The United States has created many enemies through its policies in the Middle East over the past century and bears a significant amount of responsibility for creating a fertile soil for anti-American hatred. Any American response that does not address this truth is doomed to further the cycle of violence.
Most of what is regurgatated in the US are reports of a shadowy Islamic conspiracy against the U.S. led by Osama bin Laden, which have, in turn, generated a steady stream of cliché's about this new enemy and its hatred of the U.S. Unfortunately, precious little light has been shed on understanding why this is happening and what exactly Muslims believe.
Any explanation of Middle Eastern violence that relies upon the notion that Islam is an inherently violent or inherently anti-Western religion is false and misleading. First, Islam is one of the world's largest and most diverse religions and like Christianity or Judaism there are thousands of views within Islam about the religion and also about violence and the West. Secondly, there are major differences even among explicitly Muslim militants and activists regarding these issues-some insist upon non-violent struggle and others regard violence as a legitimate tool. There is no way one can generalize about Islam or any religion for that matter.
Last week on Meet The Press, Tim Russert was interviewing presidential candidate Ron Paul and when Paul told Tim that we should look at the reasons behind the attacks on the US, Tim became upset and tried to imply that just by looking at the reason we were attacked-- at the motivations, he was somehow unpatriotic and unamerican. Paul stood his ground and had to remind him of our history and involvement in the Middle East. Is that because Russert doesn't know? Of course not, it's because no American wants to admit that we are now experiencing a by-product of what we created years ago. Which was a US backed war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980's.
OBL and others were recruited by the CIA, Saudi Arabia and Pakistani intelligence services to fight against the Soviet Union during the 1980's. They came largely from the poor and unemployed classes or militant opposition groups from around the Middle East, including Algeria, Egypt, Palestine and elsewhere in order to wage war on behalf of the Muslim people of Afghanistan against the communist enemy. OBL played an important role in helping these groups recruit volunteers and build extensive networks of bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan after 1984. He was a HERO when he was doing the US's bidding for us.
This is where Americans don't do their homework. Even after the last two videos that OBL put out and detailed all of this information, Americans still refuse to listen to what our government has done and what WE are responsible for. OBL and his groups, at that time, also served another purpose for the U.S. and its allies in the region. Not only were they anti-Communist due to their rejection of its atheism, they were also opposed to the brand of Islamic radicalism promoted by the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran (Khomeini); largely because it was based on Shiite rather than Sunni Islamic doctrine. The revolution had toppled a major ally of the U.S., the Shah of Iran, who played a major role as a pillar of U.S. hegemony in the oil rich Persian Gulf and was threatening key U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other oil rich states. Therefore, the clear aim of U.S. foreign policy therefore was to kill two birds with one stone: turn back the Soviet Union and create a counter-weight to radical Iranian inspired threats to U.S. interests, particularly U.S. backed regimes who controlled the massive oil resources.
Because we wanted to "have our cake and eat it too", our foreign policy in the Middle East has turned into a nightmare for the us and is exactly what led to the attacks in New York and Washington D.C. After the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan in 1989 the "Afghan" network became expendable to the U.S. who no longer needed their services. And as you can see, we have actively turned against these groups after the Gulf War when a number of those groups returned home and moved into the violent opposition against U.S. allied regimes and opposed the U.S. war against Iraq in 1991.
In short, they are particularly opposed to the unprecedented positioning of U.S. ground troops in Saudi Arabia on the land of the Islamic holy sites of Mecca and Medina. If you follow the intelligence agencies at all you will find that in the past decade there has been a vicious war in the region between the CIA and its allies and militant Muslim groups. The U.S. trains Egyptian police torture techniques. Moreover, the CIA has sent snatch squads to abduct wanted militants form Muslim countries and return them to their countries to face almost certain death and imprisonment.
The primary belief of the veterans of the Afghanistan war is that the West, led by the United States, is now waging war against Muslims around the world and now have to defend themselves by any means necessary, including violence and terrorism. They point to a number of cases where Muslims have born the brunt of violence as evidence of this war: the Serbian and Croation genocide against Bosnian Muslims, the Russian war in Chechnya, the Indian occupation of Kashmir, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, the UN sanctions against Iraq and the U.S. backing of dictatorships in Algeria, Egypt or Saudi Arabia, for example. They claim that the US either supported the violence or failed to prevent it. In almost all of these cases, they are correct. It is these beliefs, not to mention the fact that we've been bombing the Middle East for the last ten year and continue to keep adding more military bases over there, that enable them to justify not only targeting U.S. military facilities but also its civilians. And we sit here scratching our heads and wondering why? The "why" is clear for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. There is no question that the one-sided U.S. support for Israel, the U.S. sponsorship of sanctions against Iraq as well as U.S. support for dictatorships across the region have created a fertile ground for some sympathy with such militancy.
