native wrote:Some good points! Your observations are accurate and salient, for the most part, BUT your conclusions are just wrong.
The 9/11 hijackers were well fed, well educated, well sheltered and privileged by any standard. Our enemies are not the impoverished villagers of Afghanistan, who do not produce suicide bombers. Our enemies are middle class muslims who DO provide suicide bombers. They just cannot stand it that our system provides better material success and that we have more libertine fun. They are too lazy to to compete, so they destroy. Ask any ex-pat who has worked in Saudi. Your analysis fails.
Muslim rage and jealousy are no justification for muslim actions, even is their reasoning is internally consistent within their closed loop system of belief.
If you are my neighbor and have a beautiful wife who dresses skimpily, then I rape your wife and then kill her because she was more beautiful than mine and I could not allow you to have something better than me, would you blame yourself? After all, I would be a mere victim by my way of reasoning. YOU played a "VITAL ROLE" in my "RATIONAL" jealousy by living next door and having a beautful wife!
WHY do you blame America and excuse muslim behavior? This is the same bullsh!t "blame the victim" appeasement mentality that leads to increased crime and mass murder. ...like blaming the Czechs or Poles for Nazi aggression, or the petit bourgeoise for communist atrocities.
This isn't blaming the victims at all. I thought you'd at least go with something after giving me props at the beginning of your post, but jeeze, you're ignoring history.
I'm not for one second sympathizing with those that killed thousands of people on 9/11. If a hell exists, they surely deserve to burn for all eternity. I don't think it does exist, but that's a discussion for another day that would take this topic only further off course than it already is.
So you don't think the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire after WWI into essentially European-controlled states wasn't a factor? That the Balfour Declaration that set out to create a Jewish State in Palestine, while simultaneously assuring the Palestinians and other Muslims who opposed it that that was not their intention didn't play a part? Or that the West's (especially America's) mindset that Israel can do no wrong no matter what doesn't piss them off just a little bit?
I'll admit that Islam, itself, has been an outstanding vehicle for channeling this hate into actual violence. I don't feel the need to be politically correct and act as if Islam hasn't done that, but I feel that every religion is pure bullshit, so I guess it's easier for me.

I guess I also feel that Christianity has that same possibility, but Christians today don't have any need to kill as a last resort.
There are so many factors that lead to the state of hate in the Middle East. We are not entirely to blame, and could argue that we aren't even mostly to blame, but we do share a significant part of the blame and should recognize it, especially because that's how most of the Muslim world sees it. We cannot, however, use that bullshit analogy about my wife being hotter than yours. They don't hate us because we're free, or because we live a better lifestyle, or because we have more money. Japan has everything we have, yet they constantly site our actions of dropping two Nuclear Bombs as part of our transgressions. If it was truly about Money and Lifestyle, they'd hate Japan just as much as us, but they don't. A lot of Muslim extremists go as far as to admire Japan for standing up to the US in WWII.
And about my post saying that "people who are well fed, clothed, sheltered and happy don't blow themselves up" still holds true. Sure, the extremists give their recruits a lavish lifestyle, but that's part of the charade. They pick up those who are the poorest, least educated, and most hungry and give them a life that's much better, along with the promise of a glorious afterlife, only in return for their service to Allah and to radical Islam. A kid who has nothing to lose would eat that up in a heartbeat, but he who has a stable living situation would not. They convince these kids that the world is so bad, and that the only way to fix it is to act in violence. After essentially brainwashing these people, they make them feel completely rationalized in thinking that there is no alternative possibility. In their minds, if they don't kill Westerners, the world will never get better.