[Pants-of-dog]

Ahh, ok, you said simply nothing in that post.

Sure.

Back to the topic:

If western military interventions are a significant cause of terrorism, it stands to reason that stopping said military interventions will significantly reduce terrorism against western targets.

[Suntzu]

Sure.

Back to the topic:

If western military interventions are a significant cause of terrorism, it stands to reason that stopping said military interventions will significantly reduce terrorism against western targets.

Minding our own business would help in many areas.

[Drlee]

If western military interventions are a significant cause of terrorism, it stands to reason that stopping said military interventions will significantly reduce terrorism against western targets.

I do not necessarily agree. The people who are attacking us find us evil and an affront to their God whether or not we attack them. I am not denying that bombing them gives them an easier hand to play but I do not necessarily believe that they can afford to lose the focal point of their religious fervor.

I hate to use the example but the Jews did nothing but that did not stop the Nazis from targeting them. They needed the scapegoat. They needed a convenient focus for their hatred on which their power was built. So my suspicion is that if we left them alone not much would change. Perhaps they would become more dangerous as they would have a safe haven in which to build their strength.

Sorry POD. Absent an extremely controlling friendly government in place, backed by Marshall Plan level assistance, the incidence of terrorism is most likely to remain the same. (Or even increase because there would be no effort to disrupt the terrorist leaders.)

[Pants-of-dog]

Minding our own business would help in many areas.

I could not agree more.

---------------

I do not necessarily agree. The people who are attacking us find us evil and an affront to their God whether or not we attack them. I am not denying that bombing them gives them an easier hand to play but I do not necessarily believe that they can afford to lose the focal point of their religious fervor.

I do not think that Muslims think we are all evil and an affront to their god. Much like I do not think any religion with billions of people all interpret their religion that way.

More importantly, if they were to attack us even if we were not bombing them, then we would see attacks spread evenly all over the western world instead of a disproportionate number of attacks focusing on those countries that are involved in military efforts. But that is not the case.

I hate to use the example but the Jews did nothing but that did not stop the Nazis from targeting them. They needed the scapegoat. They needed a convenient focus for their hatred on which their power was built. So my suspicion is that if we left them alone not much would change. Perhaps they would become more dangerous as they would have a safe haven in which to build their strength.

The example of the Jews is problematic on many levels. First of all, we are not a religious and ethnic minority living in the land of the Muslims, as Jews lived in Germany. There is no centuries long tradition of Muslims scapegoating and pogroming westerners as there is of Europeans doing the same to Jews. Muslim terrorists do not control the government propaganda about westerners.

In short, the historical and material conditions of the relationship between westerners and Muslims today are nothing like the historical and material conditions of the relationship between Jews and Nazis then.

Sorry POD. Absent an extremely controlling friendly government in place, backed by Marshall Plan level assistance, the incidence of terrorism is most likely to remain the same. (Or even increase because there would be no effort to disrupt the terrorist leaders.)

Okay, it is your country. I am sitting in a country with no significant military effort in Muslims countries, and consequently I am also at a significantly lower risk of terrorist attacks.

But as a person who was "helped" by US forces who intervened for "my freedom", I can tell you that your "help" is not "appreciated".

[noir]

Enigma

[AJS]

@anasawad

Interesting post, thanks.

Much of the world's history is one of conquest, war and empire. It has ongoing impacts but fortunately not usually random violence decades later.

Islam's adventures in India go back way beyond European imperialism and have been described as genocide.

You can always find some other triggers for violence but looking at the whole picture it's hard not to get the impression that Islam has a problem with peaceful coexistence on some level.

[anasawad]

@AJS

Much of the world's history is one of conquest, war and empire. It has ongoing impacts but fortunately not usually random violence decades later.

True. And i would say its not random violence decades latter. Its more of, people didn't know whats going on.
Thats the whole idea of putting military dictators in power, to make sure they silence and suppress everyone so problems don't go out of control.
For example, Iraq has been a major source and focus of terrorist groups and conflict in the past decade or so correct ?
Well, for an outside who doesn't look much into it, before Saddam invaded Iran and then Kuwait, everything was fine and great, and then the 2003 invasion came along and Saddam was removed and whatcha know, violence and terrorism became a daily thing, and war became the norm and it started exporting to other countries.
What people usually don't see is that the reason Iraq was so "peaceful" is that it had, since colonialism, genocidal tyrant one after anther, each killing 10s if not 100s of thousands of people to silence them. And pretty much all of them took over by a military coup and all with help of outside nations (mostly Britain and US) and the take over usually happens right when the former tyrant starts to soften up. Because Iraq wasn't a nation, it was multiple nations put together under one rule under colonialism. Same conditions for Syria, it was 3 nations along with the Kurds whom were self governing under the Ottoman empire.

