I would guess that most of us can recall exactly where we were and what we were doing when we first heard about the horrific attacks on the Twin Towers and the subsequent attack on the Pentagon. There aren’t many moments in your life, no matter how long you live, that you will recall as vividly as the moment you learned about it. The assassination of John F. Kennedy was also like that for me. I don’t think anyone really feels that they have heard a satisfactory explanation of why Lee Harvey Oswald killed him. That was over forty years ago, and there are still many people who don’t believe the results of the official U.S. government investigation.
The U.S. government’s 9/11 Commission Report has also failed to gain unanimous support. The report is primarily an analysis of how we failed to prevent the attacks and how we failed to be aware that they might even occur. However, the greatest failure of the report is that no attempt is made to understand what motivated the attacks. We are left to believe that the motive of Al Qaeda is some sort of radical Islamic hatred of the Christian and Jewish west. However, just a simple observation of the attacks themselves show quite clearly that the attacks were not at all an attempt to begin a religious war or even to wage a terrorist campaign against people who were not of the Islamic faith. Look at their targets:
The World Trade Center could be described as the financial capital of the multinational businesses of the United States. The twin towers were not only functional centers of finance, they were iconic symbols of America’s mighty economic impact throughout the world. The second target, the Pentagon, is another icon as well as the functional center of the vast military might of the United States. Long after the attacks occured, and after much investigation, it has been learned that the U.S. Capitol building was the intended target of United flight 93. The aircraft that crashed in Shanksville, PA after heroic intervention by its passengers. The U.S. Capitol building is also an icon and the functional center of our government. The 9/11 attacks were an attack on a U.S. financial – military – government triad. While it would have been easy, there were no attacks on any Christian churchs, Jewish synagogues, Mormon, Buddhist, or Hindu temples or any other religious organizations or icons. The attackers may well have all been Islamic, but the attacks were not about Islam.
If we are to understand what 9/11 was all about we need to consider one very important point: every single attacker was on a suicide mission. Why is that important? Consider Japan at the close of World War II. Defeat was seen to be inevitable. Many Japanese feared severe retribution from American forces. Their backs were against the wall and they expected no mercy. Thus was born the Kamikaze pilots, the “Divine Wind”. The Kamikaze pilots flew their bomb-laden aircraft directly into American warships in a last ditch attempt to stop the advance of the U.S. Navy and a subsequent invasion. There is little doubt that the courage of these Japanese pilots was sustained, in part, by their trust in God. However, no one has ever suggested that the Kamikaze attacks were some sort of group of religious fanatics.
Toward the end of World War II the Nazis in Germany also planned to develop a suicide bomber squadron called the Leonidas Squadron. The pilots would fly Messerschmitt Me328 aircraft, equipped with a single 2,000 bomb, into selected Allied targets. There were problems with development of the aircraft, however, and the squadron never saw action.
The common thread among the Nazis, the Japanese Kamikaze, and the Al Qaeda attackers is that they were all desperate attacks. Suicide attacks are always an indicator that the attacker feels severely oppressed and near defeat, but out of a sense of patriotism, rage, and injustice decides to make one final attempt to destroy a hated enemy even if it means his own death. It’s not about converting someone to his religion, nor is it because he is unhappy that people on the other side of the world don’t worship the same God he does. The 9/11 attacks were desperate moves by men who felt their backs were to the wall. But why did they feel that way? And why us? What did we do?
We didn’t do anything. Neither you nor I, nor any of the people who died in the attacks were a threat to Al Qaeda. The people who were killed are what our military would call “collateral damage”. Sort of like the innocent civilians who were killed in the “Shock and Awe” campaign in Iraq. The real targets were the iconic, and also functional, buildings of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Capitol. But why? Why strike at the heart of our multinational business system, our military, and our government? It’s because these Al Qaeda terrorists, and their leaders, view these three icons as one sort of an unholy Trinity, and it was this Trinity that was threatening their very existence. Al Qaeda was, and is, made up of desperate men, but they are not crazed religious fanatics.
OK, so how can these people feel so threatened? What could we be doing to them that would make them feel that they are on the brink of destruction? The answer is the same answer that can be given as the cause of all wars: they perceive us as stealing their wealth. It is our wealth that allows us to live. Our homes, our jobs, our land, our money, our industries – all these things, and more, could be considered our collective wealth. For the people of this part of the world, their principle source of all their wealth lies in a single word: “oil”.
The U.S. has a long and checkered history of being in the oil business in the Middle East. When Iran nationalized their oil operations in 1951, the U.S. began efforts, led by the CIA, to depose their leader. This succeeded in 1953 when the Shah of Iran was reinstated and Iran began to sell cheap oil to American oil companies again. The Shah was deposed in the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and they haven’t been very friendly to us ever since. Similarly, Saddam Hussein nationalized the Iraqi oil industry in 1972 and tossed the American oil companies out of Iraq. The U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 and captured Saddam. He was executed on Dec 30, 2006. The Iraqi Oil Ministry is now negotiating oil deals with Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, Total, and Chevron so that U.S. companies can pump oil from Iraq again.
It is interesting to note that almost all of the 9/11 Al Qaeda terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. So is Osama bin Laden. None of the terrorists were from Iraq. Yet, when the U.S. invaded Iraq, Al Qaeda was quick to enter Iraq and join the fight against the U.S. In the past Osama bin Ladin has stated that some Al Qaeda attacks were due to the U.S. support of Israel and its perceived unfair treatment of Palestinians. It is pretty clear that Al Qaeda sees itself as a sort of defender of last resort of the entire Middle East, defending it from domination, and the subsequent loss of its wealth, by the U.S. Unholy Trinity of our multinational businesses, military, and government. The thing is, this is not exactly an irrational fear.
In 1997 the Project for the New American Century was founded. It’s stated proposition was that, “American leadership is good for both America and for the world.” It has been a strong advocate for American leadership, or domination, of the world. It has been very influential in the Bush administration. In 1998, members of the organization, including Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz warned President Clinton that Saddam was a threat and should be removed because of his weapons of mass destruction. In a report written in 2000 the group warned that “Over the long term, Iran may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has.” Paul Wolfowitz became President Bush’s Deputy Secretary of Defense in 2001 and, immediately after the 9/11 attacks, pressed for the invasion of Iraq, an idea also strongly pushed by John McCain at the same time. Donald Rumsfeld was President Bush’s Secretary of Defense at the time.
The fact that these three people immediately advocated an attack on Iraq as a response to 9/11 indicates that their view of the conflict is not too different from that of Osama bin Laden. This is a conflict between America and its policy of financial, military and political dominance throughout the Middle East and a small group of guerrilla fighters who view this as nothing less than the theft of the entire region’s wealth.Basically they feel they are getting a really, really bad deal.
There is no doubt that these guerrillas are fanatical fighters. There is no doubt they feel their backs are to the wall. There is no doubt they will employ suicide tactics again if they feel it will help achieve their objective. And there is also no doubt that this war is not about religion. It is not about Islam or Christianity. Nor is it about American freedom. It’s not about any of the great emotional issues that the leaders of all countries always try to stoke in order to get their young men to go out and die for their country.
The cause of the 9/11 attack is not radical Islam; it is the same as the cause for every war that has ever taken place. It’s about wealth. It’s about money. It’s about some people believing they are being exploited so badly that they and their way of life can’t survive, and the people on the other side not even aware of this and, come to think of it, not even caring whether they survive or not anyway.
The tragedy is that it is the innocent who always suffer the most.
[…] Exxon Mobil news by richmcsheehy […]
With due respect to your thoughtful post, I would have to draw attention to this quote:
“There is little doubt that the courage of these Japanese pilots was sustained, in part, by their trust in God. ”
as an example of the tendency to project our own way of life to other cultures we really know nothing about. It lends ourselves to easily forming wildly misconceived perceptions that do have their consequences.
As a matter of fact, there is an overwhelming quantity of doubt that the courage of those Japanese pilots was sustained by their trust in God, given that they probably did not believe in God. Japan’s native religion isn’t even monotheistic.
But never mind that. I think that these are different situations – Al Qaeda, distinct from Japan and Germany in World War II. Starting with that Al Qaeda is not a country.
I think the answer is much less appealing than they are desperate or jealous. It’s an answer both simpler yet more difficult, perhaps, to understand: they really hate us. Really, really hate us. Hate is a powerful motivator. And in many ways, we have created our own enemies.
Looking more carefully through your post though, I don’t totally disagree with you. But I would argue that their reasons for attack were not sign of desperation, if indeed that was what you were trying to say.
Clinton blew the opprtunity to whack osama bin laden and this terrorist got away. Clinton hesitated be’cos his peinis was too busy satifying his intern. Crap from democrats. Now obama wants to talk to the iranian mad man; what to congratulate the mad man on killing American soldiers at Iraq with iranian insurgents? Is this what the Americans wants in a leader, to have a tea session with someone who was responsible for American soldiers lifes? When it comes in dealing with an enemy the democrats are full of shit. Look at Reagan, he ordered f-111s to whack the Libyan leader; an enemy who were responsible in downing a commercial airplane with many innocent lifes.
People don’t be fooled, if there’s another 911( God forbid ) obama would probably be sympathetic to the enemy’s cause and probably say,” don’t do that again ok…”
America is the object of hatred by those people and groups who perceived it to be behind all their nation’s misfortune. Your nation for all its generosity is also engaged in other nation’s ‘internal affairs’ which can not be denied and is openly admitted.
