DelayedReaction

I'm sure most of you are aware of the fact that Iraq was handed sovereignty today, and a high-ranking member of Al-Qaeda surrendered to the Saudi's amnesty program.

I think these are great signs of things to come. We have lived in very dark times since 9/11; perhaps this is the first glimpse of us seeing the light of a new day? I'm not suggesting that one individual accepting amnesty is indicative of the world changing, but I can't help but hope for it.

Iraq is now a sovereign nation, and a peaceful method has produced results in the war against terror. Do you guys think this may be a positive sign for tommorrow, or are we still too far in the dark?

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RAGEAngel9

Well I do think you're a little too optimistic. However, I agree both of things are good signs. It's we are not anywhere near the home stretch.

james t kirk

I don't think the terrorists are going to give a Rat's ass who is officially in charge in Iraq as long as there are 100,000 plus US soldiers in Iraq.

Everybody knows that the US military is not going to start taking orders from the Iraqi governing council.

Expect more (and worse) of the same to continue (unfortunately).

wonderwench

I think this is a decent step in the right direction, but the war against terror is far from over.

Hwed

Terrorists aren't upset about American soldiers in Iraq. Terrorists are upset because a free and stable Iraq represents one less hiding place, one less training ground, one less source of funding for their twisted and zealous beliefs.

hammer4all

No, you are wrong. There are reasons behind their call to arms and it is not because they are intrinsically "evil" and "hate our freedoms." They didn't just wake up one day and decide "hey, let's attack America because that would be fun!" That is only government spin and propaganda.

Osama Bin Laden will tell you exactly why they're attacking us and as long as their legitimate grievances are ignored, this so called "war on terror" will probably never end and the cycle of violence will continue.

see: May 1998 Osama Bin Laden Interview and The New War Against Terror

kutulu

As long as a govt that is friendly to US ideals and business interests is in power in Iraq, the terrorists will be pissed.

That interview is enlightening. People say a lot about AQ and Osama but they are a very effective organization and Osama is a brilliant person.

His methods are terrible but he does have some legitimate reasons to be angry with us. Where he fails is when he attacks innocent civilians but from his POV, our soldiers and allies kill plenty of innocents and call it "collateral damage" If he were to keep his attacks to military targets I could even respect him somewhat.

wonderwench

Then how do you explain the 1993 WTC bombing, the embassy bombings, the USS Cole and 9/11? These were all prior to the war to liberate Iraq.

hammer4all

Yes, the U.S., along with other western powers, has been supporting repressive regimes in the Middle East for quite a while...

wonderwench

So your response is to blame the victims?

If the rationale were really that we supported repressive regimes, then the terrorists should be jumping for joy that we have liberated Iraq.

Zeld2.0

It's not blaming the victims, it's blaming previous actions that set up those things in the first place...

Muslim extremists were long fighting against the Soviets for example and we supplied them - of course, that came back and hurt us

They just have different reasons now and the Iraq war makes it easier

wonderwench

Muslim extremists are going to use anything we do as an excuse to attack us. Our very existence is an affront to their belief system.

Zeld2.0

I still don't see how it's blaming the victim when in this case, we were largely responsible for funding and aiding those groups against the Soviets and Iran which are now against us.

And if only it were as simple as our life style being an affront to their beliefs. It's not, however. No one is simply born there and suddenly believes that we are threatening their existence. It is usually when they see it or hear it that they get those ideas.

wonderwench

The war against Western Civilization has been centuries in the making.

I refer you to the following commentary on the True Source of Islamic Terrorism:

When violent, fanatical Muslims observe current events, they see a religion in recession culturally, economically, technologically, and militarily, and this brings shame, a strong cultural value in the Arab world and beyond. This historical fact of decline creates cognitive dissonance, because history is not consistent with their belief in the narrowly-defined theological truth: that God endorses only Islam and its civilization. We all sense that the terrorists follow some form of logic with their atrocities, though we may not be able to put our finger on it.

