Posted on 01/18/2004 1:47:22 PM PST by MosesKnows
I have asked this question since 9/11 without receiving an answer that agreed with my assessment. This is not unexpected but what is needed to help resolve and hone my opinion is not available. What is needed is a reference but no reference exists. The correct reference in this case would be the Conclusions of the Official United States Government Investigation of the 9/11 Attack or some such title.
Let me be clear about the question. The question is not asking how America was attacked, or when, or where, or even who. I believe these questions already have answers. How it was done was by hi-jacking commercial airliners and flying them into buildings. When it was done was September 11, 2001. Where it was done was New York City and the Pentagon. Who did it were Muslim extremist. The question remains; why was America attacked? The answer is not intended to rationalize any events. What makes the answer to the question important is that the attack led to the first unprovoked invasion of another nation by America. Surely, that event is worthy of an official government investigation.
My attempt at answering this question does not have the access to the information and sources that the Untied States government has. However, since the government has not taken an official decision my opinion will have to satisfy me until something more informed is offered. I tried to start with the few things that can taken as fact.
Fact! Islam is a monotheistic religion characterized by the doctrine of total submission to the will of God.
Fact! A Muslim is a person who is a believer in or adherent of Islam.
Fact! A Muslim’s jihad is his inner struggle to maintain his submission to God in spite of the negative influences he is exposed to.
Fact! A fatwa is a legal opinion or ruling issued by an Islamic scholar.
Fact! There are Muslims who persuade others to sacrifice their life to bring harm to America.
Fact! There are Muslims who could be persuaded to sacrifice their life.
Fact! These people are called Muslim extremists.
How could a Muslim be persuaded to give his life? Well, I can think of several ways. Let’s consider the choices offered a diseased Muslim man with three months left to live. The first choice is to strap on a bomb and comitt suicide in which case his family will receive a handsome sum of money. The second choice is to spend his last few weeks of life lying in a bed begging for pain killers as his organs begin to fail one by one and the finishing effects of dehydration set in. Another way would simply tell a Muslim to do it or their family will be harmed. Then there will be those Muslims who see it as their obligation to step forward. In any case, it can be shown that there are ways to recruit people and persuade them that there are causes greater than their life.
What is the cause?
Why do some Muslims have an agenda that require the services of persons willing to die? Did Osma bin Laden say the reason America was attacked was because he wanted America removed from Saudi Arabia?
Osama bin Laden’s fatwa entitled "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places” was first published in Al Quds Al Arabi, a London-based newspaper, in August 1996. After reading that document it became clear why Osama bin Laden would take some of the actions he has taken. It also became clearer why Muslims could be recruited to take action in his cause. It also went a long way to understanding why many Muslims may admire him but are not terrorist.
It may be well to explain something about critical thinking by carefully pondering the wisdom of Aristotle who remarked that an educated mind is able to entertain a thought without accepting it. I bother to mention this because in so many discussions I see people assuming that the only way a person could see things from another point of view is to have adopted that point of view. I disagree with that premise.
Here is what I see so far. Osama bin Laden opposes the influence of the modern western culture on Muslims. He sees the modern western culture as a powerful negative influence on Muslims that makes their jihad, their struggle, more difficult. We should not be surprised about the power of negative influences, after all, we couldn’t resist them either. My guess is that Osama bin Laden recognizes the strong attraction people have for the modern western culture and realizes that Muslims will eventually succumb.
How would a Muslim reconcile his terrorist acts with the principles of Islam? It requires but a small adjustment in his thinking to accommodate terrorism in the name of a religion. This concept existed long before Islam. A Muslim need merely strive for his jihad to expand beyond just resisting the negative influences but carrying with it an obligation to destroy the negative influences. What is for most Muslims an inner struggle now becomes for a few Muslims a holy war against infidels.
My conclusion why America was attacked was the Muslim extremist’s desire to remove America’s influence from the Islamic nations. I do not believe that Muslim extremist have plans to take over the world. With each attack, America showed great weakness and little resolve thereby encouraging the terrorist to become bolder.
At this point in time, I would hope the primary objective in the war on terrorism is to create fewer terrorists than it eliminates.
Something I had found interesting was an American soldier's question to the first Iraqi he encountered. The soldier asked what America's arrival in Iraq meant to him. His three word attempt at an english word answer was "Freedom, Whiskey, Sexy"
They want to destroy us because it's easier to try to tear down the target of your jealousy than it is to raise yourself to his level of success.
To get an answer to the excellent question you raise, one has to go back approx. 250 years to a remote desert corner of a territory of the Ottoman Empire called Arabia. There, around the middle of the 18th century, an influential tribal leader named Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdul Wahhab formulated a unique view on contemporary Islam, which saw the Ottoman sultans as corrupt, Westernized backsliders who were moving away from the purity of Mohammed's teachings.
Initially, his teachings were seen as heresy, rejected and even banned by the Ottomans, but his influence grew over time. The sect he founded came to be known after him as Wahhabism. Its early manifestation was of a terrorist nature, attacking innocent Muslim pilgrims and other travellers to Arabia. Fortunately, the Ottoman Empire, even in its decrepitude, was able to stop this menace from spreading outside Arabia.
But his teachings attracted numerous followers inside Arabia, and with the eventual ascension of the al-Saud dynasty in post WWI Arabia, and the subsequent discovery of oil, Wahhabism had large resources at its disposal.
OBL is simply following the philosophy of Abdul Wahhab, which abhors modernity and Western influence, which it regards as corrupting, and pines for a return to the early days of Islam, when brutal conquest helped spread the word of Mohammed.
Why not attack the countries of Western Europe? Because other than Great Britain, countries like France and Germany will easily fall and are already dominated by Muslims. Only the US stands in our way.
We didn't become weaker after the war in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda did. Then they sais they wanted to attack us again with WMD. Now, who in their backyard who also hates America might have them? Iraqi war was hardly unprovoked. Any reasonable person could see their intent to develop WMD if they didn't already have them, and Saddam's hatred for America.
We didn't become weaker after Iraq War. The enemy lost a potential ally and millions of people were freed. Also the world saw they could never stay in a conventional war with the US. Libya backed away from their WMD program in fear.
Individual freedom is provocative to those who want to control people, either for religious or non-relegious reasons. Provoking the world in this fashion is just part of who we are. Killing those who attack us is to.
Why ask why?
Wrong premise. The attack on Iraq was not unprovoked. 9-11 was carried out by terrorists, therefore any country that supports terrorists is our enemy.
Iraq also "provoked" our invasion by violating the terms of the cease-fire as well as all those nasty little UN resolutions.
The main reason we needed to invade Iraq, however, was the lesson we learned from 9-11 -- that we are most vulnerable to state supported terrorism. Saddam's neck was already in the noose and there is no doubt that he harbored and supported terrorists, so he was a logical next step.
Other countries currently harboring terrorists are now more likely to sit down at the bargaining table -- so maybe we won't have to invade them as well.
That's basically it in a nutshell - after all, you don't see them attacking Canada or Sweden for their freedoms. Certainly we have interests in the region which can't be ignored, but our heavy-handed intervention into their politics no doubt is a major reason for their resentment.
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