Its bias support for Israel is one reason why this radical Islamist has been crying for blood, but US would not withdraw their support for the only Democracy in the Mideast. As long as the US government continue to stand with Israel and widen its ‘interventionist’ policy its enemmies would continue to fight it.
Its sad that those people perished that way, they were civilians and none of them deserved to die that day. Al Qaeda and all the radical Islamist should be engaged, there is no other way to deal with them but to go to where they are – unfortunately, they hide behind countries that secretely supports their cause, now, if this is the situation – America would have no other course but to go to this countries, this radicals would never run out of excuse to kill.
Its a vicious cycle.
I am from the middle east and live in america ,i call it home and i have no other home but here because it was my choice to be here,now
everytime someone from there trys something crazy about the u.s will use the palestanians as a cause, but what they will do next is destroy the palastenians,saddam did use that cause,which had more than 2 milion palastanians deported from the gulf countries that they lived there for generations and called home,same with alqaeda they put a scar in every heart on earth including the palastenians ,a scar that will remind us for the rest of our life of that beautiful sunny day ,like a white dress that got ruined by a blood that stained it for ever,and it is all because of hate within them people to each other and taking it out on the inocents that has nothing to do with their own evil minds,and i wish bush just did it ina smarter way than a massive war that caused more inocant lives, but i also cant even imagine a smarter way,because i remeber how much i cried that day feelling for every loved one that was lost ,i lost a son who got killed in cold blood and all them victims of 9/11 are killed the same way,were snatched in a horroble way and there no God in what ever they beleive in will agree on taking an inocant life, and also i want to say life is tough everywhere here or abroad, so why did they do it, ???????
I am also sorry for the loss of your son.
I wonder the same thing, Sal… in the end, you don’t know how to feel because they have no lives… they ENJOY causing pain, the only thing you can do, is imagine being reunited with your loved one one day, and until then honor them with how you live… I hope you have found a way to cope some with your loss…
Americans tend to have this single-minded view that it’s “Them against the World”. They disassociate themselves from the humanity of the people who live outside their borders. Everyday is just another day in paradise if you’re an American.
Many of my friends from the States – both from there originally and those who have settle there from other countries – have informed me of this blatant ignorance of other peoples on the part of Americans, generally speaking. And one only has to listen to vox pops interviews by the American media to realise that this is sadly a fact.
Or you could walk around Cape Town with me during tourist season and listen to some of the ridiculous questions I’m asked by Americans.
And that is why generally Americans see nothing wrong with invading other countries or Guantanamo Bay or treating non-Americans as statistics. The press refers to “casualties” when speaking of Iraqi deaths, but names ever American soldier who has passed away in the line of duty.
In this war, no-one’s right. Not Al-Qaeda for choosing to call this a holy struggle and hiding behind the religion of Islam. Not the Americans who invade countries on the premise of “bringing democracy” but only want to secure oil-trading rights.
And neither side will stop killing until the enemy is obliterated entirely.
One would think after at least 2000+ years of “civilization”, we would have figured out other ways around this.
You said “Americans tend to have this single-minded view that it’s “Them against the World” I don’t know where you got that info. from, but it is certainly NOT true. As an American I don’t feel like that it’s US against The World. I feel like there are places in the world where you have countries that support slavery, inflict their personal beliefs so that their citizens have no choice but to accept those beliefs, force their woman to adjust the amount of body that they can show, and other disturbing accounts that are clearly wrong. In America, you don’t have to withstand those environments, so when WE look at the SOME parts of the world, THAT’S WHAT WE SEE! Not US vs. The World. I say some because the rest of the world isn’t like that.
America supports racism, patriarchal sexism and has a slavery past. American companies regularly reap profits off of slave-work in poorer countries. American troops invade other countries. And those women that you believe are ”forced to adjust how much body they show” actually choose this themselves for their devotion to religion, They don’t need our ‘rescuing”. Of course anyone who has sense understands the political toxicity of many countries world-wide. Their problems are fatally real. But don’t fool yourself. America is not the hero of the world. All those issues you talk about in other countries are ever so present in the US. Of course you can’t see it bc ur socialized into thinking north american culture is normal. other countries feel theyre also normal. Everyone has faults. Regardless it doesnt matter what you ”see” about the world. The truth is more complex than your vision.
Sir, I agree very much with your post. I am a U.S. born, U.S. Military Vet. Thank You very kindly.
LW, not true, it’s a way to remove a woman from being recognized as strong and many of them KNOW that and resent wearing those head pieces. It’s oppressing but they have been brainwashed from the early get go that merely touching or talking to males in an equal or affectionate manner is ungodly because males are superior and women shouldn’t consider themselves equal but less, much less discuss actual matters of import. Women in the kitchen for the tribal Muslims that is, and women must walk with man in Mideast/not drive, and women are objects that bring honor or value of whatever the man thinks she does or worse, RUINS family name because she was raped, etc etc…
You don’t know what you’re talking about, but just like usual, some MAN thinks he can twist history of women by his opinion on few conditioned women who follow this MAN-code. Because my god… ain’t like that, got me? And I just used my freedom of speech to tell you that. Don’t care what religious faith you are of, but if a Muslim woman told you that to your face, I have no doubt you’d call her a few names, hrm? Heh
Conspiracy. Conspiracy. Open your mind.
I think the only thing you fail to mention is that many of the followers of these groups are in it because they feel religiously compelled. I understand the leaders have other motivations but you tell your followers what they want to hear.
That’s why Osama bin Laden issued a jihad against the United States. It brings over conservative religious followers who believe this is a mission from God.
Lena’s point in the last post is an interesting one.
“[…]you tell your followers what they want to hear.”
It’s probably the only thing Osama and Dubya have in common. Both subscribe to the philosophy that in order to stay in power, you need to give your constituency something to fear or something to hate.
Caesar did it using the Gauls, the Goths and even the Saxons. Hitler did it using the Jews. The National Party in South Africa did it with Apartheid.
Seems to work pretty well.
they ALL do that, they’re politicians… it’s not a similarity between the few you named…
I find this an interesting arguement.
I have to agree with the writer when he says the attacks are not entirely religious, they did not intent to wage a `jihad`.
The attacks on the U.S.A (not America) had a few roots. One of them is the USA`s support of Israel. I`m an agnostic and have nothing against the jewish people, but how would you feel if you were suddenly left without your land, and had to see it being given to some other people, who have not been entirely there for more than 2000 years?
Another interesting point is in regards to the creation of Iraq after the dissolution of the Persian empire after WW1. The british and americans basically `created` the country out of their own personal and arrogant colonial interests. It was them who gave power to the minorities (sunni). It was them who did not want to see democracies in the middle east post WW1 war because as they say “it`s not in our best interests”. Hipocrecy and ignorance go hand in hand when you talk about this.
On top of this you have the western imperialism and their shameless addiction to oil, which only stirs things up.
Do not be fooled by politicians when they say that their countries are being attacked by terrorists who “hate us” just because that`s what they do. They, unfortunatelly, have very good reasons to have resent against the USA and the UK.
May there not be more innocent deaths regardless of nationality.
one more thing: despite all our social, political and technological advances, we humans are not as civilized as we think we are, and our instincts play an important role in our decisions. So bear in mind that every action has a reaction
Thanks for the wonderful posts here. Let me give this quote from the original post a try.
“Suicide attacks are always an indicator that the attacker feels severely oppressed and near defeat, but out of a sense of patriotism, rage, and injustice decides to make one final attempt to destroy a hated enemy even if it means his own death.”
As I understand it, some of these people (suicide bombers) are throwing themselves into this conflict with the same enthusiasm that many allies threw themselves into in ww1. Off to Europe to beat back the Hun. They believed that they could perform this task and be home by Christmas.
The middle east I can imagine is a very boring place to live. North America was probably just as boring 100 years ago. This war may have given their lives some meaning, something to live for.
So I conclude that suicide attacks are not so much an indicator of a defeated army, but that of a young generation of youths who (still innocent) have not had the chance to know anything better than the excitement of conflict.
ps. I admit I know very little, but I am happy that you let me share what little I have. I hope it helps.
you know, that’s true, I always wondered the same.. if they’re bored, and the neglect from living in impoverished tribal lands just creates mischief in these people, their fathers may or may not encourage this, that or they get recruited… but I must say, religious anecdotes work like brainwashing when you have this combo within a young person in third world countries… Strife!
the united states government is the ones who committed the 9-11 incident the usa and the world are in more danger from these devils that call them selves lucifearians and the reason they have not attacked the usa again is because it just was not time for bush and his friends to do so but i believe that joe biden told the story when he said what he said about barack obama on the campaign trail all of our govermental officials are involved in this mess so we must impeach them all
henry kissinger has said that military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy
we must get rid of the illuminati and the international bankers now to save the usa and the world money system
For oil, of course.
For the military industrial complex.
For the hell of it.
Because they ‘could’.
Because we needed a wake up call that ‘we’ are NOT alone on this planet.
Pick your own adventure-conspiracy theory and stick to it like a fly to fly paper.
Maybe, just maybe to give ‘us’ a taste of our own ‘medicine’..huh–go figure—think Chevron in Ecaudor….or those planes carrying elected South American leaders blowing up in the seventies or
maybe they just wanted us to give up all our freedoms …yeah..that works best….Orwell anyone?
ps. Perkins Confessions of an Economic Hitman—check him out.
