19 dead from suspected suicide blast

Sure, I wouldn't fudge those facts. You're right. I think that a good portion of those people were foreign fighters who didn't give a hoot about Iraq, and also that a lot of them were chiefly concerned with the countersect, not the US.

But there's no doubt that a lot of Iraqis, especially Sunnis, were radicalized following the invasion and the empowerment of Shia in the country. Famously, ISIS most successful recruiting propaganda has revolved around a conspiracy between the US, Russia, and Iran to marginalize and ultimately destroy Sunni Islam.

That's also not what our conversation started about. We're talking about Islamic terrorism as such and it's roots.

Nobody believes that justification, so that's okay.

 

In fact Ronald Reagan wanted to bankrupt Russia and it worked. The greatest political success of the last century.

However it seems they should have done some psychological profiles on the people they were trying to help, to separate the fanatics from the non-fanatics, but that could have taken a lot of time, given the low literacy rates.

 

This is normal thus it's a bit pointless arguing with me.

 

Huh? The link is already available on this thread and you could have read it! I just read it again to see who did the survey. Is this deliberate thickness?

 

lol, right.

So are you willing to agree that 9/11 wasn't instigated by prior American attacks on the countries of the attackers?

More importantly, are you willing to agree that Islamic extremism has deeper roots than simply wanting to fight Americans for invading their countries?

 

The link is posted but the passages relating to the claim are not.
This is because they don't exist, hence the refusal to post them.

A lie is obvious when poster can only come up with excuses in place of evidence.

 

The stated claim from OBL was he committed these attacks as a direct result of US foreign policy.

There was no middle eastern terrorist activity in or aimed at the US until the US started to support Israel.

Some idiot will now mention the Barbary pirate who were pirates (Mostly Muslims but a number of Christians and Jews) who were pirate, not terrorists.

 

The link is right here!!! You even referred to it! read it and see the reference to ICM. Geez!

 

Why agree on that? The US and some EU countries have messed up the entire middle east horrificaly, with supporting maniacs like Saddam Hussein unleash a WMD war. Kick out the elected Iranian government to install fascism. Help the Jews ethnic cleanse Arabs. And it's just shoved under the rug. Accountability is zero in these cases.

To boldly claim, the 9/11 attack came out of nowhere. That is just really really odd.

Yeah well... "extremism", you know. Doesn't that say it all? That it misses the part of any rationality?

 

See, excuses but none of the right wing lads can manage to post the part they say is there.
They won't attempt to do so because it isn't there but they're doing a Trump and claiming it is.

LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE

 

Depends on the extremists (or pretend extremists)
ISIS are about oil money and rape but many of their fighters are probably stupid enough to believe they're doing it for God.

 

I know but thanks for the confirmation.

 

Yes, of course. And you should know specifically what it was.

He was trying to get the Saudis to recruit his organization to defend the peninsula from Saddam Hussein. The Saudis, instead, recruited American help to that end.

The focus on "terrorist activity" is problematic. Terrorism is, as leftists love to point out, a method of fighting a war. We're talking about Jihadists.

So yes, American support for Israel has been a sticking point for many Jihadists. Do you think that Americans should not have friendly relations with other countries if those relations risk pissing people off?

That's understandable. I think that a geopolitical argument can be made for having left Israel to it's own devices.

But we need to be very specific about what really made a lot of Muslims angry towards the US. Support for Israel is a big one, but I think there's a more important one. As the United States and the United Kingdom worked with regional governments to secure oil supplies and to keep Soviet influence at arms length a significant cultural divide started to develop in the Muslim world. The elites of those countries who worked closely with foreign powers (even those who were pro-Soviet) started to gain a lot of wealth, and to develop a culture parallel to that of the common people. This created an understandable level of frustration within the Islamic world, not only towards the regimes themselves but their semi-Western semi-liberal lifestyles, and a sort of narrative developed in which Islam was under siege by the liberal West, with the ultimate goal of destroying Islam once and for all.

