Who caused the war on Terror: Muslims or American Foreign Policy?

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If you want to be pedantic, then you could technically blame certain aspects of Islamic culture that began the idea/cult of terror-inspiring attacks on individuals/groups with the promise of eternity in paradise after being drugged and whipped up into a frenzy. Without that, would we be in the same position now? Who knows...

No we wouldn't, what would happen is that the US would further violate Muslim countries and nobody would stand up against them, unlike now where they're getting battered in Afghanistan/Iraq.

Original post by saha01

i think a bit of both, but the ppl that triggered it were/are the so called "islamic terrorists", but killing urself and innocent ppl, muslims or non muslims, has nothing to do with islam. period!

So it was an action rather than a reaction? So the US kills 500.000 Muslim children, a group of Muslims plan for revenge, carry it out and then what happens is the Muslims fault? I think you;re a defeatist Muslim.

Original post by CrusaderTemplar

The Muslims caused the war on terror. And for the record the 9/11 terrorists were not even from Iraq they were Saudis.

They weren't from iraq, but they were Muslims, who did it because the victims of US Foreign Policy (IRaq) were Muslims.

Reply 21

ish90an

American foreign policy during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, towards Saudi Arabia and looking the other way despite Pakistan's internal disconnect between the politicians and the military along with Western Europe, particularly the UK, ignoring the radicalisation of Muslims within its own borders for fear of being branded "racist" all have contributed to the "war on terror".

Reply 22

tw68

Original post by SomaliMan

No we wouldn't, what would happen is that the US would further violate Muslim countries and nobody would stand up against them, unlike now where they're getting battered in Afghanistan/Iraq.

So it was an action rather than a reaction? So the US kills 500.000 Muslim children, a group of Muslims plan for revenge, carry it out and then what happens is the Muslims fault? I think you;re a defeatist Muslim.

They weren't from iraq, but they were Muslims, who did it because the victims of US Foreign Policy (IRaq) were Muslims.

Well if you take bin Laden at his word then it appears that the 9/11 bombings had more to do with US forces occupying their holy land. I.e. the military bases set up in Saudi Arabia post first Gulf War.

Reply 23

Drewski

Original post by tw68

Yes, all those bases that the American forces were invited to use. People always seem to forget that bit, the invitations.

Reply 24

Suetonius

For some: "Root cause" of terror = fighting against terror

Anyone see the blatantly obvious fallacy in such a ridiculous argument?

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 25

tw68

Original post by Drewski

Yes, all those bases that the American forces were invited to use. People always seem to forget that bit, the invitations.

Your point being? I was merely restating what bin Laden said, I don't see what that has to do with invitations.

Also they were invited by the Saudi government not the Saudi people, there is a big difference especially when the people have virtually no say in choosing the government.

Reply 26

Drewski

Original post by Suetonius

For some: "Root cause" of terror = fighting against terror

Anyone see the blatantly obvious fallacy in such a pathetic argument?

Yep. People get scared too easily.

Reply 27

zainn

It is definitely the US foreign policy that caused this "War on Terror".

The US and UK government are the biggest terrorists today. Look at the damage US caused in Hiroshima/Irag/Afghanistan/Vietnam in the very recent past. Then look at the damage UK government has caused over the years from the mass genocide in Australia to North America you name it. It was a long while ago but the UK government has done nothing since to prove they aren't a corrupt government especially now that they're in Afghanistan/Iraq which are places where the public don't want them.

There's also the indirect war on Islam going ie banning well-respected islamic scholars such as Zakir Naik, Khalid Yasin etc. Killing of the innocent kids in Afghanistan/Iraq etc in the quest for more oil. I know a few people from the British army and tbh none have them any clue as to what they're doing in Afghanistan. Funding corrupt islamic sects in order to spread false Islam and extremism.

And, just for the record, Al-Qaeda don't actually exist; it's just another American propaganda. We all know bin laden is dead as this suggests: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnychOXj9Tg funny how this woman was killt so "mysteriously"...

Reply 28

Drewski

Original post by tw68

No, I was agreeing with you and making the wider point.

People act like the US has invaded when they were invited by their Gov and then protest against the US rather than protest against their own Gov who brought them in the first place.

Reply 29

Kiwiguy

OP is one of the worlds worst trolls...

Reply 30

.ACS.

No person is going to say Muslims as it's far too risqué and controversial; the obvious cop-out response is so say it's America's foreign policy.

Reply 31

zxh800

Original post by Kiwiguy

OP is one of the worlds worst trolls...

I know right, this guy isn't even funny.

Reply 32

tw68

Original post by Drewski

I don't think it is quite as simple as that though. The US had a vested interest in protecting Saudi Arabia given that it is one of the biggest suppliers of oil. So I don't really think the Saudis had much choice but to 'invite' the installation of military bases.

Reply 33

Suetonius

Original post by tw68

Regardless of whether this is the case, I think we've already determined quite clearly that bin Laden's grievance was that these bases were stationed on "holy" land*. Does it not strike you as obvious that the notion of 'holy' is the problem to begin with, and that it precedes anything the West might do?

*From bin Laden - and Al Qaeda's - perspective, this "holy land" would make up part of a future Islamic Caliphate.

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 34

tw68

Original post by Suetonius

I find the notion that anything is 'holy' to be problematic. However, what do you think drives a lot of people to turn to 'religious fundamentalism' and make them willing to kill themselves?