I just thought you should know that is one of the most sane discussions of 9/11 and the motivations behind the attack that I’ve found. Your discussion of the tactic of suicide bombing was particularly astute — have you by any chance read “Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism“? It makes many of the same points you do, notably that suicide as a tactic is usually only employed when one side in a conflict is disproportionately smaller or weaker than the other (which frequently leads to desperate tactics).
How terrifying it is that the American public was never given any real insight into the reasoning and rationale behind Al Qaeda’s attacks on September 11, 2001. Shouldn’t this absence of clarity from the U.S. government reveal to us that something is unjust in our actions? Furthermore, how troubling is it that intelligent, free-thinking people are content to assume that there is nothing more to Al Qaeda than that of them being “terrorists”? We define peoples and cultures different from our own as “others” and as less than human. Many of these situations require looking through different lenses in order to comprehend how people outside of the United States view us. The other notion which fails to sink in is that much of the United States’ economic policies (which allows us our luxurious lifestyle) are so exploitative that they have become the equivalent of economic warfare. Whether someone is shot in the face, or locked in a room with no food, the end result is the same: death. It is easy for those, untouched by these economic policies, to not see them as warfare. A current example is the situation involving Somali “pirates”. Anyone with basic literacy skills could, given the care to do so, look at the history of Western exploitation in that region and come to an understanding of who the real pirates are.
There is no excuse for killing thousands of innocent people going to work in New York and Washington dude. Your post strikes me as unfeeling mass rationalization
Please elaborate.
yes, he’s condescendingly/narcissistically manipulative… ‘oh you’re sooo uneducated..’
oh please, they ARE terrorists, they cause chaos in their own homelands, beat/kill/hate men who are more tolerant/moderate, and apparently hang, rape, beat to death, and burn women for PICK A REASON.
The author of the article is definitely on the right lines. Instead of concerning ourselves about the cause of the problem, current foreign policy from the West only attempts to deal with the symptoms.
Al Qaeda didn’t just decide on a whim to attack the most powerful country in the world, they had their reasons and we should be asking what are we doing to fuel this hatred rather than simply labelling them as mindless ‘terrorists’.
I believe Allan Innes is right when he says that some US foreign policy is the equivalent of “economic warfare”. I’m sorry to say, no country or business can be that successful without screwing people over. You have to question the ethics of some large international businesses, they are only interested in profit margins and not people. Sadly in the US this seems to be acceptable and throughout the Western world we turn a blind eye to some real atrocities.
People need to get out more, see the world, meet different people. Then they may realise that despite borders, we’re all just human. Different does not necessarily mean bad.
Put yourself in someone elses shoes and try to understand their point of view. The West is certainly not the beacon of morality and freedom we claim to be.
Yes I agree with your article, I would further add that it’s very much in the interest for our 2 countries, (i.e. US and the UK) to continue having wars as it continues to keep the arms manufactures fully employed, So what, we loose our boys in the process, would they really care? after all this has been going on for many a generation and will continue to do so, their are many thousands of employees who rely on the above industries for their livelihood. which their employers will claim justifiably that they will loose their jobs, So sadly it’s a fact of life, but regrettably we must continue having wars to fund those powerful industrialist. after all they and other prominent figures are the real power of ours and many other countries.
omg .. i cant believe this happened
Definitely the best article on this subject. Thank you for putting so much time and effort into this, it really helped. (I just read what I wrote and it sounds sarcastic. . this was seriously helpful. . :D)
Interesting article and thanks for being among the few people to give significant thought to the question of “why?” That said, I think you underestimate religious motivators. Granted this is from a Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks#Motives), but the following excerpt is worth reading if the entry is even remotely faithful to its sources.
”
In his November 2002 “Letter to America”, Bin Laden described the United States’ support of Israel as a motivation: “The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price, and pay for it heavily.”[150] In 2004 and 2010, Bin Laden again repeated the connection between the September 11 attacks and the support of Israel by the United States.[151][152][153] Several analysts, including Mearsheimer and Walt, also claim a motivation for the attacks was the support of Israel by the United States.[149][154]
In the 1998 fatwā, Al Qaeda identified the Iraq sanctions as a reason to kill Americans: “despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million… despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation….On that basis, and in compliance with Allah’s order, we issue the following fatwā to all Muslims: The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim…”[148]
In addition to the motives published by Al Qaeda, analysts have suggested other motives, including humiliation resulting from the Islamic world falling behind the Western world – this discrepancy made especially visible due to recent globalisation.[155][156] Another speculated motive was the desire to provoke the U.S. into a broader war against the Islamic world, with the hope of motivating more allies to support Al Qaeda.[157]”
“
It’s interesting that some of the posts identify Israel as the reason for the attacks. But it is clear that Al Quaida only mentioned Israel well after the attack. The stated reason was because of our bses in Saudi Arabia, not Israel or any other reason. However, I think its because they fear that the West is turning their women into tramps.
Sorry but Bin Laden mentioned the Israeli Palestinian problem well before one American military person set foot in Saudi Arabia. When KSM was captured in Pakistan he also said that was the motivating factor of planning the attack. Its even on page 147 of the 9/11 report.
yes but he had a problem waay before Israel WITH us.. this started during his time in Saudi Arabia, his hatred of us was BEFORE the conflict .. after we supplied Afghanistan with weapons to fight off Russia… eep
If they are not attacking USA in the name if Islam, so why when they kill, blow-up or destroy a place they say Allah Akbar (God Is Great)!!!! In other words, they are killing in the name of their God.
that’s just a rally cry… it’s senselessly said… they want to make their newly recruited losers feel like somebody might actually love them so they blow themselves up for a cause they scapegoated Islam for.. how else would they get recruits? That IS the power of religion.. and these are lands that are still third world, that’s what they rely on to gain as power. If you lived there and had nothing, and someone came up to you, that they’ll train you for a higher purpose and you’ll have something worth living for… (for like short period, regardless), you’d be guaranteed to see fanatics from ALL religions given those conditions. I’m sorry but some humans do not have fully developed consciences… It’s sad and sick. That is why we have atrocities in ALL nations.
“CARLOS” How would you know about people killing in the name of god. Have you ever heard with your own ears. Your just another person who listens to what ever the media has to say. And their has only been one attack on the USA which was done by them selves. So they can create the war on terror(which doesn’t even exist as the so called AL-QAEDA group which attacked America was created by them selves during the Russian Afghan war. Just an excuse to attack the middle east. Oil is the main reason
[…] In 1997 the Project for the New American Century was founded. It’s stated proposition was that, “American leadership is good for both America and for the world.” It has been a strong advocate for “American leadership,” or domination, of the world. -paraphrased from Rich McSheehy’s Weblog […]
Dear Rich, may I paraphrase a couple of things you said? You provided good information and sources to back up what you said. I’d like to use it as a little history in a post I am writing about Bin Laden’s death and the casualties of war.
Sure, feel free to quote excerpts. Please mention the source.
Rich
With terror on the doorstep of common citizens in today’s world, it is time for people to stop being sitting ducks. It is clear that terror today is basically a war of “perceived haves and have-nots” of a globalized world.
It is also euthopian to expect leaders in the western world or the islamists to stop this power struggle and thirst for dominance. Innocents are dying. Innocents are being misled. Innocents are being embittered in a hopeless war of wealth, hegemony, military might, radicalism and narrow-mindedness from either side.
It is time perhaps, both in the west and the middle-east, for common people to stop looking up to their respective leaders for a solution to this war.
What is perhaps needed is people to people outreach, more communication to understand each others’ fears and apprehensions, greater cultural exchanges, citizen awareness to shun corporates that are exploitative, teaching children the values of compassion, love for all humanity, religious tolerance and value of peace.
What is the use of all the money if you live in fear of being killed or the guilt of not deserving that wealth. And what is the use of jihad if it brands you as terrorists or killers.
Nobody grudges wealth acquired through fair practices and jihad should be against poverty, illiteracy and oppression.
In answer to poster “whackthebugger” (see above)…. what is that you were saying about Obama and democrats?
Osoma Bin Ladin is dead….
187 PC = Osama Bin Laden. 187 pc equals navy seal team six. 19 saudi arabian aircraft hijackers = all parties equal…killers! equal all drew blood. PERIOD.
