Q.Bovifs wrote:
VeganFan, what do you say to the allegation that certain radical Muslims, and maybe the entire negative element as we know it, were, either directly or indirectly, manufactured into being marrtuhrr-terra types by outside intel/influences, or at the very least by mimicking other groups' actions toward them?
I dunno, hasn't the Islamic religion been around for hundreds of years, yet you only started hearing about bahmmings[sic] and heinous shit like that the past 30-50 years? Has anyone ever stopped to think what might have caused such a recent shift in mindset?
Weren't the people in and around the original Israel settlement actually first subjected to such horrors by the original, evictor settlers, with tents allegedly being set on fire and families killed before any of the Arab and/or Muslim acts started? Now, if that is at all true, could they have just started fighting fire with fire, or are things a bit more deeply psychological, as guys like John Perkins, author of 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman' describe, wherein intelligence agents from more developed countries (not naming any names. .. ) allegedly fomented radical thought and opposition, and even maybe funded/seeded upstart organizations, which may or may not have grown into some of the largest and most horrible organizations we currently associate with some of today's most horrible acts? Or could it be both?
Is there a possible connection here? Were the Arabic/Islamic people taken advantage of and transformed into villains?. . . if they were, what possible purpose would this serve?
I readily admit that I could be being short-sighted, because I am probably not anywhere near as studied on the history and peoples of that area as you might be, with yourself having a claimed heritage in common with such peoples. I know that they were vilified and attacked in the Crusades, but I thought that, in modern times, we came to see them as more of a persecuted group in that instance.
Do you consider the areas I just touched upon to be the stuff of Alex Jonesian mythos or would you grant any of these suggestions any shred of validity?
Can you fill in any gaps in such chronology of middle eastern acts of "terra" that I may have missed or mis-represented?
I think much of what you're saying is exactly what other historians and analysts have said about the post-World War I Middle East. The bit about extremists being "manufactured" is precisely how some have come to see groups like the Taliban, who were just one of a range of non-state actor groups that benefited from CIA financing and training during the last days of the Cold War. The use of pawns, no matter how undesirable they may be, in proxy wars is nothing new for major powers, and continues today in places like Syria, Pakistan, and numerous countries in Africa.
Not saying this is your position or anything, but I would hesitate at some meta-narratives out there that attribute ALL violence to the machinations of intelligence agencies and what not. There's no doubting the role certain global powers played and continue to play in the emergence and sustenance of militant groups in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, but at the same time, there are just some bad dudes who are predisposed to do all this stuff anyway, whether or not they're helped by foreign agencies. For the latter types of people, historians like Chalmers Johnson argue that this is a form of "blowback," or the unintended consequences of the kind of covert operations you were referencing.