AMosely

I see where you are coming from with this but you're omitting quite a bit. The US sends a lot more than soldiers to kill 'enemy.' Where do guided missiles, drone aircraft and military contractors and mercenary/indigenous armies fall in that list? I realize that in a sense they are honorable, but this type of killing is considered very dishonorable among the populations unfortunate enough to receive them.

The point that I think is being overlooked here is desparation as a leading if not critical factor in the use of barbaric or inhuman tactics. Further, I think it is a mistake to group all Islamic terrorists into a single category of 'extremist.' There are very distinct militant groups out there, and they are fighting for very different reasons - particularly Al Qaeda/al-Jihad, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and Hamas. These are all very different groups, with different purposes.

Let's look at Al Qaeda/Al-Jihad - the only one of these groups that has attacked American soil or American soldiers without provocation. Al Qaeda's leadership aside (Bin Laden and his compatriots subscribe to a twisted motivation), the makeup of this group consists largely of desparate men who believe that they have no hope for a future as a Muslim. Bin Laden has been pitching the same belief all along - that 'Western' civilization is is gradually making permanent inroads on Islamic states and either occupying or conquering them (or both). He originally pitched this using the U.S. protectionist role in Saudi Arabia in the early 90's, and gained (as Sept. 11 showed us) many dissidents from that country. Today he continues on the same grounds, using Iraq as the latest battleground. It is desparate men who join this battle - mostly Egyptian and Saudi dissidents who for various reasons have found life in their home countries unbearable. I've said this before, but in my opinion creating more destruction, impoverishment and expanded middle-eastern occupation is completely undoing any military or diplomatic gains that the U.S. makes in this 'war on terror.'

Kerostasis

Just for reference, I'm not actually complaining about Al-Qaeda's attacks on the US. If they want to pick a fight with us, so be it, and we'll be happy to fight back. Their choice of civilian targets over military targets is somewhat distressing, but in historical context civilian targets were "in limits" for much longer than they've been "off limits" -- we pretty much only adopted that rule after World War II.

No, what I'm complaining about is their barbaric practice of assaulting and disrupting the peaceful citizenry of Iraq as they will do anything to further their propaganda goal of telling people how much worse life is under American influence -- if the prediction won't come true on it's own, by God they'll make it come true by bombing the hell out of your markets and schools and offices so you can't go about your daily life until you submit to their leadership.

Life's pretty bad in Iraq right now, to be sure. But that's not due to anything the US is doing over there. Life is bad because the extremists are insisting on making life bad.

Absolutely true, and thats why Al-Qaeda is doing its best to create more destruction and impoverishment in the middle east, while the US is doing exactly the opposite and attempting to create more stability and economic growth. A capitalist middle east will by nature be more friendly to the US.

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Steeler

How did this become a discussion of guerilla tactics and geopolitics? The article is about a backwards superstitious community sentencing a woman to death for witchcraft after their own country's appeals process freed her. Al Qaeda is kind of tangental. I would think that the big issue here would be the disparity between Saudi Arabia's modern industrialized face and its oppressed fundamentalist underclass.

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Augustus Gloop

It's so nice when someone much smarter than you comes in and makes with ease the point that you've been struggling to make for a week now!

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[tR]Greasy_mullet

Any society that still allows for the murder of its children is barbaric. The USA is still a part of that sadly.

FatCobra

What do you mean?

LuckyStrike

celebrate diversity.... or else

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Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

-Benjamin Franklin

[tR]Greasy_mullet

We allow our babies to be slaughted by the thousands each year. As long as we allow and even encourage Mothers to murder their Children then we are a barbaric society.

ScratchMonkey

I suspect he means abortion. That's a whole 'nother thread, though.

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FatCobra

yea, Abortion is defiantly for another thread.

sordavie

Drugged up child soldiers in Africa?

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FatCobra

Thats pretty high up on the list as well.

AMosely

I think you're answering your own question here - Bin Laden's Al Qaeda was born from the disparity between Saudi Arabia's royals and the fundamentalist population. It's not a coincidence that they are poor and opressed. You are mentioning what I believe to be the key ingredients of most terrorism today - about the only things that various groups share in common - just with different countries, governments and participants.

Looking at Bin Laden's Al Qaeda and its break from Saudi Arabia, this clash 'officially' began in 1979 with the siezure of the grand Mosque in Mecca by an organized group Sunni fundamentalist university students. This was a key turning point in the alignment of Saudi royal values, as the event made the royals much more paranoid of both internal and external threats to their power. This almost immediately played into the hands of the United States, who funneled tremendous amounts of arms to the country throughout the 80's - a trend that continues today as the Bush administration recently announced a $53 billion arms and 'technology' sale. In addition to the arms, though, the US pledged to defend Saudi Arabia from their neighbors - a pledge that was lived up to in the first Gulf War.

The Gulf War and the lead up to it is actually another major turning point in the rift between the Saudi royals and its fundamentalists - now both in-country and abroad. Bin Laden is reported to have offered his mujahideen services to the Saudi royals to defend the country from Saddam Hussein. He was turned down in favor of the US military (there really was no decision here - the royals were already deep in bed with the likes of Bush Sr., Cheney and Rumsfeld). That decision - especially having a non-muslim army on Saudi soil - drove Bin Laden to start publicly denouncing the royal family as non-Muslims. This was something that simply wasn't done in Saudi society, and led to Bin Laden being ex-communicated from his home country. He set up shop in Sudan, and when that government collapsed he moved to Afghanistan, where oddly enough it was the Saudis who dictated to the Taliban what to do with him (keep him quiet).

Returning the semi-focus of this thread, 'tolerance' is still a very relative term at this point in human history. In the case of muslims resorting to terrorism, they do so in the name of justice, in response to what they view as grave intolerance by their native governments. Al Qaeda's leadership was originally made up of two distinct factions - Egyptians and Saudi Arabians - two countries whose leadership leveraged their power with American backing. When dissidents (fundamentalists) fought back, they were often barbarically crushed - imprisoned, tortured, and executed - often publicly. Bin Laden's al Qaeda of today is intent on breaking the back of the force that he believes corrupted his home country and many other Muslim nations, therefore believing that he has the backing of Allah on this quest. It will not succeed - but America's (and the world's) response to it will have a profound effect on the future of the movement.

So, again, I make the suggestion that the response must be diplomatic and not militaristic. America needs to use its power to try and ease the tension between some of the host governments and their political opponents. Bush's overuse of the term 'enemy' is not helping in this process. I can only hope that new executive leadership may turn things in the right direction.

Doktor Goku

Pre-freaking-cisely.

Speaking of tolerance- I recall one particular event at UF where one of the campus preachers was doing his thing- screaming out bible verses with a big sign, etc., etc. One of the passers-by objected to this, and got in a screaming match with him- then demanded the local campus cops to haul him off. They chatted with the guy, told him to quiet down, etc., but she was so vocal about it, they asked him to just come back another day. Ok.

She then stands right where he was and basically starts screaming the opposite points to his. People start to get upset, and the cops come over and say "Hey, you're doing the same thing he was, cool it." She then immediately starts screaming about her rights to free speech.

There's my real-life experience with people's idea of "Tolerate everybody! Wait, you don't agree? WE WONT TOLERATE YOU AAAA"

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