The inherent flaw with the War on Terror - Lmk if u disagree

In his manifesto, published not too long after 9/11, Osama bin Laden explained very specifically what he wants from us. One of the key things was for us to convert totally to Islam. You want to do that for him?

Yes, everyone likes you if you give them money. We might even have been able to buy the Japanese off after Pearl Harbor. Yes, we probably should work much harder to make people like us, and I suppose that some of that will involve paying them. However, when you have dangerous enemies who do terrible things, sometimes you have to fight them.

When did I say that we shouldn't fight them?

I'm saying that we're doing jack to try and make friends with those of them who aren't yet our enemies.

They are the poor downtrodden very vulnerable to join any terrorist organization that gives them some aid.

If we help them first, they won't see the US as so bad. They won't fall in line with the terrorists, they won't harbor terrorists, they might even help us fight them off.

But we aren't doing that. We spend next to nothing in aid to these people. And that little bit that we do spend, we don't make any effort to let them know where this aid is coming from. We instead just give it directly to the governments. Governments that do little to dispel the hatred the terrorists are spreading of America.

That's foolish on our part.

Mr. Controles: It anguishes me to see your heartfelt sincerity coupled with your almost childish niavete. You dear person, the world wide terror organization is organized and funded by mostly middle-eastern Arab-Islamic nationstates and includes Russia as well as China. The terrorist agents are well trained and well financed and their stated purpose is to exterminate all infidels worldwide, not just enemy combattants, but women,children and innocent non-combattants.
This will insult you but all the "remedies" you point to wouldn't make one iota of difference in halting or altering terror.
I am going to cite three excellent credible sources for you to start your education process. Each of these has numerous objective factual references that you may investigate in detail.
Look into these sources and you will make immediate progress. But first you must suspend your disbelief and virtually every notion you presently now entertain on world events.
Do as I ask and you will be enlightened:
1.) Find author Victor Davis Hanson of National Review Online- Read all his editorials for the past 12 months.
2.) Obtain the book Networks and Netwars by John Arquilla et al. This is a publication of the National Research Institute and the RAND Corp.
3.) Go to Hugh Hewitt's online web log. WWW.HughHewitt.com ( He is networked with dozens of other online bright observers of world events and has links to all of them.)
You will come up the learning curve rapidly and I wish to witness your progress. Don't contact me until 60 days after you start. Do include your e-mail address in your reply...I will send you links after 60 days.
Good Luck.

So you're argueing that these terrorists hating has little if anything to do with the impoverishment of their people, and how we don't even seem to care abou this.

You're argueing that these terrorist organizations don't recruit poor people in poor arab countries who have little to nothing to fight for them.

You're argueing that these terrorist organizations don't get enormous shelter and support for their war against America from poor people all over the world who aren't helped by either our government or by their own.

Your childish naivete combined with your view of the world strictly in terms of black and white is what truly saddens me.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Islamic terrorists hate us because we are NOT PART OF ISLAM, not because we have color TV sets.

And I think if we gave aid marked FROM AMERICA in big red-white-and-blue letters to poor countries, some of that aid would go to nourish terrorists, who would then hate us not only because we are not part of Islam, but also because nobody likes to have their nose rubbed in the fact that they can't shift for themselves.

that's rather close minded and racist.

most islamic people don't hate everyone that's not a part of their religion.

they do hate america though, because it invades their countries, aids isreal in fighting palestine, and does nothing to help them.

if we actually did some good in the region, the poor islamic people that are targeted by islamic recruiters wouldn't hate us so much.

Dear Centroles: First no one is arguing anything. Old saying: Only fools argue facts. When you realize how much aid goes from the US to foriegn countries you will be ashamed for entertaining such a horrendously incorrect and uninformed opinion. Lord, each year we pour hundreds of millions into Palestine alone despite their monstrous record of slaughtering innocent Israelis. I have merely suggested a method for freeing yourself from the misery of pure ignorance. See the facts for yourself. Draw your own opinions and conclusions. Try reading the sources I have cited. Make your mind up independently. You have not one thing to risk in trying to inform yourself.

Yes only fools argue with facts. You claim that we already do too much for the world and I'm misinformed to think otherwise. So how do you argue with this?

