labeled an oppressor--which brings legitimacy to the enemies she fights. Israel roars; much of Europe supports Hezbollah.
Over and over, white guilt turns the disparity in development between Israel and her neighbors into a case of Western bigotry. This despite the fact that Islamic extremism is the most explicit and dangerous expression of human bigotry since the Nazi era. Israel's historical contradiction, her torture, is to be a Western nation whose efforts to survive trap her in the moral mazes of white guilt. Its national defense will forever be white aggression.
But white guilt's most dangerous suppression is to keep from discussion the most conspicuous reality in the Middle East: that the Islamic world long ago fell out of history. Islamic extremism is the saber-rattling of an inferiority complex. America has done a good thing in launching democracy as a new ideal in this region. Here is the possibility--if still quite remote--for the Islamic world to seek power through contribution rather than through menace.
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I like reading your links as to view what it must be like to believe all these things. Some I can take and some I can't. It may just be an ability. Who knows?
Why when these stories get posted that America and Israel have to be mentioned in the same breath? But, can never be doing any bad or wrong?
"Over and over, white guilt turns the disparity in development between Israel and her neighbors into a case of Western bigotry. This despite the fact that Islamic extremism is the most explicit and dangerous expression of human bigotry since the Nazi era. Israel's historical contradiction, her torture, is to be a Western nation whose efforts to survive trap her in the moral mazes of white guilt. Its national defense will forever be white aggression.
But white guilt's most dangerous suppression is to keep from discussion the most conspicuous reality in the Middle East: that the Islamic world long ago fell out of history. Islamic extremism is the saber-rattling of an inferiority complex. America has done a good thing in launching democracy as a new ideal in this region. Here is the possibility--if still quite remote--for the Islamic world to seek power through contribution rather than through menace."
Keeping score can be useful, but at this point in the history of the Middle East it will only continue a never ending cycle of violence to do so. This is the author's point. Afterall, she did admit that Israel and the US have made many mistakes in the Arab world.
But it would be much wiser to identify root causes and goals of the opposing factions. And through recent devlopments, it has become quite clear that radical Islam is an empty ideology that only leads to death and destruction. They have no goals, other than to oppose the West. If there are any others, I would be very open to hearing them.
Not to support this article, but what is going on with this post? Have you listened to these "Islamic Terrorists"???
HEZBOLLAH CHARTER
"Our primary assumption in our fight against Israel states that the Zionist entity is aggressive from its inception, and built on lands wrested from their owners, at the expense of the rights of the Muslim people. Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated."
OSAMA BIN LADEN
"I'm fighting so I can die a martyr and go to heaven to meet God. Our fight now is against the Americans."
You think that "leaving them alone" will end this conflict? Considering that their claims against us are not limited to our actions but rather our existence, I think you're the one who isn't listening.
No. I'm saying that Israeli and Western interference in the region is the cause of the conflict. It has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, inferiority complexes, or whatever else the author suggested. It's not complicated.
Ok. I have some questions then.
Can you explain when this conflict began? Can you identify the "interference" you speak of? Finally, would it be your contention then that if this "interference" ended, so would the conflict?
Islamic Extremism is our fault.
Who is "our"?
I don't agree. I will agree that some of these bungled wars like Iraq have made Islamic extremism worse, but they were not the original cause.
The conflict I'm talking about is terrorist activity against the U.S. (we'll stick with the U.S. since that is my main concern being an American) that is carried out by Al Qaeda and other groups originating from the Middle East region.
The conflict with Al Qaeda is the result of many interferences: mainly our massive support for Israel, but also the 1991 invasion of Iraq, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This was the conclusion of the 9/11 comission, and it's basically my conclusion as well.
It's too hard to tell whether our conflict with Middle Eastern terrorists would end if we stopped interfering. Conflicts escalate and mutate over time, so you never know what will happen. However, I certainly think it would be worth a try.
"If this war makes anything clear, it is that Israel can do nothing to appease the Muslim animus against her. And now much of the West is in a similar position, living in a state of ever-heightening security against the constant threat of violence from Islamic extremists. So here, from the Muslim world, comes an unappeasable hatred that seems to exist for its own sake, a hatred with very little actual reference to those it claims to hate."
