5 ms·

It's odd that in all of what is essentially the fallout from 9/11--two wars, subversion of American rights, spying on Americans, torture, rendition, massive sec

It's odd that in all of what is essentially the fallout from 9/11--two wars, subversion of American rights, spying on Americans, torture, rendition, massive security/surveillance state, etc.--no one seems to have ever seriously asked "why do these people want to kill us". Beyond the quotable but facile "they hate us for our freedom" line, there hasn't been much real discussion of this sort. And, here, as we parse the latest round of bills, legal interpretations, infringed freedoms, etc., there is still no such earnest discussion about why we find ourselves in this position in the first place. It's just assumed that this is somehow where we "should" find ourselves, and the only question is how much further we should go in our response to our inevitable position. EDIT: At this point, I would go beyond the question of why these people want to kill us and ask who and how many are there who actually do want to kill us?

mpyne 13y ago
> no one seems to have ever seriously asked "why do these people want to kill us". Plenty of people have asked that question. That the answer isn't what you expect doesn't mean the question wasn't asked. It turns out that the goal is to establish (or rather, re-establish) the Caliphate, or at least some twisted takfiri version of it. In order to establish the Caliphate you need somewhere to put it -- namely, the Muslim countries of the Middle East. But the countries already have states running the show. In AQ's viewpoint, they are "the near enemy". The near enemies have supporters too, including the U.S. (which was "the far enemy"). Other enemies include the United Nations (both since the UN Charter is incompatible with takfiri Sharia extremism, but also because the UN recognizes Israel), Shi'a Muslims, etc. In one of the key decision points for OBL post-Gulf War, he decided to focus on the far enemy first instead of the near enemies. At this point, the "crime" of the U.S. wasn't drones or bombing brown babies or anything so snide. The U.S.'s only crime was putting infidel soldiers on Arab soil to evict Iraq from Kuwait, and for maintaining regional stability for what I'm sure were completely self-serving reasons that provided no benefit whatsoever to the rest of the world. Accordingly AQ attacked the U.S.: The 1993 World Trade Center bombings... the 1995 "Bojinka" airline bombing plots (yes, plural) that was only discovered by accident at the last second by an alert Philippine policewoman... the 1998 embassy bombings... the 2000 attack on USS Cole in Aden, Yemen. The U.S. response was remarkably restrained throughout this entire period. Despite hundreds of Kenyans alone being killed by AQ in the 1998 bombings, the U.S. response was limited to dropping cruise missiles on known AQ training camps in Afghanistan and a chemical production facility in Sudan that showed evidence of working with AQ to produce nerve gas. The evidence was not ironclad, mind, but that was it: No boots on the ground, no roving drone patrols, no NSA massive surveillance efforts. The problem for AQ wasn't what the U.S. was doing to the rest of the world by 2000, the problem was that the U.S. wasn't doing enough. AQ had somehow failed to get America's serious attention, and had failed to evict America completely from the Middle East, so they decided that they had to go bigger. And they did. So while the facile "they hate us for our freedom" line is not the answer, it's not far off: They attack because Muslims still live in either approximately free societies, or tyrannies under the wrong dictator (i.e. apostate regimes). There will be no end unless they establish the Caliphate, and even that doesn't necessarily represent the end, since the stated goal of this new caliphate by Ayman al-Zawahiri is to extend jihad against the U.S. and the West. If you want to research yourself the motives of the various and many insurgent/terrorist groups out there then there's certainly no lack of material, from the very many people who have asked the same question you say has never been asked. I'd recommend going through some of it. Articles asking (and trying to answer) this question have been published since long before 9/11. Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" article dates to Bosnia.
- unclebucknasty 13y ago
  I appreciate your thoughtful response and I have, in fact, heard this mentioned over the years. I am not sure that it is entirely accepted as the rationale (and, in fact, it has been disputed by some), but it has certainly be suggested. I should probably have been clearer in my initial question. While there has been some discussion about in different circles regarding the genesis of this "problem", it has largely been muted. At a minimum, the volume and quality of earnest discussion has been remarkably limited relative to the importance of such discussion. Instead, we get pablum such as "they hate us for our freedom", even while we drone strike, destroy, and kill. Remarkably, the theory that you repeated fits with this pablum as it puts virtually no emphasis on our actions, save for a passing mention or two. Somehow, even with a long and complex history of involvement in the region, we magically have no responsibility for any of wha is happening, save for being