Im not a religious man, nor a patriot of my homeland the United States. Ive gained my knowledge from the laws of nature & common sense. Ive never read into this topic until now just out of bordem and curiosity im a younger guy 21.. my heart is broken from all of this. Because I kno its to late. This will never stop until real people remove these leeches from power by force.. I have a feeling that could be why JFK was cowardly murded by a goverment assassin most likely. JFK was probly a good man & was fighting for us as a people, probly made a decision which would cause some group of individuals to lose large amounts of money. It will never change its to late they have the powerhouse on lockdown.. The main thing in america is we can vote for these people yet we kno nothing about them or why they are even qualified to be there.. Its basicly a game of who talks the best talk.. But we cant vote whether we should steal oil from afghan, or give other countries billions of dollars to help after disaters so we can then blackmail them for resources in the future? Think about that a while in the long run chunks of gold and those pieces of paper with photographs of slave traders on them will be worthless… but oil, iron, steel, wood, salt, fruit veggies, cattle LIFE!!! Our government has very sour plans for our future. And it will cause another World War.. I wish i could stop it.. Theres so many of us & i kno theres great people out there i love you all no matter what country your stuck in! You are my Brothers & sisters. I just dont kno how we can unite and fight for change peacefully.. Unfortunatly we are the sheep in the situation we eat the grass and pace back & forth for them to lie to us like that? Even tho we are sheep maybe are horns will grow! Maybe 20million rams could change the world! a man can only dream.. goodnight
[…] the fuck down! Second, the “they hate us for our freedoms” bit is propaganda bullshit. Get a fucking clue! Turr-ur-ists have attacked us because of our government’s foreign policy, which has included; […]
The US government in the past has gone to war due to perceived injustice even though no Americans were the victims of the perceived injustice as in the war between Iraq and Kuwait,
so is it surprising that Osama Bin Laden would want to go to “war” with the US government over perceived injustice due to the US government committing “atrocities” against fleeing Iraqi soldiers and the collateral killing of hundreds of Iraqi children ?
If a tiny, insignificant, minuscule british tea tax that only affected rich Americans who drank british tea and which led to cries of “taxation without representation” resulted in terrorizing and disfiguring innocent British civilians and American loyalists by American “patriot” mobs,
so is it surprising that some muslims might be adversely affected by US bombs raining down on them during the gulf war in 1990, which in turn resulted in Bin Laden starting a 10 year terror campaign to get US troops out of Saudi Arabia
as a result of Saudi dissidents being tortured for opposing the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia following the carnage of the gulf war in which the US government was accused of not only massacring fleeing Iraqi soldiers from Kuwait but also air strikes that collaterally killed Iraqi children and babies in the gulf war where US bombs killed 200,000 Iraqis, destroyed 20,000 Iraqi homes, leveled schools and hospitals.
This is what Bin Laden saw; which he described in his numerous fatwas :
Iraqis, before the gulf war, had not killed any American intentionally and had not taken any military action against the US anywhere in the world and yet the US government decided to launch a war that collaterally killed Iraqi children and massacre fleeing Iraqi soldiers from Kuwait
for the purposes of installing a hedonistic and cruel Kuwaiti dictatorship
In one US air strike : three hundred Iraqi children were killed by “smart” bombs in a Baghdad bomb shelter on February 16, 1991. The blast caused a fire so intense that it flash-burned outlines of those children and their mothers on the walls; you can still peel strips of blackened skin-from the stones.
And in 1994, religious scholars safar al-hawali and salman al-awdah were tortured by the Saudi government which escalated the conflict between Osama
bin laden and the fact that his friends were tortured due to the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia.
Some of the contents of Osama Bin Laden’s fatwas :
(1) Osama Bin Laden read about the US government in the 50s overthrowing a democratically elected Mossadegh of Iran and eventually the Shah terrorized his own people in Iran, thanks to the military support given by the US government
(2) He read about the US government in the 60s, arming the Israeli government that used those very US weapons to collaterally kill Palestinian children and babies
(3) He saw the US government in the 70s using napalm, agent orange and carpet bombing Vietnam and Cambodia, collaterally killing hundreds of thousands or even millions.
(4) He saw the US government in the 80s siding with the “christian” militias in Lebanon, the very christian militias that massacred Muslims
(5) He saw the US government in the 80s supporting cruel dictators like Saddam Hussein
(6) He saw the US government in the 90s imposing cruel sanctions on Iraq resulting in UN reports stating that half a million Iraqi children died prematurely due to the sanctions
(7) He saw that the cruel Saudi dictatorship was being supported by the US government , the very dictatorship that tortured dissidents who opposed the stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia
(8) He saw that the US government never left any country in which it had troops in ( example; US troops still present in Germany and Japan, even after the war had ended decades ago)
(9) He saw that warnings to the US government to withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia were ignored
(10) He saw that the only way to get US troops out of Saudi Arabia was to launch a terror campaign
(11) He saw that his terror campaign against the US had failed and US troops still remained in Saudi Arabia 9 years after the gulf war had ended
(12) He saw that the only way to get the US government to withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia was to launch an attack on the US homeland on 9/11/01
(13) He saw that the US government finally gave into his demands to withdraw troops, only after the 9/11 attacks, and US troops finally left Saudi Arabia in 2003, almost 13 years after the gulf war had ended
In Closing :
Mar 24,1991 : US General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the American commander of Operation Desert Storm, told reporters in Saudi Arabia the United States was closer to establishing a permanent military headquarters on Arab soil.
(AP, 3/24/01)
What eventually motivated Bin Laden ( I suspect ) to launch a terror campaign against US troops stationed in Saudi Arabia was for personal reasons : one of the dissidents tortured by the Saudi dictatorship might have been a close friend of Bin Laden and that must have been the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back” and that torture was directly related to dissidence against the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia.
If your close friends were tortured, what would you do if the torturers were not brought to justice and you had the resources to retaliate ( I personally would forgive the torturers since Jesus said to forgive but most people do not follow Jesus and that includes the US government ).
Perceived injustice by a tiny minority is what caused the LA riots in 1992.
The American “patriot” mob took out their anger on innocent British civilians and American loyalists by terrorizing and torturing the British/American loyalist civilians for the wrong doings over insignificant and minuscule taxation on tea by the British Monarch. The tiny tea tax only affected rich Americans who drank British tea.
Its human nature to collectively punish those who have some kind of ties to the perpetrator; just as today in America, the Texas government punished the entire YFZ commune for the alleged crimes of a few individuals.
Targeting civilians and collective punishment can also been seen in the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the fire bombings of scores of Japanese cities where hundreds of thousands of women, children and babies were deliberately burned alive for the wrongs done by a few in the Japanese government
I do not think the US government was wanting to deliberately burn alive Japanese children for the sake of killing children
but rather “state terrorism” is used to achieve political goals, in this case the unconditional surrender of the Japanese government.
The difference between what non-state terrorists are doing today and the terrorism engaged by the US government in destroying Japan is in the numbers.
Non-state terrorists kill in the thousands whereas state terrorists like the US government (has been periodically in the past) kill in the hundreds of thousands.
The US government is not willing to abandon state terrorism as can be seen in the immense stockpile of nuclear “terror” weapons today.
Just as non-state terrorists say, the US government is saying the same thing by telling other countries that if they kill our children with a nuclear weapon, the US government has the right to kill all their children with nuclear weapons
which is the very definition of terrorism with the only difference that terrorists kill by the hundreds or even thousands but state terrorism by the US government ( at least in the past ) has killed by the hundreds of thousands
Reiterating :
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Tempe
Before the American revolution , the presence of a tiny tea tax resulted in terrorism and torture which created burns that resulted in infection and a slow death.
A tiny minuscule british tax on tea that only affected rich Americans resulted in American mobs terrorizing and torturing their innocent fellow loyalist Americans and British citizens.
So if a tiny tea tax that only affected rich Americans can cause terrorism, is it surprising that the collateral deaths of loved ones, children and babies due to bombings by western colonial powers could result in terrorists exploiting the situation in recruiting the loved ones of the victims of those bombings ?
I am not justifying anything done due to human nature; I am just explaining that it happens and the only way to mitigate or prevent it from happening is to avoid or prevent the casualties in the first place so as it prevent the cycle of violence
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It’s a great post, look like well-researched and very objective. Thanks for sharing this post.
uv touched me m8, al along i said the yanks were to blame 4 the 9/11 all those innocent people relate to america its greed n power for centurys theyv tried to take over the middle east for there oil once again greed so all u yanks out there feeling sorry for yourselfs need 2 wake upn reliase ur goverment are to blame 4 your 9/11 loss not the warriors who fought 4 there country they sent a message to all u greedy yanks YOU ARE NOT THE WORLD YOU DONT OWN IT AND NEVER WILL NO MATTER HOW MUCH POWER YOU HAVE THE OIL WILL ALWAYS BE THE MIDDLE EASTS…
jason ur an ass!!!!!
totally agree with you… Nobody in the world is fool to kill anybody without any reason.
am i the only 13 year old commenting this blog?
I feel so sorry for those inoccent u.s. citizens who aboarded that plane. So many people died just for no reason! just from some selfish al Qaedacs. But still i dont get it. Is the United States fighting afghanistan just because of 9/11?
The US government fights wars according to either “manufactured fear” or a cost/benefit analysis and not according to how dangerous the enemy is, meaning, all wars can be prevented or avoided and especially avoided when the enemy is the most dangerous and that is why the US government did not directly confront the Soviets even though the Soviets were invading and occupying countries
and President John Adams avoided war with France, even though the French government was spoiling for a fight with the US.
Even when the Soviets, Chinese, North Korean and North Vietnamese governments were directly and indirectly killing tens of thousands of American soldiers in horrible ways and horribly paralyzing, blinding, maiming, disfiguring or deforming tens of thousands of American soldiers or even torturing many American soldiers, not once did the US government ask for the unconditional surrender of the Soviets, Chinese, North Koreans or the North Vietnamese.
But much weaker enemies like World War Two Japan, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are subject to either indiscriminate bombing or targeted bombing or targeted assassinations in which up to hundreds of thousands of children and babies are collaterally killed and terrorized and even burned alive due to the US government’s atom bombs in the case of World War Two Japan which was destroyed by fire and atom bombs in 1945, allowing communism to greatly expand in Asia which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of innocent civlians.
