Hi, Karen
That's one of the things I most like about Americans and prevent me from
anti-Americanism: the average American deals with serious intl politics as
if you were talking about the Osbournes' relationship with their
neighborhood! No one that naive can be so bad! :-)
Ok, the connection between sociopath behavior and buying political
propaganda is historically clear (the nazi and stalinism are recent
examples). In Latin America, we have "Liberation Theology", which is a
pro-communist interpretation of the Gospels by Catholic theologians that
supported guerrillas back in the 60's/70's. Its influence has faded away
since the 70's, but it's still the only kind of "religion" leftist ( or
"liberal", in the US) college students can put up with, if any.
Al Qaeda members are young college students from Muslim countries with
exactly the same profile: they've embraced a non-traditional interpretation
of Islam, with the difference that in Eastern countries they (still?) don't
have this all-pervasive skepticism we have nowadays (do you know of many
Christians who would die for their faith today?).
Just don't think they're pychopath rebels without a cause: Bin Laden and the
other leaders have an AGENDA, even if the other members vary in terms of how
well informed they are of the big picture. It's definitely NOT
loosely-organized. All leftist guerrilla-like organizations have always been
slippery, but not amateur.
They ARE attacking the US because (in capital letters so that you never
forget that. I know it's gonna hurt, but...) THE WORLD DOESN'T LIKE
AMERICANS. Why's that? Of course you're angels (who is?), but you're
obviously the scapegoat for everything wrong in the world. If you do
business with African countries, you're exploiting them. If not, you're
letting them die. You won't let the IMF lend us Brazilians some billions of
dollars, you're destroying our economy. You change your mind, you're
increasing our external debt. Without your help, Western European countries
wouldn't have gotten rid of Hitler and would be like its Eastern counterpart
nowadays, but MacDonald's restaurants are vandalized by farmers in France if
their government refuses to subsidize them. No matter what you do, you're
wrong, and the wrong things you (or better, your representatives) do are
manipulated to confirm the general impression.
When I stayed in a youth hostel in Hong Kong, another Brazilian guy I met
there told me to disguise my American-like accent when I spoke English or
the European guests would treat me as terribly as they had treated the
American guys who had stayed there the previous week. And that was about 10
years ago!
That's sheer envy, I'm sure, but, Mike, "you're either with us or against
us" doesn't help much!
Caio
>I don't accept this argument. To say that the 9/11 attacks were attacks on
anything other than buildings, planes, and the people in them - i.e., to
say that they were attacks on America - is to grant a legitimacy to Al
Quaeda that it simply does not have. Al Quaeda is a loosely-organized
group of individual psychopaths. They are murderers, vandals, and
hijackers. As such, they are able to murder, vandalise, and hijack planes.
They are NOT able to attack nation-states, or to declare war. They are NOT
legitimate national entities, and as such, their acts were and will always
be the acts of groups of individual criminals, that can only target
individual victims - collective, admittedly, but still individual victims.
Karen Mercedes
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