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Originally Posted by DJ Happy
- I don't quite get what you're saying in your last point. My point is that the fundamentalists consider the Saudi ruling family an enemy as they have sold out Islam by inviting infidel troops to set up base on Islamic soil, and are also eroding Islamic values through their ruling of the country. The fact that the US supports these regimes is another source of hatred for the fundamentalists.
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What I'm saying is: If there was a democratic US-friendly government in one of those countries, instead of a depotic ruler, the US would support them. In fact, I think it's safe to say that the US would prefer democratic governments in the middle east. OTOH, the US has more need for oil than it has need for democracy in the middle east; hence the "US-friendly" part of the equation.
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Originally Posted by DJ Happy
Your last point seems to veer off on a tangent though. Why do you refer to all Arabs as hating the US, implying that the terrorists are actually Arab governments? You make it sound as though the whole of the Arab world sits around fantasising about the destruction of the US. That is just not the case and I think you know it.
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I did not say *all* Arabs hate the US, nor did I imply that the Arab governments are terrorists. <sup>*)</sup> I said that a lot of the hatred in the Arab world comes from jealousy. The Arabs naturally want to be important in the world, not just as suppliers of oil, but as a political and cultural force. That is totally acceptable to me. What is *not* acceptable is the way at least some Arabs (the terrorists) want to achieve this goal. Instead of building up their own strenght, they seem much more interested in destroying ours (and theirs in the process).
<sup>*)</sup> I do think a lot of them provide support, though. Maybe not openly, but certainly by looking the other way.
Just some questions: what was the last fundamental scientific breakthrough that emerged from the Arab world? Why doesn't any major news network pay attention to stock markets in the Arab world? When was the last time you saw "made in the middle east" on any of your consumer goods? Why does the middle east need *western* companies and experts to export their oil?
The answer is simple: the Arab world in general doesn't grow enough, they don't build enough, they don't invest enough in their own population, nor in education or science. Their economies are mostly driven by oil, and many people have pretty meaningless jobs, being paid for by their rulers. When the oil runs out, they'll still be a bunch of backwards third-world countries, and they'll lose what little "power" they have now.
Furthermore, if the fundamentalists get their way, the Arab world will be even worse off than it is today, in terms of scientific/economic terms. But instead of blaming themselves, and doing something positive about it, many Arabs seem very eager to blame the US and the West (and the Jews) for holding them back. And of course, if Arabs blame the west, their propaganda machine makes a lot of other Muslims support their point of view.