7 ms·

What do you mean "freedoms they hate us for"? Can you clarify?

jlgreco 13y ago
It is a sarcastic reference to an often repeated line from a speech Bush gave shortly after 9/11/2001. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/bushaddress_092001.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacke... My point here being that "our freedoms" plainly is not why they hate us. The real reason is because of our involvement and interaction with them. When such involvement and interaction is kept classified for decades, then the American public has no hope of correctly evaluating statements such as Bush's.
- Myrmornis 13y ago
  Agreed. Sadly, many Americans continue, as you describe, to believe that the country is hated because of its freedoms, when the reason is its actions overseas. The core reason that people believe glib lies such as Bush's is that many people in the USA have no idea that people in other countries are not that dissimilar from themselves, in their interests and in their ambitions and concerns. We can't get everyone to travel, but we should be able to do better with modern internet technology and ubiquitous cell phones. For example, perhaps a website facilitating the creation of email / text message friendships between people in America and people in Afghanistan (or Gaza or Yemen etc). That would have the advantage of potentially severely reducing the signal-to-noise ratio in the government's mass surveillance of its own citizens. Initially of course it would be the more enlightened westerners that would participate, but it would be a start. Incentives for both sides could include language skills / other educational objectives.
- twoodfin 13y ago
  Are you sure they don't hate the "decadence" of modern Western society?
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    No doubt it is our freedom to be decadent. /s
    - twoodfin 13y ago
      It is, actually. Do you really think it's a coincidence that these guys set up shop in some of the most religiously oppressive places in the world?
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        "Set up shop"? Where were they previously? Do you really think it is a coincidence that the more people we bomb, the more there seem to be?
        mpyne 13y ago
        They were in Sudan previously, as I recall. By the way, Clinton did attack Sudanese AQ training camps (watch "Wag the Dog"); still waiting for the Sudanese terrorists...
  - ucee054 13y ago
    Ask Michael Scheuer: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgj08e_michael-scheuer-on-bin-laden-s-true-motives_news#.UbPIvdvMdXI http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgj08e_michael-scheuer-on-b...
    - Alex3917 13y ago
      Didn't Bin Laden also supposedly say that he was against the US because of the lack of action taken on global warming?
    - twoodfin 13y ago
      His argument is that radical Islamists hate us for what we do, not who we are. But we do what we do because of who we are. That's nearly a tautology in a democracy. We support Israel because its people largely share our values. We threw Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and maintained a presence in Saudi Arabia because we support and defend the sovereignty of our allies, particularly when those allies supply vital resources. We continued to prop up Mubarak because we thought he was better than the alternative, etc. All of these are policies reached through a free, democratic process, which has not been a hallmark of those societies which have welcomed Al Qaeda into their midst. Also, have you heard of Sayyid Qutb? Just curious.
Symmetry 13y ago
Well, way back in the day (around WWII) Arab opinion of the US was rather high. One of the key initial moments in the disenchantment came with Sayyid Qutb[1]'s journey to the US and writing about it. He had a lot to say about the moral degeneracy of the US, where men and women mixed together socially even sitting side by side in church etc. He later helped found the Muslim Brotherhood from which splintered the Islamic Jihad under Ayman al-Zawahiri which later made up half of Al Qaeda. But while it is true that part of their beef with the US was things that we would consider freedom a much bigger issue would be America's support of Israel or the stationing troops in Saudi Arabia. And then 9/11 happened and the West invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and this became very much beside the point. So Bush's famous mention of Al Qaeda hating us for our freedoms, while true in some sense, was very much a red herring. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb
alan_cx 13y ago
I think it is because they believe, with much justification, that Americans use their freedom to enrich themselves at the expense of others, and to try to make others more like themselves. Often by war, killing, coercion and manipulation. The trouble is, Americans believe they have the best system, society, country in the world, and that it is up to them to make every one have that same sort of system, regardless of whether or not they asked for it. If you see America as a religion, its constitution as a holy book, its foreign policy as a crusade, its politicians as religious leaders, its people as believers, then you begin to understand the problem. The problem is, America has a fundamentally different history than most other countries, and is that way it is because of its history. Essentially diverse people came from abroad for many different reasons to create it. The rest of the planet is not like that. Nothing wrong in that at all for America, it makes total reasonable sense, and works fairly well inits context. But for most other countries it does not. All America needs to do is accept that its unique and that other systems have equal validity to their own people. It is not up to America to judge other and seek to tell them they are wrong. If other countries and culture are wrong for their people, its is up to them to change it, not have it forced on them. If such people want American "democracy", which lets face it, Americans seem to have plenty of issues with, then such people will fight for it, loose blood for it, and really value it. Just like Americans did for themselves. No one forced democracy on Americans.
rdtsc 13y ago
Question: Mommy, mommy why do all the Arabs seemingly want to blow themselves up and attack us and why do we have to fear them? Answer: Because they hate our freedoms honey... /They reason it is presented in that way is because the explanation is infantile and geared for an infantile mind but it is funny how well it has worked for so long

It is a sarcastic reference to an often repeated line from a speech Bush gave shortly after 9/11/2001. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/bushaddress_092001.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacke... My point here being that "our freedoms" plainly is not why they hate us. The real reason is because of our involvement and interaction with them. When such involvement and interaction is kept classified for decades, then the American public has no hope of correctly evaluating statements such as Bush's.

