Eide wrote:

What about Canada? Brazil? Australia? Iceland?

What about them? They're all targets as well, and equally hated by this wacko
minority.


It's not because we do those things, there are a lot of other peoples that
do those things.

Uh, have you ever actually _listened_ to these people you presume to understand?
(In translation, of course. I'm told it the effect is much more compelling in
Arabic and, say, Farsi because of the rhetorical power of those languages, honed
by a millenia-long tradition of oratory as an art form.) Believe me, they hate
everyone in the West just as much and most of the 'third world' only a little
less. True, the United States is their poster child, because we are the leader
of the world they hate and fear. We also have a very parochial tendency to
exaggerate anything that touches us and not to notice anything that doesn't. But
neither their hatred nor their venom is reserved for us.

(Look up copies of bin Laden's 'fatwas' on the net. There are also some of the
fire-eaters' sermons around, but go for the stuff that was originally intended
for home consumption and translated, not the propaganda written in English.)


I think the US is too headstrong.

Actually we have a very natural tendency to object to people killing thousands
of our fellow citizens in terrorist attacks. That's our main motivator.

We think that the rest of the world needs to live like we do.

Perhaps. But so does almost everyone in their part of the world. The people in
those regions want desperately to live like we do with our standards of health,
nutrition, rule of law and basic human rights. The overriding problem, and the
thing that gives such power to a few nut cases, is that they have never figured
out how to do it it. Modernism and secularization haven't worked in those
regions and neither has traditionalism in various guises. The common people
still end up dirt poor and treated like dirt and their baffled resentment turns
to rage.



It's like when your wife or girlfriend really wants to have a cookie. The
guilt of "sneaking" a cookie is too much, so instead of just having a
cookie, she brings a plate of them and sets them in front of you - so you
can both have cookies. Shared guilt.

Or, when the bully in the playground gets told he's a jerk. He then replies,
"nope, you're the jerk." And punches the kid in the mouth.
He's too insecure to do anything else.

Both these examples point, by implication, to one of the reasons we have so much
trouble understanding what we're facing. Far too many of us want to see the
situation in terms of our own motives and our own understandings of the world.
So we seize on those parts of what the extremists say which come closest to our
own experience and thought patterns and proclaim that as the reason. John
Campbell called this "Hobson Jobson" many years ago and pointed out it doesn't
work.

The traditional cultures in most parts of the world are _not_ like us. They see
things differently and they react to different patterns. That doesn't make them
evil, it doesn't make them superior; it simply makes them different.

--RC



Eide

"Gunner" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 8 Sep 2004 10:57:21 -0400, "Eide"
wrote:

"Gunner" wrote in message
. ..
On Wed, 8 Sep 2004 09:29:54 -0400, "Eide"
wrote:

That "sharp sword" has _really_ done well so far!

Indeed. Toppling two regimes, wiping out 80% of the leadership of a
global terror organization and freeing 50,000,000 people from
totalitarian governments.

To what end? A mission accomplished? I don't like the idea of a war on
terrorism - it gives the warlord a never ending supply of enemies. There
can
never be an end to such a war. We definitely need to look at the log in
our
own eye on this issue, i.e. why are we a target?

Why are we a target? You mean other than a 12th century culture
clashing headlong with a 21st century one, while the warlords and
fundimentalists drive the Jihad for their own personal power base and
enrichment?

Gunner


"In my humble opinion, the petty carping levied against Bush by
the Democrats proves again, it is better to have your eye plucked
out by an eagle than to be nibbled to death by ducks." - Norman
Liebmann