After All We’ve Done For Them, Why Do They Hate Us?

A follow up, answer, another viewpoint…

The title is somewhat rhetorical. Hate–in its undiluted, culturally-disseminated form has only one reason–the perpetuation of local power–for the individual, the power to insist that he/she is right and refuses to countenance criticism, implicit or otherwise; for the state, the power to maintain power in the face of outside insistence on change. . If those against whom the hatred is directed are unfortunate enough not to see how they play into it, then the issue becomes complicated. What we now see in the Middle East and many other parts of the world is a hatred based on local potentates (single rulers, committees, vested interests, or cultural hegemons) desire, need, hunger to maintain a privileged position in their section of the world, something that became more and more untenable int he aftermath of World War ll.

Can that really be? After the decades of beating ourselves (namely, the West, which includes Europe, North America, and certain isolated pockets here and there and may now, paradoxically, include Japan, but certainly includes Australia, and may in time include India…) for our “responsibilities” in causing global problems (such self-recrimination soundly based on the legacies of a colonialist past), maybe it’s time to revisit some of that surplus self-loathing and see where the responsibilities actually lie.

The current exacerbating events of the current mess are all from the same source–the end of the second world war and the onset of the Cold War. Lest we forget, WW ll was …

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Scrambled Eggs Benedict

This will be short.  Seems the Pope has gotten into a bit of controversy because of a couple of ill-conveived remarks he made about Islam.  Now, like most people, he probably meant Those Bad Ones Over There, who wear bombs and kill people in order to get into heaven.  But…

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Why do they hate us? We still don’t care.

Shortly after 9/11, we asked why “they hate us.”  We still haven’t considered who “they” are, much less "why" "they" allegedly hate us.  At Alternet, Matt Taibbi has posted a sharp criticism of America's refusal to take this question seriously. Taibbi correctly notes that America versus the World (similarly consider American versus…

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The War of Terror vs. the War on Drugs

It appears that the War on Terror is shaping up to be as decisive, efficient and effective as the War on Drugs: “Mission Accomplished since 1933”. The enemy is hard to define, hard to detect, and there is no exit strategy (see bureaucracies, below) in the unlikely case of a declared win.Terror is a state of mind, a reaction to extreme and unexpected negative events. Those Saudis who attacked on 9/11/01 (using materials and training acquired in the U.S.) set off a chain of events that is turning our country into a Police State. This is a win for them.

Here are some signs of a gathering Police State.

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A 9/11 message for President Bush

Dear Mr. President:

Five years ago, you told us you would “bring to justice” the perpetrators of 9/11.  Yet today, five years later, the man who is undisputed to have caused the 9/11 attack — Osama bin Laden — remains at large.  Instead of making it your mission — and that of the U.S. military — to capture or kill bin Laden, you have wasted America’s resources — and your own — on a wild goose chase in Iraq.  In the process, you have needlessly killed or maimed (both physically and emotionally) hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims.  We must assume that some of these people — or their spouses, parents, children, friends, etc. — will harbor extreme hatred toward America for this loss. 

Indeed, we should not think otherwise given our own extreme reaction to the 9/11 attack.  We must also assume that some of these angry people will, in some way, at some point in their lives, support violence against America.  Whether it is by strapping a bomb to their chest and blowing up a street market, or merely providing a safe house to someone who does, we cannot tell.  But we do know, for certain, that violence begets violence, especially when the violence is perceived as unjust — which is exactly how your invasion of Iraq and many other misguided policies are perceived. 

The Bible tells us to love our enemies.  This probably does not mean bombing their families and neighbors, perhaps because doing so merely creates …

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