Like an earlier post has stated, the Islamic world/Middle East was not always a cesspool of extremism and terrorism. Before the 1979 Islamic revolution and the creation of Israel, the Middle East was as calm a place as any other.
What happened to the Middle East was the same thing that happened to Africa. Years of colonial control under European nations suddenly evaporated after WWII. As a result, lots of crazy came to the surface and extremists took power.
It's the Western world's own damn fault for creating these terrorists and pirates. We imposed Western ideals onto these cultures by force, and as a result it poisoned them to all of our ideas, not only the bad, but also the good. The lesson they learned is that a small number of men leveraging technology, guns and social propaganda can cower an entire populace by force.
It wasn't even as far back as the 16th century that the Middle East was a center of civilization and refinement. Just before WWI, the Ottoman Empire pretty much owned the place and kept the populace happy and educated. It was comparable to the other European monarchies at the time like Austria, Germany or Russia. What they DID lack was a massive build up of militarization due to the European arms race. Don't forget that most of us were still pretty barbaric in the early 20th century- Western powers had no qualms about throwing machine guns and gunboats around prompted by religious reasoning. Of course, it was politics that motivated the start of WWI...really, that's MUCH more rational...
After WWII, the crop of leaders that took the reigns of Middle Eastern countries were pretty reasonable, UNTIL the West suddenly planted a brand new nation in the middle of one of their holiest cities. Go figure. Even after the Six Day War, only Israel really had to worry about Muslim aggression. And that was from whole countries, not terrorists.
The Iranian revolution was THE catalyst for today's terrorists. The revolutionaries fought against mechanized troops, tanks and planes, the best the CIA could supply the Iranian Sultan and Saddam with. We -taught- them that the proper tactics for defeating modern armies was not through force of arms, but social mobilzation.
The Islamic extremists are simply a more evolved version of what we see in Africa today- demogouges taking advantage of a poor populace and feeding them hatred. The main difference is that they've moved past killing each other, and moved on to killing foreigners. Generally this is how proper nations are made- you stabilize a region by emphasizing a common foreign enemy. In this case, it's 'the evil West"
It's our own ignorance that makes us think that Islam is the root of this problem. It's not. Islam is about as violent as Christianity. They all have their various elements against blasphemy and the like. It's simply the fact that religious leaders in the Islamic communities have MUCH more power. They're petty dictators that have full control over their homelands, and now are moving on to conquer new horizons. Saddams and Castros aren't dangerous because they're content with their little personality cults. These guys are MORE DANGEROUS because they have ambition- they not only have the devotion of their flock, now they're trying to move onto the next country over.
It all goes back to politics. Islam is a vehicle for dictators to make war. These dictators dress up in the robes of clerics and have religious upbringings, but in the end they're the same as Napolean or Saddam, more interested in their own personality cult. When other religious figures threaten them, they are no less ruthless. See the recent Iran elections for evidence.
See, the CIA and the US in general has made a really bad habit of targeting and assassinating leaders. That has been it's modus operandi throughout the Cold War. So these religious leaders have adopted personalities that -transcend- themselves and become part of a religion. Kill them, and they become martyrs. It's the perfect tactic to counter the CIA's headhunting tactics.
What we're really bad at is finding good leaders. This has been a problem since Vietnam. All too often the US are happy to prop up some 'other' dictator that tows their line, rather than someone who is actually a good leader and might clash with their interests.
The bad guys are succeeding because they've managed to deceive people into thinking that they represent some kind of nebulous, universal movement. That couldn't be further than the truth. What needs to be done is that western nations need to start calling out these dictators by name. Too few of us know who the President of Iran is, who the Supreme Cleric is. We don't know who the top men of the Taliban are, and whoever's in charge of Al Qaeda OTHER than Osama bin ladin is a really challenging question.
As we can see with Christian terrorists, it's easier to stop when you know your own. We can SEE who are the crazy gun militia men and the Timothy McVeighs. But when we start looking at a crowd and say "Those people can be potentially dangerous!" rather than saying "THAT man is dangerous" is when problems occur.
Throwing around generalities and pluralism is unproductive. You're never going to get millions of Muslims to do anything, any more than you can get millions of Christians to do anything. The bad leaders need to be thrown out, and good leaders need to be identified and supported.
