As for Americans who would "call the IRA freedom fighters", I know the number is not zero, since I met one, thirty years ago, but I've never met a second one. They are not exactly thick on the ground.
In 2001 there were an estimated 40 million Irish-American's in the USA. If even half of them gave $1 a year to "the cause" the terrorists could buy a fair few weapons with that. Court hearings in the US during the 70's clearly publicised that funds raised for Ireland were being used for weapons and seized weapons in Ireland even had the American weapons dealers names engraved on them ... yet the funds kept pouring in.
I agree as a Brit I probably believe that American support was much wider reaching than it really was ... I wonder if you do the same when we discuss Palestinians and Hamas?
Greetings Muslimwoman, it is so seldom we speak together anymore.
Salam Juantoo
So true and I must make an effort to drop by more regularly but nice to talk with you now.
I must make a correction here though, please.
You do realize that 9/11 occurred prior to overt American involvement in Afghanistan, right? While we did go into Iraq previously, it was in defense of Kuwait. So if this is what Muslims are thinking...hurray! America got their comeuppance!...their clocks are backwards. America was struck first, 9/11 was the instigation for going (back) into Iraq and for going into Afghanistan for the first time.
I'm afraid that's only a correction if you look at it from our (the West's) perspective. We (the West) seem to have an infuriating habit of seperating everything out .. this war was named XYZ and started on this date ... in a neighbouring country we were supporting "freedom fighters" against our own enemy ... etc ... yet we never seem to string all of these things together. How does our foreign policy affect people's view of our country?!
Let's take Afghanistan as an example. At the turn of the century the Afghans were fighting the third war against the British (foreigners) .. they then had 4 decades of civil strife and attempted coups .. until the Russians (foreigners) invaded ... because of the Cold War the US wouldn't stand for that and financed and trained an army of "freedom fighters" ... of course these freedom fighters were meant to form a pro US government ... the Afghan people then had the Taliban leadership to contend with who rejected outright the US approaches to site an oilpipe through their country ... in the summer of 2001 English and French newspapers reported that the US was gathering support for an invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban ... 9/11 happened and we had the perfect excuse to invade Afghanistan. What is startling is the brazenness with which the US began it's building of said oil pipline, only 6 months after the invasion began.
So if I were an Afghan I would not see it as a sudden invasion of my country in 2001 by a saviour force against the brutal Taliban or even a force determined to stop international terrorism, I would see it as just another war by foreign powers over oil. I would see my people dying, my religion and culture being eroded and outside countries determining my countries future and see a highly visible thread running through foreign policy toward the Middle East in the past few decades.
For Iraq we would have to look at the US policies in the Iran/Iraq war, at their sudden swing in changing sides and their influence in getting Saddam to invade Kuwait in the first place, in our lack of military force until Saddam refused to share the Kuwaiti oil with us and the sanctions against Iraq which led to hundreds of thousands of children dying ... long before the "second" Iraq war "after" 9/11.
Add to the pot the US and European attitude toward the Israel/Palestine conflict and you get a really pee'd off bunch of people who do not see Mid East history quite the way we do.
In my experience Arabs do not compartmentalise conflicts in the way we do (perhaps we do it because we are such experienced colonists) and they see outside influence or aggresion toward them or a neighbouring country as interference and intolerable.
As an aside, there is something I really don't understand about the Arabs, they will not lift a finger to help their neighbours but they see every external (ie non Arab) insult or attack on their neighbours as their own ... maybe it's like siblings, who will fight tooth and nail until the kid next door hits one of them and then the siblings stand together??
We have yet to address Saudi over it.
Why on earth would we address Saudi over it? First they have vast amounts of money invested in the US, enough to seriously damage the US and in turn European economies if they suddenly dropped all their stocks and withdrew their gold from banks. Second they have a hefty influence in OPEC and have been quite instrumental in ensuring that oil is still traded in dollars. Third they are basically the centre of the universe for Muslims, to be honest most Muslims I have met (if not all) see them as a bit on the crazy side but Mecca is in Saudi and any threat to Mecca or it's "guardians" would be akin to declaring all out war on Muslims (something the Saudi's have traded on for years).
So "all of Islam" isn't quite correct
I'm sorry but from where I am sitting "all of Islam" is unfortunately quite correct. I just did a google search for "islam+1999" and looked at the first 3 pages of google results (I discounted anything which is written after Sep 2001 but happens to have the date 1999 in).
The third link on the first page is a news article about a House of Lords legal case involving a man named Islam and there is an article on Human Rights in Islam (which appears to be from a Jewish source as it has the words Bat Ye'or in the title).
Other than that there is the usual spattering of religious sites, women's rights ssues from sites like Middle East Quarterly and a couple of sites about history.
Now a search for islam+2002 and a look at the first 3 pages
The first result on page one is Inside Islam (2002) (TV) .. a documentary. Clearly this was int eh response to the question "who are thes people that flew planes into buildings??!!
Then we have Inside Islam the movie, The History of Tafsir, Leaving Islam, Unholy War the future of Islam, Islam Watch and finally More than Islamic Extremists and all that just on the first page, just one link to a Muslim site.
This was a change that may not seem obvious to non Muslims but is very frightening for ordinary Muslims around the world. We now see dress bans, people demand that peaceful Muslims do something .. like we all have a OBL's mobile number and that doesn't even tackle the issue of Muslim countries being invaded based on a whole load of lies and scaremongering.
...I grew up a poor Catholic with Irish ancestry, living in the UK. weight of propaganda and half-truths.
Catch idealists early, and they make great terrorists... Give them a figure to hate, to blame, they'll go for it. People is people.
Thank you for your openess Sam, a very insightful read.
May I ask how much religion was used to influence your learning process or was it simply a label to identify them and us?
Reading your post I was reminded of a documentary interview I watched with a British woman who had been in Nazi Germany and she said during rallies, with all the flag waving and singing she had to force her arm not to go up in a Nazi salute. She explained that there is something hypnotic about belonging to a strong group, a group with a purpose and even though she was there to fight this very enemy it was hard not to be drawn in by the power such a group/crowd projects.
don't be a drama queen. I potentially insulted about a quarter of Irish Americans but someone was putting those coins in the buckets and I doubt it was Italian Americans.
