Is the western world brain washed?
I’ve tried stepping in the shoes of Osama Bin Laden and what the destroying of the WTC’s must have meant for the Middle East. I couldn’t have come to my conclusion until after I’ve taken a course in Art History. Obviously I learned how vast and rich civilization is and it’s very deep roots to the Middle East. I started wondering how it must feel to have western powers essentially control the Middle Easts natural resource [OIL] and dictate it’s trade and what not and I thought wow that must be pretty crappy.
So was the destroying of the WTC’s more of a metaphorical outreach to the world? Was Bin Laden’s point of view that of which trade should not be done with the U.S. and it’s allies because they are imperializing the world and that the Middle East [or at least Bin Laden’s followers] want to take control of it’s natural resources and dictate it’s own oil driven economy.
I can’t help but to think as a scholar 200 years from now, the point of the bombing wasn’t to insert fear, but to destroy a capitalist system that was slowly but surely imperializing the world and creating a global economy. Or at least that’s how I think it will be interpreted years from now.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t condone barbarism and the murders of fellow human beings. I’m just wondering what Bin Laden’s point of view was because to be ignorant and not take into consideration his point of views would be to truly believe the U.S.A. was the only victim of 9/11 when really we do imperialize other countries for the most part whether they like it or not.
Does any of this make sense?
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I can honestly say i have never heard of this idea. I mean sure people say the intent of the war’s started was an ill thought out attempt to control oil… but this.. Well i love a conspiracy theory.
I don’t know what you find so novel about this notion, honestly. That most of the middle eastern terrorism has to do with american economic imperialism is fairly established, the problem is that it’s also very much ass backwards.
If we don’t include the whole Iraq debacle, which happened afterwards anyway, it’s not like the US had any way to dictate what arab oil tycoons did with their oil.
They sold it to the US because it was advantageous, and the US made sure to make it so, but they dictated (and still dictate) the price, hence why the US government later tried to essentially colonise a middle eastern country, to have a way of lowering the price, at least for a while.
So, was 9/11 a symbolic attack? Of course, it would be pretty rubbish had it tried to be anything more than that. That doesn’t mean that the reasoning makes sense or that the “threat” was real. The amircanisation of the world has nothing to do with imperialist tactics, it has everything to do with convenience and opulence. People strive for comfort and riches, and whatever gives the feeling, often illusory, of achieving them is welcome, hence why people gravitate towards the american symbols.
Killing thousands of innocent people was a terrorist act justified by nothing.
The middle east has a lot of oil. We have a lot of food. That seems like a good trade. Last time I checked there’s not enough edible material growing in the desert to feed their population.
Maybe they would look at “western imperialism” differently if the deal was not listed in dollars but was “one barrel of oil for one bushel of wheat”.
We kept shoveling money into the pockets of the Emirs who owned the oil. They could have said no.
Keep in mind Osama bin Laden was worth $250,000,000, and his family had a Snapple franchise. They weren’t hurting due to American Imperialism.
The stated reason they gave for what they did was that they were against our support of Israel. It is easy to just stop there and not try and find other reasons.
“it’s not like the US had any way to dictate what arab oil tycoons did with their oil.”
Hahahahah ! Really?
In Iran for example,after WW II the monarchy was being overthrown, and briefly their oil resources were nationalized. The U.S. and U.K. stepped in and brought back the foreign-oil-company-friendly shah who lasted nearly to 1980. The Iranian resentment over this imperialist behavior set the stage for their current hatred of the U.S. and the U.K..
@filmfann Totally correct that the bin Laden family has nothing to complain about capitalism. Osama was simply the one in the family with a couple screws loose. An extremely well-funded black sheep in their family with a couple screws loose.
@LuckyGuy If you’re starving and watching your family wither away and face death, I’d guess you’d place the value of a bushel of wheat far higher than that of a barrel of crude oil, even though the world market values the oil far more than the wheat.
What is the vision offered by the followers of Osama bin Laden? A democratic back to the earth movement based on shared resources? Hardly. It is more a theocratic dictatorship that bans all technology and scientific learning and where girls are not allowed to go to school. I can’t work up much sympathy for these people.
@ETpro At one point many years ago the two were equal. The farmers here had the great idea of pegging the two prices to each other. It didn’t fly.
It was an act of evil. Period.
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