If you honestly believe that Israel has done everything possible to appease Muslims, including Palestinians, then you're fucking baked. Israel has repeatedly offered nothing more then tokenism to the Palestinians. Take Camp David, an example that right-wing Americans and Israeli's love to hold up as an example of Palestinian implacability. Only problem is that that agreement would have seen "Palestine" completely at the mercy of Israel both geograpically and economically. Colin Powell said you "can't have a Palestinian state carved up into a thousand pieces". Oh well, so much for Camp David. So much for offering Palestinians everything under the sun.
Another line questions the motives for war, and the animosity toward the U.S. and Israel. Come now, are people really that stupid (?), or are they just hopelessly ignorant of Middle East affairs over the last 50 years or so ? They mistrust and fight b/c they have been treated like shit, lied to, been subjected to double standards, taken advantage of, pitted against one another, and generally been fucked over for generations now. The source of much of that shit has been the U.S.. So what's so hard to understand ? And still, to this day, we lie about Iraq and start an arguable civil war there. In case no one has noticed, Iraq is worse now than its been in the last 4 years. Oh well, who cares right ?
Americans better get it into their heads - you can't go around the world and do your fucked-up bidding without some price being attached. You can't offer unconditional to some parts of the world, while you simultaneously treat other parts like shit. People notice, for example, that Israel gets more in U.S. gov't aid than all of Africa combined. Look it up. And last time i checked, large parts of Africa were MUSLIM. You fuckling reap what you sow.
I'm not hear to suggest that Muslims are innocent of certain charges, b/c they certainly are not. But this writer makes a joke of, and trivializes to an unbelieveable degree, the actions of the U.S. and Israel. A reluctant recognition of some of America's faults won't cut it. 99.9 % of Americans wouldn't live for 10 minutes the way that Palestinians have had to live for 50 years.
This ignorance is going to bite us in the ass. Take a look at the 5 year old you are sending off to kindergarten... he/she is going to have to face the consequences of our 'Spreading Democracy' in the Middle East as a nuclear armed Iran/Iraq Shi-ite state threatens the rest of the region. We are so ignorant... we never saw the possibility that this hatred for us may lead them to Democratically elect people that hate us. Just give them a Wal-Mart and they will be free... it worked for us.
The conflict in Israel/Palestine has nothing to do with this grandeous big picture and anti-semitism. It's about land... land that both see as Holy according to their own scriptures. The only reason we have our noses in it is because we need the fucking oil.
Hail, Hail!!!
http://www.wishlistfoundation.org
Oh my, they dropped the leash.
Morgan Freeman/Clint Eastwood 08' for President!
"Make our day"
Ok.
Cool.
Ok, some questions:
1) You say that the conflict would not necessarily end if the interferences do not. How does that work considering your previous statement:
"Radical Islamic extremeists [sic] have the goal of being left alone by the West and Israel"
If those extermists truly only wish to be "left alone", why would they continue this conflict if that wish was granted? Wouldn't additional wishes be required to continue the conflict?
2) You say that this conflict is caused by our interferences. What do you say about their interferences? Al Qaeda and similar groups directly interfere or have interfered with Russian interests, Israel's interests and now American interests. How come our interferences justify their aggression or existence, but their interferences cannot justify ours?
3) You say "there's no ideology involved here". Yet these "interferences" have happened throughout the globe without a similar result. We are not fighting extremists from Panama, Columbia or other nations in similar situations despite very similar "interferences" there. If ideology is irrelevant, what accounts for these differences?
4) By suggesting that America/Israel is the root cause behind suicide bombings and other violent acts by Islamic Radicals and suggesting that it would be "worth a try" to end our interferences, you obviously believe that America/Israel has a choice to change their behavior. But at the same time you seem to suggest that Islamic Radicalism is a determined reaction to our behavior. Do Islamic Radicals have no choice in their violent behavior? If they do have choice, isn't that choice and their failure to turn their backs on violence primary in their complicity as a violent entity in the exact same way that our choices are primary in our own complicity in these events? In short, can you please explain how your argument does not require Islamic Radicals to be reactionary zombies without free will?