Ultimately, though, the trigger is theological. Communists in China and the old Soviet Union surely experienced cognitive dissonance as they observed Western dominance, economically and technologically. The Chinese also place a strong value on saving face. But neither of the two regimes, nor a nefarious communist organization operating in the US, ever crashed jets into American buildings. Instead, they (and we) embarked on fifty years of the (mostly nonviolent) Cold War. Something is at work that we have not seen before.

The communists were missing the theological factor that the current Islamic terrorists have. Therefore, realizing this, perhaps we will take effective action and avoid passivity.

Like Christianity and Buddhism, Islam has thrived historically as a “universalizing” religion in four major stages as it pertains to East-West relations. In the first stage, the days of Muhammad, the new Muslims expanded into the Arabian Peninsula, whether by proclamation, diplomacy or outright conquest. For example, in 624, they defeated a much-larger Meccan army in the Battle of Badr, which Muhammad oversaw.

This early expansion fixed the genetic code for the rest of Islam, which is important because it set up expectations that would eventually be disappointed. In contrast, the founders of Christianity and Buddhism endorsed the spread of their religion or philosophy, but only by proclamation, never by the sword. But Islam, it seems, applied the sword to their incipient theology of spreading the word or expanding politically.

Second, during the Umayyad Dynasty (661-750), the Muslims expanded into Egypt, Libya, Syria (with its capital in Damascus), and all the way east into Iraq, Persia, and Afghanistan. They also expanded into Spain and France, but were stopped at the Battle of Poitiers (732), so they retreated and flourished in Spain. The early genetic code was thus reinforced.

Third, during the Abbasid Dynasty (750-1258), the ascendant Muslims moved their capital to Baghdad, solidified control over their vast empire, and allowed other dynasties to grow in Islamic lands, which were careful to respect the Caliphate in Baghdad. The Abbasids witnessed the flowering of their culture into the Golden Age: superior medicine and science (Al-Kindi, Al-Razi and Al-Biruni), superb architecture and urban development (e.g. Granada), advanced philosophy and theology (Avicenna, Al-Ghazali, and Averroes), and great literature (A Thousand and One Nights and the mystic Rumi’s poetry) and historiography (Ibn Khaldûn’s The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History). Clearly, God has endorsed Islam as it grew by proclamation, cultural development, trade, and the sword.

Finally, the Turks, migrating south, eventually set up rule in Asia Minor (Turkey) under Seljuq after the fall of Manzikert (1071). Mehmed the Conqueror (reigned 1451-81) sacked Constantinople in 1453, consolidating his power because he overthrew his last rival, Byzantine Christianity. The Ottoman Empire (1258-1918), using that formerly Christian city as a launching pad into Europe, carried on the expansionist tradition with incursions into the Balkans, Austria and Hungary, and as far north as the Ukraine.

For example, in the Battle of Mohacs, the Turks overran the Hungarians (1526), which opened the door to the siege of Vienna (1529), though they failed to sack the city. However, they were still strong enough to besiege Vienna again (1683), though unsuccessfully, and to control the Balkans and force the inhabitants to convert. Much of the Islamic presence in the Balkans today dates back to these conversions. Thus, when Muhammad set the genetic code for expansion, he bred into the Qur’an and his early successors the notion that not only does God favor the new religion, which completes the two inferior religions, Judaism and Christianity, but He also oversees its expansion.

Psychological expectations today, which are rooted in past military success and subsequent cultural hegemony, blend with theology and the cultural value of honor (the opposite of shame), linked by logic that is clear. If God endorses Islam, the truth, and its expansion by His sovereignty and compassion into non-Muslim lands in order to show God’s will (shari’ah) to pagans and people of the Book (Jews and Christians, then it should be able to expand endlessly and cover the whole world with His truth.

