I think you missed my point, which was that we are fighting against people we have supported 20 years ago (when they were still "freedom fighters"). How do you explain that? Have they changed? Or maybe it was not about helping "freedom fighters" 20 years ago, it was just about our interests in that region.
No you miss the point. It's always about our interests. Even sending Americans to bleed for a bunch Europeans was about our interests. If our security and way of life didn't depend so much on the health of other regions, we would absolutely let the world rot under your own makings. Our problem is that the rest of the world can't take care of themselves and they sucks us into their problems.
The fact remains, Muslims have sinned against Muslims. 20 years ago, Muslims fought the Soviets and shoved them out of Afghanistan. What they did with their so called "freedom" was of their own making. Much like World War II was of European making because after World War I, Americans left you all to your own destinies. The U.S. is always caught between a rock and a hard place with these matters. Our history very much suggests that we want to be left the hell alone. We were isolationalists and even a World War couldn't convince us that we had to take a larger role in this world. Today, we get blamed because so called "freedom fighters" weren't colonized or imperialized in the 80s? At what point do you people allow them to take responsibility for themselves?
Explain what was our goal then, since it looks like Bush lied to us when he pretended it was to spread democracy
Iraq is a democracy. Afghanistan holds elections and is on the way. Either way, they have to vote and they have to hold it together. Despite the fad of Europeans, the U.S. does not seek to dominate entire populations by occupying their nations against their will for decades and decades. Europeans did this for centuries. Why is it that you all always expect the U.S. to do it?
What exactly are you needing Bush to be liar for these days? Are you aware of the larger struggle in the Middle East since the days of al-Afghani? Muslims in every single European-created country have been searching for ways to make Islam compatible with a democratic prosperous modern world for two centuries under European colonization. People ignorantly (and there is no other word for this) believe that democracy is something they don't want because a few with bombs on the television say otherwise. How many Iraqis or Afghanis have to vote before you see democracies in the making? How many more modernists have to emerge out of Egypt and Syria before people start seeing the dramatic shift that has occurred since they all watched Iraqis vote on their own destinies? The spread of democracy is the goal, but they have to sweat and bleed for it.
And before you dismiss their efforts because of the internal turmoil and violence along the way, let me remind you that the all mighty French slaughtered and stumbled for decades and decades throughout their revolution on their way towards democracy.
I don't think so, what unites them is the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan.
Professional opinion, huh? All kinds of things unite them from one event to another. It's rarely one thing. There are class divisions within the tribal divisions. Foreign troops are temporary and a lazy copout of an excuse. Their grievances over internal social structures, the uneven spread of wealth, and lack of power is the greater unifier. Until they overcome these hurdles intheir societies, foreign troops temporarily on location is a diversion. These people have couped, rebelled, and murdered each other north Africa to Pakistan since the independence era (end of European colonialism - post WWII) and they have done so without foreign troop presence. With us gone, what's left of the rag tag Tali-Ban will merely seek power overothers again. The question is..."what are democracy hungry Muslims willing to do about that?" Like I stated, success or failure will be a Muslim success or failure. We're eventually coming home to our success.
No one, since we don't have military bases all over the world. That was the point.
Bases all over the world had nothing to do with 9/11. Nobody seems to care around the world about our bases. No governments are insisting we leave. In fact, there are plenty of countries out there that would love an American base and the protection and economic gain it brings. We weren't attacked by Saudi Arabia. We were attacked by religious terrorists who strenuously believe that a Western presence in their land is an afront to Allah. The same thinking that was nurtured and created throughout the European colonialism period.
Why do you think so many people hate the USA? Is it only "scapegoating"? Didn't the USA (like UK or France) support the Shah, Saddam, the Egyptian dictators, the Saudi dictators? Don't you have troops all over the M/E? Isn't it the reason why OBL bombed the twin towers?
I'm beyond thinking about it. I know. First of all, not as many people hate the USA as you wish. Considering the European protests at American bases during Vietnam and the bigotted hatred towards the US during the height of the Cold War, this is nothing.
