> John, Ravi, and others:
>
> I must admit that the older I get the more possibilities and uncertainties
> I see. Therefore your assumption that islamic terrorism is a "blowback"
> reaction to US policies and oppression of the masses they created or aided
> seems to me a somewhat naive article of faith.
>
hi wojtek, thanks for the response. to clarify my explicit position: i am not assuming that the attack is a blowback of US actions. i am only defending the position that it is sensible and worthwhile to question "why" this incident happened.
> If things were as certain as the above described assumption holds, we
> should be swamped by terrorists from Korea, Vietnam, Latin America, and
> Yugoslavia avenging the unquestionable wrongdoings of the US foreign policy
> there.
while reiterating that that is not my explicit position, i want to respond to your thoughts above. perhaps people from these nations might swamp the US if they had the resources to do so. if the bush administration story is to be believed (that this was orchestrated by islamic terrorists with bin laden as their mastermind), then it took a billionaire and years of effort to accomplish this (being non-american, in these times, i have to immediately add what would have been implicitly understood in earlier times: i of course do not wish that the people of america be visited upon by further acts of terrorism). there have been relatively few terrorist acts in the US (and correct me if i am wrong), and if the first significant one happened to be from an internal source (mcveigh) and the second from [possibly, one is yet to see proof] islamic groups, that does not preclude others from other sources.
> But why from the Middle East, for goddess' sake? The US policy
> there has been quite benign, if not good, for the most part: we saved Naser
> from the European wrath after he nationalized the Suez Canal, we gave Sadat
> the territories he lost to Israel, we helped the Afghanis to fight the
> Soviet invasion, we liberated Kuwait from a secularist invader, and we even
> saved the Muslim Kosovars from a Slavic butcher.
with all due respect, isnt this your version of the events? (seems like the center/left-liberal version). you may be right that US activities in the middle-east have been benign compared to activities elsewhere (especially latin ameica), but that reasoning probably does not comfort the bin laden's of the world much.
> <snip of well reasoned material setting up the stage for explaining
> islamic hatred of america as being a result of the response of a
> displaced religious authority>
>
> To sumamrize:
>
> 1. I do not think that the US is a super evil responsible for all wrongs in
> other parts of the world.
and most of us in the discussion with nathan newman are in fact questioning the use of the word 'evil', so i doubt anybody believes the US is "super evil". insofar as we believe some of the actions of the US govt call for critique, it merits discussion that leads to efforts to change. i am sure those who call for change in US action also call for change in the taliban's treatment of women (to just give one example). perhaps there is a broader critique of america from a marxist or some such perspective, but speaking for myself, i am not a marxist (i am not clear what slot i might fit into, and i prefer to think i am a PKF style epistemological anarchist - note to the INS: that means i did not lie when i answered that i am not an anarchist in your forms).
> 2. Our perception by islamic fundamentalists has little to do what we did
> or did not do. We are a mere symbol, a signifier, in their struggle
> against modernism.
it seems that that is the conclusion you have arrived at exactly by asking the "why" question that nathan newman and hitchens want the rest of us not to be asking at all. they do not want us to try to use rational methods to understand why this happened. perhaps: rather this happened because there is "evil" and it is only important to find out "who" did it and you have identified the source of the "evil" and all that is left to do is to eliminate that source (i do not know these to be nathan newman's or hitchens' words - they are my fabrication as a possible position emerging out of their words).
> 3. Islamic funadmentalism has little to do with Islam - it simply uses it
> in the same way as it uses us, as a symbol bearer (in this case, a symbol
> of good).
does not religious fundamentalism exploit the tolerance that we all want to show towards religion. to be fanciful for a second: isnt dawkins right in pointing out that we are ignoring the 800 pound gorilla i.e., religion and its role in all of this?
> 6. Western European social democracy is the best political things in
> exsitence ever created. I am pretty proud of it and I think we should
> defend it against any form of fascism or barbarism, no matter how veiled.
i could agree with that, except i dont know what parts of social democracy are "western" or "european" (other than the contingent truth that social democracy exists in western europe).
--ravi
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- man is said to be a rational animal. i do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. more often i have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly - but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the 2nd degree. -- alasdair macintyre.