Arab media is 10x worse than american media. AL Jazzera is a propaganda station yet the people of the islamic world eat it up. The reality of the middle east is that the jews are right and the muslims are wrong...its pretty simple
Western guilt doesn't blind me to anything. In fact, I have no guilt. I WOULD have guilt if I was an extremist who had killed somebody, though, because I believe killing is wrong and there is NO excuse for it.
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
And I try to make this kind and clear
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days
Cuz I don't need boxes wrapped in strings
And desire and love and empty things
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/16/op...&oref=s login
Muslim Myopia
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By IRSHAD MANJI
Published: August 16, 2006
New Haven
LAST week, the luminaries of the British Muslim mainstream — lobbyists, lords and members of Parliament — published an open letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair, telling him that the “debacle” of both Iraq and Lebanon provides “ammunition to extremists who threaten us all.” In increasingly antiwar America, a similar argument is gaining traction: The United States brutalizes Muslims, which in turn foments Islamist terror.
But violent jihadists have rarely needed foreign policy grievances to justify their hot heads. There was no equivalent to the Iraq debacle in 1993, when Islamists first tried to blow up the World Trade Center, or in 2000, when they attacked the American destroyer Cole. Indeed, that assault took place after United States-led military intervention saved thousands of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo.
If Islamists cared about changing Iraq policy, they would not have bothered to abduct two journalists from France — probably the most antiwar, anti-Bush nation in the West. Even overt solidarity with Iraqi suffering did not prevent Margaret Hassan, who ran a world-renowned relief agency in Baghdad, from being executed by insurgents.
Meanwhile, at least as many Muslims are dying at the hands of other Muslims as under the boots of any foreign imperial power. In Sudan, black Muslims are starved, raped, enslaved and slaughtered by Arab militias, with the consent of an Islamic government. Where is the “official” Muslim fury against that genocide? Do Muslim lives count only when snuffed out by non-Muslims? If not, then here is an idea for Muslim representatives in the West: Go ahead and lecture the politicians that their foreign policies give succor to radicals. At the same time, however, challenge the educated and angry young Muslims to hold their own accountable, too.
This means reminding them that in Pakistan, Sunnis hunt down Shiites every day; that in northern Israel, Katuysha rockets launched by Hezbollah have ripped through the homes of Arab Muslims as well as Jews; that in Egypt, the riot police of President Hosni Mubarak routinely club, rape, torture and murder Muslim activists promoting democracy; and, above all, that civil wars have become hallmarks of the Islamic world.
Muslim figureheads will not dare be so honest. They would sooner replicate the very sins for which they castigate the Bush and Blair governments — namely, switching rationales and pretending integrity.
In the wake of the London bombings on July 7, 2005, Iqbal Sacranie, then the head of the influential Muslim Council of Britain, insisted that economic discrimination lay at the root of Islamist radicalism in his country. When it came to light that some of the suspects enjoyed middle-class upbringings, university educations, jobs and cars, Mr. Sacranie found a new culprit: foreign policy. In so doing, he boarded the groupthink express steered by Muslim elites.
The good news is that ordinary people of faith are capable of self-criticism. Two months ago, 65 percent of British Muslims polled believed that their communities should increase efforts to integrate. The same poll also produced troubling results: 13 percent lionized the July 7 terrorists, and 16 percent sympathized. Still, these figures total 29 percent — less than half the number who sought to belong more fully to British society.
Whether in Britain or America, those who claim to speak for Muslims have a responsibility to the majority, which wants to reconcile Islam with pluralism. Whatever their imperial urges, it is not for Tony Blair or George W. Bush to restore Islam’s better angels. That duty — and glory — goes to Muslims.
Irshad Manji, a fellow at Yale University, is the author of “The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith.”
And I try to make this kind and clear
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days
Cuz I don't need boxes wrapped in strings
And desire and love and empty things
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days
Question: Would you kill someone in order to save your life, or the life of a loved one? Say, as in self-defense?
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Low Traffic CIO MIW
Non Traffic ABC BAY FDU GBZ HNC NDP OEM ROV TMS ZWL
Like I just said, conflicts mutate and change over time...so do the wishes of each side over time. So I don't know if the conflict would end based on the original wishes being granted. However, I do know that the conflict (meaning the terrorist attacks) stemmed from the interferences I mentioned before.
