From: John K Clark (jonkc@att.net)
Date: Thu Jun 05 2003 - 22:35:40 MDT
"Jeff Davis" <jrd1415@yahoo.com>
> When the 911 attacks came, I thought "***NOW SURELY***
> people will ask 'Why?'
You're assuming that if somebody hates you then you must have done something
wrong, but hate can be generated far easier than that.
> Some segment of Islam--maybe even a very large
> fraction--may disapprove of western cultural values
Yes indeed!
> but so long as we keep it here, and don't force it on
> them, it's probably not something they care a whole
> lot about.
In the above you seem to be saying that the Islamic community is infused
with a basic libertarian attitude, and I'm saying baloney.
> It's the aggressive intrusion of the west that
> inspires their antipathy. The crusades.
800 years ago, get over it!
>The invasions of western "colonial" powers
For a very brief time in their history, and the USA was never part of it.
> most noitable and recently the parcelling up of the mideast by the
> Europeans (primarily the Brits) after the defeat of
> the Ottomans . [etc]
The long list of bad events you mention happened centuries ago, and measured
against the historic scale of human evil none of them rank very high,
certainly not enough to account for their vast rage. Nothing on you list
comes close to what the Jews experienced, and far more recently too. The
stuff that happened to Islam is just the sort of hum drum evil that happens
in history, nothing special.
>And finally, the jewel in the
> crown, the poison pill, the knife in the back (or
> perhaps I should say the ice pick in the face) of the
> deliberate, overt, unashamed, and unrelenting
> "erasure" of Palestine and ethnic cleansing of the
> Palestinians, accompanied by their replacement by an
> ultra-aggressive, ultra-militaristic(which is to say
> threatening), and ultra-contemptuous Jewish state
I've said several times that it's a mistake to treat Israel like the 51's
state, but to say that the reason Muslims in Indonesia hate the USA more
than they love life is because America supports a nation who harmed a people
who speak a different language, live 10,000 miles away and who they've never
seen is ridiculous. Most Indonesian Muslims wouldn't recognize a Palestinian
if he tripped over him.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
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