by JBG » Fri Oct 06, 2006 1:44 pm
My own feeling on this subject - and its not going to win me many friends here - is that I don't see Osama Bin Laden as this cartoonish Dick Dastardly bad guy which many in the West do. George W. Bush is an infinitely greater danger to the safety and peace of the planet than Bin Laden ever could be.
Its often painted in the West that Bin Laden hates the west for religious and cultural reasons, that he thinks our way of life is decadent and unIslamic and the fact that we drink alcohol, eat pork, allow women equal status and that we are Christians is a reason in itself for wanting to attack and destroy us. It is true that Bin Laden and his ilk disagree with Western lifestyles and as such we are seen as infidels and in an ideal Bin Laden world, our "blasphemous" way of life should see us punished by Allah will and that we should be converted into good Muslims. However, I don't think Bin Laden is attacking the West for those reasons alone and Bin Laden is pragmatic and sane enough to realise that there will have to be some sort of happy medium and understanding between the religious.
Many in the West have got carried away with the notion that Bin Laden and other fundamentalists want to destroy us because of who we are. George Bush and Tony Blair would have us believed that September 11th was the result of Bin Laden hating "freedom" and our way of life.
September 11th didn't result because we are Christians and that there is an inherent flaw in the Muslim pyschology which causes them to attack us because we are Westerners and Christians. September 11th was a culmination of tensions in the Muslim world dating back to the end of the First World War and the Balfour Declaration in which Balfour called for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Al Qaeda hate the US and Britain not because we sit around drinking beer after work, "degrade" women and worship Jesus, but because of what Muslims perceive as 80 years of humiliation and oppression by the West. The problems in Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia and Iraq are all a direct consequence of the collapse of Western Empires and the last death throes of European colonialism when Britain and France divided up the Arab world after the first world war, either by ruling directly themselves or imposing artificial kings or dictators on artificial countries, arming these tyrants and then turn a blind eye to the persecution by Western backed "strongmen" of Arab peoples. Both Britain and the US adopted this policy in Iran up until the Islamic Revolution of 1979, when the Shah was propped up by US/UK military supplies, financial and diplomatic assistance so as to ensure that the large and unhappy Persian people were kept under the thumb so as to keep things quiet in that part of the world and keep the oil flowing. When the Shah was deposed the US/UK turned Saddam into their strong man, until Saddam made the crass error in judgement of thinking he could take Kuwait as a reward for the sacrifice of the Iraqi people in tying down the Islamic Revolution for the best part of the decade and allowing the US get on with winning the Cold War.
Bin Laden doesn't want to destroy the west, he just wants the West out of the Middle East and allow Muslim people govern themselves and their resources, in much the same way as Europeans took to arms in the 1940s to fight Hitler.
Last edited by
JBG on Fri Oct 06, 2006 1:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Jolly Bob Grumbine.