to reason why

[bongo]

When I think of Sept 11 I keep coming back to the same question: why? There seem to be two schools of thought:
1. Terrorists hate us because of our wealth, culture, and freedom.
2. Terrorists hate us because of our foreign policy

Now, I'm sure there is truth in both feelings, but virtually everyone in the media, and most of the people I talk to, implicitly accepts #1 as the primary motivation, while it seems most likely to me that #2 is the primary motivation. I can see reasons to want to believe #1 (it makes them more evil and us more just), and I can see reasons to want to believe #2 (it feeds our guilt, and makes the terrorists more rational), but evidence of the true motivations is pretty slim. Does anyone have any decent evidence for motivation #1?

As evidence for motivation #2 I append a statement from Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who was involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. I do not agree with Ramzi's statement, but think it's important to understand why terrorists are targeting us.

"You keep talking also about collective punishment and killing innocent people to force governments to change their policies; you call this terrorism when someone would kill innocent people or civilians in order to force the government to change its policies. Well, when you were the first one who invented this terrorism.

"You were the first one who killed innocent people, and you are the first one who introduced this type of terrorism to the history of mankind when you dropped an atomic bomb which killed tens of thousands of women and children in Japan and when you killed over a hundred thousand people, most of them civilians, in Tokyo with fire bombings. You killed them by burning them to death. And you killed civilians in Vietnam with chemicals as with the so-called Orange agent. You killed civilians and innocent people, not soldiers, innocent people every single war you went. You went to wars more than any other country in this century, and then you have the nerve to talk about killing innocent people.

"And now you have invented new ways to kill innocent people. You have so-called economic embargo which kills nobody other than children and elderly people, and which other than Iraq you have been placing the economic embargo on Cuba and other countries for over 35 years...

"The government in its summations and opening said that I was a terrorist. Yes, I am a terrorist and I am proud of it. And I support terrorism so long as it was against the United States Government and against Israel, because you are more than terrorists; you are the one who invented terrorism and using it every day. You are butchers, liars and hypocrites."

[E. Blackadder]

From Norman Podhoretz's opinion piece WSJ 9/20/01 A16

...But what is harder to grasp is that, just the fervent wish of the Arab world to wipe the Jewish state off the map derives not from anything Israel has done or failed to do, but rather from its existence alone, so we are hated not because of our policies but because of who and what we are. A Palestinian textbook sums up one item of the indictment: "Western civilization ... deprived man of his peace of mind, stability and noble human examples .. when it turned material well-being into the the exemplary goal ... his money leading him nowhere, except to suicide."

True, the Arabs accuse us of all manner of horrible crimes. But as someone recently said, what really arouses their emnity is not what we have done wrong but what we have done right. To them our democratic polity, and the freedoms that go with it, are as corrupting as our economic system. They want to destroy all this, first in the Middle East itself, and then in as much of the world as they can, so that the way of life they believe is commanded by Allah can rise up again in all its sacured purity from out of the degenerate rubble."

Of course the answer is #2, but people like EB will fight to the death to STOP you from being able to say that.

Any newscaster who dares say the primary motivation is #2 would have his name smeared, simply for telling the truth.

[mikey]

It is both. There is a good article in slate (which would be expected to say #2) which talks about all the countries in the region. Terrorists/Soldiers loyal to OBL and his network are fighting all over the region and have tried/are trying to replace leader in every single moderate (and not so moderate) country over there including Libya,Egypt, Saudi, Jordan, Syria, Pakistan, the former Russian Republics. Even Iran and Iraq's only area of agreement is dislike for the US.

So clearly it goes way behind just one of the two choices. Certainly, all of those countries' foreign policies don't mirror ours.

Those who insist it is #1 are blinded by nationalism. Those who insist #2 are blinded by the fact that they disagree with out foreign policy.

If we completely altered our foreign policy to align with what they want, those left standing after the ensuing mayhem would still hate us, though they probably would leave us alone. Take away #1 and #2 is irrelevant beacause our policy would mean nothing if we had no money or influence.

Does anyone honestly believe we would have been attacked if we did not have a foreign policy that many Arabs disagree with? if we

a) did not support Israel
b) did not participate in Gulf War

Yes, we would have, except it would have happened years from now when it would be against holy law in all of Asia and some of Europe to say, do, or think anything that defied the consolidated Islamic dictatorship.

[mikey]

"Does anyone honestly believe we would have been attacked if we did not have a foreign policy that many Arabs disagree with? if we

a) did not support Israel
b) did not participate in Gulf War"

Of course not, but without wealth and freedom we wouldn't have done either of those two things.

Plus at this point, it is spilled milk. We couldn't walk away from the Gulf War and we can't just walk away from Israel. And until both the Israelis and Arafat are SERIOUS about working out a way to share the land, anything we do is pointless. Let's not forget that some of the Arab world is mad because they thought Clinton pushed too hard for peace just to say he did it when maybe they just want to continue the fight.

Probably there are some elements of both, BUT: historically, when a terrorist is acting on political motives (like hating our foreign policy), they take credit for the attack. When a terrorist is acting on religious motives (like hating our existence), they don't bother. God already knows what they did.

So far I haven't heard of anyone taking credit, so I'm not thinking it's our foreign policy (as much work as that might need...)

All the neutral European countries and Japan/Korea/China are gonna reap the rewards of not starting trouble with them. Hopefully they won't be so stupid as to be pulled into this mess. These countries are JUST AS WEALTHY as us.

You reap what you sow.

On 2001-09-20 11:01, E. Blackadder wrote:
From Norman Podhoretz's opinion piece WSJ 9/20/01 A16

...But what is harder to grasp is that, just the fervent wish of the Arab world to wipe the Jewish state off the map derives not from anything Israel has done or failed to do, but rather from its existence alone, so we are hated not because of our policies but because of who and what we are. A Palestinian textbook sums up one item of the indictment: "Western civilization ... deprived man of his peace of mind, stability and noble human examples .. when it turned material well-being into the the exemplary goal ... his money leading him nowhere, except to suicide."

True, the Arabs accuse us of all manner of horrible crimes. But as someone recently said, what really arouses their emnity is not what we have done wrong but what we have done right. To them our democratic polity, and the freedoms that go with it, are as corrupting as our economic system. They want to destroy all this, first in the Middle East itself, and then in as much of the world as they can, so that the way of life they believe is commanded by Allah can rise up again in all its sacured purity from out of the degenerate rubble."

Two things are true: first, we in the West are economically much better off than most Moslems; second, we in the West have treated most Moslems as though they are not entitled to the rights and dignities that we presume for ourselves. Either of these might be responsible for the hatred with which many Moslems view the West, and to determine which is in fact responsible would require getting an honest answer from Moslems and believing it. Moslems, out of pride, are not likely to give an honest answer if the first is the actual cause, and we in the West, out of an inability to acknowledge our faults, are not likely to believe that the second is the actual cause if Moslems say that it is.

But this is all irrelevant. We in the West treat most Moslems as though they are not entitled to the rights and dignities that we presume for ourselves, and this is wrong and contrary to the notions of equity and human dignity that we claim to adhere to. Whether this causes them to hate us is irrelevant: it is still wrong, and we should not do it. Once we can honestly say that we treat Moslems with respect, then if they still hate us we can conclude that they do so without reason. But we are not there yet.