NEWS: The Grievances of Al Qaeda

POLITICS: The Grievances of Al Qaeda

The idea that London would not have been a terrorist target had Britain not participated in the ouster of Saddam Hussein is rather popular in certain quarters. It is certainly true that Al Qaeda and their fellow travellers prefer Iraq’s status quo ante to regime-change, occupation, and democratic nation-building. But that is by no means the only grievance the jihadists have against Britain and other infidel nations. It makes little sense to zero in on one grievance as though somehow amending it will take Britain (or any other country) off the hit list.

Al Qaeda's list of grievances is long indeed. It is neither possible nor desirable for a Western nation to get on their good side, and it is likewise impossible to duck low enough to escape their wrath.

See Christopher Hitchens in The Mirror:

See also David Aaronovitch in the Times of London. (Hat tip: Dem_z in the comments.)

This is the tradjedy of war. Bush's actions have promoted terrorism, converting Iraq into a trainng ground for jihadists and Al Qaeda's terrorism has promoted the right wing in the West.

Is this simply ironic or is it a self promoting scheme to create the conditions in which extreemism can flurish?

What were we going to possibly do to make the terorists change their mind about America and say "Really, they are good people"?

They hate us. They won't stop hating us even if we try to appease them.

So it's clear that they will never love us. We CAN make them respect us, and hopefully make them fear us enough to not dare attack us.

Right, a good start would be to kill their leader, something that's been seemingly put on the back-burner.

we could, you know, disengage ourselves from their affairs...get out of iraq, get out of the middle-east entirely, reduce our oil needs, etc. all of these things would give them less grievances with us.

"An appeaser is a guy who throws his friends to the alligator in hopes that the alligator will eat him last." - Winston Churchill

We would have to get out of Afghanistan, too. We would have to have stayed out of Afghanistan. That means we would have had no military respnose to the worst attack on our country ever.

Isolationism and pacifism just aren't going to get any traction in this country.

But maybe if were really, really, good and do what we are told they'll like us.

Some of these are good ideas in themselves, but not for the reasons you outline. The point of Hitchens' article is that many of al Qaeda's beefs with the West in general and the U.S. in particular are *not* reasonable ones - and hence, they are demands that we would be immoral to give in to. For instance, al Qaeda does not just oppose this or that controversial policy of the Israeli government - they oppose the existence of Israel itself. And, while some of the insurgents in Iraq are surely just patriots and nationalists who resent us as foreign invaders in their homes, that is not the motivation of the al Qaeda-connected groups there - they're not trying to kick us out so as to turn Iraq over to the sovereignty of its people.

We should roll back or end our support for autocratic governments (that happen, like Karimov in Uzbekistan, to oppress Islamist groups along with the rest of the dissenters) because it's the right thing to do, not because it will make al Qaeda tolerate us. And we should try to get more energy-independent so that we can do things like demand that Saudi Arabia stop exporting wahabism. We shouldn't become more independent just so we can walk away and let al Qaeda and their ilk's brand of political ideology take over a significant chunk of the world. (And even if we were to combat them through more diplomatic and less military means, they'd still oppose us).

This is the main thing I take issue with. I like s5's comment about al Qaeda's mission (at least as presented by these non-al Qaeda authors) looking like an "extreme hate crime." I don't think that's so far off the mark. Nevertheless, Iraq is a bonanza to al Qaeda right now, like the Culture Wars are to our own reactionaries, and no self-respecting (I am aware of the irony of that) fundamentalist Islamic partisan would really like to see Saddam Hussein back in power. They hated him with an irrational passion that rivalled the Bush family's.
Disengagement in Iraq is a wise course of action for a variety of legitimate reasons which have nothing to do with appeasement of Wahhabi bigots.
It should be distinguished from disengagement from the whole Middle East, particularly Israel--which whatever its faults has an existential right as valid as Palestine's--and certainly from the successful prosecution of the "War on Terror," which has so far seemed to consist largely of enriching Cheney & Co. at the expense of the American and Iraqi peoples, with little result beyond the spectacle of a few war crimes and other human rights violations being committed by what was once a nation that could credibly claim to be one of the most enlightened and tolerant on Earth.
But I'm rambling.
Basically, while I'll acknowledge that hate is the primary motive of fundamentalists everywhere, I think you're profoundly misguided in positing a natural link between what's going on in Iraq to the wider issues of Islamic extremism. What connection there is is purely propagandistic. On both sides. And I will rightly consider it to be an egregious failure of American policy should the rhetoric succeed in being actually transformed into reality.