free and not Muslim. I find that absolutely incredible and profoundly myopic. Still, even if one can somehow remove the notion of consequences for previous behavior as a cause of 9/11 and what preceeded, and also manage to detach all responsibility from the West, there should be little doubt that our current course of action (yes, including drone strikes), provides indisputable cause for real grievances borne of our actions and, potentially, a generation of terrorists that modern history has yet to see. Or, to put it in your terms, unless the goal is to kill every single Muslim or sympathizer who could have either answered the call for the Caliphate or been affected by the loss of a loved one who was presumed to have done such, then it seems that our current course is either exceptionally stupid or specifically designed to create perpetual conflict. But, back to my original point: all of this that we are discussing here is incredibly important and lurks beneath the surface. It has brought us down this path of surveillance, etc., yet it is not questioned or discussed. Think of how fantastically stupid it is that we are in such a reactionary mode that we no longer question key assumptions regarding why we are doing what we are doing in the first place. Even if you believed that it's all about the Caliphate, shouldn't that single word be part of our daily discusion for as long as we ar at war, drone striking, and spying on Americans? Shouldn't we be openly discussing what it means and how we might work to not radicalize members of that community? Shouldn't there be a sober assesment of Western policy and how it might intersect with legitimate complaints and even radical ideas? This, instead of an attitude that "they hate us for our freedom", followed by more drone strikes, spying on Americans, etc.? Apologies for length. Just hoping to better make my point.
trendoid 13y ago
You should probably read this first as a starting point: http://www.newstatesman.com/2014/04/challenge-islam http://www.newstatesman.com/2014/04/challenge-islam
jacquesm 13y ago
> "they hate us for our freedom" Besides being not true in principle (they couldn't care less if you're free) even if they did it would stop working as soon as you're no longer free. In reality it is much simpler than that: The US has (rightly or wrongly) become the de-facto superpower and has been projecting its power all over the globe with abandon. That creates a (very predictable) backlash. So those that want to kill you want to kill you out of sheer frustration with having their plots foiled and their ability to operate restricted and they figure (rightly) that the way to strike back is to target the home country and hope for the leaders of the country to mess up and alienate themselves from their allies. From that point of view 911 is mission accomplished.
bostik 13y ago
> And, here, as we parse the latest round of bills, legal interpretations, infringed freedoms, etc., there is still no such earnest discussion about why we find ourselves in this position in the first place. Some of it is possibly history going through its usual cycle. As a corollary to Santayana's legendary quote: the only thing people ever learn from history is that nobody ever learns anything from history. For an interesting look on the history of modern terrorism, I recommend watching at least the first two parts of this German stand-up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4H_E8b-qmo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4H_E8b-qmo . Yes, it's inflammatory, and yes, it's politically slanted. That's the point. The way to find unexpected things in common wisdom is to look at it from a different angle.
SkynetSystems 13y ago
The reason there hasn't been much discussion is because the state controls the parameters of discussion through heavy use of propaganda and intimidation, and they don't like the questions that get asked when we ask why. The truth is they don't want to kill us at large. Not even the most militant groups have ever taken issue directly with the American people as a whole, in fact many of them quite the opposite. Their issue is with the American government and its allied state actors who are the chief executors of its foreign policy. However when one side has disproportionate strength, and the political outlets to change are closed to you, and you are systematically disenfranchised, guerrilla warfare (aka terrorism) becomes the only way to strike back at your tormentors. The state actors do not want their foreign policy and their violence (direct and indirect) to become the subject of the discussion. So instead they spin narratives about how the enemy is pure evil, how his hatred is irrational and fanatical and cannot be reasoned with or understood, and because of that, we have no choice but to kill as many of them as possible all the time because otherwise they would leave their relatively impoverished lands thousands of miles away and come here to kill us. Does it sound ridiculous? That's because it is. Rather than condense hours of Noam Chomsky lectures that go in great detail about this subject, I will paraphrase his conclusion: The best way to stop terrorism domestically is to stop carrying out acts of terrorism overseas. But the American government has no intention of stopping so unfortunately you will be kept in the Orwellian state of fear they are orchestrating.