Japan was so weak it could only destroy the US fleet in Hawaii but could not occupy Hawaii or invade the US mainland and by July of 1944, Japan was defeated completely resulting in Tojo resigning and the Japanese making painful concessions to the Soviet communists, hoping the Soviets can broker a peace between Japan and the US.
But FDR/Truman were not interested in a negotiated peace with Japan in July of 1944 because the US government knew it could invade and occupy Japan.
And instead of a negotiated peace and conditional surrender of Japan in July 1944, FDR/Truman did not care about the plight of US/Allied POWs who were in prison in Japan and subject to the US government fire bombing Japan
and FDR/Truman did not care about the plight of hundreds of thousands of Japanese children and babies who were subject to the horrors of being burned alive in the fire bomb destruction of Japan
and FDR/Truman did not care that the destruction of Japan that would enable communism to expand in Asia which in turn resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of innocent civilians and the horrifying deaths of tens of thousands of our beloved soldiers or the horrifying torturous blinding, paralysis, deformities, deformation and disfiguring injuries that tens of thousands of our beloved soldiers suffered during the Cold War due to the destruction of both Germany and Japan which enabled the Communists to greatly expand their power.
Yes, the US government could have avoided and prevented wars with Japan, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, but the cost/benefit analysis showed that the US government could carry out a profitable war for the warfare corporations and institutions while the cost was minimal and in the case of Iraq, selling the war was easy since the US government pushed the idea that Iraqi oil could pay for the reconstruction of the country.
Its easy for the US government to “manufacture fear” especially if the “enemy” attacks us, as in the case of the Pearl Harbor attacks and the attacks on the World Trade Center and when fear can be manufactured then the cost/benefit analysis is just an option and not required in convincing the public, why it is essential to loot the treasury of trillions of hard earned taxpayer dollars and give the hard earned tax payer money to the US government’s rich and powerful friends in the corporate welfare system of the warfare corporations and institutions
While millions of Americans die every few years from cancer alone and the US government at the same time is cutting cancer research grants since the money is going to the rich and powerful in the military/industrial complex who are “laughing all the way to the bank” while the average American has to see one of their loved ones or friends dying of cancer due to cancer research being cut :
http://www.aacr.org/home/public–media/science-policy–government-affairs/resources-for-policymakers/federal-cancer-research-funding.aspx
Very true…
THE COVERT OPERATIONS AGAINST OSAMA BIN LADEN IN 2011 WAS MUCH CHEAPER THAN THE TRILLION DOLLAR WARS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED AGAINST IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN.
But the US government will first spend trillions before spending millions to solve a problem because trillions is what the rich and powerful friends of the US government need in order to support the re-election of the US government and once, at least a few billion is spent, then the US government will try to solve the problem with millions of dollars.
US foreign policy is selective in nature.
The more dangerous and powerful the foe, the US government tries its best to avoid a direct conflict,
but the weaker the nation, the more aggressive the US government’s policy towards that nation, example Iran and Iraq and to a much lesser extent, North Korea due to North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.
Compare the US government’s military operations in the middle east with the non-interventionist policies of Switzerland, one can see how dangerous US government’s interventionist policies really are as compared to the safety and security Swiss citizens enjoy due to their government adopting a non-interventionist foreign military policy.
Even during World War Two when Switzerland was helping the Allies, Hitler did not invade Switzerland because of Switzerland’s neutrality and formidable defenses.
]If there is credible information that Al-Qaeda has a nuclear weapon, you can rest assured the US government will first publicly declare victory on the “war on terror” and then start secret peace negotiations with Al-Qaeda because then the cost/benefit analysis will suggest peace with Al-Qaeda is a better alternative than war.
i hate osama bin ladin
I hate osama bin laden but we shouldnt be mad at him but mad at hat he did. I’m pretty sure anyone you ask will say they hate osama…. i would say the same!!!!!!!!!!!! SCREW YOU BIN LADEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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becuase those bastards couldnt mind their own bisness
f those peices of shit
why did they attack anyway?
to bin laden
screw you,you bitch
I see a lot of rationalization here. The point is, why did these people kill 3000 innocent civilians on a Tuesday morning when they were doing nothing but going about their jobs?
If the United States EVER chose civilian targets anywhere in the world like that, the press would eat the current administration for lunch. The moral? The U.S does a lot of things in their own interest but they would never kill ONLY innocent civilians, especially on such a large scale. No decent country would.
Enough said
Oh, by the way. Those of who think you are in the know, Nagasaki and Hiroshima were MILITARY targets. Hiroshima had military installations and Nagasaki was a naval port. They were not business offices.
so why not just target the military installations
instead of dropping the atom bomb over a church in Nagasaki
which resulted in hundreds of thousands of unarmed christian and non-christian men, women, children and babies being terrorized and burned alive.
In his fatwas, Osama Bin Laden mentioned the atom bombing of Japan which in turn gave Osama Bin Laden the excuse to target civilians, just as the US government did in the atom and fire bombing of Japan.
Osama Bin Laden read about the US government fire and atom bombing Japan in 1945 when Japan was already defeated as early as July of 1944 when Tojo resigned and Japan was negotiating concessions to the communists
but FDR did not care about communists either killing tens of millions of civilians or that the crushing of Japan enabled communism to expand in Asia resulting in hundreds of thousands of US soldiers either dying horrifying deaths or being maimed, disfigured, deformed, blinded or paralyzed for life during the cold war.
Also, Osama Bin Laden read about US/Allied POWs in Japan and hundreds of thousands of Japanese children being terrorized, tortured and burned alive due to the US government’s fire and atom bombings of Japan
and Bin Laden must have concluded that if FDR/Truman did not care about the plight of their own US soldiers captive in Japan who were being killed by the US government’s atom and fire bombings of Japan
and since FDR/Truman did not care about the lives of hundreds of thousands of Japanese children and babies, why should he, Osama bin Laden, care about lives when strategic goals were more important
( this is how both state and non-state terrorists think and I do not agree with the way they think because killing the innocent in order to take revenge on the murderous actions of others is wrong )
The following message will reveal to the reader why Al-Qaeda chose to attack the US on 9/11/01 and not attack Switzerland:
This is what a terrorist on death row wrote in his blog :
Writing on his blog, he said, “This was not a crime of hate but an act of Passion and Patriotism, an act of country and commitment, an act of retribution and recompense. This was not done during Peace time but at War time.
I, ……… felt a need to exact some measure of equality and fairness for the thousands of victims ”
http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/07/20/texas.execution/
3 Questions :
(1) Do you think this terrorist experienced the same things as other terrorists do, who are vulnerable to recruiting propaganda, especially when they see their fellow citizens as victims of terrorism and so out of duty, they feel deaths need to be avenged and they do not see their victims as innocent but rather “guilty by association” ?
(2) Would he have become a terrorist if his fellow citizens were not terrorized and killed?
(3) This guy became a terrorist by just watching one day of victims being killed, so can you imagine what happens in a situation where the killing goes on for days or months, how many terrorists could be recruited in such a situation ?
If a Norwegian, Anders Behring Breivik, in peaceful Norway goes on a terrorizing killing spree
targeting children and setting off a deadly bomb in Oslo due to his anti-left wing views,
is it surprising that some muslims in the middle east, Pakistan and Afghanistan might be vulnerable to being recruited as terrorists when western countries are raining down bombs on them, collaterally killing their loved ones ?
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15260377,00.html
The US government in the past exploded an atom bomb over a church in nagasaki, terrorizing and burning alive the nuns and the large community of christians, children and babies in Nagasaki
and the dropping of atom bombs on civilian cities was approved by the American public that was hardly affected by Japanese bombs,
so is it surprising that some muslims in the middle east might be vulnerable to terrorist recruiting propaganda when they see their loved ones collaterally killed by US bombs ?
The US government in the past has gone to war due to perceived injustice even though no Americans were the victims of the perceived injustice as in the war between Iraq and Kuwait,
so is it surprising that Osama Bin Laden would want to go to “war” with the US government over perceived injustice due to the US government committing “atrocities” against fleeing Iraqi soldiers and the collateral killing of tens of thousands of Iraqi women and children ?
FOR THE PURPOSES OF THE US GOVERNMENT RESTORING A CRUEL KUWAITI DICTATORSHIP
http://www.post-gazette.com/nation/20030216casualty0216p5.asp
Even though Switzerland might have some anti-islamic laws, the militants do not attack Switzerland
because Switzerland has a non-existent or tiny military “foot print” in the world
and no matter how much good the US government does in the world, the collateral killings of civillians by the US government is what the militants emphasize in spreading their recruiting propaganda,
just as liberals in America emphasize on the bad done by the other side of the political spectrum in the US (example: the republican party ) rather than the good the Republicans do.
Its human nature to look at the collateral killings of civilians by the US government rather than the good the US government has done.
Would you look kindly on a drunk driver who has done good in his life but who accidentally killed your loved ones ?
You would say that the drunk driver should have known better than to drink, so likewise, the militants would say the US government should have known that the use of heavy weapons would result in collateral killings of civilians
but off course, terrrorists do not look at their own actions which do result in the deliberate killing of civilians and just as the US government, the terrorists do not think about the consequences of their actions since strategic goals are the goal and the safety of civilians are not a top priority.
