Why They Hate America

[steviejames]

People keep asking why al Queda, and others like them, hate America (and not just the US). But their motivation has been given. For their part, it is a holy war, jihard, against the infidel, that is, non Muslims like Christians, Jews and others, but also those Muslims who lack their fundamentalist purity. It is foolishness not to accept their stated reasons.

That does not mean it is a religious war for us. Far from it, we have nothing against Islam. Al Queda has decided it is either they or we who perish. In simple self defense, we must see to it that it is they who die.

http://juandejesus.50megs.com/juancomments.html

[jaguar]

*rolls eyes before slamming head into desk*
I read though those comments, what can I say? Good work treating the symptom not the cause.

There has always been nutters, fundamentalist religious types, political extremists, the key thing is they do not have popular support, so they really are pretty useless. Its when the have popular support for whatever reason that they become dangerous. Certain conditions need to be met before they get popular support, namely, people have to be pissed off about something. It may that they have no food to eat, no money, they are being invaded, their culture eroded against their will, many others.

Example: Hitler, Hitler rose to power after WWI which, in all honest, shitted on the Germans, they were made powerless, ineffectual it made them feel impotent and screwed their national pride, not to mention annihilating their economy. SO you have angry, hungry, poor people looking for someone to blame and along comes Hitler, full of answers, a soldier with answers and so her gets popular support.

Apply this to the Middle East, in different areas its different reasons but the underlying reasons are the same, destruction/erosion of culture making people go to extremes in a desperate attempt to protect it. Economic and political reasons in Palestine (look at IoTD I’d be pissed too if a tank shell went though my living room) and in some cases its purely religious (US troops in Saudi Arabia, the spiritual have of Islam) IN all these cases Islamic Fundamentalism I is like Hitler, its there, it seems to have answers and a scapegoat, so people have flocked to it.

There are huge macro-economic issues here about differences in the first and third world living conditions, and the fact our living conditions are at the cost of the third world, there are large cultural issues with globalization and smaller localized issues. Bolting the cockpit door after the terrorist has left will not solve the issue. Until these issues are solved the west (not just America) should brace itself for 10-50 years of this.
<*/rant>

[wwarner11]

There are two events, starting today and the second event next Saturday that we should watch.
That is two soccer games between Iran and Ireland. The younger people within Iran I am told want to have a democracy, and the one reason I believe for this is their youth being exposed to the ways of the west. I have read that there have been riots at past soccer games in protest of their government and the way they live. China is having the same problems with their population. This is one reason why they are moving towards a market economy. Between the internet and Third World people being exposed to our ways, they do not want to live like a rice farmer or goat herder any longer. If the world of the 20's had today's ability to communicate with each other just maybe there would never have been a Hitler.

[jaguar]

You hav e apoint but there are other factors. First of all nationalism is an unbelieveably powerful force, in China much of the youth's devition to the party is frightening. Second is that it takes a long time and alot of pressure to work against the concervative inertia of something of the shah (propably incorrect spelling) goverment in Iran. It all comes back to globalisation, which the economic side of globalisation has been very throughly worked out(with input from gee....every major corperation and western goverment - and noone else!), the cultural and social impacts have never relly been looked into and there are jsut *so* many issues its not funny.