So what you're seeing today in a number of parts of the world both with Muslims and non-muslims, isn't something new or random or such. Rather its just that now it got out of control that it cant be silenced by brute force any more and the whole world started seeing whats really going on.

And again, this is not just with Muslims, you hear lot about Muslims because, well, its 1.6 billion people that pretty much most of them were or are under such conditions. So the news is frequent. But if you looked at Africa or other part of Asia, you'd that its not just Muslims. Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and yes even non-religious groups are all starting to rise up and the news of their conditions started coming in all across the world.

Islam's adventures in India go back way beyond European imperialism and have been described as genocide.

I did actually discuss this period before, and i would say rather no it wasn't about religion in general or Islam in particular. If it was, the majority of the population under the Timurid empire and then followed by the Mughal empire would be Muslims not Hindus.
It was more about conquest, or in particular, re-claiming conquest. And it was done by the Hazzar tribe (Parni tribe) reclaiming their empire and the Timur blood line was in charge back then. And the Hazzar tribe has a habit of cleansing all non-Aryan and hostiles during conquest and its done it a number of times before in history (its much much older than Islam) . Simply at that period that population was a lot larger so the death count was alot higher.
Basically ethnic supremacy.

I am a Hazzari BTW.

[Rich]

Hundreds of millions of Muslims threaten their children with eternal damnation if they don't obey the commands of Islam. These are all terrorists every one. But there's more, it is blatantly clear that there are hundreds of millions of Muslims that are prepared to use the the threat of death, imprisonment, violence and imprisonment to curtail Infidel rights.

The Koran and Islam are lying racist filth and it is the right of every Infidel to call them that. Any Muslim willing to use violence, or supports others to use violence on their behalf, to stop Infidels exorcising their right to free speech is a terrorist. I'm a Pagan, of course I don't like people insulting Lord Odin, but I don't try to use violence to stop them or condone violence by others. Do you see the difference?

Muslims are of course not the only people to use terror. The Soviet Union and its Communist client states in Afghanistan were terror states.

Afghanistan when under the Soviet sphere of influence:

In Afghanistan rule by Marxist theocrats may well have been preferable to rule by Muslims. Saddam was also a terrorist. He ruled through terror. I would argue though that for all its faults democratic rule by Iraq's Shia majority is better than Saddam's rule.

[noir]

@Rich When the Americans helped to create the Madrasa system in Pakistan (part of the mujaheddin backbone to fight in Afghanistan) the world was two polared. No one foreseen the Islamic problem (outside Iran). At that time hardly any third world country played a role on world stage. Nasser was long dead and the third world was neglected and remote. Today these cultures penetrated to the First World arena due to immigration. If there were no immigration there wouldn't be terror. We see today that the Muslims attack pro Arab countries as well. Simply because of proximity.

[Political Interest]

How can you destroy an idea? It is absolutely impossible. The fighers in these radical groups are not afraid to die, in fact death is an honour for them.

It is a determination to get the West out at any cost.

America was playing with fire when it chose to make contact with Sunni Islamist groups.

Now they have created something that will eventually consume them.

[noir]

They didn't witness it at that time. No one could predicted it. Jihad is part of Islamic culture but few understood what does it mean. And the BBC world service didn't help either. Is it still important broadcast?

Today in Pakistan. These events were always there but the Western media didn't report it.

[noir]

Low intensity war.

[Political Interest]

They didn't witness it at that time. No one could predicted it. Jihad is part of Islamic culture but few understood what does it mean. And the BBC world service didn't help either. Is it still important broadcast?

In those years of the 1960s and 1970s everyone was thinking of communism and fascism. Islamism was seen as something harmless. In many ways the biggest fear was being overrun by communism or a resurgence of fascism. Those who lived at that time were defined by the politics of WWII. The global south and its influence on European politics and societies was largely ignored.