In the link below, a US government spokesman says “ No innocent civilians were killed on our part deliberately.
We took great pains to prevent that.
I know ….children were hurt and we did everything we could to help them.
I don’t know how the children were hurt” – Major Brent Cummings ( US Army ).
The above statement was made because the goal of the US government is strategic
and the well being of unarmed civilians is not a priority, just as the terrorists are more interested in their strategic goals than the well being of civilians.
But seeing the video, you will see many unarmed civilians being gunned down in broad daylight including the children who can be clearly seen in the van:
If a tiny, insignificant, minuscule british tea tax that only affected rich Americans who drank british tea but which led to cries of “taxation without representation” resulted in terrorizing and disfiguring innocent British civilians and American loyalists by American “patriot” mobs :
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Tempe
so is it surprising that some muslims might be adversely affected by US bombs raining down on them during the gulf war in 1990, which in turn resulted in Bin Laden starting a 10 year terror campaign to get US troops out of Saudi Arabia
as a result of Saudi dissidents being tortured for opposing the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia following the carnage of the gulf war in which the US government was accused of not only massacring fleeing Iraqi soldiers from Kuwait
but also air strikes that collaterally killed tens of thousands of Iraqi women, children and babies.
The US government’s war against iraq in the 90s killed 86,194 men, 39,612 women and 32,195 children and destroyed 20,000 Iraqi homes, leveled schools and hospitals.
This is what Bin Laden saw; which he described in his numerous fatwas :
Iraqis, before the gulf war, had not killed any American intentionally and had not taken any military action against the US anywhere in the world and yet the US government decided to launch a war that collaterally killed tens of thousands of Iraqi women and children and the “highway of death” massacre of thousands of fleeing Iraqi soldiers from Kuwait
for the purposes of installing a hedonistic and cruel Kuwaiti dictatorship
In one US air strike : three hundred Iraqi children were killed by “smart” bombs in a Baghdad bomb shelter on February 16, 1991.
The blast caused a fire so intense that it flash-burned outlines of those children and their mothers on the walls; you can still peel strips of blackened skin-from the stones.
And in 1994, religious scholars safar al-hawali and salman al-awdah were tortured by the Saudi government which escalated the conflict between Osama bin laden and the US government.
Osama’s friends were tortured due to them being against the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia.
Some of the conclusions reached from reading Osama Bin Laden’s fatwas and from the first-ever television interview with Osama Bin Ladin which was conducted by Peter Arnett in eastern Afghanistan in late March 1997 :
(1) Osama Bin Laden read about the US government fire and atom bombing Japan in 1945 when Japan was already defeated as early as July of 1944 when Tojo resigned and Japan was negotiating concessions to the communists
but FDR did not care about communists either killing tens of millions of civilians or that the crushing of Japan enabled communism to expand in Asia resulting in hundreds of thousands of US soldiers either dying horrifying deaths or being maimed, disfigured, deformed, blinded or paralyzed for life during the cold war.
(2) Osama Bin Laden read about US/Allied POWs in Japan and hundreds of thousands of Japanese children being terrorized, tortured and burned alive due to the US government’s fire and atom bombings of Japan
and Bin Laden must have concluded that if FDR/Truman did not care about the plight of their own US soldiers captive in Japan who were being killed by the US government’s atom and fire bombings of Japan
and since FDR/Truman did not care about the lives of hundreds of thousands of Japanese children and babies, why should he, Osama bin Laden, care about lives when strategic goals were more important
( this is how both state and non-state terrorists think and I do not agree with the way they think because killing the innocent in order to take revenge on the murderous actions of others is wrong )
(3) Osama Bin Laden read about the US government in the 50s overthrowing a democratically elected Mossadegh of Iran and eventually the Shah terrorized his own people in Iran, while the Shah’s military was being supported by the US government.
(4) Bin Laden read about the US government in the 60s, arming the Israeli government that used those very US weapons to collaterally kill Palestinian children and babies
(5) Bin Laden saw the US government in the 70s using napalm, agent orange and carpet bombing Vietnam and Cambodia, collaterally killing hundreds of thousands or even millions of civilians
(6) Bin Laden saw the US government in the 70s supporting cruel, murderous dictators like the Shah of Iran who used US government weapons to cruelly suppress and torture the Iranian people
(7) Bin Laden saw the US government in the 80s siding with the “christian” militias in Lebanon, the very christian militias that massacred unarmed Muslim women, children and babies
Another example Osama Bin Laden gives is the UN, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reports in 1996 that blamed the Israeli government using US government weapons to deliberately or carelessly kill women and children in the UN compound near Qana, a village in Southern Lebanon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_shelling_of_Qana
(8) He saw the US government in the 80s supporting cruel dictators like Saddam Hussein
(9) He saw the US government in the 90s imposing cruel sanctions on Iraq resulting in UN reports stating that half a million Iraqi children died prematurely due to the sanctions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_sanctions#Infant_and_child_death_rates
(10) He saw that the cruel Saudi dictatorship was being supported by the US government , the very dictatorship that tortured dissidents who opposed the stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia
(11) He saw that the US government never left any country in which it had troops in ( example; US government troops still present in Germany and Japan, even after the war had ended decades ago)
(12) He saw that warnings to the US government to withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia were ignored
(13) He saw that the only way to get US troops out of Saudi Arabia was to launch a terror campaign
(14) He saw that his terror campaign against the US had failed and US government troops still remained, in Saudi Arabia, 9 years after the gulf war had ended .
(15) He saw that the only way to get the US government to withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia was to launch an attack on the US homeland on 9/11/01
(16) Bin Laden saw that President Bush and the US government finally gave into his demands to withdraw troops, only after the 9/11 attacks, and US government troops finally left Saudi Arabia in 2003, almost 13 years after the gulf war had ended
Placing US government troops in Saudi Arabia deeply affected Osama Bin Laden and the Saudi religious leadership because of the historical record of the US government in its dealings in the middle east and elsewhere.
An analogous way of looking at it would be the US government’s involvement in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan
because the Soviets had their “presence” in those countries and the US government was “afraid” communism would spread if the Soviets were allowed to have their presence in Vietnam, Korea and Afghanistan
and thinking along the same lines, Al-Qaeda does not want the US government’s military presence in any Muslim country, especially “holy” Saudi Arabia because Osama was afraid the US government would continue supporting the cruel Saudi dictatorship’s crack down on dissidents.
So just as the US government was trying to prevent communism from spreading by being militarily involved in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan; Al-Qaeda wants to get “militarily” involved in preventing the US government’s support of cruel dictators in the middle east.
THIS IS THE MAIN MOTIVATION FOR THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS :
US GOVERNMENT’S MILITARY PRESENCE IN SAUDI ARABIA
due to the gulf war in which tens of thousands of unarmed muslim men, women, children and babies were collaterally killed by the US government
and the subsequent imprisonment and torture of Saudi dissidents by the cruel Saudi dictatorship that provoked Osama Bin Laden to act.
Dr Robert Pape has extensively researched this issue and goes in depth in his book “Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It”.
In fact, of the 2,200 incidents of suicide attacks Dr. Pape has studied worldwide since 1980, 95% were in response to foreign occupation.
Dr. Pape notes that before the US government’s invasion of Iraq, only about 10% of suicide terrorism was aimed at Americans or American interests.
Since, then however, not only is suicide terrorism greatly on the rise, but 91% of it is now directed at Americans ( or proxies or allies of the US government )
http://paul.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1909:foreign-occupation-leads-to-more-terror&catid=62:texas-straight-talk&Itemid=1&Itemid=69
Mar 24,1991 : US General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the American commander of Operation Desert Storm, told reporters in Saudi Arabia the United States was closer to establishing a permanent military headquarters on Arab soil.
(AP, 3/24/01)
“Collective punishment” is the mark of terrorism and here are some examples :
Perceived injustice done by a small number of cops is what caused the LA riots in 1992 in which a mob took out their anger on the cops by killing 53 innocent people during the riots and thousands more were injured.
The American “patriot” mob took out their anger against the British government by targeting innocent British civilians and American loyalists by terrorizing and torturing the British/American loyalist civilians for the wrong doings over insignificant and minuscule taxation on tea by the British Monarch.
The tiny tea tax only affected rich Americans who drank British tea.
Its human nature to collectively punish those who have some kind of ties to the perpetrator; just as today in America, the Texas government punished the entire YFZ commune for the alleged crimes of a few individuals.
Targeting civilians and collective punishment can also been seen in the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the fire bombings of scores of Japanese cities where hundreds of thousands of women, children and babies were deliberately burned alive for the wrongs done by a few in the Japanese government.
I do not think the US government was wanting to deliberately burn alive Japanese children for the sake of killing children
but rather, “state terrorism” (similar to the goals of Al-Qaeda ) is used to achieve political goals, in the above case the unconditional surrender of the Japanese government.
The video link below shows at least two men who are smiling, not realizing or not caring that the collateral actions on their part would result in children and babies being terrorized before they die horrifying deaths or children and babies being terrorized as they are maimed, blinded, disfigured, deformed or paralyzed for life, ruining any chances of marriage or having kids or a happy, depression free and pain free life:
What do terrorists and the two men in the above video have in common ?
Both the terrorists and the two men in the video do not realize or do not care that their actions will result in children and babies being terrorized and killed and why do they not realize that or do not care?
its because to them (state and non-state terrorists ) strategic goals are more important than any collateral deaths resulting from their actions.
