I know it's probably inflated, but the numbers are frightening:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/wo...ei=5088&partne

If 3.000 people died on 9/11, and the above number would be 10 times too high, that would still make 20 dead Iraqis for every one killed on 9/11. And you sure won't tell me they were all terrorists?

Indeed Skybird, very good points. I don`t pretend to understand it all, being so young myself. But one must try and peel back the layers, and have an opinion at the same time.:D

I never meant to imply it as being a true resistance movement however. In that sense more accurate comparisons would be made with Hezbollah or Hamas. But I don`t think we can simply stick Osama under the category `zealot` and dismiss his strategy. Exploiting the missteps of the west in their trek through the ME is one very powerful recruitment tool. Saying `lets go fight the infidels in Iraq` is a powerful one indeed.

The US and Britain continuing to do what they`ve done for a long time just feeds the fire. Al Quada looked to be done as an independant organization after Afghanistan. Iraq looks to have given it a new life. We blunder and create our own enemies.:roll: I don`t think that we are particularly righteous in that region. Nothing we do is out of anything other than self interest, at least not as nation states.

There are times when the reality of what I know saddens me. I certainly understand the allure of ignorance.:p

With regard to Islam, we certainly do not create our enemies - Islam is narcistic to almost pervert levels and thus is deeply hostile towards everything that is not itself, it does not need mis-steps of the West to make it it's enemy. But you are right, the stupid pplicies of Wetsern powers throughout the past let's say 150 years have made this enemy of ours stronger, with our active assistance. And this is a very stupid and self-damaging policy of ours. Maybe you have taken note of the conflict in Turkey. In the long run the military is the only thing that stands between turkey and it's future of becoming dogmatic-fundamentalistic again. That truth does not stop European full-time-polit-suckers to already warn them again to step down and not to interfewre while a deeply fundamentalist Islamic party secures more and more legal, administrative power and influence and tries to reduce secularism slowly and under the umbrella of "democracy" and fundamentalist-made changes in laws. The same full-time-idiots call for Egypt stopping to supress the radical-fundamentalist opposition, so that it can gain even more control of parliament as it already did during the last "election". Europe uses it's idea of democracy to allow it's worst enemies getting elected to power. And islam has nothing on mind with democracy, this one finally has to learn here in the West.

Europeans politicians are so very, very, very, very stupid and naive and off-reality. One could wish to run amok when witnessing that ammount of self-damaging idiotism. :arrgh!: :damn: :dead: :down: :nope: When democracy has come so far that it allows to get deconstructed by something that is deeply-anti-democratic, and calls this tolerance and peacefulness, I declare it the dead body of a successful suicide candidate, and turn my back on it, not moving one hand for it anymore. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Not to mention: weak, and disgustingly shameful.

Actually, I think this is all more a case where Al Qeida couldn't unseat their own Saudi government to install a Islamic one, so they are looking at the West since they are an easier target. Sooner or later, I think they suspect one or more of our governments will fall and they will move in with an Islimist one.

That is my take on it. No president, no Prime Minister, no one has anything to do with it.

-S

PS. Now the sad part - they are probably right in which they think that one of our govs will fall.

Nothing lasts forever sadly. With the West I see it as an economic self immolation. Between the fact that that most important characteristic of the West, the middle class, becoming poorer again, and the constnat economic outsourcing to the far East, we are literally selling our prosperity for cash.

And the businesses and businessmen have no particularl loyalty to the US or Canada, or anyone else. They just go where the dollar takes them. Thats one particular flaw in market capitalism as its evolved in North America.

All that that has to do with Islamist extremism is that we are growing weaker every year. Eventually economic collapse or just stagnation seems to be the real threat of the fall of our society. Usually that is when the strong militaristic culture pops up and says "we can save you, just don't ask questions about how and forget about your rights".