As posted by IronLionZion

Interesting fact: According to a poll conducted by the University of Maryland, most Americans think we give 25% of the budget to foreign aid. The real figure is about 250 times less. A slight discrepancy, no?

The debate over how much foreign aid the United States should give - how much and if we "owe the world," in the words of one poster - represents a fundamental divide between Conservative and Liberal thought. Although we have no real obligation to help, I would submit that we have a ethical obligation to do so.

In reality we give only .1% percent of GNP to foreign aid. The generally agreed upon goal for industrialized nations is about .7%. In fact, the United States dedicates a lower percentage to foreign aid than any other industrialized nation on Earth. We give only about 10.9 billion dollars a year. To put this in perspective, the Netherlands, a relatively small nation with only about 5 million people, gives 3.2 billion - almost a third of what America contributes. We can find 87 billion to fight a war, but its nearly impossible to muster up 1 billion to fight AID's.

While we Americans harp about our own poor - which are a legitimate issue as well - 2 billion people around the world live in poverty everyday of their life, trapped in chronic malnourishment. Three billion live on less than two dollars a day. In Africa 2.3 million die every year of Aids; the infection rate continues to increase; the numbers of infected approaching 40% in some countries. This is simply unacceptable.

Some contend that the United States owes the world nothing. They say we are a benevolent and generous super-power. What we give, we give freely. We deserve more recognition and thankfulness. Africa should do more for itself. The world's unhappiness is its own fault.

I think that stance is retarded. When shaved to the bone, this philosophy is based on the premise that America is somehow entitled to its wealth - that we are prosperous because we are better, more ingenuitive, our ideas are superior. In reality, most of our prosperity is rooted in circumstances beyond our control (i.e. - the domesticability of plants and animals in the Fertile Crescent several thousand years ago), and Western civilizations willingness and skill in applying organized violence. We are no more entitled to our wealth than anybody else on this planet. That, I think, is the crux of the debate.

I would make an analogy: America is a man sitting at a grand table with a legendary feast arrayed before him. He is eating voraciously, and wasting incessantly. All around him, grouped under the table and on the sides, is a group of 23 other people. They are malnourished, living in abject poverty, uneducated, unemployed, many are dying of various ailments - Aids, TB, and Malaria. But, the man at the table doesn't feel obligated to feed them. The very idea is preposterous to him. Even though the man didn't gain his wealth through hard work, superior ingenuity, or some inherent goodness, he feels entitled. So, now and then, to boost his ego and keep his conscience intact, he tosses a few crumbs to the masses (about .1% of the feast, to be exact.) This is sufficient to convince himself that he is righteous, benevolent, altruistic.

The bottom line is that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world, and we are guilty in our insouciance. We give pathetically little. What we do give often comes with strings attached - destroying the illusion of altruism. The fact that we toss a few crumbs to the rabble does not make us good. When you are wastefully enjoying a feast of the magnitude that America is, tossing a few crumbs to the masses doesn't make you benevolent, it makes you a monster.

Not one word is supported by facts. Do a Google search on US Foriegn Aid. Find out what the facts are. This person is deliberately lying. Let's not contact each other for 60 days, as I originally stipulated.

So, now you're accusing both ZionLion and me of lying?

Why don't you want to contact each other for 60 days?

So that I can't prove that you're misinformed and argueing with facts?

Forget that.

As you suggested, I did a google search on US foreign aid.

http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp#Almostallrichnationsfailthisobligation


For someone who seems to be so adamant about facts and not argueing against them, you sure do a poor job of getting your facts straight.

Perhaps you should consider freeing yourself from the misery of ignorance.

This is a simplistic response, with little basis in reality.

I'm sure they would be just fine with us not being islamic, as long as we quit screwing up the economies of their countries big time.

Cycloptichorn

You are very naive. Do you not read the posts in your own thread?
Osama bin Laden published a manifesto some time after 9/11 explaining
his motives. One of his primary demands was that the West convert
completely to Islam. It was quoted in the newspapers. It reads, in part:

Brandon9000 Wrote:

It's a question of motivation.

