They can't see why they are hated

Nearly two days after the horrific suicide attacks on civilian workers in New York and Washington, it has become painfully clear that most Americans simply don't get it. From the president to passersby on the streets, the message seems to be the same: this is an inexplicable assault on freedom and democracy, which must be answered with overwhelming force - just as soon as someone can construct a credible account of who was actually responsible.

Shock, rage and grief there has been aplenty. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process - or why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world - seems almost entirely absent. Perhaps it is too much to hope that, as rescue workers struggle to pull firefighters from the rubble, any but a small minority might make the connection between what has been visited upon them and what their government has visited upon large parts of the world.

But make that connection they must, if such tragedies are not to be repeated, potentially with even more devastating consequences. US political leaders are doing their people no favours by reinforcing popular ignorance with self-referential rhetoric. And the echoing chorus of Tony Blair, whose determination to bind Britain ever closer to US foreign policy ratchets up the threat to our own cities, will only fuel anti-western sentiment. So will calls for the defence of "civilisation", with its overtones of Samuel Huntington's poisonous theories of post-cold war confrontation between the west and Islam, heightening perceptions of racism and hypocrisy.

As Mahatma Gandhi famously remarked when asked his opinion of western civilisation, it would be a good idea. Since George Bush's father inaugurated his new world order a decade ago, the US, supported by its British ally, bestrides the world like a colossus. Unconstrained by any superpower rival or system of global governance, the US giant has rewritten the global financial and trading system in its own interest; ripped up a string of treaties it finds inconvenient; sent troops to every corner of the globe; bombed Afghanistan, Sudan, Yugoslavia and Iraq without troubling the United Nations; maintained a string of murderous embargos against recalcitrant regimes; and recklessly thrown its weight behind Israel's 34-year illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as the Palestinian intifada rages.

If, as yesterday's Wall Street Journal insisted, the east coast carnage was the fruit of the Clinton administration's Munich-like appeasement of the Palestinians, the mind boggles as to what US Republicans imagine to be a Churchillian response.

It is this record of unabashed national egotism and arrogance that drives anti-Americanism among swaths of the world's population, for whom there is little democracy in the current distribution of global wealth and power. If it turns out that Tuesday's attacks were the work of Osama bin Laden's supporters, the sense that the Americans are once again reaping a dragons' teeth harvest they themselves sowed will be overwhelming.

It was the Americans, after all, who poured resources into the 1980s war against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul, at a time when girls could go to school and women to work. Bin Laden and his mojahedin were armed and trained by the CIA and MI6, as Afghanistan was turned into a wasteland and its communist leader Najibullah left hanging from a Kabul lamp post with his genitals stuffed in his mouth.

But by then Bin Laden had turned against his American sponsors, while US-sponsored Pakistani intelligence had spawned the grotesque Taliban now protecting him. To punish its wayward Afghan offspring, the US subsequently forced through a sanctions regime which has helped push 4m to the brink of starvation, according to the latest UN figures, while Afghan refugees fan out across the world.

All this must doubtless seem remote to Americans desperately searching the debris of what is expected to be the largest-ever massacre on US soil - as must the killings of yet more Palestinians in the West Bank yesterday, or even the 2m estimated to have died in Congo's wars since the overthrow of the US-backed Mobutu regime. "What could some political thing have to do with blowing up office buildings during working hours?" one bewildered New Yorker asked yesterday.

Already, the Bush administration is assembling an international coalition for an Israeli-style war against terrorism, as if such counter-productive acts of outrage had an existence separate from the social conditions out of which they arise. But for every "terror network" that is rooted out, another will emerge - until the injustices and inequalities that produce them are addressed.

Shallow people still think of homosexuals as "pansies" and "fairies." The SS and SA were full of homosexuals, and there probably is no group that, as a whole, worships power, strength, the STATE, and Nazi regalia so much as homosexuals do. The fantasies being posted on this thread and many others, the reveling in imagery of women and children being dismembered or vaporized by bombs, is truly juvenile and/or effeminate, when seen in grown men and women.

Yes, Fitz, I just knew there would be some idiots on FR, that would defend the attacks. I was right.

Yes unfortunately there are traitors who celebrate the cruel death of thousands of Americans and welcome the destruction of our cities and economy.

They would have us cave into the terrorists who are attempting to utterly destroy our country. I have to admit I have listened to Islamic students and co-workers defend their side. I've had them in my living room and I've sat in theirs, I heard and tried to understand anti-Zionism and I wondered if they were right about our support for Israel. No more. A new land in the sand has been drawn, it was not the Israelis that attacked us on US soil.

The United States has repeatedly bombed and starved innocents around the world. The generally-accepted figure is that 750,000 to a 1.5 million Iraqis have died due to the US embargo (and, yes, it is a US embargo - the UN was bullied into accepting it). Not to mention that 200,000 were killed in the Gulf War, many without any reason except slaughter. What exactly do you think the difference is?

There's a considerable difference between innocents dying as a result of legitimate military activity - loosely and cruelly termed "collateral damage" - and deliberately targeting innocents and nobody else. To blur this difference is to attempt to establish a moral equivalence that does not, IMHO, exist - useful for propaganda, but not for any clear understanding of the situation.

As for 1.5 million Iraqis dying "because of the embargo", that is not only not a "generally accepted" figure, it is more propaganda. How did these people die? Lack of medicine? Medicine isn't embargoed. Lack of money for medicine? The Iraqis seem to have plenty for the military. If that many Iraqis have died, which I do not believe, then they have done so through gross and immoral misplacement of priorities on the part of Saddam Hussein.