I never said our interferences justify their agression or existence. I said our interferences are the cause of their attacks on us. That doesn't mean they're justified.
Money. Al Qaeda is heavily funded by rich families such as the Bin Ladens. They were also trained and funded by the CIA. Central Americans are not.
Everyone has a choice to change their behavior. My argument is that American interference is the motivation for the terrorism carried out against us. Al Qaeda chooses to carry out that terrorism as a response to our interference. They could choose otherwise, but they don't. But that doesn't change the fact that their motivation stems from our interference, not a difference of ideology. I don't see how my argument requires them to be reactionary zombies without free will.
Keeping score can be useful, but at this point in the history of the Middle East it will only continue a never ending cycle of violence to do so. This is the author's point. Afterall, she did admit that Israel and the US have made many mistakes in the Arab world.
[/quote"]
You are an American???? And you quote something about never ending violence! Why don't you count on your fingers and toes and then get your mommy or daddy to stand by so you can use their fingers and toes too, and count up the number of countries you have dropped bombs on. Then come and quote me something about violence.
Do you have an opinion on how your government fucked up bad in New Orleans or was that the Muslims wrong doing too? You don't seem to have an opinion other then wanting dead Muslims. Just an observation.
Like having some other body tell me they need a homeland and take me off of mine. I would sure be killing them until they were all gone. Oooops, that is the problem!
Nope. But bombing people in a market isn't exactly self-defense, either.
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
But your original point was that all these people want is to be left alone. Again, how does that point square with the language above.
Ok, that's fair. But are you not saying that our interferences cause their aggression therefore we should change? Can you not simply flip that around and suggest that their interferences are causing our violence and therefore they should change?
Sure they were. The CIA has funded and trained numerous unethical groups throughout Central America.
Because you imply that the only hope is America's choice. The potential choices of Al Qaeda seem completely non-existant in your argument. You imply that it is America's choice to interfere in the first place and America's choice to stop interfering in the future. Both problem and solution, in your mind, are found in America's choices. Unfortunately, your argument completely fails to account for the very real choices of Al Qaeda.
This is no different than the "blame society" argument for crime and the concomittant calls for social change. While certainly individuals are subject to outside forces that shape their personality, a logical problem is found when an argument demands free will from one set of individuals in order to define complicity and determinism from another set of individuals in order to define victimization. It's inconsistent and poorly thought out.
Yes, they are saying they want to be left alone by the West and Israel. I'm assuming they're serious about what they are saying since they're attacking us. I don't know if there are other motives or reasons involved here because they aren't telling us anything else. So that's why I don't know if granting the wishes they've identified would end the conflict.
Yes, I think we should change and they should change. I focus on us because we have control over that. But Al Qaeda certainly needs to change as well. Terrorism is never a justified reaction to interference.
That's a really weak point though. We trained and funded death squads to control a poor, peasant population in Central America...not to fight a superpoewer as we did in Afghanistan. There's a huge difference in the amount of funding and type of training those people got.
And aside from all that, the major difference, as I said, is money...resources. Central Americans don't have the resources. Middle Easterners do.
I'm not trying to imply that the only hope is America's choice. We don't control what Al Qaeda does. Like I said, leaving them alone might not stop them, precisely because of the fact that they have the choice to terrorize. However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to listen to them and choose to change our ways to see if we can stop the violence. We're certainly doing the opposite right now by invading again and supporting Israel.
Ultimately, people are responsible for what they do. We are responsible for creating the motivation for others to terrorize us. Al Qaeda is responsible for choosing terrorism as their method of attack. Getting into this free wills argument is silly. You could use it both ways for all kinds of situations. I mean you have the free will to walk on a street sidewalk. Let's say say someone chooses to push you out into the street, and you get injured by an oncoming car. Would it be ok for him to say "well you have the free will to choose whether or not to walk on the sidewalk, so it's not my fault you got injured"? No. It's a silly academic-type argument that doesn't apply to anything realistic.
And here, I come to find out it's all about their hatred of my ........
....... Frrrreeeeeeeddddddooooommmmmm.!...!...!!!.......