Truman stated the atom bomb was dropped on a military base ( Hiroshima ) , in other words, Truman could only see the strategic objective and he was not able or was not willing to see the poor, the handicapped, the destitute, the elderly, the children and babies who were burned alive due to the atom bomb.
Quote from George Orwell : “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind”.
Similarly, terrorists are not able or willing to see their victims
but are only able to see their strategic objectives in carrying out suicide missions
but sadly, all the non-state terrorism in all of history pales in comparison to the hundreds of millions of civilians, children and babies who have been collaterally killed due to state terrorism conducted by the state governments of China, the Soviet Union and the US government.
Here is a video of one example of state terrorism in which the US government was not able to or did not care to see the victims of its crime but rather only seeing its strategic or tactical goals :
The war mongers and war decision makers do not care about the lives that they put at risk;
They do not care about the lives of our poor soldiers
but also they do not care about the lives of children and babies in the war zone
because they are more interested in the political agenda of their friends and supporters in government and the profit agenda of the rich and powerful in the warfare corporations and institutions.
The difference between what non-state terrorists are doing today and the terrorism engaged by the US government in destroying Japan is in the numbers.
Non-state terrorists kill in the thousands, whereas state terrorism which the US government has engaged in (at least in the past) resulted in hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians, children and babies being terrorized to death.
Even today, the US government is not willing to abandon state terrorism as can be seen in the immense stockpile of nuclear “terror” weapons today.
Just as non-state terrorists say, the US government is saying the same thing :
by telling other countries that if they kill our children with a nuclear weapon, the US government has the right to kill all their children with the US government’s nuclear weapons
which is the very definition of terrorism
with the only difference that terrorists kill by the hundreds or even thousands but state terrorism by the US government ( at least in the past ) has killed by the hundreds of thousands.
Another indication that the US government, just as terrorists, does not care about civilian populations in war zones can be seen by the extensive use of nuclear materials in ammunition.
During the gulf war , extensive use of depleted uranium resulted in a sharp increase in the incidence of child leukemia and genetic malformation among babies born in the decade following the Gulf War.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Iraqi_population
In a three week period of conflict in Iraq during 2003, it was estimated over 1000 tons of depleted uranium munitions were used mostly in cities.
The U.S. Department of Defense studies using cultured cells and laboratory rodents continue to suggest the possibility of leukemogenic, genetic, reproductive, and neurological effects from chronic exposure to depleted uranium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_with_war#Depleted_uranium_munitions
The fact that Belgium has banned the use of depleted uranium shows that at least one country has the conscience to care about children and babies in war zones where radioactivity from ammunition is clearly present
while governments such as in the US, Israel, Britain and France (who do not care about the well being of children and babies in war zones ) have voted against restricting the use of depleted uranium.
A year ago, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health published an epidemiological study, “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009,” which found that the Iraqi city, shattered by two U.S. invasions in 2004, is experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia and infant mortality than Hiroshima and Nagasaki did in 1945. Birth defects abound.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/14
In this video :
the narrator says that just one depleted uranium shell emits 1,000 times the normal radiation in the atmosphere
and knowing this, the US government still keeps using depleted uranium shells, not caring about the long term health risks posed to children and babies in war zones
and just as terrorists think, the US government is more concerned about its strategic goals than the long term health and well being of children and babies in war zones
Reiterating :
Before the American revolution , the presence of a tiny tea tax resulted in terrorism and torture conducted by American Patriot mobs against American loyalists, which created burns that resulted in infection and a slow death.
A tiny minuscule british tax on tea that only affected rich Americans resulted in American mobs terrorizing and torturing their innocent fellow loyalist Americans and British citizens :
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Tempe
So if a tiny tea tax that only affected rich Americans can cause terrorism,
is it surprising that the collateral deaths of loved ones, children and babies due to bombings by western colonial powers could result in terrorists exploiting the situation in recruiting the loved ones of the victims of those bombings ?
Terrorism arising from foreign forces occupying or taking native lands can also be seen here in America where Native Americans resorted to terrorism when massacres against Native Americans occurred while their lands were taken or occupied by the American colonists.
Reasons to kill have a lot to do with “just war”, just as 85% of the American public thought it was “just” to drop atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
showing that war brings out the worst in people
and if war can bring out the worst in the American public that was hardly affected by Japanese bombs, can you imagine the effect war has on a muslim population under fire from US bombs ?
http://www.gallup.com/poll/17677/majority-supports-use-atomic-bomb-japan-wwii.aspx
The fact that the US government is not willing to apologize for the horrific terrorist nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the terrorist fire bombing of Japan shows that the US government is still willing to terrorize, burn alive and torture civilians, just as terrorists do, in order to further its strategic goals.
Here is one of numerous examples of a minority of Americans terrorizing and killing children in peaceful America:
On 6/19/10, Jimmy Schlager, 56, arrived at the Del Taco restaurant in San Bernardino on a bike at about 1 p.m. Saturday, walked over to a table and fired several shots at his 29-year-old stepdaughter, her 33-year-old husband, and their sons, ages 5 and 6, San Bernardino police Lt. Jarrod Burguan said.
The above is an example of numerous cases in the US in which “loving” fathers in our non-war zone and trauma-less America
but who have nonetheless terrorized, tortured and killed their own children or pregnant wives, either through suffocation, drowning, hanging, beheading, stabbings or shootings,
so is it surprising that in Iraq or Afghanistan today, in the trauma of a war zone, where numerous victims see their loved ones being killed or blinded, maimed, deformed or paralyzed or disfigured for life due to either US bombings or sectarian violence, that those victims are vulnerable to Al-Qaeda’s propaganda that is able to influence the victims to take revenge and kill Muslims allied with the US or collaterally/accidentally kill Muslim children in the process of attacking US forces or Shia militias ?
If you were in a war zone and you see your family murdered by rebels or collaterally killed by the occupying force, knowing that you do not compromise with injustice , what would you do ?
I personally will forgive those who either deliberately or collaterally killed my family but most people do not follow the teachings of Christ.
When a foreign power occupies another country or when separatist movements reject the government, it tends to result in terrorism, as was seen by the torture that many loyalist Americans/British went through by being tarred ( boiling tar being poured on them) because they were seen as loyal to the occupying British forces by the American rebels.
So terrorism can be the result of being in a war zone and its either terrorism from the occupying force through collateral actions or the terrorism of the rebels against those loyal to the occupying force.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/MuslimM
The fact that 100,000 Americans , who were loyal to Britain, fled the US, shows the terror they faced, not only from being tarred or properties confiscated but being lynched to death:
http://www.redcoat.me.uk/
Its extremely hard for Muslims to hate to the point of wanting to commit murder, even when UN reports of infant and child death rates in muslim Iraq were attributed to sanctions against Iraq by the US in the 90s :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_sanctions#Infant_and_child_death_rates
the fact that Osama Bin Laden could only get 19 muslims to commit murder on 9/11/01
and he could not get any of the millions of muslims in America to create havoc on 9/11/01 shows that its extremely difficult to recruit muslims to murder innocent Americans.
The reason there is very little terrorism in “christian” countries is because those countries are not being bombed on a regular basis as compared to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine being bombed on a regular basis
and so a very tiny minority of muslims who see their loved ones being terrorized and killed by US bombs take out their anger on fellow citizens who they think are allied to the US government or they try to kill Americans who they think are part of the US government.
Every time a weaker group is terrorized, a tiny minority in that group resort to terrorism as seen by the terrorism committed by Native Americans, by African American slaves, by the Irish, the tamils in Ceylon and muslims in Chechnya, Phillipines etc.
I am not justifying anything done due to human nature; I am just explaining that it happens and the only way to mitigate or prevent it from happening is to avoid or prevent the casualties in the first place so as to prevent the cycle of violence
So why did Al-Qaeda choose to attack the US while the residents of Switzerland enjoyed a peaceful day on 9/11/01 ?
Could it have something to do with the interventionist military policies ( in the middle east ) of the US government, ever since WW1 compared to the non-interventionist policies of Switzerland ?
After 9/11 some Americans joined the military, thinking they were defending America but little did they know, they were defending the huge bank accounts of the people who profit from war
while millions of Americans are dying every few years from cancer alone while the government is cutting funding on cancer research :
http://www.aacr.org/home/public–media/science-policy–government-affairs/resources-for-policymakers/federal-cancer-research-funding.aspx
All of us know somebody who has cancer and who might even have died from cancer, but the government rather spend trillions on the ” war on terror” and the “terror of war” then try to fully fund cancer research.
The “war on terror” and the “terror of war” has left numerous of our beloved soldiers suffering from PTSD due to the horror they experience in the horror that people call war while children of soldiers have been known to “wet their beds” due to anxiety attacks because of worrying about their dads on the front lines.
PTSD can lead to depression, anxiety attacks, nightmares, drug addiction, and divorce which in turn can lead to homelessness and even suicide.
From crumbling infrastructure endangering the lives of Americans : http://www.realtruth.org/articles/100709-002-americas.html
to cutting funding on cancer research even while millions of Americans are dying every few years from cancer alone, one can see that the US government is more interested in catering to the special interests and profit agenda of the warfare corporations and institutions then actually providing for the health and safety of the average American.