No, that would just make them dig deeper to find more to bitch about Bin Laden cites Isabella and Ferdinand's conquest and reunification of Spain (which was in the late 1400s) as justification for terrorism. No, they won't have less grievances. They will still attack us. They will just have less excuses.

i think the focus is less on "appeasing terrorists" or making them like us more, and more on not alienating and angering enormous amounts of people with our foreign policy. i don't care whether al quaeda like america or anyone else. what i do care about is al quaeda using roughshod foreign policy and perceived disrespect toward islam and muslims/"zionist marginalisation" of muslims as an excuse to cite the impressionable and angry youth of poor countries to label other people as "great satan" and the root of all evil. this anger is what's responsible for the successful recruitment of additional mujahadeen. if we made more of an effort not to be seen as the bad guys in the muslim world, then the better off we'd be. fuck what extremist terror organizations think. it's the disenfranchised fence sitters that we should work to win over. i don't expect to see that kind of action from an administration who's managed to neatly divide their own country though (and the CE boards here are an excellent example of that).

It's sort of like the whole thing in Afghanistan: We need to both reach out and help, as well as reach out and harm.

We need to take down terroristsswiftky and decisively, but we also need to help out and try to aleviate the poverty that garners so many jihadis. I mean, if you help out people, they are more likely to say "Hey, you guys aren't as bad as everyone says!".

I couldn't agree more.

I agree if we disengage when the Iraqi security forces are strong enough to stand on their own. Leaving right now would be irresponsible. We would be screwing over the people of Iraq and leaving them in the lurch yet again. We really need to stop doing that.

Disengaging from Iraq will be good for us (and for Iraq) if we do it at the right time. I wrote an article a few days explaining why I think that is. So you won't get any argument from me about that unless you want to do it right now.

because muslim fundamentalism didn't exist in the middle east until george W went in there

exactly. i don't really give two flying fucks about what al qaeda or the ira or black september or whatever the flavor of the week thinks. i'd just like to not piss off the entire world.

and the rest of the world would recognize that it's THEIR problem, not ours. we wouldn't be the ones starting shit, and blame for any attacks/threats would fall entirely on the "terrorists" or whatever they're supposed to be called. we'd be showing that we are not a threat.

national defense would be a lot easier to perform with a functional (not bustedass) and fully-trained/equipped/armed army, don't you think? or maybe the money could go to different programs, to reduce poverty or fighting cancer or balancing the budget or any of a multitude of programs. war is an expensive business...why continually war with people when the problems don't even have to exist?

Al Qaeda want a motivated muslim population above everything else. They are fascists. They want a unified group of Koran waving zealots. Attempting to "teach respect" to these populations is a dreadful plan, it's just what they want. Which I'd say goes a step beyond appeasement and into collaboration.

At the moment all our diplomats make the best deals they can. But we're making them with governments which don't represent the populations. A just foreign policy would slowly change things. We're not going to agree with what those people want much of the time, and in those case we should stay out of their lives.

Freedom is the right to make your own mistakes, it's not just getting democracy forced on you by people wanting to turn you into passive consumers.

[Edited on Jul 13, 2005 by quagmirething]

You will always have the "blame America first" group. Isolationism has never helped us. These Islamofacists hate us because of our culture of freedom and our insistence on making sure that Israel exists as a nation, not because of anything that we've done to them. There was terrorism before the war in Iraq and before we went to war in Afghanistan. 9/11 was being planned under Clinton's watch, for Christ's sake.

Acting as if there is no problem will not make the problem go away. We did that in Somalia, which is why we are still fighting in Iraq. These people are under the impression that, if they kill enough Americans, we will leave, thanks to the Black Hawk Down incident and the botched hostage rescue in Iran. But I digress. Islamofacist terrorists will always hate us. There is nothing we can do about it. All we can do is engage them on their turf or on ours. My philosophy is "better there than here." I would rather have suicide bombings in Baghdad than in Chicago.

Replace "middle east" with "Iraq" and you're on the right track.

what bugs me about this topic (in general, not this particular news item) is that although the argument that these guys are obviously insane and murderous is pretty much ironclad, it usually comes along with the implication that because they're crazy, we aren't. like somehow because they're cowards and killers it makes the actions and attitudes of the US somehow less wrong, or even in some peoples' minds justified.

"well shit, they're going to be evil whether or not we're evil back to them, so there's no reason not to bomb them back to the stone age". that just doesn't fly with me.

You say that as if it's a good thing.

Let me just remind you that the Taleban - worthless scumbags that they are - offered to extradite Osama bin Laden in October 2001. At that date, I can't think of a government in the world which wouldn't have passed him to the USA.

Bush refused.

[Edited on Jul 14, 2005 by waldo]

clearly, real justice requires bombs.