What the West failed to understand is that the Islamists could only ever be fair weather friends. Once communism was no longer a factor in global politics the Islamist extremists could pursue their ultimate goal of removing Western influence from their countries. The only reason Islamist groups chose to sometimes cooperate with America was because they saw them as a lesser evil. The West was a colonial occupier of Muslim lands and a decadent cultural wasteland but it was not proudly atheist, as were the communists. Wahabi Islamists have always viewed both the West and Russia as two sides of the same coin.

The BBC is a major influence on public opinion within the United Kingdom. It is one of the major sources from which most of the citizenry get their news and political frame of reference, including opinions.

[noir]

Read recently how it was started. Britain Arabophilia aside, in America it started with President Carter. "Such fanatics might have remained in their tribal world had Brzezinski not launched an international movement to promote Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia, and so undermine secular political liberation, and destabilize the Soviet Union, creating, as he wrote in his autobiography, 'A few stirred up Muslims.' His grand plan coincided with the ambitions of the Pakistani dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, to dominate the region."

Source from 1979

Religion in Communist Dominated Areas - Volumes 18-20 - Page 100


1979 - ‎Snippet view - ‎More editions
Communists and religion

Hypocrisy in general generates hatred, especially when people in the upper echelon of power use it. The members of the current U.S. Administration, like Zbigniew Brzezinski, are prime examples. And the American President himself has now begun to be aware of Moslem holidays. On August 11 Jimmy Carter even issued a mesage on the end of Ramadan, the Moslem month of fasting. The sharper commentators immediately noted that this was an unprecedented step — the President usually issues a message on Christian or Jewish holidays, but nobody can remember this ever having been done for a Moslem holiday. Flirtation with the Vatican and assurances of their love for Islam... It resembles an American horror film, when the vampire declares his love to the victim whose blood he wants to suck — or oil, in this case. The current Peking leadership has also begun to ardently woo Islam, Catholicism and other faiths. Washington, Peking and their allies are conducting the anti- Afghan campaign under the banner of "protecting Islam from Soviet aggression. That is the U.S. Administration's attitude towards Islam: assurance of love, respect and loyalty inwords, and trampling on national sovereignty and plunder of national wealth — in real life. However, this is not the only expression of hypocrisy. Silly, malicious and absurd lies about the persecution of religion in the USSR have been spread in the West for many years now. But for what reason? Simply to make believers around the world revile socialism and the socialist state, and to keep them out of the movement against war and for social change. Even an objective thinking person in the West might say: "Communists are atheists, thus they are opposed to religion, its commandments and its morality." — But he would be very wrong. True, most Communists are atheists, but they are not opposed to universal human morality. By the way, the central provision in the moral code of the CPSU ( Communist Party of the Soviet Union) is "man to man is a friend, comrade and brother". Religion in the USSR is separated from the state, as it is in most countries; believers enjoy 

[Political Interest]

Read recently how it was started. Britain Arabophilia aside, in America it started with President Carter.

I would say that the English are not really Arabophiles but orientalists. Anything eastern and especially Middle Eastern or African, they love very much.

But in all honesty I cannot understand how you can say the British are pro-Arab. The UK is the most pro-Zionist power in the whole world. The Balfour Declaration was not issued by France or Germany.

[Rich]

But in all honesty I cannot understand how you can say the British are pro-Arab. The UK is the most pro-Zionist power in the whole world. The Balfour Declaration was not issued by France or Germany.

The Balfour declaration was not issued out of love. It was the payment to international Jewry for getting America into the war. Now you can argue all you want about Jewish influence in American entry, but the British Government were clearly terrified of the consequences of failure to deliver on the private promises before American entry. Note it was for more important to placate the world's Jews than the hundreds of millions of the world's Arabs and Muslims, despite the inevitable negative reaction it would cause amongst them.

[QatzelOk]

Terrorism is mostly associated with democracies. This is because democracies are vulnerable to terrorism in a way that authoritarian countries are not.

Authoritarian countries do not care if their citizens are bombed by foreigners. Democratic governments can see themselves get elected out of power if their citizens get annoyed by being bombed by foreigners.

In other words, terrorism can be seen as a way of putting pressure on a populace, who then put pressure on the government. If the populace cannot pressure the government, terrorism will not work as well.

Oh yeah, like our governments are "afraid" we'll vote them out if they don't do what we say.

They don't even do what THEY SAY and we still re-elect them. So really, terrorism works equally well on any nation. We "democracies" are just suburban zombies who vote ever few years, but we have absolutely no idea what we're voting for, and we are trained to ignore our own self-interests every time, and just think about what's best for our masters - banksters and multinationals.