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akuma587 on 17 October 2008
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Kasz216 said:
akuma587 said:
Kasz216 said:

Eh I'm going to have to ask for a source on that one.  Aside from which... he was a terrorist when he was fighting with the US too.

He was really just pissed the US stole his oppurtunity to get in big and gain influence in the government.

The US was an easy target to bolster recruits when his failing terrorist cell was falling apart and needed a new influx of troops.

He doesn't hate America.(not anymore then the rest of the non islamists anyway)  He's an opurtunist.

Fair enough, I can't really find any information that he received money directly from America.  He did receive a lot money from the Saudis though, who the US supported.

But the argument I was making doesn't need the Osama bin Laden connection.  People who put a face on terrorism really misunderstand the roots of terrorism.  Its the concept of Western interventionism that really upset people, and turned people who would otherwise be law-abiding citizens into terrorists.  It pisses people off when they feel like their rights are being trampled on.

A great parallel example is the US after the French and Indian War.  The British literally came over to fight the war for us and won the war for us.  They saved our ass!  But what did we do?  They left troops on our soil so that future attacks would not occur, and this really pissed us off.  And this was even without any kind of religious our larger ideological debate between the cultures.  We were even technically their own colony, so it was totally normal for them to station troops on our land.

Leaving troops on foreign soil generally pisses those people off even if the intentions were good, which is why military force is really an ineffective way to bridge gaps between different countries and different cultures.

 

One Osama Bin Laden wasn't pissed we stayed there.  He was pissed we were there in the first place. Even if you take him at face value and he wasn't just pissed America upstaged him by giving Saudi Arabia better help...

He didn't think non islamic troops should be alowed in the holiest cities of Islam... ever period.  He was pissed he didn't get picked because he thought it was a sin that we were in those cities at all.

Also, we weren't pissed British Troops stayed there.  We were pissed they stayed there... and they robbed and stole and forced there ways into peoples homes.

The Us funded their troops.  The US troops didn't barge their way into random Saudi Arabians homes and said "Your required to support us now... and give us your good rooms.  With no compensation."

 

But we did kill civilians whether or not it was intentional.  Even if it wasn't intentional, is that any better than taking away people's property/invading their homes?  War creates too many unpredictable contingencies, and is an ineffective way to build lasting relationships between people and cultures.

I agree that Osama bin Laden is cooky and an opportunist, but Osama bin Laden could not have existed without regular people who were convinced by his words based on their own life experiences.  These people are the ones who give people like Osama bin Laden power because they are frustrated with the interventionism of Western culture.

 



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson