On Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:57:14 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Sure there are other factors, but the major beef that Bin Laden and
>> others has is that unbelievers are in their holy land.  Our solution to
>> that was to put MORE unbelievers in their land.
> 
> Yeah. And the obviously correct way to get our military *out* of their
> land was to start attacking our *own* country. Good move, that. ;-)

Well, it wasn't Iraq who attacked us on 9/11, was it?

I don't seem to recall that 9/11 was the first attempt to get us out of 
their land.  Some people take the approach "I'll *show* you what it's 
like" after other means fail.

I absolutely don't agree with their tactics, but I can understand why 
they do what they do.  This isn't something that happened overnight; even 
when Bin Laden was on "our side" fighting in Afghanistan, he was angry 
about the "US occupation" (ie, established military bases) in Saudi 
Arabia.

If you were a believer in God (and I know you're not from earlier 
discussions), if someone came in and pissed all over your church and 
disrespected your religion, you'd probably be upset about it as well.  If 
after asking a hundred times that they leave they didn't, you might feel 
it was time to take more extreme action to get your point across.

Most people have a very hard time stepping into someone else's shoes in 
order to look at a situation and understand it from a different point of 
view.  I can't count the number of conversations I've had with people 
over the years to try to get them to see something they disagree with 
from my (contrary) point of view:

"Imagine that you didn't believe in Christ"
"But I do!"
"Yeah, but imagine if you didn't!"  
"Why on earth would I do that?"
"To see a different point of view"
"But that point of view is WRONG"
"And you know that how?"
"Because it's not MY point of view"
etc.

As a nation, the US is extremely guilty of failing to look at situations 
from other points of view, even to understand them.  Understanding 
doesn't mean agreement.  I think many people, though, are afraid of 
understanding a different perspective - maybe they fear agreeing with it.

Jim

Post a reply to this message