Osama bin Laden is not the only mastermind of these attacks as is often claimed in the media; he just facilitates these groups and sentiments with logistics and finances, as do others. He is simply a very visible symbol of this loose network and the U.S. obsession with him most likely works to increase his standing as an icon of resistance to the U.S. A rational person would ask themselves, why he was considered a Hero in the 80's and now considered, by the very government who helped him with training, armaments and finances, the antichrist of the 21st century.
The real problem is that the US refuses to address the root causes of anti-American sentiments in the region. Moreover, the U.S appears to have no long-term strategy to address the sources of grievances that the radical groups share with vast majority of Muslim activists who abhor using violent methods that would include, for starters, a more balanced approach to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, ending the sanctions on Iraq, moving U.S. military bases out of Saudi Arabia, and supporting the legitimate aspirations of regional peoples for democracy and human rights. Legitimate meaning, the majority of the people want and ask for help; not butting your head into a country's affairs when none is warranted and attempting to install your form of government under the banner of "helping" and "nation building" and "democracy" ad nasueum, when all you are really interested in is OIL and contracts.
What truly aggrevates me and the Muslim people I know are the US's double standards. The U.S. claims that it must impose economic sanctions on certain countries that violate human rights and/or harbor weapons of mass destruction. Yet the U.S. largely ignores Muslim victims of human rights violations in Palestine, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kashmir and Chechnya. What's more, while the U.S. economy is propped up by weapon sales to countries around the globe and particularly in the Middle East, the U.S. insists on economic sanctions to prevent weapon development in Libya, Sudan, Iran and Iraq. In Iraq, the crippling economic sanctions cost the lives of 5,000 children, under age five, every month. Over one million Iraqis have died as a direct result of over a decade of sanctions. Also, the U.S. pro-Israel policy unfairly puts higher demands on Palestinians to renounce violence than on Israelis to halt new settlements and adhere to U.N. resolutions calling for an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian lands. Is this fair?
It isn't and that unfairness cannot be extinguished by Tomahawk missiles or military operations. The present U.S. strategy for ending the threat of terrorism through the use of military force will only exacerbate this anger and desperation. When innocent U.S. and Middle Eastern citizens are killed and harmed during this pathetic "war on terror", or used as cannon fodder for suicide hijackings, the U.S. government expects expressions of outrage and grief over brutal terrorism. But when U.S. Cruise missiles kill and maim innocent Sudanese, Afghanis, and Pakistanis, the U.S. calls it "collateral damage". The so-called hunt for Osama bin Laden has been and will continue to be futile. It's the actions of a true megalomaniac--a sociopathic Bush who can't stand to lose and will try and win at any cost. But he has lost already because the fertile soil that our involvement keeps us entrenched in simply creates other such figures as OBL who will still be around for a long time. Moreover, our continued presence in the Middle East simply serves to inflame passions and create hosts of new volunteers to those ranks.
I hate it that Americans lost their lives in New York and Washington. I was working in D.C. at that time and very nearly one of them. But I also hate that innocent women and children have lost their lives in the Middle East due to America's attacks. These attacks have served no cause; they have likely set back efforts to build popular movements and international solidarity that, in the final analysis, are the best chance of achieving social justice and change in the Middle East and elsewhere. Yet, at this difficult time, Americans should critically examine policies with which Arabs, Muslims and many others have legitimate grievances. Instead, like Russert, our leaders refuse to admit the flaws in their policies and find it easier to demonize those in both the American and Arab world who oppose them as a way of diverting attention from their own mistakes. It's my opinion that more military solutions to the problems in the Middle East and the terrorism that has resulted from these problems is not a policy but a recipe for more violence and bombings.
Is it really so hard to leave people in peace? If America wants democracy there so badly, why don't they start off by taking a democratic vote. All Americans who want us there say aye. All Mulims who want us there, say "aye". Hmmmm.......the silence is deafening.
