Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Ilaine who wrote (140832)	7/18/2004 2:32:10 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

My thesis is that the threat bin Laden poses lies in the coherence and consistency of his ideas, their precise articulation, and the acts of war he takes to implement them Interesting how he says this but does not believe in bin Laden's religious motivations at all. He doesn't even mention them. Might I suggest that this is understanding bin Laden in terms that make sense to us, which don't necessarily have anything to do with the way he sees the world? Islamism's basic engine is the war against the infidels, the war to restore Islam to its rightful place in the world. It gets its marching orders from the Koran, as they interpret it. Actual policy questions are fuel for the fire, but they follow, they don't cause. Religious belief is the motivator - he even quotes bin Laden saying the war is religious! Well, if it's religious it doesn't NEED policy reasons, does it? We didn't do anything bad to Afghanistan in the 1980s to make the Taliban hate us; we aren't the Russians, we were even helping the Afghans against the Russians. It doesn't matter. We helped the Muslim Kosovars against the Christian Serbs; that doesn't matter either. If our actual "crimes" are lacking, they will be made up, as when Nasser accused the US of flying with the Israeli Air Force in 1967. And there's always the Palestinian issue, an issue that makes zero sense to even matter to 90% of the Muslim world except as a religious issue. I mean, what do the Afghans care if Israel exists? How does it affect them in any way, shape or form? We're still infidels, we're the greatest power in the West, we are therefore the Great Satan, and what we actually do matters only marginally. (Like the fact that we were in Saudi Arabia to prevent conquest by Saddam Hussein, an eventuallity that I don't think bin Laden supported) This philosophy needs an enemy and the chief question remains, do they pick the 'far enemy' (us) or the 'near enemy' (their own corrupt governments)? Naturally, the governments have been doing everything in their power to make it the 'far enemy', and have chanelled all political discontent in that direction. Most of all, Islamism is currently the only Arab political philosophy with true belief behind it, and the Koran as well. Where is Socialism? Where is Nasserism? Where is Pan-Arabism? Where is Ba'athism? who believes in them anymore? Nobody. See also comments at europundits.blogspot.com

To: Ilaine who wrote (140832)	7/18/2004 5:49:27 PM
From: skinowski	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I think people like OBL hate us for what we are, and for the threat which we - in their view - represent to "true" Islam. Claiming that the main reason they are after us is because of our policies is - for the most part - a rationalization. If - for whatever reason - we would become very isolationist and get out all Muslim countries, OBL and his people would probably only re-double their efforts at becoming the dominant political power in the Islamic world. They would still fight to remove Muslim kings and presidents - and themselves become rulers and dictators. While U.S. leaders will not say America is at war with Islam, some of Islam is waging war on the United States This statement contains an important insight - but also, an important error. Yes, it is a religious war, and our leaders should publicly recognize that. And, NO, it is not a war against Islam, not at all. It is a war against an extremist, fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. Against a militant minority, which endangers most Muslims no less than it does us.