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Re: Miami Herald
20010918210411.91761.qmail at web11502_mail.yahoo.com">
If we insist on
pretending that they are irrational, inhuman, and
beyond the pale
So now I'm supposed to believe that what these beasts
do on a regular basis is rational, humane, and
completely acceptable. How naive!
I think what Don is trying to say is that if we understand even a tiny bit
about what their lives are like, what their warped version of Islam teaches,
how they see us and our actions in their countries, then we might understand
that, while being opposed to their violent, regrettable actions, they're
not crazy or irrational. Most reports I've read on terrorists is that they
tend not ot be the Tim McVeigh/David Koresh types. Rather, they tend to be
avaegare, run-of-the-mill young men. When recruiters look for suicide bombers,
they look not for crazies (they actually psychologically profile their people
and reject crazy folks) but for stable kids, what we would call "the boy
next door." bin Laden in particular is not regarded as irrational, inhuman
or beyond the pale by most people in the Middle East, he is regarded as a
hero much in the same way we regard George Washington (who, before you retaliate,
was known to be a cruel military leader in the French and Indian War and
in the Revolutionary war, and was none too kind to his slaves). If you want
to compare bin Laden to a Biblical person, compare him to Joshua, who led
the Isrealites into an already-occupied Caanan and slaughtered tens of thosands
of the people living there (women, children and even cattle) all because
he claimed God had told him the land was his and these unfortunate people
were in his way and were "unclean." These are bin Laden's exact reasons for
attacking us. His main concerns are nto with taking us over, but rather with
getting our troops and cultural influence out of Saudi Arabia (his home country)
and out of the Isreali-Palestine conflict. He sees our materialism, consumerism,
racism and considers it all very ungodly and doesn't want it coming anywhere
near his people.
20010918210411.91761.qmail at web11502_mail.yahoo.com">
Unless America really
looks at our own
culpability in acts of terror around the world, and
makes changes to stop it,
this will happen again.
I am so damned sick of hearing people bend over
backwards to try to find our "culpability" in this.
There is none. We got up to go to
work/school/wherever last week, thinking it was a
typical blah day, and were instead victims of the most
horrendous act of violence imaginable. How the crap
to you figure that we are responsible?!?
Well, firstly, we committed plenty of our own "Acts of terror" in 1999 when
our naiton sent 75 cruise missles into various Islamic nations, claiming
to be wiping out terrorists. We actually hit a pharmecutical comany in the
Sudan, claiming it was making biological weapons, when soil tests by our
own intelligence boys have shown that it was doing no such thing. The other
missles destroyed a bunnch of Bedioun nomds' camps. No terrorists were hit
by our missles, but a good many innnocents were. In case you don'[t remember
the news as far back as 1999, recall the angry throngs of Sudanese holding
up placards declaring Bill Clinton to be a terrorist (my favorite was "No
bombs for Monica") and burning our flag. With that act alone, by George W
Bush's own policy-in-the-making, our nation is a nation that commits terrorist
acts and harbors terrorists. Under Bush's new policy, the Sudan has the right
to blow us all to hell until we surrender Clinton and his Secretary of State
over to them for trial.
Never mind our highly self-interested involvement in the Gulf War, or our
involvement in the Isreal'Palestine matter. In case you don't remember *that*,
in 1948 the UN, urged by the US and Britain, took away 75% of Palestine from
the Arabs, renamed it Isreal and gave it to the dispossesed Jews. Until that
time, Palestine had been the home of the Arabs for a little under 1300 years.
In 1967, Isreal invaded the remaining 25% of Palestine (What we call the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip) and took it too. If you do the math you'll
see that leaves the Palestinians nothing. Again, under Bush's current policy,
that makes Isreal a terrorist nation, and indeed, you could say that it was
that war which sparked the terrorism we know today. The US has unequivocably
backed Isreal since then, causing much of the Arab hostility towards the
US. and, again, making us a nation that "aids or harbors terrorists."
20010918210411.91761.qmail at web11502_mail.yahoo.com">
No. Not even close. They were saying 'We don't like
you. We don't like that you oppose what we are doing.
We don't like that you work for peace and
rationality. We don't like that you haven't bent to
our will. You are a threat to us and we want every
last one of you dead."
I'll have to disagree here. Having actually paid attention to the Arabs
and even terrorists interviewed, never mind the State department, I'd have
to say that nobdy except President Bush (and maybe Isreal's prime minister)
believes they were trying to say they oppose what we're doing in terms of
democracy, peace, etc. They call us "the Great Satan." Really when you look
at it, the things they hate about us are the same things *we* hate about
us: our greed, our culutre that glorifies violence, irresponsible sex, consumerism.
They look at us and see a great tide that will wash them away, culturally
and economically. If you told any self-respecting Middle-Easterner that we
stand for peace or equality or democracy, you'd get laughed at, not becausre
they despise peace, but because we do not, in our actions, uphold it, unless
our self-interest urges us to.
20010918210411.91761.qmail at web11502_mail.yahoo.com">
"Don't destroy our peaceful, daisy-ridden, we just
want to get along, terrorist existence"? Please...
Oh good grief. It's not like they do it for *kicks*. Your carichature of
them and thier motives isn't accurate or helpful. I will say that they're
the worst kind of evil people, that is, evil people who believe so much in
the evil of others that they're ready to kill them to get rid of it. But,
if you notice, that makes us pretty evil too.
John
20010918210411.91761.qmail at web11502_mail.yahoo.com">
--
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"History goes blind and in darkness;
neither ses nor is seen, nor is
known except as a carrion
marked by unintelligible wounds:
dragging its dead body, living,
yet to be born, it moves heavily
to its glories. It tramples
the little towns, forgets their names."
-Wendell Berry, "The Design of the House: Ideal and Hard Time"
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