Myrmornis 13y ago
Agreed. Sadly, many Americans continue, as you describe, to believe that the country is hated because of its freedoms, when the reason is its actions overseas. The core reason that people believe glib lies such as Bush's is that many people in the USA have no idea that people in other countries are not that dissimilar from themselves, in their interests and in their ambitions and concerns. We can't get everyone to travel, but we should be able to do better with modern internet technology and ubiquitous cell phones. For example, perhaps a website facilitating the creation of email / text message friendships between people in America and people in Afghanistan (or Gaza or Yemen etc). That would have the advantage of potentially severely reducing the signal-to-noise ratio in the government's mass surveillance of its own citizens. Initially of course it would be the more enlightened westerners that would participate, but it would be a start. Incentives for both sides could include language skills / other educational objectives.
twoodfin 13y ago
Are you sure they don't hate the "decadence" of modern Western society?
- jlgreco 13y ago
  No doubt it is our freedom to be decadent. /s
  - twoodfin 13y ago
    It is, actually. Do you really think it's a coincidence that these guys set up shop in some of the most religiously oppressive places in the world?
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      "Set up shop"? Where were they previously? Do you really think it is a coincidence that the more people we bomb, the more there seem to be?
      - mpyne 13y ago
        They were in Sudan previously, as I recall. By the way, Clinton did attack Sudanese AQ training camps (watch "Wag the Dog"); still waiting for the Sudanese terrorists...
- ucee054 13y ago
  Ask Michael Scheuer: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgj08e_michael-scheuer-on-bin-laden-s-true-motives_news#.UbPIvdvMdXI http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgj08e_michael-scheuer-on-b...
  - Alex3917 13y ago
    Didn't Bin Laden also supposedly say that he was against the US because of the lack of action taken on global warming?
  - twoodfin 13y ago
    His argument is that radical Islamists hate us for what we do, not who we are. But we do what we do because of who we are. That's nearly a tautology in a democracy. We support Israel because its people largely share our values. We threw Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and maintained a presence in Saudi Arabia because we support and defend the sovereignty of our allies, particularly when those allies supply vital resources. We continued to prop up Mubarak because we thought he was better than the alternative, etc. All of these are policies reached through a free, democratic process, which has not been a hallmark of those societies which have welcomed Al Qaeda into their midst. Also, have you heard of Sayyid Qutb? Just curious.

Symmetry 13y ago

Well, way back in the day (around WWII) Arab opinion of the US was rather high. One of the key initial moments in the disenchantment came with Sayyid Qutb[1]'s journey to the US and writing about it. He had a lot to say about the moral degeneracy of the US, where men and women mixed together socially even sitting side by side in church etc. He later helped found the Muslim Brotherhood from which splintered the Islamic Jihad under Ayman al-Zawahiri which later made up half of Al Qaeda. But while it is true that part of their beef with the US was things that we would consider freedom a much bigger issue would be America's support of Israel or the stationing troops in Saudi Arabia. And then 9/11 happened and the West invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and this became very much beside the point. So Bush's famous mention of Al Qaeda hating us for our freedoms, while true in some sense, was very much a red herring. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb

alan_cx 13y ago

I think it is because they believe, with much justification, that Americans use their freedom to enrich themselves at the expense of others, and to try to make others more like themselves. Often by war, killing, coercion and manipulation. The trouble is, Americans believe they have the best system, society, country in the world, and that it is up to them to make every one have that same sort of system, regardless of whether or not they asked for it. If you see America as a religion, its constitution as a holy book, its foreign policy as a crusade, its politicians as religious leaders, its people as believers, then you begin to understand the problem. The problem is, America has a fundamentally different history than most other countries, and is that way it is because of its history. Essentially diverse people came from abroad for many different reasons to create it. The rest of the planet is not like that. Nothing wrong in that at all for America, it makes total reasonable sense, and works fairly well inits context. But for most other countries it does not. All America needs to do is accept that its unique and that other systems have equal validity to their own people. It is not up to America to judge other and seek to tell them they are wrong. If other countries and culture are wrong for their people, its is up to them to change it, not have it forced on them. If such people want American "democracy", which lets face it, Americans seem to have plenty of issues with, then such people will fight for it, loose blood for it, and really value it. Just like Americans did for themselves. No one forced democracy on Americans.

rdtsc 13y ago

Question: Mommy, mommy why do all the Arabs seemingly want to blow themselves up and attack us and why do we have to fear them? Answer: Because they hate our freedoms honey... /They reason it is presented in that way is because the explanation is infantile and geared for an infantile mind but it is funny how well it has worked for so long