Ravi, you are still making an assumption that bin Laden and Co is a reaction to the wrongs of the US policy. Following that logic, Eastern European pogroms or Nazism should be seen a reaction to the wrongs commmitted by international Jewery. At this point one may ask "what wrongs?"
The point I am proposing is that we should adopt a different frame of reference to discussing islamist fundamentalism - not as as a reaction to popular discontent but as the creation of reactionary elements in the ruling class of Arab/Islamic countries (esp. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan). An analogy can be made fo the fascist movement in Italy, that originated as a band of ex- World War I soldiers, bankrolled by landowners and industrialists, to attack labor organizers. Islamic militants have similar origins.
Fascist movements often espouse poplist ideologies to attract more followers that may sound similar to the ideologies espoused by socialist movements, such as attacks on capitalism, international organizations, wealthy individuals, moral decadence etc. But make no mistake - they are very different types of movements. You can tell them not only by their fruits, but also by their roots, that lead to very different social classes - reactionary property owners in case of fascist movements (as you yourself admit in the passage above) and working and middle class activists in case of socialist movements.
WE should not fall for the trap of fascist anti-capitalist propaganda and repeat their preposterous attacks on bourgeois society. These folks may criticize the US and Western European countries - but they do it for very different reasons than most of us do: secularism, equal rights for women, scientific rationality, democratic institutions.
>
>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.
As I said before, what bin Ladin and company say is a mere excuse and not a reason. What they are against is not specific US policies but modernism and its "perils" - equality, secularism, rationality, democracy.. The US is merely a symbol, and its policies - mere excuses. In the same vein, Nazi propagandists were denouncing Jewish "greed" and "disloyalty" to justify nazi-led attacks on Jewish population.
>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).
I never used the word "evil" or its equivalenet - I used the word "fascism" which in my book denotes certain class interests. Thus my explanation was "these folks pursue the class interests of reactionary property owners who are uncomfortable with social changes brought by modernization." This is a legitmate explanation, albeit it may not be factually true (which needs to be demonstrated).
BTW, as the history of fascit movements shows, fascists often break loose from being a mere vassals of reactionary elites and unleash terror that eventually runs against the interest of their sponsors.
>
>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).
That is precisely what I wanted to say. US is not a social democracy.
wojtek