God does indeed endorse it, according to received theology; therefore, the rest follows logically (the consequent necessarily obtains) -- ole fashioned modus ponens (affirming the antecedent):
1. If A (antecedent), then B (consequent).
2. A (the antecedent is affirmed).
3. Therefore, B (the consequent follows necessarily).
Such must be the psychological expectation of observant, concerned Muslims who care about Islam’s spread, and especially of fanatical Muslims. Thus, theology and logic worked harmoniously, so Muslims did not experience cognitive dissonance or shame—in the distant past.

However, Islam did not expand endlessly. As usual in history, what goes up must come down (or, more accurately, what expands sometimes contracts). History does not always follow the laws of logic and abstract theology. Thus, in 1492 the Spanish pushed out the Muslims, except in Granada, though they too were removed in 1609. (Al-Qaeda refers to this event in 1492 as the “Andalusian tragedy,” the Arabic word for Spain.)

In 1686, the Ottomans lost half of Hungary, and in early 1699, the Holy League, formed by the Pope, after defeating the Ottomans a few years earlier, forced the Muslims to cede vast territory in Europe. More examples could be cited, demonstrating the contraction of Islamic civilization in the last two or three hundred years before the Twentieth Century. The contraction is painfully continuing now, with the rise of the US in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries.

So the retreats continue to the present. During WWI the Ottomans chose the wrong side, so the Allies dissolved the Ottoman Empire and took possession of the Middle East: Syria and Lebanon for France, and Palestine, Trans-Jordan and Iraq for Great Britain. (Usama bin Laden refers to this as a “great humiliation.”)

Finally, in 1924 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a young army officer, led a revolution and dragged Turkey into the modern era by building a wall of separation between mosque and state, establishing a secular state and closing the book of Islamic law, shari’ah in its excessive forms, in a traditional Islamic land. Besides these political defeats, Islamic lands have not developed culturally, economically or technologically vis-à-vis the West, especially the US, which is a claim so obvious that it does not need any elaboration. The inference from all of these data is not far to seek: a religion and its subsequent civilization, both endorsed by God, does not go forward by going backwards. The infidels are surpassing the true believers.

Consequently, history in the last three or so hundred years teaches not-B, so the old, positive logic must give way to a new, negative one. Briefly, the new logic says that if God endorses Islam, then it should expand endlessly. However, it is not expanding endlessly, but receding in the face of the expansion of the West, the “Christian” lands. The new conclusion must be terrifying to violent fanatics, but it is they who have initiated belief in the first two premises. The conclusion: therefore, God does not endorse Islam. This is known as modus tollens (denying the consequent):
1. If A, then B.
2. Not-B (the consequent is denied).
3. Therefore, not-A (the antecedent is also denied).

For fanatical Muslims, the internal (psychological expectations) and the external (historical reality) are in conflict. Therefore, they are experiencing cognitive (religious) dissonance as they work out the simple, terrifying logic. Moreover, whereas Westerners may experience merely dissonance, it seems that in vast areas of Islamic culture, dissonance runs more deeply than an uncomfortable mental state; it intensifies to social shame and loss of honor. Even the “average” Muslim, the so-called “man on the street,” who has been interviewed in print or on television often in the first half of 2004, constantly refers to the (mostly US) occupation in Iraq as “humiliation.”

Basic psychology says that a subject experiencing cognitive dissonance (and presumably shame) may do the following: (1) alter one of the dissonant cognitions; (2) reduce the importance of one of the dissonance; or (3) add new information that reconciles the dissonance. So how may Muslims grapple with these defeats and retreats?

The vast majority, living in distant and diverse regions like Indonesia and Turkey and all points north and south, seem to adopt the second strategy. They simply do not experience the conflict of expectations and reality because they do not have the high expectation of equating expansion with God’s endorsement in the first place. They do not connect history and theology: Muhammad’s early success, the thousand-year ascendancy (mixed in with retreats), the recent steady decline (without victories mixed in), and God’s will to further Islam (theology). They reduce stress by ignoring the importance of the dissonance or the dissonance altogether and the shame as well.

