@braineclipse
My point is that with Bin Laden given an international platform following 9/11, his rhetoric started to resonate with some Muslims worldwide when they saw the West invade two Muslim countries within 2 years and perform drone strikes on another. Did he solely cause them? No (though I don't think we'd have given a fudge about Afghanistan otherwise actually). He accelerated them and was able to successfully use them as evidence for his flawed logic.
Sorry mate, I'm still a bit confused. You've wrapped it up a bit but you still seem to be saying to me that Muslims in Islamic countries need to be oppressed by dictators or the West and that, if we are to keep our own values, we must fight the Islamic world at some point?
Yes but we're not doing that. What we're doing is repeating the exact same stupid mistakes of the past. The analogy there is that we go to war in 1939, defeat Nazism in a strange alliance with Communism and then, repeating the mistakes of 27 years past, impose yet another extraordinarily harsh set of terms on Germany. Instead, the US got more involved this time and, unlike in WWI, where they allowed the UK and France to dictate terms, pumped money into West Germany and the rest of Europe under their sphere of influence. What we're doing is repeating the mistakes of the past. We are supporting dictators that oppress their populations (which in the process pushes the population further towards religion and in some cases to extremism), we are invading these countries and attacking them (perpetuating the theory that the West is on a new crusade) and we are more and more aggressively pushing ourselves into them.
Really? How's that working out for us in Iraq? Invade and destroy a whole country. 8 years of civil war, crushed only by a huge troop surge. Bubbling along again now with troop removal. Now run by a man that seems to be re positioning himself as a dictator. And with a vice-president currently in hiding in the Kurdish areas after allegations by Maliki that he is funding and running a guerilla organisation. Who knows whether he actually is? Either way, its a mass. Stellar job. There have to be the foundations of a democratic state there first before you waltz in there. Japan and Germany were completely and utterly defeated, as a military and people. And Germany had basically had a democracy just 10-15 years earlier. It was a cold war only for those in North America and Europe. For the rest of us, it was anything but cold, as the forces of NATO and the Warsaw pact fought it out amongst themselves in our countries. And Russia isn't a democracy now. Iraq's democracy won't hold up, its already breaking apart.
We've seen just what removing Saddam did. The numbers in the Iran-Iraq war are horrific (made even more horrific by the fact that basically the whole world supported Saddam in that little endeavour) but the body count after the West's little incursion is hardly small. The West is not the world's policeman. Especially not when they're not wanted or desired by anyone in the region. Can I ask, when is the world launching its invasion of the UK, USA, Israel, Sri Lanka etc etc? Why, rather than invade Iraq in the 80s after the Iran war, did the West, China and the Arabs support Saddam rather than removing him then? Because those laws are flimflam and we pick and choose as we wish.
I will reiterate again that Saddam was not a theocratic dictator. Not even close. He was a secular Arab nationalist, possibly more secular that Western forces in how he ran his country. Just because he happened to be a leader of a Muslim country does not make him a theocratic fascist. Saddam doesn't even feature on the West-theocratic dictator sliding scale. In fact, probably the most theocratic dictator in the region is currently wedged rather far up Western asses, funneling as much oil as is needed to them.
4 of the 5 most populous Muslim countries have elected a female leader and the majority of Muslims worldwide have lived under a female leader. Is there a problem with female rights in Islamic countries? Yep. Is it mostly linked to culture? Yep. Is there a problem with female rights in Western countries? Yep. I'm not sure how any side has any moral legitimacy whatsoever on this issue, we all treat our women like brick and its time we made this a global issue and attempt to remove all negative consequences of having two x chromosomes, rather than get all uppity because we give our women marginally more rights in the grand scheme of things.
Course I'm happy. My wife's dad fought in the second world war for the Allies, despite having never set foot in Europe and not having any link to Europe whatsoever, other than being colonised. For the UK, it was a war to protect the UK. Our politicians just weren't stupid enough to wait until Hitler actually invaded, having by that point conquered the whole of Europe and Russia and therefore rendering our Islands basically helpless.
The rules on Jihad are clear. You must not resort to unscrupulous methods or indiscriminate killings. You must not drag innocent parties into your conflict (ie children, women and men who are non-combatants). You must not damage the environment. You must not pillage. Force can only be used as a final resort and must always be proportional. Nukes break just about every one of these. From what I can see, the closest any Islamic country has come in the recent past to attempting to 'colonise the world' is Iraq. Led by a secular nationalist. Where are all these wars started by Islamic states to colonise even their surrounding area first? Colonise is quite an unfortunate choice of term too considering the West's very very recent history along this thread.
The whole world is at odds with the small number of extreme Muslims. Contrary to this belief held by some in the West that it is the West leading the valiant fight against these groups, it is actually the Islamic world which has had to do most of the fighting and the Islamic world which has had to bear the brunt of the attacks and deaths. It has nothing to do with some wider clash of civilizations and it really has little to do with religion either.