And there are aspects of Islam itself that channel the way this occurs. To begin, it creates solidarity between countries as disparate as Yemen, Tunisia, and Pakistan. Further, it gives a kind of "holy war" air to the whole struggle, which can justify a whole new level of barbarism. Further still, the way that martyrdom is treated in Islam can make even things like sacrificing your own children not only justifiable, but ideal for your children. Even the most vile of the 19th century Anarchists or 20th century Communists wouldn't have been able to justify something so monstrous.

Religion is capable of the most grotesque deformations of human values.

 

The schoolyard Master of Repartee strikes again!

 

So you think that people like OBL were angry about American opposition to Mossadegh or support for Husseins war against Iran?

There were among the first people to oppose Mossadegh within Iran! And they probably cheered the Iraqi-Iranian carnage.

To boldly suggest that I boldly claimed that is really odd.

No it doesn't. One can't simply say that it's irrational. Something caused it. They came to strongly dislike the United States for a reason.

And I want to be clear about one thing, blood-curling hatred of the United States is not ubiquitous through the Middle East. A lot of people over there would like to live alongside us like anyone else. People like OBL are frighteningly common, but still a minority.

 

Well on that he has a point. Hezbollah were the result of attack by Israel on the Lebanon. Prior to that the Shia of Lebanon were not keen on Palestinians and were quite pro Israel. Obviously Hamas was originally encouraged by Israel and of course other Palestinian terrorists obviously came as a result of the creation of Israel which meant many of them losing their ancestral home. I see these terrorists as different from Al Qaeda and Isis types. They do not have the religious crazyness. Indeed I think Hamas has recently decided to give up religion and just be a Nationalist group.

Most people believe that without the attack on Iraq, groups like ISIS would not exist and I am sure I have read some of your military or politicians agreeing with this. I think Tony Blair has only recently accepted this. In Syria, the UK and US have been doing a mixture of the financing training and turning blind eyes....but for the beginning of the madness, I would still go for the Afghan/Russia/US war and I think the idea to use them came from that man who died recently - some name beginning with B. So they were a mixture of people let out of Arab jails who had been in them because they were fanatically religious. Many of them had also been tortured which I understand made them even more crazy. They were joined by many particularly from Saudi Arabia including Bin Laden who had been schooled by an extremist Muslim Brotherhood who the Saudis let in to educate their children.

Well definitely to some extent they did. During the Afghan war the Saudis also funded the education of Refugee Afghan children who apparently the parents were more than keen to send because they got a good meal. The education however according to RAWA could not have been more extreme and left out even simply things like learning basic maths and Afghan Traditions. These children grew into the Taliban. I think it is definitely true that the US and in particular with its relationship with the Saudis has had a major part in their development.

However on hating you I suspect this may be because of your Christian Right. Obviously they hate you because you are interfering in their area and according to Michael Hirsh in Bernard Lewis Revisited, the Iraq war was a war against Muslims - the intent being to thrash the hell out of them like the Turks did and get them all secular. That obviously failed! In Islam, Christians and Jews are supposed to be accepted. The Church of Scotland a few years ago brought out a book for Christian Zionists as they felt their actions in the ME were part of the reason why Christians were having such a hard time there. Obviously with the fanatics this is really bad so I have started wondering whether the hatred of Christians and all the talk of Crusades is speaking to the American Christian Right (not to be confused with other Christians.)

http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/interview-evangelical-christianity-devils-in-high-places-1524855

 

Al Qaida is around to establish some extremist Caliphate based on their version of Sharia law. And I bet they don't like American influence in any way. Now, do you think the American influence in the middle east is "a bit" noticeable? Or lets be honest,.. cmon. Lets not kid each other the influence of the US is just utterly massive in the ME.

Well. The influence of the west in the ME is just massive. And Al Qaida doesn't want any of that.... well there you go that 9/11 is by far due to the never ending meddling of the US in the ME.

That depends if you are willing to see it or not.

Yeah. Not so popular in Latin America, due to it's recent passed of helping with the installing of murderous fascists regimes all over at the expense of their elected leaders,... that went with massacring around and everything, to even the US illegally invading countries. That, and the US has refused to apologize for it... so that means they still fully approve and might do it again when they feel like it.

 

Of course, all the Arabs bordering the Israelis have obvious reason to dislike Israelis and those who support them. I don't think it explains all (or even most) of it. But more importantly, none of these are the root causes of Islamic extremism.

