My argument is not with that, I just think that you are giving a misrepresentation of things. Its one thing to say that there are surely political factors involved in islamic suicide bombings. But you are in several posts taking it quite a lot further by, if not intentionally then atleast unintentionally placing religion as at best a side effect.
What? I know it’s one thing to say it is purely political. That’s why I’m not saying that. And I’m not suggesting religion is some sort of side effect of anything.
I think that religious motives are probably the root, the method of twisting peoples minds into ending their lives, and the cause for most of the radical leaders. But I think political events play their part in helping to recruit new people into the ranks.
The problem is you are twisting the process it seems. You sound as if these ppl wanted to kill themselves to begin with and just had no reason to do so until politics came along. But that’s not true at all, lest we’d have moderates becoming martyrs all day long. We don’t see that though.
US foreign policy has created a lot of angry people that could be taken in to be terrorists. Generally though, thats not enough for the kind of behaviour we see from radical muslims. Especially since a lot of it is not even directed at the US.
I don’t think you fully understand how big of a deal 40 yrs of Isreali occupation is. Violence is the natural reaction to that when you don’t have other ways to fix the problems in your society. The colonists who fought a brutal war against he British Empire did so because the empire was dominating them economically. And the Arabs have WAY worse economic conditions than the colonists had, as well as political conditions and social conditions that are WAY worse too.
We should be careful though to differentiate between a terrorist and a run of the mill Arab fighting against US troops or Israeli troops. One has a very good reason for doing wat they’re doing, the other doesn’t and has to use his religion to justify such actions. We should be sure to remember that most of the insurgents in Iraq and most of the Arabs fighting against Israeli soldiers aren’t necessarily terrorists.
And you are right, in terms of how the terrorists behave, that is’t sewn by poltics etc. Which is exactly what I have been saying this whole time. The decision to act that way (mrtyrdom) comes from religion. But the HATRED comes from decades of the US abusing the region in every manner imaginable.
But I personally think, based on how these people act, and how they differ from other political activists that the religious reasons is what ultimately pulls in and turns angry people into murders in this case.
I agree…again. I’m not saying otherwise. Though they aren’t actually political activists as they have no political structure to work through thanks to the US. There are some distincions maybe I didn’t do as good a job making as I had hoped. I’ll try again:
There is a distinction to be made between the cause of the hatred, the motivation for a violent reaction, and the justification for martyrdom. The cause of the hatred is PURELY political, economical, etc.
Normally, such hatred can be expressed via a political structure or an economic structure. But these places have neither of those in place, specifically because the US fght to control the natural resources and added sanctions all over the place, and dominated the economies by concentrating all the oil control into a handful of families while overthrowing any govt that looked to be gaining more ground than the US liked. So, without any other way to respond to these problems, the only other tool was violence. This isn’t to be condemned necessarily if directed at soldiers ad not civillians.
So we have ppl who are willing to use some sort of violence to fight back, then we take into account the religious component. Ppl tend to not want to just jump right into violence. It usually is something that needs some sort of justification first. With their religion, they can easily justify killing civillians if they do so thru martyrdom. someone will be starving to death or have their family killed in Gaza by Israeli military terrorists or just get tired of liing n those conditions and next thing ya know they hear some radical preacher talking about killing the infidels and that shit resonates with ppl pretty hardcore.
So the root problem is the policies that systematically make them hate us, the force them into a position where they have to turn to violence if they want any reform, and then the religion comes into play and turns tho violent intentions in justified forms of terrorism in their eyes. It’s a 2-3 step process depending on ya want to break it apart. Steps 1 and 2 are purely political and economic etc. Step 3 is religious, but it depends entirely on there bei the hatred and violent intentions to begin with. Islam is used to get ppl to stop thinking about acting on the violence and actually participate in it.
If you nix step 3 by somehow magically removing the religious component, which isn’t even possible most likely, you still have a huge group of ppl who want to at out violently against the US. Ppl will use anything they can find to justify violent actions these days, especially when put in such shitty conditions. They may not react by killing civillians or blowing themselves up, but we would still have problems either way. So the answer isn’t to try the impossible and take religion out of the equation, it is to remove the hatred and violent intentions by altering foreign policy in a responsible way and trying to work with the muslim world to rebuild some economic and political structures to react from. The convenient thing is these will build themselves without the help of the US if we stop trying to tear them down when the pop up and let them grow as they will.
Now you could argue that 9/11 was mainly a retaliation based on US foreign policy in the middle east. But lets face it these people were no freedom fighters. They were not upset about the Talibans being given power in Afghanistan, they relied on the Talabans having power in Afghanistan.
They were mostly Saudis, not Afgans and they were upset, as was bin Laden, for there being US troops in Saudia Arabia and for the US’s unconditional support of Israel and the things th US has done economically and politically in the region. You can hear them tell you why they are doing these things. Just watch any bin Laden video and he will tell you exactly why he is acting this way. He even personally recommends reading Michael Scheuer’s book about why al Qaeda is doing such things in one of his videos!
And whether you think of them as freedom fight doesn’t matter. They thought of themselves as freedom fighters. The fact they were educated and had money doesn’t mean they can’t be fully motivated to react violently by looking at what the US has done to the region. That’s a fallacious argument Sam HArris often uses in this type of discussion. He assumes that since the hickers weren’t dirt poor and illiterate, therefore their motivations for hating the US and seeking violen couldn’t have have anything to do with foreign policy. As if ppl aren’t allowed to act on behalf of others less fortunate or something. US history is full of characters who didn’t have to react with violence to a specific issue and could have let others suffer but didn’t. That isn’t just an American miset ppl sometimes get, it pops up everywere ppl are being oppressed, dominate, and humiliated, especially by a foreign superpower.
And you make it sound as if I should be marveling at the fact al Qaeda got along with the Taleban. As if al Qaeda was fighting all political structures the world over or something. The Taleban was sympathetic to their cause, so al Qaeda enjoyed them being in power.
They might have been angry about the existance of Israel and through that on the US backing of Israel. But lets keep in mind that if the Israel Palestine issue were not at heart a religious one. It would be way less difficult to get a peace treaty working there.
You honestly don’t sound like you know much about that conflict. The UN has been trying to push a peace accord thru for decades. Every single year the US has used its veto power on the UNSC to strike the resolution down. Every year it comes up and every year it is vetoed by the US. The US is the ONLY nation to have ever voted ‘Nay’ on the resolution.
And every time ISrael makes an offer for a peace accord, their terms are so full of hit they know way ahead of time the Palestinians can’t agree to them. For example, they never agree to give the Arabs access to East Jerusalem nor agree to return their land to them without thousands of secutiry checkpoints that cut off access to 90% of the land.
There are lots of reasons treaties can’t be made that stick, but it’s alwas due to the US or Israel. Just a few months ago Hamas offerd Israel a 10 yr peace treaty if they simply retreated back to their pre-occupation borders and they would agreto recognize Israel as a state and would not attack any Israelis for those 10 yrs without being provoked. Israel refused on the basis of the claimed they didn’t believe Hamas would keep their word. By assuming that, Isreal is now to the point where no deal will beaccpable to them no matter what the terms are. Maybe it is a religious issue at heart, but certainly not on the end of the Palestinians.
