> In the first few weeks after, there was a growing feeling that maybe this was finally the time that the US would straighten out and take a deep and serious look at our own actions and policies.
I agree we did overreact, but this sentence is just nonsense. Are you really implying that our actions and policies are what caused muslims to hate us, and that therefor we should change them???????????
what
Dicking around in a country or region's political and economic affairs can certainly lead people there to hate you. You certainly can't think the US didn't have its hands mucking about the middle-east before 9/11.
Wow this place has really gone down if people like you feel comfortable expression your ignorance so openly. "Hate us for our freedoms" was the idiotic excuse Bush used because he wasn't intelligent enough to give us anything meatier. Only the simplest of the simple ever actually believed it.
I would tell you to go educate yourself but if you honestly buy this line now in 2013 I don't suppose there's anything more than can be done for you.
> But, yes, your policies led to the 9/11 attackers deciding to attack you. Is this not blisteringly obvious?
In exactly the same way that wearing miniskirts leads to rape. Take for example UBL's main grievance: the presence of the international Desert Shield force, or as UBL put it, allowing infidels to live in the land of the two holy cities. That force was there at the request of King Saud of Arabia. So what makes this agreement between King Saud and 30+ other powers a valid cause for the King's subjects, or anybody else, to wage war against the US? What makes Usama bin Laden the superior authority to say who is allowed to live in Arabia? What justifies forbidding people from holding any other religious belief than the approved one? What makes Usama bin Laden the sole authority on religious matters in Arabia who can decide what religion people are allowed to believe?
Ehm, didn't USA support Israel which was/is very hostile towards Muslims living on its territory (Gaza Strip)? So it's not like their politics weren't giving Al-Queda a reason to be provoked.
To use your metaphor, it's a lot like wearing a miniskirt and flashing the perpetrator. Neither side is really 100% clean in this.
Do you think people decide to just blow themselves up for no reason? Or maybe installing the shah in Iran, giving military aid in abundance to Israel, giving guns to Osama, giving guns to Saddam might, just might, have had something to do with it?
God forbid the Iranian people benefit from their own oil fields! That'd fuck over BP!
"people decide to just blow themselves up for _no_ reason" = they have established a coherent subsect of Islam which teaches that Islam requires they forever be waging war against the nonbelievers and which celebrates dying in such a war as the highest honor, giving them a very clear reason that anyone with open eyes is well aware of by now.
"Jihad means war only. Fighting, with the sword." - Abdullah Azzam.
"The Quran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." - The Muslim Brotherhood creed
"We love death more than you love life." - Nidal Hassan
"We love death. They love life." - Azzam Tamimi
"We are going to win, because they love life and we love death." - Hassan Nasrallah
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"installing the shah in Iran" = the West intervened after Mohammad Mosaddegh launched a coup d'etat against the Shah of Iran, this after Mosaddegh had dissolved parliament and declared himself dictator. Look it up.
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"giving military aid in abundance to Israel" = the US gave anti-tank missiles to Israel in 1973, which ruined the Arab League's plan to finish the job that Hitler started. After the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, the US annually gave billions of dollars to both sides. Aid to Israel is given with the restriction that it must be spent on American weapons, making it both a subsidy for the US arms industry and a means of crippling Israel's arms industry.
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"giving guns to Osama" = The US once was nice to Osama, and this therefore justifies him ordering the 9/11 attacks. The specific choice of which parties to distribute weapons to was mostly made by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
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"giving guns to Saddam" = The US sold weapons to Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, and this therefore justifies the 9/11 attacks by a completely unaffected third party.
While we're at it, we might start to wonder why Vietnamese are not currently blowing up Americans, Indians are not currently blowing up the British, and Gabonese are not currently blowing up the French.
I agree we did overreact, but this sentence is just nonsense. Are you really implying that our actions and policies are what caused muslims to hate us, and that therefor we should change them???????????