| spurgeonryan said: What are you thoughts? |
While America certainly has done its part in providing material for terrorist organisations to use in recruiting, its actions are merely catalytic in nature. The issue was already there, and America can only be blamed for a moderate fraction of the conditions that produced these organisations.
It's a lot like the recent attack in Paris - while the claim being made by the terrorists was that they were "avenging mohammed" for "offensive cartoons", it's not the real reason why they did it. They did it to foment disunity and anger towards Muslims. Why? Because if the West mistreats Muslims, then the terrorists have a great recruiting tool in the form of that mistreatment.
The terrorists want these things to increase the bigotry and racism, because it actually benefits them. America's actions in various cases simply provide more convenient recruiting tools.
Note that this isn't to say that America is blameless. American actions in various countries over the past century have set up the ripe conditions for recruitment. But blaming America for the attacks is like blaming a rape victim for wearing clothes that are "too revealing" (not that I'm equating America's actions with a woman wearing revealing clothing in any way, as the completion of the analogy will make clear) - there is no "motive" at all justifying rape (or terrorist attacks on civilians). Moving away from the analogy (the following makes no connection with the rape victim analogy), you might blame America for the circumstances, but the terrorists are to blame for their own actions - they are not being controlled by America (and the American government doesn't, despite what some people claim, gain any benefit from the terrorist activity, so any suggestion that America is orchestrating things is ludicrous - not to say that anyone specifically has suggested that within this discussion, but I wanted to be clear in case someone was tempted to suggest it).
Besides which, assignment of blame is counterproductive. We need to address the root causes, only a few of which can be connected to a particular person or group with "blame". Poverty is a highly complex problem that certainly drives extremism, and is one thing that we should be working hard to address. We also need to deal with misinformation being spread by a variety of sources.
You'll notice that I've avoided speaking specifically about "Islamic terrorism" with the specific exception of where I was discussing the Paris bombing (which I did for the purposes of illustration of the point). There's good reason for this - so many people think that Islam is the source of most terrorist activity in the world, and that it's aimed at the West. It's just not true. The majority of victims of terrorist activity are Muslim (ISIS is just one example of this). Only something like 1% of all terrorist acts in Europe are committed by Muslims, and around 6% in America (which is less than the number of Jewish terrorist attacks that happen in America, at 7%). Far more of the terrorist activity that hits the west is more political than religious - separatists (such as the Basque separatist movement in Spain, who are vastly predominantly Christian, and for whom Christianity isn't a major factor) are a common form, as are extreme left- or right-wing nutjobs (the only religiously-motivated terrorist attack here in Australia was by a christian anti-abortionist - the recent Sydney siege wasn't religious, despite the Islamic flag thing).
America should certainly learn from past mistakes, and address their role in creating the circumstances in a way that doesn't just exacerbate the problem... but the world shouldn't blame America for the attacks.
