History lesson (Score 1)

The challenge with history is where do you start the narrative? A lot of posters here point to Kermit Roosevelt's purported mischief in deposing the Shah of Iran's precedecessor. You could just as easily argue, as Daniel Yergin suggests in _The Prize_, that the Shah merely reaped the whirwind that his erratic and eccentric precedessor, Mohammed Mossadegh http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Mossadeq, sowed. I think it started during the Suez crisis. OBL himself blames what he calls the "tragedy of Andalusia" which happened in the 1400s and marked the end of the last glorious Islamic empire. Another example of this is the fact, as several here have pointed out, that what really got under Bin Laden's skin was the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia. Few have inquired or mentioned how our troops got there in the first place. Saddam may not bear proximate responsibility for 9/11, but since it's his "fault" that we were in Saudi Arabia, he may in fact be the ultimate cause, if we take OBL at his word. But even more importantly, I would like to point out that the US troops are now LONG GONE from "the land of the two holy places" in OBL's poetic term for Saudi Arabia. Yet OBL presses on. The problem with a lot of the analysis here is that it uniformly blames the west for the problem of terrorism. Yet we do not act in a vacuum. While there is no question that we are responsible for our own actions and their consequences, the same is true for the perpetrators of this act and their masters. Do they bear no responsibility for their choices and their consequences? It is a fact that every modern Arab and Islamic country since the Ottoman Empire has been an abject failure. Blame Sykes-Piquot or whatever all you want (which doesn't explain Pakistan, Bangladesh, or Indonesia anyway), we still have to deal with that fact. It is useful, particularly in a war, to understand what motivates your enemy. Yet it is not always necessary. For instance, it is generally and rightly considered an outrageous to suggest that blacks could best deter hate crimes by avoiding dating white women and acting more deferential towards whites. Similarly, only a retrograde suggests women would best deter rapes by dressing more modestly. The proper response to both of these suggestions is to point out that the perpetrators of these crimes are evil, regardless of what provoked them. And that those who defend them are knuckle-dragging moral imbeciles. The best way to protect women from rape and blacks from hate crimes is to militate--ideologically and by force if necessary--against such barbaric beliefs. If we know that Ted Bundy was attracted to brunettes, it does not follow that all college girls should have dyed their hair blonde. I would suggest that the analogy is apt, for much of what has passed for commentary here is effectively suggesting that Uncle Sam is wearing too short of a skirt. (This metaphor from Hitchens first). Yes, perhaps that is so. Some blacks are also impolite, and some women are skanks. But in a way, it is irrelevant, for these atrocities are beyond the pale NO MATTER WHAT the provocation is. Let us complain about various ways that the War on Terror has been prosecuted. But those who argue that it was never necessary in the first place are being worse than naive, for--even if it is not their intention--these apologias for militant Islamic terrorism have the effect of encouraging and enabling a pathological death cult.