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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: quehubo who wrote (48058)	2/6/2008 3:41:06 AM
From: Cogito	Respond to of 541658

>>Nice to see you make it so simple. Unfortunately Al Qaeda's writings are quite clear on the subject. Maybe free is not clear enough. How about because we are not converted to their version of Islam. You might want to expand your reading past Noam Chomsky.<< Q - I've never read Chomsky, for the record. And I was only giving one example of something we have done that has generated hostility among Arabs and Muslims in general. The statements by Bin Laden, Zawahiri, and many other Muslim extremists about what they are pissed off with us about are what give me my view of how what we do may be connected with their anger. They have referred to our support for Israel, the fact that we maintain bases in Saudi Arabia, and so on. Sure, they find our culture repugnant as well. (So do a lot of American Christians and Jews.) That doesn't mean at all, however, that nothing we have done has made them angry, or that our foreign policy hasn't fueled their hatred. They didn't just decide to go on a jihad one day when everything in their world was peachy. And they would have a much harder time with recruiting if our nation wasn't supporting Israel and throwing our weight around in the Middle East. They leave Sweden and Switzerland alone, I notice. Those are two very permissive cultures. And they'd probably be pretty easy to take down, relatively. Why do you suppose they've chosen us as their main enemy, then? - Allen PS: Have you read the Al Qaeda Reader? I haven't, but the review does say this: "Of course, this is not to say that the direction of U.S. foreign policy is irrelevant to the appeal of terrorism. Most recruits for organizations like Al Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and others do not begin as ideologues. One of the reasons for which bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, emphasize political rather than religious grievances is that political motivations are more likely to drive ordinary young men to fight the Westerners they believe are occupying their land and killing their countrymen."