Does Understanding WHY THE U.S. WAS ATTACKED

Mean Condoning The Killers?

NO!

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Karen raises valid concerns as an American. Basically, does trying to understand WHY the US was attacked mean condoning the terrorists? NO, it does not. Here's why we need to understand "WHY?" - Imran,

I do not agree with or condone any religious zealots or fanatics. I feel
people should be able to live where they want and worship as they please.


Karen, yes. Of course.


I also do not condone the acts of bigotry on any people/races.

Of course, no rational person does and should.


But I do condemn the senseless

Senseless to you and I, but not to someone whose only sense is to attack what HE perceives as the enemy. In one action the person brings down a symbol of our pride, attacks in the heart of our Defence AND Offence establishment, has our President being taken off into a place designed to meet a full scale nuclear attack, generates global media attention, brings down the stock market for a week, AND does $40 BILLION of damage in a weak economy......and, in their book, kills a couple of thousand people who really were collateral damage......

It is foolish of us to think it was "senseless," Senseless is what that Russian immigrant did to his family in LA, senseless is what happens in Columbine type schools, or in homes of little girls like Jon Benet Ramsey, or the dragging death of a Black man by white supremacists. WE do senseless things to ourselves. These people KNEW what they were doing. Cold hearted, or callous, or cruel or inhuman or barbaric may be better words than senseless, unfortunately, in my humble opinion.


killing of thousands of innocent people by
people I can only describe as fanatics and terrorists.

These are well armed, well trained people, INDOCTRINATED to fight any OCCUPYING superpower as FREEDOM FIGHTERS (the US' words for them, not mine, in 1980~). Who did that? The US government, which created this whole "global family of holy warriors" to fight the Soviet INFIDELS who were occupying the ISLAMIC land of Afghanistan. Well, the Russians retreated, and, the Soviet Empire crumbled. But the tribes were trained, indoctrinated, even provided passports and visas by the US....they just needed new places to fight. So, they are as happy to detonate a bomb in Pakistan or Paris, anything that stands in the way of the promised land they were TRAINED to fight for......someone just forgot to turn them OFF.

In the meantime, ANOTHER US-backed evil, Saddam Hussain came to life. (Yes, the US financed and armed him to beat the Iranians.) We were mad at them for the hostage crisis, [of course forgetting that they hated the US because the US financed and kept in power an evil and murderous Shah of Iran. When the Shah fell, the US was on the wrong side of history]. Saddam attacked two other DICTATORIAL and OPPRESSIVE regimes, of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia so despite being a despised EVIL dictator in HIS country, to the people of poorer nations in the region, and even the non-ruling people of Saudi Arabia, he was somewhat of a hero.

So, now we went in to "defend" these dictators (themselves evil people) from another evil of our creation. (We went in, really, to defend our monetary interest...oil), and beat Saddam, whom just a few years ago we armed. So, we beat him.

But, since it was really oil we were interested in protecting, we stayed in what is the holiest of Muslim places, the land of Arabia (which is why Osama Bin Laden is considered a hero among Muslim nations elsewhere - like someone fighting to remove, say, the Russian or some other infidel army from occupying the Vatican would be hailed by Christians, rich or poor, in Peurto Rico or Pakistan).

Being there to defend the Arab NATION and then leaving (maybe even helping bring in democracy - heck even getting women the right to drive) would have earned us their gratitude and even hospitality. Staying on to control oil supplies and prop up corrupt and oppressive Sheikhs and Shahs - once again, we do not seem to learn our lessons from even recent history well.

[My limited knowledge was supplemented by PBS and Moyers]: Usama/Osama was apparently part of that establishment but one who got disenchanted and fought the families to get Saudi Arabia back on its own feet. That did not work and so he was forced out, and moved to Sudan. We, the US, forced him out of there.....where at least he could have been monitored, into Afghanistan, where, literally, a thousand people can live in caves around the same mountain and not know who was doing what. Then we tried to kill him with cruise missiles (some of which landed in Pakistan by the way). We failed. Now, we are paying the price - as to him, you, or I, (reportedly because we pay taxes to finance the US imperialistic system according to him) are all parts of the American war/imperial/whatever you want to call it machine, which oppresses his land and people and tried and tries to kill him. We are or would be just casualties of THAT war that he wages.

