Saint Ying: I don't think you realize how out of touch with reality you are. When CBS News interviews me next week, I'll be sure to keep in mind your words though. 
. You apparently don't realize that intelligence has nothing to do with having opinions that correspond to your particular view points.
The FACTS in this particular discussion are readily available to those who actually wish to research them rather than wallow in their own anti-American ignorance. Groups like Al Qaeda aren't noble. They're just hate groups similar to the KKK and the reasons they strike have little to do with the imagined evil deeds of the United States you dream of (or real bad deeds for that matter). Al Qaeda and their ilk are violent racist organizations that despise our culture for what it stands for and wishes to eradicate it from the face of the earth through violence -- first in the middle east and later throughout the world.
The US doesn't need to "understand" Al Qaeda any more than the US needed to understand Japan's motivations for attacking Pearl Harbor. It is up to the one who is liable to suffer the most to learn from history. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima (and Nagasaki) are the end points that trace their beginnings to Pearl Harbor. One can argue that the deaths of over a million Japanese civilians was an overreaction to the loss of 2,500 people (mostly sailors) in a military base attack. But ultimately, that's not something Americans have to worry about. It is the one doing the attacking that should be reading up on history. The reaction to 9/11 is signifcant and far-reaching and should be an object lesson to those would would perpetuate terrorism against the United States. For after all, there have been zero terrorist attacks against the US since 9/11 while on the other hand Al Qaeda is living in caves in the mountains of Pakistan, Saddam is gone, and Taliban now without a country to rule.
From the US's point of view, therefore, there is little evidence to show why the US needs to "understand" the question "why do they hate you". I don't care. It might be interesting in an academic sense but on a practical level, it doesn't matter. It never matters. If you knew anything of history, you would recognize that the why someone attacks you never matters. It only matters that they did. Nation states aren't individuals. They are collectives. They react as collectives. They cannot do otherwise and never do.
It is far more effective for the middle east to clean up its culture of death and violence than try to convince Americans that it somehow "had it coming" because the US supported Israel or because it had a US base in Saudi Arabia or some other lame ass argument for justifying the mass murder of innocent people. Let us remember, after all, that 9/11 was PLANNED during the Clinton administration who was about as benevolent to the Muslim world as can be realistically expected.
But all that aside, I can find far more justification as to why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor than to muddle through the bullshit arguments as for why 9/11 occurred. Pearl Harbor was attacked in response to specific US actions with specific goals in mind. By contrast, 9/11 happened for very nebulous reasons with very nebulous (and unrealistic) goals. And at the end of the day, Al Qaeda is no government in waiting. It's just another pathetic violent hate group more akin to a KKK out of control than any sort of legitimate organization.
If you were more intelligent, you would realize that your ability to convince people of the validity of your point of view rests on two things:
a) How persuasive you can make your arguments
and
your ability to get those arguments out into the general population.
You fail on the first item because you make personal insults towards those who disagree with you even when they obviously are not ignorant. You may not agree with me but I obviously do know the subject matter. I don't really need your validation to know that I'm familiar with these matters and qualified to speak with some knowledge on them from having spent years following these events and researching the backgrounds.
You fail on the second part because by attacking people like me, who control sites like this, your ability to get the word out is diminished substantially. I can make you disappear from this site with a single click. You have nothing to gain by intentionally antagonizing me. And in fact, you rely on the very tolerance that you show so little of in order to even get your word out. It is that tolerance that allows you to have many people exposed to your opinions rather than being just another lunatic on a fringe site like Democratic Underground spewing their extremist drivel on their forums that few normal people read.
