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Sep 16, 2006 10:01:41 PM
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The explanation is very simple: the western world is aggressive against them. A normal response to aggression is aggression. It is universal, not just limited to humans. If a lion bites another lion, it will be bitten back. Noam Chomsky was once asked the following question: "How do we stop terrorism?" He answered: "Stop participating in terrorism" There are a lot of countries that are not targeted by terrorists, like Switzerland, Norway and Lithuania and many others. Why not? Because they don't do terrorism. "Spreading freedom and democracy" is just a floscule, a propaganda slogan, used to convince people to support terrorism. An example of such propaganda is Bush's "They hate us for our freedom". If that was the case, The Netherlands would probably be attacked by terrorists on a daily basis.
We, the human race, have made great technological advances, but sociologically we are still savages. Research has shown that the sense of justice is not unique to humans. Even apes have justice mechanisms. However, chimpanzee do not have a sense of belonging to a chimpanzee species. They do not treat chimpanzees from another herd any differently than other species. They only protect and treat justly (according to their own sense of justice) chimpanzees from the same herd. Everybody else is a competition and an enemy. We, humans, have to some extent developed appreciation for humans in general and for human life. That world view has not gained a lot of traction yet. The animal need for belonging to a specific group and treating everybody outside of that group as competition and enemies still prevails. Examples are numerous. All over the world there's hatred and fighting based on ethnic, racial, and religious differences. Being humane is rational and rationality is not very popular yet.
A lot of times different groups treat other groups relatively justly or lives in peace with them just because of their own safety. If, on top of that, some group feels invincible, they tend to care even less about other groups. Examples are all great empires throughout the history. Romans did not care much about human rights of barbarians, they enslaved them, even though they had an advanced judicial system. Napoleon and Hitler invaded practically all of Europe. Europeans/Americans enslaved black people from Africa just because they were techniologically inferior and therefore considered no threat. As a matter of fact, great colonial powers had colonized almost the whole world. They felt invincible.
Today, there is practically just one great colonial power, which is The United States. The United States feels invincible and sees the whole world as its playground. It has no regard for rights of other peoples or for human lives. Other countries and peoples are regarded as just pawns in a chess game and a pawn in a chess game can be sacrificed for positional advantage. The motivation is always profit. In order to reach its goal The US will install dictator, overthrow a democratic government or a dictator it previously installed or do anything else it considers effective. This has been going on since WWII ended. Naturally, people in these countries are not happy with that and they fight back however they can.
Let us reverse the roles. Today, a vast majority of Europeans are against the actions of The US. Should Europe invade The US and install a government that would protect the interests of European countries? If your government should start doing things you don't agree with, would you want your country invaded by, say, France, or Russia, or China? No, you would want that to be an internal affair. You would want to protect the souverenity of your country.
Now, let us consider psychology of the matter. Behavioral psychologists have two methods of modifying behavior, positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. Negative reinforcement is punishing bad behavior. If you punish bad bahavior, that behavior will eventually stop due ti fear of punishment. Positive reinforcement is rewarding good behavior. If you reward good behavior, eventually good behavior will replace bad behavior because of desire for reward. Can these two methods be applied on nations? Let us assume that the retoric of George Bush and his gang is actually sincere, i.e. that they really want to spread democracy and freedom. How come it does not work. Because they, obviously apply negative reinforcement. "If you don't do what we want you to do, we will attack you." So far it does not seem to work. All these "experiments" show that negative reinforcement does not work. Quite the opposite, the more negative reinforcement is applied, the more bad behavior it results in. Are there any examples of positive reinforcement. Well, there is a huge experiment going on right now in Europe. The European Union offers membership (a reward), which has a lot of benefits, to european countries which promote democracy, freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence with their neighbors (good behavior). Does it work? Absolutely. Many countries have made great advances just to please The EU. The benefit of membership has been a great motivation. Therefore, it seems highly unlikely that the US government is sincere about its motivations. Just not getting involved would have been much more effective. Many countries, as your own, Canada, can serve as an example to other nations. But, if we look back a couple of hundreds of years or even much less, these countries have not been so democratic or free. It is a process, which takes time. The same progress is inevitable in other countries too without foreign involvement. Iran, for example, was a much more democratic country some fifty years ago than it is today. It was a secular society. How come we are witnessing a reversal of this process? The involvement of The US in Iran has caused an aversion towards the western world, and The US in particular, which gave rise to radical islam, and Iran is today and has been for quite a while an islamic state.
I could go on for pages and pages, but I think this is already enough.
by Fikret
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