Who knows? Instability in Syria was likely to be some kind of problem regardless of what happened in Iraq. It's certainly true that the invasion of Iraq likely pushed a lot of Sunnis towards groups like al-Qaeda, especially once Sunni-Shia tensions really started to explode.

So you think that the United States is responsible for the spread of a certain sect of Islam at the behest of the Saudis? Okay, we can make an argument that Europe and Japan shouldn't have been buying Saudi oil, and that we shouldn't have ensured that trade, but I feel like that's a pretty deep rabbit hole.

Let me know if you want to go down it.

I really doubt that they care at all about the "Christian Right." They refer to Westerners as "atheists."

"Thrashing the hell out of them" was not the intention. We can do that with bombers alone. It's certainly true that we wanted to institute a semi-liberal democracy in the Middle East.

 

Of course they don't like American influence, nor do they like the Westernization of their cultures.

That's my entire point in this thread. Western economic and cultural influence started to become quite obvious following WWII, and during the Interwar years for that matter.

My point is that it wasn't military actions that started all of this. It was a political divide between pro-Western elites and the dirt poor populations those elites left behind.

We're not likely to care much about leftist regimes in Latin America anymore.

 

Well. Knowing OBL is a Saudi Arabian,.. a country with strict sharia law... that kind of defeats the argument that the US got a cultural influence in there. As for economy... Muslims can make money. There is no harm in there. So what is left? It's probably them US bases in Saudi Arabia and their fleet steaming up and down the Gulf.

The coup against Chavez some years ago was orchestrated by American NGO's, who can freely collect money there for their violently anti-democratic ideals.

 

They are not Muslims, They are ISIS. They don't belong to any group... just them.

 

I think it explains that which I think is quite different to the other kind. Its pretty similar to other terrorism including the terrorism Israel used to form itself!

Have you heard of Clean Break? so not necessarily so. The initial revolutionaries in Syria had three no's. No to violence, no to sectarianism and no to outside interference. The outside interference blew things very quick. They did not have a chance for their own revolution.

Is not ISIS second in command the ex head of the Iraq army or something. I read a while ago that the Sunni Shia thing was deliberately set up. That is an outside force would organise for one of their Mosques or meeting places to be blown up making it look as if it was the Shia. Cannot remember where I read it or maybe listened on Youtube - possibly someone like Jeremy Scahill or Chris Hedges but it is late here and I am very tired. Shia and Sunni had lived in peace in Iraq for a long time and they did live together prior to all this creation of failed states.

No that is too simplistic. The US's main interest in that area is Israel. The Saudis do not like the Shia or Assad's religion. The Sauds want as much Wahhabi around - it is somewhat similar to the extremists. The US's interest is to protect Israel and in this and 'clean break' the idea was to get rid of Assad and then go after Iran. The Sauds also wanted this. They are the US's closest alley in the area. The US want to help Israel. Their interests coincided and a tape has been released where Kerry admits collusion. The US has also given masses of training to who they hoped were 'moderate' but knew were not.

In Afghanistan in the Afghan/Russia/US war I would say though yes, to your above question and that is what got them started. I do not think the US gave a toss or a thought to what they were doing. At the very least they were extremely naive and somehow did not realise what they were doing but they were the people who first financed and trained those who would be Muslim extremists. If they had not they might not have come into being. Many would still be in Arab jails. You should try and find out about that sometime. Abdul Haq kept going to the states to tell them what they were like. He even learnt English just to do that. But the US would not listen. Eventually they realised it was because it did not matter to the CIA. Indeed they liked it because as I said earlier they knew fanatics would fight harder and be less likely to come to a cease fire.

I think you are ignorant as well as abusive. Now it is very late here and I have given you my time not knowing you are just an abusive time waster.

 

That's great, but let's not pretend that Islamism wasn't going to be part of the Arab Spring. It was. They're Arabs. Islam is extremely central to Arab culture.

There were always going to be competing groups in Syria following some kind of mass instability, and regional actors were always going to get involved.

But the important point is that this was always going to be a rickety situation. Jordan still is, and to some extent so is Saudi Arabia.

