Know Thy Enemy?

Obviously suicide attacks (in the name of Islamic extremism and anti-capitalism) have been hot news items since 9/11. Western cultures (and the vicitim in the article below) see these acts as despicable, monstrous, and cowardly, and maybe even insane. W was the poster boy for dismissing the attackers at face value, and most of the country agreed, especially right after 9/11. At that time and still partly now I was 100% behind bulldozing the Taliban and anyone associated with al-Qaeda, and asking questions later.

Murdering innocent people is horrible, and inexcusable. But why don't we ask "why" more often? --This is not the liberal "we must deserve it" theory.-- I recently raised the question of "how can we ever beat them if we don't understand their motives?" to my stepmother in Iowa, and she said "who cares, they're evil and that's all that matters. We need to blow them all up." Hearing her say that, without ANY interest in knowing ANYTHING about these people, just felt, well, incomplete. Something is missing. To beat cockroaches, don't we study them first to understand their motives? We can never negotiate with them, but we can know more about them, and hopefully minimize their actions. "Understanding" is not the same as "condoning."

As the war drags on and the suicide attacks continue, I am wondering more and more, what the HELL is motivating these people (other than insanity because I don't really believe that anymore.) Are they just killer cockroaches, or something smarter than that? Is there any sense in reasoning with them, or not? Why doesn't anyone know this? Last I heard Obama wants to try it, with a lot of hoots and hollers from people like my stepmother. Or, are our cultures SO vastly different, that we'll never agree? Kind of like the movie Independence Day where the aliens just wanted to kill everyone for no reason? I guess it's possibly but I kind of doubt that. They're not Nazis that want to invade the world...we're not our grandfathers stopping the spread of communism. It seems like this version of Nazi keeps to themselves, at least as far as I know. They're just mad at western culture, right? (Really, desperately, insanely mad.)

So I guess the question is, are these extremists pure tools of Satanic evil, with whom we'll never be able to negotiate, and the only way to beat them is to kill them one by one, and also hope to somehow stop the education of future extremists? It's definitely possible, but my western logic tells me otherwise. These people are just way too pissed off at something that we're doing, or that our leaders are doing, and I just feel like we should be looking at that a little closer. Wow, never thought I'd be writing something like this, but then again I never thought we'd still be in Iraq 7 years later, with bin Laden still on the loose, and my trust in W all but gone.

If a guy on the street punches another guy, is it the victim's fault because he must have done something wrong to piss off the puncher? No. Is it ever right to hit? No. But I do think the motive is something to consider, is all, before completely dismissing it as insanity.

I also must disclose that I read the book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man recently, in which a retired secret agent describes the US's hidden agenda behind its foreign aid since WWII and the Marshall Plan - basically we loan other countries huge sums of money (or infrastructure projects) that we know they can never pay back, and then we control them forever. If the leader of that country smells a rat and rejects the offer, we find a way to replace the leader. (He uses Saddam as an example - which is a reach I know.) It's definitely conspiracy theory, and has been rejected by most experts as purely fiction. But if any of it's true, yikes.

Article mentioned in 1st paragraph-
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081114/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan
Taliban kill mullah critical of suicide attacksBy RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writer Rahim Faiez, Associated Press Writer Fri Nov 14, 8:05 am ET
KABUL, Afghanistan – Suspected Taliban militants killed a religious leader in western Afghanistan after he criticized the use of suicide attacks as a weapon of war in the country, an Afghan official said Friday.
Militants kidnapped Shamsudin Agha in Farah province's Anar Dara district on Tuesday, days after he led prayers condemning the practice of using suicide attacks, said provincial police Chief Abdul Ghafar Watandar.
Suicide attacks are one of the Taliban's preferred tactics in their assaults against Afghan and foreign troops. Most of the victims of such attacks have been civilians.
Authorities recovered Agha's body on Wednesday night, Watandar said.
Violence by the Taliban and other insurgent groups has spiked this year to record levels. Attacks are up 30 percent from 2007, military officials say.
On Thursday, another suicide car bomber struck a U.S. patrol, killing eight Afghan civilians and one U.S. soldier and wounding 74 civilians, Afghan officials said.
Nearly 1,000 civilians are among the approximately 5,400 people killed in insurgency-related violence this year, according to a tally by The Associated Press of figures provided by Afghan and international officials. Most of the reported dead have been militants.
Elsewhere, U.S. troops killed four al-Qaida-linked militants during a raid in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday.
The troops were targeting militants who helped local Taliban leaders bring Arab and other foreign fighters into Afghanistan, the U.S. military said in a statement Friday.
None of the militants killed was identified.