Reply 35

Suetonius

Original post by tw68

I find the notion that anything is 'holy' to be problematic. However, what do you think drives a lot of people to turn to 'religious fundamentalism' and make them willing to kill themselves?

I'd say a mixture of crazed exultation, social propaganda, perverse childhood "development", literalist readings of religious texts, and so on. The thing itself is not created by Western foreign policy in any case. The strands of thought, and the movements that hold them, have been in existence for over a millennium: through the Caliphate, the Islamist Ottoman Empire, writers such as Wahab and Qutb (even Khomeini and his 'velayat-e facqui' to an extent). The Islamist claim that a theocratic regime must spread by means of violent jihad* simply does not directly follow from any Western intervention in the region, nor can it be considered a rational response. It is completely sui generis. To use another example, it may well be said that had the Iraq war not taken place the mosque at Samarra would not have been blown up by Al Qaeda psychopaths in 2006. But the idea that all Shia be deemed impure - and practically subhuman - is not a direct consequence of Western foreign policy. That also predates it. As does fundamentalist anathematising of all Hindus, and the subsequent attempts to blow up the Indian parliament (in 2001) and Bombay (in 2008). Similarly, you see mosques being blown up in Pakistan on a weekly basis, where the U.S. has not invaded. Remember, the main victims of these movements are not Westerners, or Israelis, but other Muslims (spanning a range of countries: Mauritania, Mali, Somalia, Algeria, Nigeria, Libya, Tunisia, the Phillippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and so on; plenty of these countries being staunchly opposed to U.S. foreign policy). Al Qaeda are an imperialist bloc that wants to impose a Taliban-esque regime on the entire Ummah. These ideas are not a direct outcome of Western involvement in the Middle East in the same way that, for example, Pan-Arabism (or other forms of nationalism) are. Similarly, there are many other countries on earth that have been invaded, occupied and plundered by Western hegemonic interventionism that have not seen psychopathic criminal behaviour of the jihadist kind. When the United States supported the apartheid regime, for example, Nelson Mandela didn't use a tribalistic, mediaevalist form of Christianity in order to condone the throwing of acid in the faces of teenage girls, genital mutilation, suicide bombing or beheading. The same can be said of the NLF in Vietnam, the various resistance groups in Rhodesia, Fretilin in East Timor, the supporters of Allende in Chile, the Nicaraguan Sandinistas etc. Similarly, you don't see Cuban exiles launching suicide campaigns or "holy wars" against Fidel Castro in the same way that Chechan Islamists unhesitantly slaughter over a hundred schoolchildren in Beslan because of their belief that God is on their side. You don't see the secular Kurds attacking Iraqi society for what has been done to them over the past 30 years (poison gas, genocide, expulsions, mass graves), by blowing up Baghdad's UN offices and churches, suicide bombing in busy market places and funeral processions, cutting off the water supply, sabotaging elections etc. 'Al Qaeda in Iraq' (many of whose members aren't even Iraqis) are busy doing that. You really are looking at the face of evil with these religious fanatics. What we are truly up against is a form of imperialistic fascism, and no capitulation or appeasement on our part will deter them.

*as Iran's constitution explicitly states

P.S. The OP's so-called argument is obscenely post hoc ergo propter hoc. There is no direct causation between U.S. sanctions on Iraq (which were intensified to fatal levels by Saddam Hussein's own negligence, and refusal to make goods available to feed his own people while he was building a palace in each of Iraq's eighteen provinces) and the actions of the Saudis and Yemenis who committed that terrible atrocity. None of the 9/11 hijackers had any ancestral or familial relation to Iraq (just as none of the 7/7 bombers had any ancestral or familial relation to Iraq or Afghanistan). Indeed, if you say they felt solidarity with dying Iraqis during that period because of their mutual religious beliefs, then this obviously shows once more that religion is the ubiquitous and overarching problem. As it happens, I don't believe the sanctions had any bearing on the hijackers' motives.

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 36

qasman

Original post by SomaliMan

9/11 'started' the War on Terror, around 3000 were killed. The attackers were Muslim, but was that the beginning, or was the beginning the escalation of American Foreign Policy on Muslim countries.

Just one example:

500.000 Children died in Iraq due to sanctions, New Mexico Governor & Bill Clinton's Ambassador to the U.N. Bill Richardson supports 'Mad' Albright on the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children in pursuit of U.S. foreign policy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S1YkQs5nXQ

Madeleine Albright also thinks the price was worth it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIX1CP9qr4&feature=related

So 9/11 = 300
US Sanctions on Iraq: 500.000 children dead.

Yet, people want to live in their fairytale world, that the whole world was in peace before those evil Muslims attacked the god-fearing US of A.

Thanks for clumping >1billion people together with the actions of a few :wink:

Reply 37

Electrodude

Well, the United States (plus some western countries) did seem to fuel the terror acts both in the western society and most of the middle eastern ones.

It is not coincidence, that the correlation between the Iraqi invasion+Afghanistan's occupation, increased terror threads and bombings.

Washington seem to worsen the situation, and it is not getting any better.

Reply 38

sazzz

Fundamental Islam in the form of the Taliban is directly stemmed from the mujahadein (spelling?), so from that root, it would be both the fault of the USA and USSR.