Not sure about the "set up" theory, and it's also foolish to pretend that Sunni-Shia relations were super hunkey-dorey pre-invasion. There's a reason the Shia and Kurds have excluded the Sunni Arabs from their ruling coalition, there's a lot of bad history there. Saddam Hussein explicitly blamed the Shia for the failure of his military to hold back the American invasion. It is certainly true that Zarqawi made Sunni-Shia relations a lot worse than they had to be.

HAH! Israel has very little to offer us in the region. Our main interest is Saudi Arabia.

If I'm ignorant, teach me. The "abusive" accusation is flabbergasting to me.

Whatever brotha. I'm always willing to have discussions when you are.

 

BRITISH GOVERNMENT FUNDED MANCHESTER BOMBER

Can a Western welfare state defend itself against Islamic terrorism? Perhaps, but it will require fundamental changes. The Telegraph reports that last week’s terrorist attack in Manchester was funded by the British government:

The Manchester suicide bomber used taxpayer-funded student loans and benefits to bankroll the terror plot, police believe.

Salman Abedi is understood to have received thousands of pounds in state funding in the run up to Monday’s atrocity even while he was overseas receiving bomb-making training.

Why? What qualified a terrorist in training for state aid? I suppose the answer is, anyone can get state funding these days, no serious questions asked.

Abedi’s finances are a major ‘theme’ of the police inquiry amid growing alarm over the ease with which jihadists are able to manipulate Britain’s welfare and student loans system to secure financing.

One former detective said jihadists were enrolling on university courses to collect the student loans “often with no intention of turning up”.

Abedi was given at least £7,000 from the taxpayer-funded Student Loans Company after beginning a business administration degree at Salford University in October 2015.

It is thought he received a further £7,000 in the 2016 academic year even though by then he had already dropped out of the course. Salford University declined to say if it had informed the Student Loans Company that Abedi’s funding should have been stopped.

Time out! British universities aren’t required to advise the government when students who are receiving loans drop out of school? Apparently not. The student gets to keep the cash that was intended for tuition.

Then there is Britain’s generous welfare system. The fact that murderous imams have been supported by the British government for years has been widely reported.

Separately, the Department for Work and Pensions refused to say if Abedi had received any benefits, including housing benefit and income support worth up to £250 a week, during 2015 and 2016. It would only say he was not claiming benefits in the weeks before the attack.

So taxpayers are required to fund terrorists as they prepare to murder Brits, but are not entitled to find out how much money they have paid to reward their murderers. Actually, in the 21st century welfare state that is not at all surprising.

Apparently Salman Abedi never actually worked, so pretty much everything he did was government-funded:

Abedi, 22, never held down a job, according to neighbours and friends, but was able to travel regularly between the UK and Libya.

Abedi also had sufficient funds to buy materials for his sophisticated bomb while living in a rented house in south Manchester.

Six weeks before the bombing Abedi rented a second property in a block of flats in Blackley eight miles from his home, paying £700 in cash.

He had enough money to rent a third property in the centre of Manchester from where he set off with a backpack containing the bomb.

Abedi also withdrew £250 in cash three days before the attack and transferred £2,500 to his younger brother Hashim in Libya, who is accused of knowing about the attack in advance.

Abedi might have gotten some cash from ISIS. But still, how stupid are we Westerners, to support those who are trying to murder us?

Professor Anthony Glees, director of Buckingham University’s Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, said: “The British system makes funds readily available to jihadist students without checks on them. There needs to be an inquiry into this.”

No wonder the terrorists hold us in contempt. It is easy to ridicule the Brits, but the real question is: given the fact that it is not possible to talk honestly about terrorism, Islam, welfare, education, or a number of other topics, is there any way a Western welfare state can reform itself to stop supporting its most bitter enemies?

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/05/british-government-funded-manchester-bomber.php

 

I'm British so I have the right to say that the top people who run the Brit "security" services, the police and the Army have been an incompetent disgrace for a very long time, they just haven't got a friggin clue!
For example the cop who was stabbed to death recently defending Parliament hadn't got a gun, you couldn't make it up..(facepalm)