There is little doubt in my mind that if the U.S. was not heavily involved in the economic and social disaster area that is the Middle East, we would not be targetted by terrorists from that region.

You see, the problem is that you don't think that the terrorists (and Bin Laden in particular) are smart. They are very smart. Do you think they actually expect white, middle class Americans to convert to Islam? Nope. Does it make a very political statement, as well as build strong ties with those on the extreme fringe of your religion by demanding this, those who help fill out the ranks of your armies (even though you know it will never happen)? Yes.

We are targetted by the terrorists because they believe our way of life, combined with our actions, is a major threat to their way of life. We haven't really done anything to disabuse them of this notion; a study of the foreign policies of the major 'western' nations in the region over the last eighty years or so shows just how much our oil imperialism has screwed their systems of society and government up.

And we don't seem to care, at all.

Of course the terrorists are wrong for doing what they do. They should be stopped. But, the original premise of this post was that we could do much, much more to stop the flow of terrorism by at least attempting to improve the lives of other people than we are currently doing. That would be the TRUE face of freedom and democracy - not bowing to demands, not reacting to attacks, but taking the steps neccessary to restore a sense of balance in the region to the people who live there.

Kudos, original poster. We need more people thinking about helping others.

Cycloptichorn

I guess we're just lucky that you can read bin Laden's mind and know that he doesn't really mean what he says.

It's called.... logical reasoning. You should try it.

Or at least try responding to some of my points, if you don't want to drop the debate.

Cycloptichorn

It's called guessing that someone doesn't "really" mean what he clearly states.


I have consistently responded to your points:

1. You said that the terrorists would be "just fine" with us not converting to Islam.
2. I responded by posting a well known quotation from the man behind 9/11
saying that one of this primary demands was that we convert to Islam.

If osama is so caught up on killing everyone who's not islamic solely for that reason, why did he accept our help against Russia. Why did he allow our nation and troops to aid him? Did he demand us to convert to islam then?

The reason that the people their hate us is because we used them and then screwed them over in the past, or atleast it seems to them like we did. The reason they hate us is because we never so much as lifted a finger to help the straving masses there. We only cared about what we wanted. What little aid we gave them, we gave them only if they do what we want them to, if they let in our companies into there country, if they let us take their oil for far cheaper than it is sold to the rest of the world. Did we care about how dictators intercepted this money to make themselves rich, build up and equip their militias in order to oppress them and build palaces upon palaces while their people were starving on the street. No, we actually helped these dictators. We didn't give a damn about stopping them unless the dictators threatend our oil interestes.

The poor people in those countries do have a reason to hate our government. This hardly justfies their terrorists murdering our people. I hope they pay for this with blood. But the people that are doing this are a small minority. Most of the people in these countries do nothing to hurt us even though we screwed them over and continue to do so. But the longer we sit around ignoring their plight, the more that will be recruited by these terrorists and the more of our people will die as well.

We need to continue this campaign of hunting donw and killing terrorists. But we should only start making amends for some of the harm we inflicted on the regular people there. We should give them aid, show that we are not evil. if we do, the hate for us will decrease, the number of people who are recrituted into these terroirst organizations will fall, more of the pople their might actually help us hunt down these terrorists.

When a politician (and make no mistake, Bin Laden is in many ways a political leader) makes claims that cannot have any realistic chance of suceeding (as I am sure any reasonable person agree, there is no realistic chance of America turning to Islaam for everyone) he is doing so in order to support an ideology, to gain support from others. It's not a guess. It is a shrewd political move by a man who knows what he is doing.

Now, how about my other points? About our actions which have led (directly or indirectly) to major problems in their area of the world? Do you think that they have nothing to do with OBL's hate for us, at all? More importantly, nothing to do with the hate shown by those who follow him?

Cycloptichorn

I am responding specifically to your assertion that it will be just fine with
them if we don't convert to Islam, by citing a quotation from the man
behind 9/11 demanding that we convert to Islam.

When we helped the Mujahadeen rebels fight the Soviet invaders, Osama
bin Laden was a much younger man and the ideology he has today may
not have been entirely formed yet. He was also not in charge. Anyway,
he accepted our help because he desperately needed help and we were
offering it.