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

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (69160)	5/29/2008 11:37:29 AM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542152

<<<They hate us because we are there Mary. They think it is their land and their people and their culture and their religion that we have no business telling them how to live their lives. >>> I fully agree. They will have to deal with the stateless terrorists in their states in their own way. We have to cooperate with them, with our allies, and with Interpol to fight stateless terrorists just like the way we fight against the mafia and other international criminal organizations.

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (69160)	5/29/2008 11:48:09 AM
From: one_less	Respond to of 542152

"They hate us because we are there Mary. They think it is their land and their people and their culture and their religion that we have no business telling them how to live their lives." It's more complicated than that. Radical Islamicism was forged in Islamic countries in the sixties, it became tempered in Afghanistan and is currently much more than a reaction to us being there. Cultures and societies have clashed blended and meshed. Borders no longer distinguish ways of living or ideologies. We (the west) were instrumental in the radicalization process because the puritanical sheiks were offended by the influence of western life style in Middle Eastern countries in the first half of the 20th century. They did not become radicalized however until they were brutalized and tortured for preaching their puritanical message. Radical Islamicists, at least in modern times, got their start in the 1960s. An idealistic Egyptian named Sayyid Qutb went to school in America and was shocked by what he saw and considered decadent and wasteful. When he went home he became convinced that his own culture was suffering from contageous effects of western decadence and began to preach about purification. He was tortured by the secular government and the result was a move from Idealist to Radical, calling for the death of the corrupt leaders of Islamic nations. He was executed but had managed to garner a significant following. An Egyptian physician was impressed by his puritanical preaching and began to preach the same idealism. He was tortured also and became radicalized as a result of that torture. His name is Ayman al-Zawahiri and he became the head of what we came to call Al-Qaeda. He convinced Osama Bin Laudin to throw his funding behind the Radical cause in Afghanistan. Osama had not been a radical before this, in fact in his early life he was known to be something of a playboy. This created a great deal of conflict between Afghani groups and his group partly because his group was focused on something different than the Afghan cause and partly because they were mostly foreigners who had originally been recruited to help fight the Soviets. The recruitment was partly to blame. Lots of fighters had been funded by their own people and told they must go to Afghanistan for the sake of Islam. Most probably didn't know what Afganistan was but they believed they were doing a good thing for Islam. There they taught the radical message and way of life to multitudes in training camps and Madrassas. Additional funding poured in from diverse sources and this actually became institutionalized for a while. They were emboldened by the defeat of the Soviets and told to return to their countries and for the same cause, recruit followers, kill government leaders who collaborated with democracies, and foment rebellion until all Islamic lands were following their purified version of the Religious teaching. Trying to remove Western Influence from the Middle East in modern times is equivalent to saying send Blacks back to Africa Mexicans back to Spain and Indians back to ??? oh well we could try genocide again. In other words it is not only impossible to achieve without massive and violent revolution it is pure bigotry. Unless or until we find a common and beneficent cause, which modern peoples can back, we will be escalating risks of all kinds toward human catastrophy. We are rapidly approaching the tapered end of decision time. Will we be able to dismiss the shadows of historical circumstance to seize an opportunity to renew our obligations toward the well being of one and all. Will we mingle our affairs with good intention to establish a brotherhood of humanity among and for those involved; or, do we reek vengeance for each of our sins on one another until the conscience of humanity is annihilated completely. Does our generation, in fact, trumpet the de-evolution of human decency and societies of peace and good will? Seek truth and educate conscience toward action that is of benefit, while contributing to the well being of others. When you find yourself on an errant path of regret, listen to the inner voice that connects us regardless of culture, ethnicity, or geography. There are no losers in life, except those who give up. People who have given up are exposed by their lies, false accusations, blaming others, refusal to own up for their conduct, playing victim, escape and avoidance of responsibility, personal fraud, hypocrisy, etc. Is the history of society, the story of de-evolution from an original garden?