Of course, one could say that it's possible to despise an ideology while at the same time disagree with the - ahem - need -cough - to spend billions blowing the holy hell out of them while at the same time making an investment in future reasons to blow the holy hell out of them. In fact, I think it a tenable argument to say blowing the holy hell out of them is why we have to blow the holy hell out of them.
But would they stop if we did? Probably not at first. Our little Iraq adventure will guarantee returns on this investment for years to come whether we stay there or not. No. The best all around way to protect ourselves from terrorism is through law enforcement (a la the British, who seem to have had a good spot of success not long ago) and by keeping our military here and ready for real threats. Ready - not preemptive. No good protecting yourself with an empty gun.
But Iraq was a real threat.
Or, but we thought Iraq was a real threat.
Or, and this one's a gem, we're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here. Disregard that we could have done the same thing from Afghanistan ("no we couldn't, no we couldn't" - sure) , or that they weren't really "there" to begin with. Sure, I'll admit that people in and around Iraq hate us; but that's no reason for war - and, despite the fact that Saddam was/is an evil prick, he never threatened U.S. soil, and most of his evil days were behind him (you know, when he was on our side - which is an interesting side note. We support Saddam when he's at his most nefarious - and invade when he starts calming down. No mixed messages there, right? Knowing that, it's not to hard to see how Iraqis could hate Saddam, be relieved that he's gone, yet still hold some animosity toward the U.S.).
But what about Israel? We gotta protect Israel (with rhetoric, of course). Well, to me, it looks as though Israel is capable (and more than willing) to protect itself. So if you want to lend verbal support, it's no skin off my back. It's not like Hezbollah is a model to route for. But, then, neither is Israel. Me? I'll sit back and say they're both working to secure their own demises - and realize, in comfort, that not supporting Israel isn't the same as anti-Semitism.
But they are telling us something else. They're telling us that our existence is what they wish to end, not just our "interference". I posted just two examples of that above. Did you read them? Do they not matter? Should we only listen to these extremists when they're telling us what's wrong with our actions?
This is all cool.
It is a huge difference. South American's got and continue to get more money and more training.
What resources? The few thousand bucks it takes to build a bomb and plant it somewhere? The few thousand bucks it takes to hijack an airplane? Again your argument must deny choice and therefore deny an ideology that leads to choices. But you cannot whitewash the different reactions that stem from different ideologies.
I agree.
Agreed.
Actually the silly "academic-type" argument is the one that now requires we must sympathize rather than empathize with that which hates us. It's the argument that believes one party is culpable for their free actions but another is not. It's the argument that believes two cultures are equal even while they're different.
Regardless, you got us into this "free will" stuff by suggesting that Americans' free will to change is the solution without any initial mention of Al Qaeda's (and others') similar choice to change.
Clarified, I'm much more comfortable with the argument you're making.
No, you posted an example of someone saying Israel needs to be obliterated, and another example of someone saying he's terrorizing because he wants to go to heaven when he dies. There was nothing about ending U.S. existence.
But I'll save you some trouble of finding another quote, because it's obvious that there are statements put out there like "death to America". That doesn't change the fact that they are pissed about what we're doing in the Middle East. I believe that is what's driving them to say those things and attack us, not some difference in ideologies.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree there. We don't fund the peasant victims in Central America, we fund the oppressive armies and client regimes. So the two situations really aren't comparable. It's a bad analogy to say Russia is to U.S.-funded Mujahadeen as U.S.-funded Central American death squads is to poor peasants. It doesn't make sense.
Well it's not my argument that we must sympathize with anyone, or that only we are responsible for the violence coming out of this conflict, or that our two cultures are equal. That's why I agree...it's a silly argument.
I glimpsed the end of it where (surprise surprise) the "global left" (so as to make sure you get them all) is to blame for various nations' "complacency" and "unwillingness" to do what they must. Bullcrap. If anything has been shown through history it is that especially Israel doesnt give a fuck who it rubs the wrong way, and America hasn't actually been unwilling to boldly go forth under the current administration.
Partisan hot air. Gotta love it.
Perhaps there was something worthwhile inbetween the start and the end, in that case, both start and ending is unrelated to the main part of it.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965