I welcome all points of view.
Most of what is regurgatated in the US are reports of a shadowy Islamic conspiracy against the U.S. led by Osama bin Laden, which have, in turn, generated a steady stream of cliché's about this new enemy and its hatred of the U.S. Unfortunately, precious little light has been shed on understanding why this is happening and what exactly Muslims believe.
Any explanation of Middle Eastern violence that relies upon the notion that Islam is an inherently violent or inherently anti-Western religion is false and misleading. First, Islam is one of the world's largest and most diverse religions and like Christianity or Judaism there are thousands of views within Islam about the religion and also about violence and the West. Secondly, there are major differences even among explicitly Muslim militants and activists regarding these issues-some insist upon non-violent struggle and others regard violence as a legitimate tool. There is no way one can generalize about Islam or any religion for that matter.
Last week on Meet The Press, Tim Russert was interviewing presidential candidate Ron Paul and when Paul told Tim that we should look at the reasons behind the attacks on the US, Tim became upset and tried to imply that just by looking at the reason we were attacked-- at the motivations, he was somehow unpatriotic and unamerican. Paul stood his ground and had to remind him of our history and involvement in the Middle East. Is that because Russert doesn't know? Of course not, it's because no American wants to admit that we are now experiencing a by-product of what we created years ago. Which was a US backed war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980's.
OBL and others were recruited by the CIA, Saudi Arabia and Pakistani intelligence services to fight against the Soviet Union during the 1980's. They came largely from the poor and unemployed classes or militant opposition groups from around the Middle East, including Algeria, Egypt, Palestine and elsewhere in order to wage war on behalf of the Muslim people of Afghanistan against the communist enemy. OBL played an important role in helping these groups recruit volunteers and build extensive networks of bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan after 1984. He was a HERO when he was doing the US's bidding for us.
This is where Americans don't do their homework. Even after the last two videos that OBL put out and detailed all of this information, Americans still refuse to listen to what our government has done and what WE are responsible for. OBL and his groups, at that time, also served another purpose for the U.S. and its allies in the region. Not only were they anti-Communist due to their rejection of its atheism, they were also opposed to the brand of Islamic radicalism promoted by the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran (Khomeini); largely because it was based on Shiite rather than Sunni Islamic doctrine. The revolution had toppled a major ally of the U.S., the Shah of Iran, who played a major role as a pillar of U.S. hegemony in the oil rich Persian Gulf and was threatening key U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other oil rich states. Therefore, the clear aim of U.S. foreign policy therefore was to kill two birds with one stone: turn back the Soviet Union and create a counter-weight to radical Iranian inspired threats to U.S. interests, particularly U.S. backed regimes who controlled the massive oil resources.
Because we wanted to "have our cake and eat it too", our foreign policy in the Middle East has turned into a nightmare for the us and is exactly what led to the attacks in New York and Washington D.C. After the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan in 1989 the "Afghan" network became expendable to the U.S. who no longer needed their services. And as you can see, we have actively turned against these groups after the Gulf War when a number of those groups returned home and moved into the violent opposition against U.S. allied regimes and opposed the U.S. war against Iraq in 1991.
In short, they are particularly opposed to the unprecedented positioning of U.S. ground troops in Saudi Arabia on the land of the Islamic holy sites of Mecca and Medina. If you follow the intelligence agencies at all you will find that in the past decade there has been a vicious war in the region between the CIA and its allies and militant Muslim groups. The U.S. trains Egyptian police torture techniques. Moreover, the CIA has sent snatch squads to abduct wanted militants form Muslim countries and return them to their countries to face almost certain death and imprisonment.
The primary belief of the veterans of the Afghanistan war is that the West, led by the United States, is now waging war against Muslims around the world and now have to defend themselves by any means necessary, including violence and terrorism. They point to a number of cases where Muslims have born the brunt of violence as evidence of this war: the Serbian and Croation genocide against Bosnian Muslims, the Russian war in Chechnya, the Indian occupation of Kashmir, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, the UN sanctions against Iraq and the U.S. backing of dictatorships in Algeria, Egypt or Saudi Arabia, for example. They claim that the US either supported the violence or failed to prevent it. In almost all of these cases, they are correct. It is these beliefs, not to mention the fact that we've been bombing the Middle East for the last ten year and continue to keep adding more military bases over there, that enable them to justify not only targeting U.S. military facilities but also its civilians. And we sit here scratching our heads and wondering why? The "why" is clear for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. There is no question that the one-sided U.S. support for Israel, the U.S. sponsorship of sanctions against Iraq as well as U.S. support for dictatorships across the region have created a fertile ground for some sympathy with such militancy.
