Just as the treaty of Paris' sowed the seeds of Hitler's rise to power, the U.N. General Assembly’s resolution 181 in 1947 recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish States in Palestine sowed the seeds for the rise of radical Islam. Since then the west's failure to be an unbiased arbitrator in the subsequent conflicts has nourished those angry seeds like Miracle Grow. Muslims have become more fundamentalist and so have American Christians as evidenced by the rise of conservative churches and declining membership at liberal churches. Still we refuse to acknowledge the major role of religion in the Middle East wars, other than to point to the problem of radical Islam, which is but one side of this twisted coin.
We refuse to address root causes of terrorism and simply keep repeating that they are jealous of the west and hate freedom. Meanwhile back at the Kasbah they call for jihad because they think what we're doing is a crusade. We refuse to consider that’s what it is, despite Bush's slip of the tongue or whatever you want to call it when he said, "this crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.”
I don’t claim to know if God gave Israel aka Palestine to the Jewish people or not, but I do believe that without our wars in Muslim countries and without our virtually unconditional support of Israel there would have been little or no motivation for jihad. I don't know whether or not it's too late to change the course we’re on, but I feel certain we won't try.
This morning’s expert pundit suggests that leaving scorched-earth and crying widows is the solution but we’ve been hearing this for a long time and things have just gotten worse. The aforementioned pundit is of the camp that all we have to do is kill more of them and eventually we will be victorious. I doubt that he’s righter now than such people were immediately after 911 but I believe his strategy will just make things worse.
The pundit noted that we killed thousands of civilians in Germany and dropped atomic bombs on Japan and that both of those countries are now our allies. Equating those examples with the current situation and expecting the same result this time is questionable. In this day and age when terrorists might obtain and use weapons of mass destruction probably makes this time in history different and his proposed strategy even more questionable. His response might be we mustn’t be cowed and I agree, but we should address root causes instead of just killing more people which could result in unnecessary catastrophes here as well. I don’t know if he considers the lives of civilians in the middle east valuable or not but he seems quite willing to sacrifice them in order to achieve the much vaunted unconditional surrender of the enemy which may be a pipe dream.
The next argument the pundit offered is that appeasement never works and I agree but addressing root causes often does. On a related note he mentioned Sharia law areas in France and other countries which are no go zones for the police. He suggested this must change and I wholeheartedly agree with him on that point! If people want Sharia law they should go to countries where it is practiced but bringing it to the West is a huge mistake.
I also wholeheartedly agree that the Islamist terrorist’s and their atrocities are an abomination but to use that to justify some questionable; tactics, strategies and policies by us does nothing but diminish the West's moral superiority… which I believe the West does have.
On a related note, it’s evident that the government wants to be Godvernment and many people are all for it. They think that government surveillance of everything we say and do will keep us safe from terrorists but like Ben said, “those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” It’s more likely that greater safety will instead come from less interference in the affairs of other countries. The religious war we are involved in is the basis of terrorism and the competition and jealousy between the "great" organized religions is at the root of the problem.
If it's true that the Godvernment records or listens to our; phone calls, emails, key strokes and internet searches then we have surrendered to the PTB. Those who say that as long as we're doing nothing wrong we have nothing to worry about are incorrect. The unconstitutional surveillance and knowledge of our private thoughts is a violation of our human rights and will not keep us safe it will make us slaves… and finally, is it just me or does the terrorist Hayat Boumeddiene remind anyone of Jodi Arias?