From: Robbie Lindauer (robblin@thetip.org)
Date: Mon Sep 01 2003 - 23:11:26 MDT
On Monday, September 1, 2003, at 09:06 PM, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
> But *what* then is driving these people to irrational behavior?
> Is it simply "salvation" in the afterlife, e.g. really gone wrong
> mental programming?
Hardly, God wants "good people" to make it to heaven in just about
every Theistic religion. (Few people are philosophically advanced
enough to ask the question "Does God always want what is really Good or
is Goodness just defined by what God wants?")
These people are simply doing what they think is Right. And that is
probably not as far from what you think is right as you might think.
Keep reading:
If you take him at his word:
"The call to wage war against America was made because America has
spear-headed the crusade against the Islamic nation, sending tens of
thousands of its troops to the land of the two Holy Mosques over and
above its meddling in its affairs and its politics, and its support of
the oppressive, corrupt and tyrannical regime that is in control.
These are the reasons behind the singling out of America as a target."
-
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/
interview.html
That's a pretty good summary. IF you take him at his word. Another
possibility is, of course, that he's just putting on a show to gain
himself more power within his political basis. But if that's the case,
then at least we know that these are the issues that are driving his
political basis.
There's also the possibility that some deeper conspiracy is going on -
perhaps the old "backing both sides" thing is happening somewhere in
the vaults of secrecy. I have no idea. That whole executive privilege
thing gets used quite a lot nowadays basically negating the Freedom of
Information Act as regards the Presidency and for that matter
Administrative Branch.
> Social pressure?
For some segments of the population of the Islamic nations, surely
Poverty and Hopelessness are contributing to their dislike of American
Foreign Policy. I'd recommend a nice documentary circulating called
"What I learned about US Foreign Policy".
> Desire for power by the leaders?
An ever-present sin. The leaders like selling oil to the US - it makes
them rich - they don't work very hard... BUT they have to show a
certain amount of loyalty to their own people and religion and culture
so they have to at least look vaguely defiant.
> It simply does not seem rational.
Only if you ignore the material basis. It seems perfectly rational if
you think of it from their point of view. The easiest way to do that
is just turn it around:
If Saudi Arabia were stationing troops around Hollywood and Vine and
Disneyland while selling Quran's to your daughters and sons and giving
them jobs and extolling the virtues of Alla and changing the currency
to shekels and insisting that Arabic be taught in all the schools,
you'd be pretty upset too.
And if they were simultaneously supporting a despotic regime (actually,
they probably are, we're just too dumb to see it) that was causing
chronic poverty not just here but in Canada, England and Australia too,
we'd be rallying the Canadians and Australians around the cause of
ejecting the Saudi's from the US at any cost. And if our armies
weren't big enough, you can be sure we'd turn to guerilla warfare.
Witness Northern Ireland. White people fight too.
And if they were simultaneously supporting Mexico in a border dispute
that had been violent for 40-years and had been escalating in the last
two years.
(Of course they have all kinds of other ancient morality concerns that
are equally vexing to them about us - especially the whole equality of
Women thing. I expect that they'd learn to live with American Women
wearing pants if there weren't the 10,000 soldiers standing behind them
on the lawn. That's what appears to have happened in Egypt.)
The list is endless, the US is not innocent in this by any means.
It's clear that one part of Burch's reasons for US going to war with
Iraq is true - our Cultures are incompatible. But not because we're
different - because we're the SAME.
The question for civilization will be whether or not the US and it's
Enlightenment values have grown up enough to try to help others rather
than simply destroy them "Just because we can". If we can't reach a
level of civilization where people don't kill each other just because
they can, then our hope for survival has got to look pretty slim given
the technological advances.
This will require concessions on ALL sides.
The preemptive policy of war against a country developing nuclear
weapons is a seemingly sensible defense tactic NOW. But think about
200 years from now when weapons technology has really started taking
off and a 5-man crew could blow up the earth without so much as
alerting the authorities. Sometime between NOW and THEN we're going to
have to come up with something more reasonable, and EVERYBODY is going
to have to like it.
Best,
Robbie Lindauer
thetip.org
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