I've spent decades thinking that we, the First World countries, the Westerners, the Imperialist Government types, have gone into these countries and robbed and pillaged these poor countries who had nothing. I thought we were the bad guys. And maybe we were. But do you fight back by blowing up women, children, the handicap, and even your own people? Really? Doesn't that sound, kind of, retarded?
Yes, I said, Retarded. Look it up. Slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development or academic progress. The word isn't bad, just its use in relation to people who were handicapped, regarding treating them improperly, is. It used to refer to those who were underdeveloped, especially mentally and especially having an IQ of 70 to 85. We know many of the Islamic terrorists are highly educated. So that can't be it. But I seriously think, that on another scale, perhaps, socially, or religiously, they are of lower intellectual capabilities.
Anyway, I'm starting to understand that its not really just us. At some point, when two people are in a bad situation, both can have responsibility. Just try getting away with someone who punches you in the face, then you methodically, beat, then, to, death. Is he going down for hitting you? No, you are going to jail for the rest of your life for killing him, for using inappropriate force. For not stopping when he did and was no longer a threat.
Slowly, surely, I think I'm beginning to get it. If you are a third world country, you may grow up through the years with a first world country in your face, taking your resources. Do you benefit from it? Actually, yes? You usually do. Should you just allow that first world country to continue to take, to benefit almost fully, for themselves? No. At some point, you wake up, you grow up, you become educated enough that you stand and say, "enough".
And then, there is enough. You stand. Your government stands. They broker a new deal with you. You may even nationalize your resources and take back what was yours in the first place; but look, it was you who was too ignorant, too uncaring, or too deluded, initially, to give a rap about it. It doesn't make it right what was done to you, but you pick up yourself and move on, you don't dwell on it and commiserate on it forever.
We all tend to one day wake up and take back what we have been giving away out of ignorance, fear, or simply lack of education. But, when the school bully, to take extreme cases, is finally put in his place by you, do you kill him? No. You may even punch him in the nose, whatever it takes to get his attention. But you do not, try to destroy him, nor continue for EVER to try to destroy him. To kill his friends, his family, his children. Then, your own friends, family, your own people, you don't kill your own people.
Do you? Does that make any sense at all? If you said yes, you are retarded. Socially, damaged. Psychologically, unbalanced.
Lawrence Wright said recently that Al-Qaeda was a reaction, not a movement. They have no plans once they win, should that absurdity ever come to be. They are like the tribes in Lawrence of Arabia, when, once, they finally had control of Akaba (with the help of a British Officer who fought for and with them), these tribes had no idea how to run things, how to work together, how to have a plan after victory.
So maybe that is what they need to be doing. Stop destroying, stop luxuriating in your misery, your killing, your bullying and typically, your own people who are indeed scared of you. And just try to get something productive done.
Ask yourself just one question: what would be happening, what would they be doing, if these terrorists did not have religion to hide behind, to guide them into their insanity?
At least it would be more honest in what they are actually doing and what their real motivations, their real compulsions and their actual desires and fetishes are, and we could just get on with it.
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