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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (137268)	6/21/2004 3:48:31 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 281500

I was specifically addressing the terrorist argument. Seems to me, at least from the data we're allowed to see on terrorists, that most of the terrorists are from Islamic countries, have no interest in integrating into any Western country, and were often working against their own Arab country (alienated not from Western society but from moderate, or less extreme, Arab societies). 9/11 was given as an example- very silly, those men weren't frustrated because they couldn't fit in to Western countries. The article that was posted states that only a very small fraction of Arabs in Western host countries are interested in terrorism (even though it's obvious the Arabs are objects of some pretty strong hostility), and the Western terrorists seem dwarfed by the number of terrorists coming out of the ME with no goal toward assimilation, and having as their primary goal the ejection of the US from all ME soil. I agree the problem is complex. I wasn't the one who said something silly and over simplistic and then called it a "fact". "the failure to integrate themselves into Western European societies is precisely what's fueling a lot of the terror. Their failure leads to extreme alienation, leading to religious fanaticism, leading to Kaabooom! A proven and established fact. " I don't think we can say "precisely", I am sure we cannot say "a lot of the terror" and I know that the "failure to integrate" does not generally lead to extreme alienation AND religious fanaticism and Kaaboooom (and the article posted by the person who wrote the post actually supports that alienation does NOT generally lead to Kaboom). The leaps in logic in that post were so extreme, I commented. It would take several books to explore all the topics it touches on in the detail which they deserve. Please excuse me for not writing those books here. Whe you get into the "is it ok" stuff- I have no idea. Societies do what they do- is it ok? I don't know- by whose yardstick do you want to measure that ok-ness? Are you looking for fairness? I say that's a dictionary concept, and to some extent a legal and playground concept- but it is only as "real" as the people around you allow it to be. Cultural preservation is the same way- two way, one way, no way- it's whatever kind of street the society you are living in decides to call it.