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Originally Posted by GenuineRisk
Rupert, interesting stuff and I'll get back to it- but I have to go to work (bleah) and then to "Evil Dead, the Musical" (yay!). I'll check in tomorrow. Hey, go watch my short film, would you, please, if you have the time? (Link on the esoteric board)
Just didn't want you to think I was blowing off your post.  |
Let's just pretend that tomorrow we gave in to Bin Laden. We said, "Osama, we don't want to fight with you any more. We don't want any more terrorist attacks, so just tell us what you want us to do and we will do it."
He'd probably tell us to get out of Saudi Arabia and probably tell us to get out of the Middle East entirely. He'd tell us to stop supporting Israel. So let's just say that we did everything that he wanted. Do you think that he would retire from being a terrorist? I don't think so. He'd probably leave us alone for now and he would find another target. He'd probably try to overthrow the Saudi government. He'd be blowing things up all over the place in Saudi Arabia. He'd probably try to do the same thing in Egypt. Let's say that he was successful and he overthrew those governments. Do you think he would stop there? I don't think there is any chance that he would stop there. Even if he conqured the entire Middle East, I don't think he would stop there. He'd find someone else to wage jihad on. The West would probably be his next target.
Anyway, none of that is going to happen. But the point is that a terrorist like Bin Laden is going to keep being a terrorist. He will always have a new target to go after. And if you are his target, you need to do what he says or else he will terrorize you.
Bin Laden is an individual citizen with a group of followers. He is not a country. His group carries out bombings in all different countries. He has no right to try to impose his will through violence on all different countries. If I got a group of a few thousand followers, I would have no right to start bombing targets here or any other country.
I think it is a mistake to want to blame the victims in any way. I am not saying that it is not important to figure out why the terrorists are mad at us. It is important to know why they are attacking us. But just because they have what they believe is a reason to attack us, it doesn't mean that the attack is justified in any way.