mpyne 13y ago

> no one seems to have ever seriously asked "why do these people want to kill us". Plenty of people have asked that question. That the answer isn't what you expect doesn't mean the question wasn't asked. It turns out that the goal is to establish (or rather, re-establish) the Caliphate, or at least some twisted takfiri version of it. In order to establish the Caliphate you need somewhere to put it -- namely, the Muslim countries of the Middle East. But the countries already have states running the show. In AQ's viewpoint, they are "the near enemy". The near enemies have supporters too, including the U.S. (which was "the far enemy"). Other enemies include the United Nations (both since the UN Charter is incompatible with takfiri Sharia extremism, but also because the UN recognizes Israel), Shi'a Muslims, etc. In one of the key decision points for OBL post-Gulf War, he decided to focus on the far enemy first instead of the near enemies. At this point, the "crime" of the U.S. wasn't drones or bombing brown babies or anything so snide. The U.S.'s only crime was putting infidel soldiers on Arab soil to evict Iraq from Kuwait, and for maintaining regional stability for what I'm sure were completely self-serving reasons that provided no benefit whatsoever to the rest of the world. Accordingly AQ attacked the U.S.: The 1993 World Trade Center bombings... the 1995 "Bojinka" airline bombing plots (yes, plural) that was only discovered by accident at the last second by an alert Philippine policewoman... the 1998 embassy bombings... the 2000 attack on USS Cole in Aden, Yemen. The U.S. response was remarkably restrained throughout this entire period. Despite hundreds of Kenyans alone being killed by AQ in the 1998 bombings, the U.S. response was limited to dropping cruise missiles on known AQ training camps in Afghanistan and a chemical production facility in Sudan that showed evidence of working with AQ to produce nerve gas. The evidence was not ironclad, mind, but that was it: No boots on the ground, no roving drone patrols, no NSA massive surveillance efforts. The problem for AQ wasn't what the U.S. was doing to the rest of the world by 2000, the problem was that the U.S. wasn't doing enough. AQ had somehow failed to get America's serious attention, and had failed to evict America completely from the Middle East, so they decided that they had to go bigger. And they did. So while the facile "they hate us for our freedom" line is not the answer, it's not far off: They attack because Muslims still live in either approximately free societies, or tyrannies under the wrong dictator (i.e. apostate regimes). There will be no end unless they establish the Caliphate, and even that doesn't necessarily represent the end, since the stated goal of this new caliphate by Ayman al-Zawahiri is to extend jihad against the U.S. and the West. If you want to research yourself the motives of the various and many insurgent/terrorist groups out there then there's certainly no lack of material, from the very many people who have asked the same question you say has never been asked. I'd recommend going through some of it. Articles asking (and trying to answer) this question have been published since long before 9/11. Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" article dates to Bosnia.