Osama bin Laden is not the only mastermind of these attacks as is often claimed in the media; he just facilitates these groups and sentiments with logistics and finances, as do others. He is simply a very visible symbol of this loose network and the U.S. obsession with him most likely works to increase his standing as an icon of resistance to the U.S. A rational person would ask themselves, why he was considered a Hero in the 80's and now considered, by the very government who helped him with training, armaments and finances, the antichrist of the 21st century.
The real problem is that the US refuses to address the root causes of anti-American sentiments in the region. Moreover, the U.S appears to have no long-term strategy to address the sources of grievances that the radical groups share with vast majority of Muslim activists who abhor using violent methods that would include, for starters, a more balanced approach to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, ending the sanctions on Iraq, moving U.S. military bases out of Saudi Arabia, and supporting the legitimate aspirations of regional peoples for democracy and human rights. Legitimate meaning, the majority of the people want and ask for help; not butting your head into a country's affairs when none is warranted and attempting to install your form of government under the banner of "helping" and "nation building" and "democracy" ad nasueum, when all you are really interested in is OIL and contracts.
What truly aggrevates me and the Muslim people I know are the US's double standards. The U.S. claims that it must impose economic sanctions on certain countries that violate human rights and/or harbor weapons of mass destruction. Yet the U.S. largely ignores Muslim victims of human rights violations in Palestine, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kashmir and Chechnya. What's more, while the U.S. economy is propped up by weapon sales to countries around the globe and particularly in the Middle East, the U.S. insists on economic sanctions to prevent weapon development in Libya, Sudan, Iran and Iraq. In Iraq, the crippling economic sanctions cost the lives of 5,000 children, under age five, every month. Over one million Iraqis have died as a direct result of over a decade of sanctions. Also, the U.S. pro-Israel policy unfairly puts higher demands on Palestinians to renounce violence than on Israelis to halt new settlements and adhere to U.N. resolutions calling for an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian lands. Is this fair?
It isn't and that unfairness cannot be extinguished by Tomahawk missiles or military operations. The present U.S. strategy for ending the threat of terrorism through the use of military force will only exacerbate this anger and desperation. When innocent U.S. and Middle Eastern citizens are killed and harmed during this pathetic "war on terror", or used as cannon fodder for suicide hijackings, the U.S. government expects expressions of outrage and grief over brutal terrorism. But when U.S. Cruise missiles kill and maim innocent Sudanese, Afghanis, and Pakistanis, the U.S. calls it "collateral damage". The so-called hunt for Osama bin Laden has been and will continue to be futile. It's the actions of a true megalomaniac--a sociopathic Bush who can't stand to lose and will try and win at any cost. But he has lost already because the fertile soil that our involvement keeps us entrenched in simply creates other such figures as OBL who will still be around for a long time. Moreover, our continued presence in the Middle East simply serves to inflame passions and create hosts of new volunteers to those ranks.
I hate it that Americans lost their lives in New York and Washington. I was working in D.C. at that time and very nearly one of them. But I also hate that innocent women and children have lost their lives in the Middle East due to America's attacks. These attacks have served no cause; they have likely set back efforts to build popular movements and international solidarity that, in the final analysis, are the best chance of achieving social justice and change in the Middle East and elsewhere. Yet, at this difficult time, Americans should critically examine policies with which Arabs, Muslims and many others have legitimate grievances. Instead, like Russert, our leaders refuse to admit the flaws in their policies and find it easier to demonize those in both the American and Arab world who oppose them as a way of diverting attention from their own mistakes. It's my opinion that more military solutions to the problems in the Middle East and the terrorism that has resulted from these problems is not a policy but a recipe for more violence and bombings.
Is it really so hard to leave people in peace? If America wants democracy there so badly, why don't they start off by taking a democratic vote. All Americans who want us there say aye. All Mulims who want us there, say "aye". Hmmmm.......the silence is deafening.
I welcome all points of view.