PBS did an incredible documentary detailing this man's machinations, I saw it last night. It exposed his network and work, and explained his background and motives, but went on to show our own leaders, standing in the white house, lying to us about that background, and then humming and hawing when asked to explain themselves and their actions that brought us to where we are today.

Unfortunately, we soothe, and fool, ourselves, by telling ourselves, these are merely fanatics, and terrorists. The truth is they are COOL, no COLD, calculating, and VERY patient warriors, that WE created, and now are paying the price for our (still not improved) very short term approach to global matters and foreign policy.

A friend of mine ( a marine at one time) said they are cowards. But that only makes us feel better. They could argue that they are warriors (in the traditional sense) who go into battle not afraid, even willing, to die while we are the cowards - who rely on satellites to listen to messages, or pressing buttons to launch missiles, afraid of ground war in case people see our soldiers in body bags. So, of course we win the war of semantics, but the real war is to find the root causes of these problems. We have to solve them before the enemy becomes a global equivalent of the Viet Cong, more than one group, hitting us, disappearing, and reappearing elsewhere, while we are fighting the perpetrators of the current crimes. We have to fight it like a war, not just a battle, or, heaven forbid, we will always be under attack.

Yes, all foreign policy has to be driven by self-interest....that is the nature of life, of a person or a nation, but if every step of the way it is done callously, especially without paying any attention to the plight of the people whom we step on, and totally failing to think LONG TERM.....it can come back to haunt us.....as it continually does...Iran, Iraq, and now Afghanistan/Bin Laden.....we just do not learn.

And then innocent people, like those in the WTC (or it could have been any plane you or I could have been taking) or any other possible target suffer. Yet, we should be ashamed that instead of vowing to learn from our mistakes, and to do better in the future, we simply tell our victimized citizens, don't worry, we will bomb this guy to hell. Sure, it will get us vengeance for THIS event....will it keep us from being on the wrong side of history, somewhere else, some day in the future? Unfortunately, probably not.

And that is a crime against OUR own people, or whoever may some day be the victim of some other attack against us here or abroad, in X years of decades.

While you may have
seen more of this in your life, I have not and it horrifies me. My heart and
whole being goes out to all those families who have lost loved ones in this
American tragedy. In no way can I condone this.

Who is condoning it?


Do you feel compassion for the people who have lost loved ones and are you
repulsed by what has happened in your adopted country?

Of course. Who is not? Except for Iraq's Saddam and a video of 4 kids, 2 teenagers and 2 grownups being shown joyful in a video over and over on TV from Occupied Palestine (their people are killed and assassinated every day by a nation financed by and armed by the US so I have no right to speak for them) everyone ....including Palestine, Iran, Cuba in this case....have expressed their sorrow. By the way, no one is answering the question that that video is from 1991 or so at the time of the Gulf War.

I do not CONDONE what happened to the Pentagon, or the USS Cole, but such attacks one could at least consider retaliation in the military realm......The people who died in the WTC died for no reason. It was a result as much of US' misbegotten policies of callousness and unfairness in some nations, as from those nations' rogue warriors' retaliation with a lack of respect for ANY life (including their own) in their fight against American policies.

So, Of course I feel the pain of what happened to the victims of the blasts. That does not stop me from being treated abusively by "my fellow Americans", or others like me from being shot at, beaten, fire-bombed, or just threatened. It was not too long ago that we interred the Japanese looking AMERICANS for that crime, it can happen to any group even today.


I would appreciate knowing.

I am pretty proud of being able to call it as it is....of course it means, at various times my views have offended Americans, Pakistanis, Christians, Jews, Hindus, and, yes, Muslims. No one likes to believe that their nation or religion or tribe can do any wrong. Which is the wrongest belief of all.

May we all learn from our mistakes and let this planet be the wonderful miracle of life and happiness it was created to be. Amen.

Imran

http://www.imran.com