What we're doing in the ME recently must surely help explain the rise of an ISIS much better than reference to Jim Crow and slavery.
The purpose of the article was not so much to explain the rise of ISIS as to help prevent the pot from calling the kettle black. I had wanted to discuss our role -- and those of other Western countries -- in the rise of ISIS in other threads, but this forum is not fertile ground for that sort of thing.
Ryan Lovelace / National Review:Report: No. 1 Issue at Obama's Private Meeting with Muslim Leaders Was Islamophobia in America
As usual this thread has devolved into DB claiming that western culture is just the same as the Islamic terrorists, therefore we can not condemn a barbaric 10th century culture.
True that. One way I look at it is this. You and I have been alive long enough to know the backstory, to know why (right or wrong) there are American troops on their soil. But a young man born there recently, didn't live that history, maybe lost a relative, and if he's as patriotic as some of our young men are (and how we want them to be), he wants American troops out of his country by any means necessary. And don't forget to add high youth unemployment to the recipe.
I agree, just as we would if the roles were reversed. But the Muslims did not start this. If one wanted to place blame somewhere, I suppose he could go back to Justinian. But to what purpose other than to justify what we've done in what whozis likes to call "the current period"? What I find interesting is that American victims are only a minor part of the drama. The ME extremists are going after just about everybody, including of all things the Japanese. If nothing else, this suggests that none of this has anything to do with religion.