Also, a vast number add new information, the third strategy. It is still widely believed that “the Jews” instigated the plot to smash jets into buildings. The alleged evidence? No Jews supposedly went to work on 9/11 in the two Trade Towers. Or, the Ayatollah Khomeini and others like him believe Satan is currently backing the rise of the West, so true believers must revive the true religion in Islamic lands to resist Satan, the “Whisperer” or Seducer, typically embodied in America, the “Great Satan.”

Recently I heard a Muslim preacher on a university campus lamenting how Islamic civilization has declined because “we got corrupt, my Muslims.” He then said, with a slight tone of anticipation (glee?), that the West too will collapse due to corruption. His logic was also clear: If a civilization becomes corrupt, it will decline. Islamic civilization became corrupt; therefore, it declined. However, this logic, though technically valid, is unsound because it overlooks the reality that all civilizations are corrupt to some degree, and many civilizations, e.g. ancient Egypt or Rome, lasted many centuries and declined due to numerous additional factors. Be that as it may, these Muslims explain away or reconcile the dissonance by adding in hidden evidence or another side of theology, the problem of evil—Satan and moral corruption.

But most importantly, it seems a large number take action in order to alter one of the dissonant cognitions (and subsequent shame), that is, the first strategy. The moderates—far too few—seek to interpret old data, such as the meaning of jihad: exclusively an inner struggle, not also a military war against non-Muslims. I heard an imam tell a group of non-Muslim students that jihad means only inner struggle. Then he gestured sharply with one hand: “there is no other meaning, nothing else.” Or the moderates softly interpret passages that state Muslims must thoroughly conquer non-Muslims, even People of the Book: they may urge dhimmitude instead of elimination (Qur’an 9:29, 73, and 123). The harsher interpretation of these verses and others like them and the excesses in the Hadith are passed over quietly.

In contrast, the fanatics join together as militants to curb by terror and violence the decline of Islamic civilization and the inverse expansion of Western civilization, removing or altering the not-B, the negation, the psychological dissonance. They seek to curb the cultural shame they feel and blend their efforts with a deadly theology: the cult of death, martyrdom. If one dies in battle against an infidel (especially a Jew), he achieves high and instant status in the afterlife. This is clearly the strategy and belief of Usama and al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, like Hamas, in the past twenty years, culminating in 9/11.

Western governments have zeroed in on the economic and social backgrounds of the terrorists, and perhaps even the psychological dissonance and cultural shame, as has been done in this article, but they have not adequately addressed the theological component to Islamic terror that drives the other factors and the logic that binds all of them together. This is understandable, since Western leaders do not want to invoke the Medieval image of the Crusades -- politely overlooking the brute fact that Islam has been expansionist as well.

However understandable it may be for governments to avert their gaze from the religious component, it does not get us very far in understanding the militants. But a true understanding is crucial because countless Westerners, especially intellectuals, believe that only philosophic materialism provides the necessary insight into the sources of terrorism. If society over “there” improves materially, then terrorism will stop. This may be true for some future, would-be terrorists, but not for the fanatics who have already embarked. Many hijackers on 9/11 came from wealthy or middle class families and were Western educated. Therefore, the standard materialist interpretation of the historical and psychological facts must ultimately yield to the non-material, the theological.

Clarity brings resolve: first, more Westerners must understand the one deep motive of the violent fanatics. Second, in order to teach them that their theology is twisted and that God is not on their side, more Westerners must therefore join the fight to eliminate them before the terrorists eliminate or paralyze Westerners over the next several decades.

Zeld2.0

There is no doubt the war between East and West has been going on for centuries. That is obviously why there is even this reference to east vs. west.

However, there is little difference between the two sides in the end where neither side would believe the other.

And TBH i'm not of any religion so it just doesn't tingle many like it might to others.

I'm in the "who cares?" pile when it comes to this ideological stuff. The better question is why target us when other Western countries are out there and more vulnerable? Fact is, we've let ourselves become the juicier target for our involvement in the Middle East.

