recently had to sit through a dinner with one of the higher exec's at the company I work for. He insisted that 9/11 had nothing to do with our support of Israel
If you've been listening to OBL's grievances over the years, you know that Israel is very much of a Johnny-come-lately among his causes. The original one highlighted in his 1998 declaration of war was "infidel troops on the sacred soil of Arabia". Of course, those troops are not sitting there because of Israel, but because of Saddam, and you'd have a tough time arguing that Saddam invaded Kuwait due to Israel, or that we are protecting the oil fields of Saudi Arabia due to Israel. Of course, OBL also complains of La Reconquista, the Mongol sack of Baghdad, and support for the independence of East Timor! What was the US position on the sack of Baghdad in 1258?
Islamism is born out of the failures of the Arab regimes to modernize or get working ideologies; pan-Arabism, socialism, and Nasserism have been tried and have failed. Now maybe you can argue that the Arab regimes would not be such psychological messes if they weren't so humiliated by the existence of Israel, but it's not an obvious argument. Israel is a sharp stick in their ribs, but the contrast between American and European prosperity and Arab stagnation would be obvious even without it. One definitely gets the feeling if Israel didn't exist, they would have had to invent it, or find some other excuse. |
