-- Cathy Young wrote:
Alas, this is a myopic position. Aside from whether a 21st century democracy can survive in isolation, the sort of people who carried out this monstrous act hate us for much more than our foreign policy.
Note that their targets included not only the Pentagon and (apparently) Capitol Hill or the White House, but the World Trade Center - a symbol and a bastion of international capitalism, not of US military power.
On 27 Sep 2001, at 2:52, Paul Spirito wrote:
I'd like to believe this -- it would make the struggle more heroic -- but I can't. As they say, all politics is local. I don't think most people in the Middle East care whether Americans are enjoying freedom & democracy
Islam says that Islam should have dominion. Muslims should be better off, more civilized, richer, more powerful, more culturally influential, than unbelievers. They are not. This is a crime against islam that must be remedied. This is not a defect that is unique to Islam. If some alien people are rich and free, and one is poor and unfree, one can believe it is one's own fault or their fault. Naturally one is inclined to believe it is their fault. However Islam gives divine sanction to this belief, and in some variants of Islam, divine command to do something about it. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG bXAsof4Q6uE+9Kd6vmnOTkUO/XGGEhOB1LIAbIM 49O94VpG8qzrlA6jKfMPNbyCzH4tLIvMVAik/EzXo