> I think that all this discussion on the motives of Tamil Tigers,
> kamikaze
> pilots, expendable GIs, etc. is a bit beside the point. Carrol wrote:
> "the actual reasons for flying planes into buildings." The purpose at
> issue is *to kill innocents* at the cost of one's own life. But whence
> such a purpose? Perhaps revenge against the kin of those who have
> committed horrible crimes against you or your kin? Assuredly--but that
> emotional pathology was quite absent from the 9-11 nineteen. Or
> Muslims who blow themselves up inside a mosque.
>
> The point I am getting at is that the only motivation for the
> intentional suicidal mass murder of innocents that seems plausible to
> me is ideological:
> *devotion to a transcendant cause*. Since I can scarcely conceive of
> a secular
> ideology capable of inspiring the indispensable feeling of suicidal
> transcendance,
> what alone remains plausible is precisely a *religious* motivation.
One of the fundamental positions of Al Qaeda is that US citizens are conpirators in the percieved crimes: infidel military bases in the Holy Lands, US carte blanche support of Israel's apartheid of the Palestinians, and perpetual western involvement in the affairs of Arab peoples since they have had the unfortunate luck to be living on top of "our" oil.
So from the AQ perspective, the victims are in no may innocent. Since we are discussing the motivations for the attacks, it is this perspective which matters.
If you take away the religion and leave a century of western imperialistic interventions in the ME, planes are still going to fly into buildings.
Matt
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