If the US government adopted the non-interventionist policies of Switzerland, not only will the US government be able to save trillions in hard earned taxpayer dollars but it can direct valuable resources to actually protecting the health and safety of the average American.
We can all enjoy the peace and health that the average Swiss experiences and its up to us to tell the US government to change its foreign policies and concentrate on securing our own borders along the defensive policies of the Swiss government.
Even when the Swiss were helping the Allies, Hitler never invaded Switzerland because of the neutrality of the Swiss and their formidable defenses, so let us appeal to the US government to adopt the defensive policies of the Swiss which is a lot cheaper than engaging in the “war on terror” and the “terror of war” .
CONCLUSION :
Below are two types of terrorism:
(1) Tarring and feathering (which was, terrorizing, agonizing and caused disfigurement and a slow death due to infections) by American mobs on british civilians and American loyalists over disputes regarding taxation
(2) Bin Laden’s reaction in launching a 10 year terror campaign to expel US troops from Saudi Arabia as the result of perceived injustice for the torture of dissidents (who opposed US troops on Saudi soil) by the Saudi dictatorship and the carnage perpetrated by the US government in the gulf war,
for the purposes of installing a hedonistic and cruel Kuwaiti dictatorship.
In your opinion, which scenario would more likely result in violence and terrorism ?
the dispute over taxes or the torture and carnage perpetrated by the US government and its ally in order to install a hedonistic and cruel Kuwaiti dictatorship ?
If “taxation without representation” results in terrorizing and disfiguring British civilians and American loyalists by American mobs,
is it surprising that Bin Laden started a 10 year terror campaign to get US troops out of Saudi Arabia as a result of Saudi dissidents being tortured for opposing the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia following the carnage of the gulf war in which the US government was accused of not only massacring fleeing Iraqi soldiers from Kuwait
but also airstrikes that collaterally killed Iraqi children and babies in the gulf war where US bombs killed 200,000 Iraqis, destroyed 20,000 Iraqi homes, leveled schools and hospitals.
Why did the US government go to war with Iraq in order to install a hedonistic and cruel Kuwaiti dictatorship in the 90s ?
It has to do with supporting the profit agenda of the rich and powerful in the warfare corporations and institutions.
It is obvious the US government will first spend a trillion dollars on an unnecessary war to satisfy the profit agenda of their supporters in the warfare corporations and institutions
before spending millions in solving the problem as when Osama Bin Laden was inexpensively targeted in 2011 and the subsequent inexpensive peace talks with the Taliban in 2011
The powerful in the corporate welfare system of the warfare corporations and institutions are “laughing all the way to the bank ”
while Americans have to forgo a secure and healthier standard of living due to over a trillion dollars of hard earned taxpayers money being spent every year on the warfare corporations and institutions
resulting in blowback policies that create more danger than safety for the American people.
why is it when 3000 Americans die on 9/11 , the government is willing to spend trillions ( a trillion is five hundred thousand million dollars plus another five hundred thousand million dollars ) on the war on terror
but at the same time, the same government is cutting cancer research when over a million Americans are dying every two years ?
Are millions of American lives not worth 3000 American lives ?
Or is it because the US government truly does not care about the health and well being of the average American
but is more interested in helping the rich and powerful in the warfare and corporate welfare institutions and corporations of the military/industrial complex
and that is why valuable hard earned tax dollars are being diverted away from projects to help the health and well being of the average American.
The Average Value of an NCI Grant Fell 22 Percent over the decade, meaning the government is not funding all potential leads into curing cancer and while over a million Americans die from cancer every two years and the government is cutting cancer research funding over the decade,
at the same time, the government is greatly expanding the corporate welfare programs of the warfare institutions and corporations by trillions of dollars over the decade with the excuse that 3000 Americans died on 9/11/01
http://www.aacr.org/home/public–media/science-policy–government-affairs/resources-for-policymakers/federal-cancer-research-funding.aspx
Only 17% of soldiers stay in the military for 20 years or more, which shows that, even with generous retirement benefits for those who stay at least for 20 years, soldiers choose not to stay for the 20 year period.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/story/2011-09-07/Proposed-changes-in-military-benefits-have-troops-worried/50305324/1
Why do soldiers choose to leave before the 20 year period in order to qualify for retirement benefits ?
Could it be because soldiers are promised “the world” when they join but they finally wake up to the fact that they are pawns in a dangerous power game played by politicians and the enemy in order to further the profit agenda of the warfare corporations and institutions.
In the movie “Avatar” , Jake says ” I was a warrior who dreamed that he could bring peace; but sooner or later you have to wake up “.
What a profound statement.
Whether the “Avatar” script writer realized it or not, what he was actually saying is our soldiers think they are protecting our freedoms and bringing peace
but our beloved soldiers do not realize that they have to wake up to the fact that they are actually protecting, not our freedoms but rather they are protecting the bank accounts of the rich and powerful who profit from war.
Soldiers on the front lines live tragic lives
becoming pawns in a power game played by the rich and powerful in military/industrial complex and their puppets in the US government
there is no honor or glory in the horror that people call war, so the best thing is to avoid or prevent war in the first place.
Would an offensive war ever happen if all eligible children of politicians
were drafted by law to go to the front lines ?
As the so-called “adults” from Al-Qaeda blow themselves up, murdering innocent Americans
and as the so-called “adults” ( in the US government ) send our beloved soldiers deliberately into harm’s way
while the US government directly and indirectly through proxy governments have collaterally killed millions over the centuries,
the real victims of the power games the so-called adults play are the kids, the invalid, the poor, the hungry, the sick, the handicapped, the elderly and the destitute of society,
caught in the middle of the horror that people call war all for the profitable agenda of the corporate welfare system of warfare institutions and corporations.
dad i miss you
This is a great and well written article. The US should really take care of business at home, no such thing as a free lunch pissing about in the middle east. Forget mars and especially Israel and Iran. Israel are financed and loaded with enough weapons to take ownership of their own decisions. If not, its their own problem. The American people and the rest of the world doesn’t deserve to get pulled into that economically when the markets get hit and it trickles down to our jobs.
I feel so sad about what happen and what he did to those kids and family’s just because u don’t like America that don’t mean you have to distort it we are one and we do not want to be broken because you won’t like it someone killed your family so don’t do it to use because now we have to live with us forever and I am not saying this is good but I am happy our president but a stop to him
Do let people put words in your mouth. No one will ever know the exact reasons for why things happen, because people have problems in their brains that lead them to doing horrible things. America is not the hero for the world, but no one else but us seem to be stepping up to the plate. We do not support the negativity listed above. If you hear from a few people who live here such horrible things, come here and learn about everyone here before you say things. We are not against the world, maybe some parts of the world are against us, and others.
This artical is amazing. Really puts your thoughts on the spot. As I said, we’ll never understand why things happen. But this wraps around nearly every corner, and touches the places many people don’t consider. Swell job at this!
This is a really well written article with good comments by Brian Boatman and David (same person I think). Although there is much truth to implicate America’s guilt in this matter, it is only part of the story. Islam as it is right now is going through an identity crisis. The various groups of Islam have just a strong hatred for each other as they do for America and the radicals of each group are just as likely to suicide bomb the other denomination as an American soldier in Iraq. If the theory is is that they are only acting out of desperation in these attacks then the much of the world of Islam is seriously desperate even where Americans aren’t involved. Even though we dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan why aren’t they suicide bombing us? No, part of the problem is the tribal mentality and hypersensitivity of many Muslims. Just look what’s happening in Egypt right now over a video critical of Islam. For that matter just look at the reactions of Muslims any time they perceive an insult to their prophet (PBUH). Riots, fights, people dying. It has been said that you cannot throw a rock in Mecca without hitting an infidel and too many muslims see infidels wherever they go. They’re their own worst enemy and with this is mind I cannot sees any justification for the attack on 9/11. Nor can I see any justification for the crimes we committed against innocent Muslim civilians. Christianity also went through this identity crisis with the Crusades, the Reformation wars, wiping out of splinter groups, the killing of Jews and ‘witches’ who were simply innocent people used as scapegoats for then Christianity’s immaturity and craziness. Islam is not the problem but its current culture of craziness is. Add to the fact that there are now possible nuclear bombs involved and the whole world is in danger. We need to look at our own guilt in this matter and take responcibility, as Ron Paul pointed out, but it does not make us the sole cause of the great problems that confront Islam right now.
I just saw (on Netflix) the film dramizing the story of flight 93 that intended to crash into the Capitol building but instead crashed into Shaksville, PA, and I was left with the same questions I had on 9-11 when I saw firsthand the planes slamming into the twin towers: why?
I believe that the terrorists’ courage came from deep conviction that they were doing God’s work but I still do not understand what they thought God’s mission was. There was no “suicide note”, if you will, and Al-Qaida’s messages of justification were vague. What did they intend to accomplish?
I do believe that each of the bombers had their own personal reason that probably had nothing to do with the reason that was preached by Bin Laden. If it was all about oil and wealth why would they attack their biggest customer? Oil prices are largely dictated by OPEC which is largely controlled by the Saudis.
I believe it was not so much a tactic for advancing their financial agenda as a non-specific wounding of the West and all they perceived as evil and corrupt. Remeber how the “Arab Street” celebrated when they heard the news?
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The attack was on 2001 not on 2008
Jonathon, the article was written in 2008.