Iraq only makes it easier for them to create a focal point for their actions.

Indeed, I think it would have made much more sense to continue hutning down terrorists where they are. Instead, this year's report has terrorism on a rise again.

hammer4all

I not sure how I'm "[blaming] the victims." Bin Laden argues that they are in fact the victims.

See, we have not liberated Iraq. We have taken it over. That is how they see it. The government that we supposedly handed "sovereignty" over to is made up of unelected representatives appointed by us. That is why they have no support. Hell, the new Iraqi Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, is ex-Baathist with ties to the CIA. This is just a puppet government that will do whatever we tell it to do.

Tomservo

Hwed- Read the text of bin Laden's radio addresses. He most certainly IS concerned with Westerners in the Arab world- he's pissed off that we won't get out of Saudi Arabia. He may not give a flying leap about Iraq, but to imply our being there doesn't ruffle feathers, you show that you're not well informed of al Queda's stance on the issue.

tecoyah

Okay........

Hows this.
We , the United States, are THE superpower in the world. Our country is christian based, and our current administration is almost Fundy. We are attempting to direct the course of an area (the middle east) that is predominantly Non-Christian, and in essence tell them what to do, and when to do it. 'Ya think this is gonna go over well, No it is not.
Now, you have an entire group of people, with no usable military might, pissed off at goliath. What are the options for these people, those who are capable, and pissed enough will do whatever they can to get back at what they percieve as a series of aggressive actions(which they actually are). Well, they cant send in the bombers if they don't own any, so they make bombers out of whatever they do own, humans minds.
In many ways, we have created this nightmare with decades of ignorant foreign policy, and corrupt nation building. I only hope we will someday, learn our lessons, and get the hell out of places we don't belong.

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cosmoknight

I think you have to look at the reason for so many of these arab states are angry and I don't think its western involvment. The easy answer is to say it because we are over there but hardly in every country. One has to only look at some of the conditions that exist in those countries to understand why the population is upset.

No other region has such a vast divide between dirt poor and super ultra rich. Many want wealth distribution in the US but turn a blind eye towards arab countries still ruled by royalty with little freedoms for the average citizen. These dictators and princes funnel a few dollors to the masses in forms of propaganda and weapons rather than social reform. Its better to keep them focused outward than inward.

Bin Laden is mentioned as one of these angry at the west. In reality he is angry at the Saudi royal family who he wants to replace with more than likely himself. His parents were rich and I doubt he is doing things for the common good or else he would try and over throw all the repressive regimes in the Middle East. His terrorism has no more lofty goal than to place him as leader of greater Arabia. The world around is changing and one can't simply pick and choose between modern ideals. People have to be free in order to progress and he represents those who want nothing more than to return to the 14th century. Unfortunately for him with satellite news and the internet his ideals are slowly being eroded so he has to lash out in a losing battle. I see him as someone simply scared of change and afraid of losing his social standing. The west represents freedom and that is something someone so wrapped up in a single religion can't tolerate or understand.

Moobie

Unfortunately terrorism is never going end. As long as there is someone who feels disenfranchised by the system terrorism will be a viable option. We may eradicate Al-Qaeda in name and we may destroy their operating structure. But there will always be people willing to kill others in order to further their views.

It's the stability of the rest of the world that has given rise to terrorism. Most of the world is controlled by large fairly powerful governments. And very few of those governments are willing to go to war with each other. Because we all rely on each other.

Those that are outside of these economies and governments are the ones that are using terror as their weapons, because as tecoyah said that the most effective weapon that they have. As long as there are those who feel oppressed/angry at those who have what they do not, or until we can get people to tolerate the intolerable there's always somebody who's gonna kill innocents to further their cause.

Terrorism is a natural part of the evolution of warfare. From attacking each other with swords and spears on the battle field, to firing muskets at each other in ranks, to guerrilla fighting in the jungles, to terrorizing non-military targets, because one man cannot fight a tank effectively.

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