BT Forum

UrsusAdiposimus - 2013-03-23 10:16 PMMany do, and I am going to say with 100% confidence that I know many more military historians than you do And I'm not saying that like it's a good thing...And as far as the "they attacked us because they hate our way of life" refrain - AQ really doesn't care how Americans live their lives. Do they find our way of life vulgar and decadent? Absolutely. But UBL's motives for founding AQ, which have been articulated loudly, publicy, and repeatedly, is that the U.S. is the enemy because we provide backing to two infidel regimes that are currently occupying, in their mind, Muslim holy land - Saudi Arabia and Israel. Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem are the three holiest sites in Islam. AQ believes these sites are being corrupted by the U.S.-sustained Israeli and Saudi governments. They have articulated this over, and over, and over again. And they actually laugh at us when we say they attacked us because they "hate our way of life/freedom/whatever." Bin Laden actually directly addressed this in an interview before his death and retorted "if that is the case, how come we didn't attack Sweden then?" Terrorism is the use of indiscriminate violence to achieve political ends. All terrorist organizations have an ideology and political goals - that's what distinguishes a terrorist group from a good old-fashioned criminal organization. Often their political goals are a bit, well, crazy, but they pretty much all have clearly articulated political goals. That is how they attract membership and financial support. That's how Al-Qaida grew to what it was in 2000-2001 - they didn't recruit donors and people by saying "let's destroy freedom and apple pie!" They did it by saying "let's drive the infidels from Muslim land."This is perhaps a little too advanced for a 5th grader, but I don't think it's ever to early to start teaching kids that the world is, in fact, a rather complex place. I don't see how society benefits from raising more simple-minded people.