As for the 200,000, these were soldiers (mostly) who were participating in the brutal occupation of an inoffensive neighbor. Try balancing that against the Kuwaitis they killed if you're searching for moral equivalency.

You have hit the nail on the head: These "patriotic" and "macho" hysterics are actually a sign of feminization.

... These "patriotic," "macho" people who are screaming for blood and bombs and destruction are having a screaming, epicene hissy fit. They are a symptom of the feminization of our society--only this feminization in their case is disguised by the fact that they are calling for blood.

BTT

Now let me see. In the last 30 years we have:
Defended two muslim countries Kuwait and Saudi Arabia against invasion.
Used our troops to help protect the muslim minority in Kosovo.
Helped Pakistan against India and China.
Helped Afganistan throw out the Russians.
Protected Arab tankers in the Gulf against Iran.
Helped the Kurds when they were being exterminated by Iraq.
Have Egypt and Pakistan near the top in foriegn aid.
And these are just what pop too the top of my head.

BUT we are accused of being completely one sided against "Muslims", because we won't allow Isreal to be exterminated.

Bullshit. We need to look very carefully at just who our friends really are. If the Muslim world wants to declare war on US, we should act accordingly. Next time they need help they can kiss our ........

It is painfully apparent, by your terminology for the War of Northern Aggression, that YOUR ancestors took part in the destruction of the American Republic and the erection of the grotesque Leviathan of today.

Wrong. Don't you Damnyankee me! I lost a great-grandfather in Confederate service, and my grandfather was orphaned in the War.

Even when I was a Cadet at the Virginia Military Institute, that term was used. Oh, some of the guys made a point of calling it the War Between the States or the War of Northern Aggression, but most people, with impeccable Confederate credentials such as my classmate directly descended from Albert Sidney Johnson, used the term "Civil War". In my own family, it was always referred to as The War, but most people today wouldn't understand the reference.

"If this was Bin Laden then he and those involved should be hunted down, but he is not representative of the Aghan people."

Osama bin Laden was appointed as the Commander in Chief of the Afghan Army just a couple of weeks ago. That would seem to make him a representative of the Afghan government and, as such, makes that country a legitimate target.

So you are saying the people in New York and Washington had it coming. Is that correct?

IMO, there are a number of ways one can cross the line and become an abject LIAR. You did so by posting the above ridiculous assertion (masquerading as an interrogative)

Crawl back into your hole you jackal.

I don't believe they didn't have a conscience that they were smothering with Satanic thought. I believe Romans 1 applies to ALL people, everywhere. They have nature over there, too - same as us. They are without excuse. As to my reference of Allah being just another name for Satan, I point you to look at what IS. Look at the fruit.

There's a considerable difference between innocents dying as a result of legitimate military activity - loosely and cruelly termed "collateral damage" - and deliberately targeting innocents and nobody else. Who exactly do you think an embargo is aimed at? As for the 200,000, these were soldiers (mostly) who were participating in the brutal occupation of an inoffensive neighbor. Try balancing that against the Kuwaitis they killed if you're searching for moral equivalency.

They were conscripts of a state which had been propped up for ten years by the United States. They were slaughtered by Imperial arrogance. If Bush had marched on to Baghdad, he might have accomplished something. The murder of people desperately attempting to retreat back to Iraq was a disgusting act which comes close to genocide and certainly violates the rules of war. Compare that with the relatively gentle hand of Iraq in Kuwait "if you're searching for moral equivalency".

You called for millions of deaths within a couple of weeks. But taking out Afghanistan won't be enough. You'll have to start with 150,000,00 Arabs. Who's next? A billion Chinese, maybe? 3/4 of the humans race seems about right.

No I didn't. Those were your words, not mine. I merely responded...a bit sarcastically, I'll admit. Perhaps sarcasm does not register at a time such as this. But let me be clear...I am advocating a strong and unequivocal response against the perpetrators, once identified. I am not advocating, random, sweeping violence. Your statement about killing all the Arabs and Chinese is a straw man argument.

As for the nonsense about taking cookies to bin Laben and Saddam, just remember who armed them both. Yup, the dear old US of A. Reagan, as I recall.

The first good point you've made on this thread. But follow this logic: "We made past mistakes in arming what turned out to be terrorists. Now they blew up our buildings and killed thousands of innocent people, but because we screwed up in the past, we can't retalliate now."

That simply doesn't make sense. What, specifically, is your preferred response to the attack?

Taliban slammed over bin Laden appointment

News/Current Events Front Page News
Keywords: BIN LADEN AFGHANISTAN
Source: United Press International
Published: 08/30/01 Author: United Press International
Posted on 09/12/2001 22:47:03 PDT by Rightwing Conspirator1

Taliban slammed over bin Laden appointment

MOSCOW, Aug. 30 (UPI) -- Russia's Foreign Ministry on Thursday condemned the appointment of Saudi terrorism suspect Osama bin Laden as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban regime, the official RIA Novosti news agency reported. Bin Laden's appointment confirmed that a center of international terrorism is being set up in Taliban-controlled territory, the ministry said in a statement.

Sounds like a legitimate national target to me.

Taliban slammed over bin Laden appointment

Taliban slammed over bin Laden appointment

Sounds like a legitimate national target to me.

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