unclebucknasty 13y ago
I appreciate your thoughtful response and I have, in fact, heard this mentioned over the years. I am not sure that it is entirely accepted as the rationale (and, in fact, it has been disputed by some), but it has certainly be suggested. I should probably have been clearer in my initial question. While there has been some discussion about in different circles regarding the genesis of this "problem", it has largely been muted. At a minimum, the volume and quality of earnest discussion has been remarkably limited relative to the importance of such discussion. Instead, we get pablum such as "they hate us for our freedom", even while we drone strike, destroy, and kill. Remarkably, the theory that you repeated fits with this pablum as it puts virtually no emphasis on our actions, save for a passing mention or two. Somehow, even with a long and complex history of involvement in the region, we magically have no responsibility for any of wha is happening, save for being free and not Muslim. I find that absolutely incredible and profoundly myopic. Still, even if one can somehow remove the notion of consequences for previous behavior as a cause of 9/11 and what preceeded, and also manage to detach all responsibility from the West, there should be little doubt that our current course of action (yes, including drone strikes), provides indisputable cause for real grievances borne of our actions and, potentially, a generation of terrorists that modern history has yet to see. Or, to put it in your terms, unless the goal is to kill every single Muslim or sympathizer who could have either answered the call for the Caliphate or been affected by the loss of a loved one who was presumed to have done such, then it seems that our current course is either exceptionally stupid or specifically designed to create perpetual conflict. But, back to my original point: all of this that we are discussing here is incredibly important and lurks beneath the surface. It has brought us down this path of surveillance, etc., yet it is not questioned or discussed. Think of how fantastically stupid it is that we are in such a reactionary mode that we no longer question key assumptions regarding why we are doing what we are doing in the first place. Even if you believed that it's all about the Caliphate, shouldn't that single word be part of our daily discusion for as long as we ar at war, drone striking, and spying on Americans? Shouldn't we be openly discussing what it means and how we might work to not radicalize members of that community? Shouldn't there be a sober assesment of Western policy and how it might intersect with legitimate complaints and even radical ideas? This, instead of an attitude that "they hate us for our freedom", followed by more drone strikes, spying on Americans, etc.? Apologies for length. Just hoping to better make my point.

trendoid 13y ago

You should probably read this first as a starting point: http://www.newstatesman.com/2014/04/challenge-islam http://www.newstatesman.com/2014/04/challenge-islam

jacquesm 13y ago

> "they hate us for our freedom" Besides being not true in principle (they couldn't care less if you're free) even if they did it would stop working as soon as you're no longer free. In reality it is much simpler than that: The US has (rightly or wrongly) become the de-facto superpower and has been projecting its power all over the globe with abandon. That creates a (very predictable) backlash. So those that want to kill you want to kill you out of sheer frustration with having their plots foiled and their ability to operate restricted and they figure (rightly) that the way to strike back is to target the home country and hope for the leaders of the country to mess up and alienate themselves from their allies. From that point of view 911 is mission accomplished.

bostik 13y ago

> And, here, as we parse the latest round of bills, legal interpretations, infringed freedoms, etc., there is still no such earnest discussion about why we find ourselves in this position in the first place. Some of it is possibly history going through its usual cycle. As a corollary to Santayana's legendary quote: the only thing people ever learn from history is that nobody ever learns anything from history. For an interesting look on the history of modern terrorism, I recommend watching at least the first two parts of this German stand-up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4H_E8b-qmo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4H_E8b-qmo . Yes, it's inflammatory, and yes, it's politically slanted. That's the point. The way to find unexpected things in common wisdom is to look at it from a different angle.

SkynetSystems 13y ago

The reason there hasn't been much discussion is because the state controls the parameters of discussion through heavy use of propaganda and intimidation, and they don't like the questions that get asked when we ask why. The truth is they don't want to kill us at large. Not even the most militant groups have ever taken issue directly with the American people as a whole, in fact many of them quite the opposite. Their issue is with the American government and its allied state actors who are the chief executors of its foreign policy. However when one side has disproportionate strength, and the political outlets to change are closed to you, and you are systematically disenfranchised, guerrilla warfare (aka terrorism) becomes the only way to strike back at your tormentors. The state actors do not want their foreign policy and their violence (direct and indirect) to become the subject of the discussion. So instead they spin narratives about how the enemy is pure evil, how his hatred is irrational and fanatical and cannot be reasoned with or understood, and because of that, we have no choice but to kill as many of them as possible all the time because otherwise they would leave their relatively impoverished lands thousands of miles away and come here to kill us. Does it sound ridiculous? That's because it is. Rather than condense hours of Noam Chomsky lectures that go in great detail about this subject, I will paraphrase his conclusion: The best way to stop terrorism domestically is to stop carrying out acts of terrorism overseas. But the American government has no intention of stopping so unfortunately you will be kept in the Orwellian state of fear they are orchestrating.