Quote:
Originally posted by Silver Cheetah:
No, that isn?t what I meant at all. Sigh........
We need to go back further than merely looking at what you see on the surface.
Question: Why are these people extremists? What makes extremists extremist? Do they come out of a vacuum?
Question: Was their reason for carrying out the attacks merely because they wish people who do not want to join their faith to die?
Question: Is Israel really at the root of the problem, and if so, why? Do the Palestinians have any legitimate grievances here that we might recognise, and even relate to?
Question: Is the US really involved in Israel and Kuwait merely because they were ASKED?
Question: Why might bin Laden and other Arabs, ?extremists? or not see the US as a spreader of poison?
You?ve made a lot of statements here ? could you back them up, please, with some facts? (And Yorick, I?d be grateful if you?d keep out of this, at least until Prime2U has answered. I am genuinely very interested in why he has made the statements he is making, and upon the facts supporting those statements. I know what your opinion is.  )
BTW, I'd just like to make it clear that I hold no ruth for the Taliban. Their record on human rights, especially towards women, is appalling. I am not arguing for the Taliban here. I am simply trying to move away from what I see as an extremely simplistic view of the causes of terrorism.
Once you have posted your replies to my questions above, which will clarify your stance for me, I will post my own views on this topic.
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Eek
Posting good evidence, backup and examples for this would fill a large book (in fact it's filled several) But I'll try to clarify on your questions a bit.
A large part of what makes extremists is that they follow the rules of their faith as it was centuries ago. It's easier for you to look this up than it is for me to write an essay on it (sorry). Why would they do this? It gives them a tremendous amount of power over others (for an example see women in Afghan.)
By sing this ultra strict view of their faith they can keep the populace tightly under their control, and keep out anything that may influence the people to rebel.
No, the purpose of the attack was to incite a war between Islamic nations and western nations, most prominently the US. THEN the corrupting non believers can die, or convert and follow their rules.
Israel is a part, but not all of the problem. And yes the Palestinians do have a legitimate claim on part of the ground that Israel is holding. It's a huge headache....the border was established, later some Palistinians didn't like it and attacks occured on Israel, Israel responded by attacking back and took some more ground while they were at it, and now the goal is for Israel to give that ground back to the Palestinians and have a peace, but the Palestinians won't all accept that and want more than that ground back. Again this would take way too many words to thoroughly explain.
In Kuwait, we were of course there (so were many other countries) for economical and political reasons besides just being asked. Any time a superpower, not just the US, does anything that drastic there are going to be several factors that it effects. However, once asked, there was really no way we couldn't become involved even if we hadn't wanted to unless we abandoned the rest of the UN to handle it on their own, so it's sort of a moot point.
As for the Israeli/Palestinian mess, there's no way we can get away from it, and we've tried to more than once. We nursemaided the Israelis after the Holocaust to get them on their feet again, and have acted as their big brother ever since. How could we not? After all that that people suffered in WW2. We gave them the means to protect themselves against a future tragedy such as that. But now if we try to walk away from the dispute we have cries from both sides to come and mediate. Every time we mediate a peace there the fighting just springs back up. If we don't come mediate they are angry at us, and if we do go mediate they are still angry at us. Lose lose situation and one the US would definitely love to be out of.
And for the last question...not many do, and for those extremists that do, it isn't just the US, it's western culture in general. The US just happens to be the most powerful and blatant example, and so the biggest target. There are a couple of reasons they hate our culture. From a religious standpoint...well I already described that earlier. The other is that western culture is a temptation to the populace that they are trying so hard to control with an iron fist. If they can keep the people from seeing how their life can change, they won't have the hope and motivation to rebel. Also, the UN won't allow the type of aggressive takeover and domination that these people favor, and haven't since WW2. There are many, many reasons that can be given here, and I'm not qualified to explain them all. I think that the US would see much less anger from the extremists if we would remove all of our troops from the middle east, take back the weapons in Israel, and turn the other cheek on any events that occur in the region. Then the genocide of the jews could be completed and many of the governments with leanings toward tolerance and leanings toward western culture could be annhialated and those country places under regimes like the Talibans. That wouldn't burdun us that much economically, the losses probably easily made up for in all of the aid moneys we wouldn't be expending. I doubt we'd even have an oil shortage as these new governments would happily take our money and get along with us great cause we let them do whatever. But the cost to our concience for letting millions of people suffer and die would be great indeed.