I know a very well educated and informed Pakistani man very well. He advises me that about 30% of Muslims are of the "fundementalist/anti-U.S." variety. That is about 300,000 people world wide. This appears to me to be the source of an essentially endless and permanent supply of motivated terrorists. I came to this conclusion in part because I researched the beliefs of Islam and I also just watched a documentary on MSNBC tonight entitled something like "Abandon All Hope" in which quite a number of captured terrorists from a large variety of middle easter contries were interviewed. They were being held by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. These appeared to be the most ignorant, irrational, ill-informed and hatefull people I have ever seen. My 12 year-old said he didn't know people like that really existed. I am so afraid that this is just the beginning. Hopefully the "power trip" these people are currently experiencing it will turn out to be a sort of faddish social movement that loses momentum after a time, just as some others have. But it could be a very long time, like in Ireland and Israel.
These appeared to be the most ignorant, irrational, ill-informed and hatefull people I have ever seen. My 12 year-old said he didn't know people like that really existed. I am so afraid that this is just the beginning. Hopefully the "power trip" these people are currently experiencing it will turn out to be a sort of faddish social movement that loses momentum after a time, just as some others have. But it could be a very long time, like in Ireland and Israel. It may well be. But there's a bright side...
1. As the suicide bombers and crazy radicals do their work, they either eliminate themselves from the planet (suicide bombers) or make themselves obvious so that *we* can take them out of action. The phrase "evolution in action" was tailor made for things like this. Over time, the nutcases will take themselves out of circulation -- not only out of the gene pool, but out of the cultural pool as well. The population that remains will thus drift towards greater passivity.
2. In the world of Larry Niven's science-fiction books, there is a race of catlike warrior people named the Kzin. The Kzin are powerful, numerous, fearless, and have declared war on humanity. However, they are so bloodthirsty that they always launch recklessly into battle as soon as possible before they are well prepared, and as a result always get the crap beaten out of them by the humans. Sounds familiar...