servent101 said:
Mustard Seed
How did you get this... from what I posted?
From this part--
...but I think America needs to take some public responsibility for creating this whole mess in the first place - as it seems the core group of terrorists now were all "influenced" or "indoctrinated" to some pretty strange ideas when they were fighting in Afghanistan against the Russians. If America did do this, take some public responsibility for the "misuse" of religious dogma in Afghanistan,
We did not misuse religious dogma. We provided aid to someone that was fighting a common enemy. To my knowledge we did not send them out suicide bombing themselves in the middle of Russia's civilian population. We simply gave aid to a military organization that was fighting a cause advantageous to the containment of communism.
That is my point. If you were to pay a man for food that he had that you needed to go on living and that man took that money and used it to train himself, through the institution that supported the dogma(s) he held, to go out and later do horrible things to other people are you then guilty for having paid that man for food when you didn't know exactly what chaos that transaction would support in the long term? We can't do bussiness with people that are perfect and have no chance in the future of taking the spoils of various transactions we've had with them and using those spoils for something very very bad. You seem to say that we need to take some blame for having had these collaberations. Would you then say we should also take responsibility for transactions we didn't take that might have saved lives or kept people out of a bondage far worse than any they currently experience? What if we'd left them alone? Would you then criticize the US for sitting by while the USSR dominated the entire globe in a globalized version of medevil European serdom? It's easy to criticize any actons taken by our government at any point because we all think that things could have gone better. But no one offers alternatives. Hindsight's 50/50 untill you have to actually go back and decide what to change and then watch the consequences unfold. People scoff at the idea of the USSR taking over the world but it could have really happened. Then in all likelyhood we would be living in something like the Russians (and most of the world) endured for centuries under the iron fist of the Mongols. Tell me what you would have done differently and what you think the most likely outcome would have been. That's my problem with statements like the one you made. It's like many of us seeing the decisions our parents make at times. It's easy to say they messed up, that they really botched it, but then if we were really put in their shoes with only the knowledge they or we had at that time could we guarentee that our outcome would have been that different or better?
I haven't seen the movie the Butterfly Effect but the plot, as I understand it, goes along similar lines. While I'm certain we could do some things better than what we did if we could go back and do it all over again we often forget the complecations and differing circumstances that would ensue as the result of our initial corrections and changes.
The statement I made was to my thinking superb - one could reach what they call heaven by being peaceful, and not fighting to show that their "religion" is built on peace... if they died fighting for peace in a peaceful way... this is the glory of all glories - marterdom does not have to be by blowing oneself up in a war... but they do not preach that - why? - well I suspect that the Americans probably influenced their religion and culture to make soldiers for fighting in Afganistan against the Russians.
So anyways - if the Americans admitted that they influenced the Muslim community - even if they did not... if they lied and said they did contribute to the "aspect of twisting the Muslim Faith" - this would strike a real blow to terrorists - that they might decide to look again at their Scriptuers and realize the battle in which to be martyred is not a military battle, but one where one is living at peace with his or her enimies, and is trying to gently persuade them of what is "true"... and while in the process he or she is killed.
With Christ's Love
Servent101
A most interesting hypothesis. Beyond the fact that I think lying is ALWAYS wrong (the only exception would be if God or his true servent specificaly commanded me to do it, and then I would hope that I would only follow that command so far as I'd been authorized too). You have the problem of perpetual distrust of us. Any claim we made that they didn't agree with, even if you could fabricate a good lie with genuine looking phony evidence and even if you could get key people on their side to go in with you uniequivocably on the lie, would be dismissed. These people, after all, are quite open to theories ranging from the US letting them attack the US to the Israeli influenced US government setting the whole thing up just so we could pick on the Muslims of the world and steal their oil or whatever else they happen to be living around. They are plenty ready to accept absured theories, so long as it doesn't paint them as either the bad guy or as fools. And the case with your setup, assuming it's a lie, would have them apearing as fools.
So then if we did do it. For us to take the blame I personaly would like to see the evidence. Otherwise I see no problem with accepting my current understanding that we simply made an alliance of convenience to counter what we saw, at the time, as being the greatest threat to those things that we hold in some of the highest esteem.
Now you could go on about a government cover up but I've seen too many government cover-ups exposed with evidence comming in from all over- that I'd be a reaaaaaaaaly tough sell on a theory with no real evidence.