Well, this is very timely. Here is a post I put up on another thread just now:
....most such "discussions of root causes" have the character of apologetics for the offenders, or, to put it another way, become just one more verse of "Officer Krupke" (West Side Story).
I will discuss root causes: Islam was once a triumphant religion, having conquered North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, most of the Middle East, a wide swathe of Central Asia through to the Pacific Rim, and, with the Turks, finally Constantinople. It was, for a time, a high civilization, with splendid cities and learned scholars. However, after the Middle Ages, it fell into decline, and was rapidly surpassed by the West. Now, how could Allah have let this happen? For some, this is a very pointed question, and the answer is that the current world order is evil, an evil visited upon Islam due to infidelity (failure to follow shari'ah faithfully), and therefore we, as the topmost power, are the Great Satan, and the Muslim world must return to purity, win the favor of Allah, and overturn the evil world order.
This deluded construct is the center of the terrorist phenomenon in the Islamic world. It is particularly acute among Arabs because at its civilizational height, Islam was dominated by Arabs, and they, even more than the Turks, lost glory.......
As for your specific points:
We consume so much oil because we have the most developed economy. It goes where there are paying customers. Otherwise, the region would be truly impoverished.
We have troops in the Middle East (mainly Saudi Arabia) to keep friendly regimes from being destabilized. Only those predisposed would consider us oppressors.
Many of them are rich, like Osama bin Laden. Anyway, lots of people are poor, and they don't get obsessed with taking down the WTC.
Again, people are uneasy all over the world, and do not form terrorist cells.
I am not quite sure what number 5 means.
We do not have to simply wipe them out. We just need to cripple them enough to keep residual terrorism a manageable threat....... |