Second, the U.S. played its part. We brought a few nails to the house Europeans built. We have done very little considering how much your people did. We are simply what is left standing to hold the bag. Since Qutb, we have been the face of the West they grew to hate very much. The Shah of Iran was Shia andhad nothing to do with angering any Sunni Arab (Al-Queda organizations). It wasn't until 1967 that Israel got our protection even as we supported existing Arab governments with financial aid and began trying to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian affair. It wasn't until Khomeini threatend to take his revolution regional that we supported Hussein's defense (even as his three greatest supporters by far were the Soviets, Chinese, and the high and mighty French). It wasn't until the Gulf War that the U.S. had to settle down the region from imploding and placed a base at the request of the Saudi government. The U.S. government had nothing to do with creating any of the countries in the Middle East, nor did it have anything to do with giving power to any individuals that weren't already there. Even Muslim scholars like Barakat and Nasr agree that the greatest guilt for screwing up the Middle East belongs squarely upon Arab shoulders. They have been making bad decisions since the 16th century. From preventing the Ottomans from modernizing Islam, to stifling scientific thought, to allying with the Nazis and the then the Soviets, they have led their own to the path of the present. It took an American power to offer two of their countries what they have been unable to do for themselves for the last 120 years.
But blaming a foreign devil like the "Great Satan" or the "Little Satan" or the "Small Satan" satisfies that jihad doesn't it? Read from Qutb or Khomeini or the Muslim Brothers. You name it, the U.S. is blamed for it. Did you know that the Muslim Brothers have listed in their reasons to condemn the U.S., Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Absolutely no Muslims killed in either, yet it is listed as a valid reason for jihad for all Muslims. The lack of fresh water supply in the region is due to an American conspiracy to make the Arab people absolutely dependent. Another excuse for jihad. Do you know that most of the rules established for a legitimate jihad by historical Muslim jurists have been broken against the U.S.?
The whole affair screams scapegoat because their angers with the West must have a face. The very little we have done in no way justifies the deep hatreds behind acts like 9/11 and suicide bombings. To suggest that the simple things drove these people to absolute fanaticism in such a short period of time is dissapointing. All their core hatreds have been building for two centuries until it culminated into Al-Queda with the U.S. as a suitable target to fight for God and the Muslim people. Things would be very different if the U.S. was still in isolation. This region's creations would be targetting you properly. I laugh at our ideals of educational superiority sometimes. Europeans spent 150 years colonizing Arab nations and wrecking centuries of tradition and social organizations, violently opposing rebellion and wars of independence throughout the region, tortured hundreds of thousands in Algeria in a very bloody war of independence, and facilitating the Palestinian/Israeli situation.....but they really only got mad after a U.S. base in Saudi Arabia?
Think about it. People have been allowed to pass the buck for far too long and they have played into the hands of those who need America to be their God's enemy in order to cope with their own cultural failures.
So it is flase? No big US bases being built in Afghanistan/Uzbekistan? You do not seek to maintain any influence in that region?
It's like talking to a wall. There were bases in Iraq too, right? Yet we aren't staying, right? What are bases in Afghanistan supposed to mean? Are our troops supposed to go without base in a foreign land? Did we not have bases in Vietnam? Across Europe during WWII? No matter what, the U.S. will always seek to keep an upper hand in regards to influence. What do you think diplomacy is? What do you think has kept World War III a subject for fictional novels? Our bases have done what your colonies could not. Are you willing to suggest that European governments are controlled by the U.S. because of our bases? Probably not. Why then, do so many Europeans insist that everyone else has it different? That a basein Saudi Arabia or Uzbekistan or Okinawa or any other place means "colony?" I keep stating this, Americans are not Europeans. We have never kept any land we took in battle. And we have never sought to add to the U.S. through expansion across the oceans. We merely need the world to behave so Americans don't have to die because they can't solve their own problems.
How much longer do you think the U.S. is willing to wait for Iranians to handle their own problems before we have to do it for them?
He entered Afghanistan to destroy the mujahideens, sounds like what we're doing right now
He entered Afghanistan for absolutely no reason other than to imperialize. Had 9/11 not occurred, the Tali-Ban would still be in power with the U.S. nowhere near. There's your damn difference. You still going to pretend there's not one?
Good way to get away with any criticism: "you are anti-american".
You're the one that needs America to be the Soviet Union. The difference is extremely obvious, yet you still pretend otherwise. Sounds pretty damn anti-American to me. You know what bothers me the most about Europeans? There has been no event in history that killed more civilians than wars over Europe. World War I was a pathetic display on how nations can trip into war one after another and World War II saw the greatest amount of civilian slaughter ever. Yet, any war that hasn't to do with saving or securing Europe must be scrutinized with fine tooth comb and judged by those who are far more guilty of war crimes than the U.S. will ever be. European powers forced local people tohave to fight for their independence against them throughout the world, yet Europeans are fond of tagging the U.S. with the "imperialism." The French publicly tortured hundreds of thousands of Algerians during their war for independence just 50 years ago, yet America gets judged as torturous over a few cases of waterboarding.
It has become tradition to look down upon any American acts that doesn't offer American blood on behalf of Europeans only and as a way to ease European guilt for their traditional behaviors.
