Throughout this war we have an understandable, if ethnocentric, habit of ignoring what our enemies actually say. Instead we chatter on, don’t listen, and in self-absorbed fashion impart our own motives for their hatred. We live on the principles of the Enlightenment and so worship our god Reason, thus assuming that even our adversaries accept such rational protocols as their own.So if radical Islam's not premised on recent or ancient wrongs, what's their motive? As Hanson says, just listen to the terrorists; then read the Koran.
So they talk on and on of beheading, suicide bombing, another holocaust, and blowing thousands of us up, while we snooze, now and again waking in the midst of a war to regurgitate Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, flushed Korans, the abusive Patriot Act, and the latest quip of Donald Rumsfeld.
But again keep quiet, and listen to radical Islam.
Take the August 4 declaration of al Qaeda’s second in command, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. He promises even “more destruction” for London, and tells us precisely why.
Many in the West assume that those mass murders were payback for the United Kingdom’s presence in Iraq, even though its troops are mostly confined to non-Wahhabi areas in the south.
But no, the Dr. instead lists a number of grievances beyond Iraq that justify his terrorist cadres murdering innocents. One complaint, for example, is “Stopping the robbing of our oil and resources.”
Examine that gripe carefully.
Oil is now at record highs. I just filled up with regular gas at $2.89 on a California interstate. It costs the Middle East about $3-4 a barrel to pump petroleum that was discovered, developed, and marketed for the Gulf autocracies through hated Western expertise — and is now selling at over $60. Despite Zawahiri’s rants, billions of poor the world over are being price gouged to enrich a Muslim world flush with petrodollars.
And some of those obscene profits have ended up in coffers of Zawahiri himself. Indeed, his al Qaeda blackmailers depend on recycled petrodollars from Gulf State sheikdoms.
(via Dr. Sanity)
4 comments:
As we have said, it's about an ideology and nothing else.
They repeat that ideology, everyday, as often as they can- and as you say, many just refuse to listen. That's going to cost us- big time.
Thus, we must attack the ideology, relentlessly.
I was hitting "next" and "previous" in the blogger toolbar and actually came to this blog right after reading this post Cindy Sheehan on the blog I was previously viewing.
Where the "next" button takes me next no knows...:-)
No chance of PC libs listening to what radical Islamists say, because it's not what they want to hear. I know one so full of BS, he will tell you that 9/11 was all about "the haves and have-nots" — as if the solution were to put the entire planet on welfare.
V_H:
Agreed. Radical Islam isn't motivated by economics, and so can't be defanged by free money, as SC&A properly conclude.
Anony:
As for Cindy, my sole and final reaction is here.
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