Why does the U.S. love helping Islamist radicals?

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

It's practically a trend at this point. Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, and now Syria. We've been on the same side as those who hate us (including but not limited to al-Qaeda) on many occasions. But politics makes strange bedfellows, I suppose.

[free my dawg]

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend." ~ Sagesawx

[Oakvale]

sup JCL

[Хahar 🤔]

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend." ~ Sagesawx

don't sageshame

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Afghanistan - Initially not Islamist radicals, and never fully Islamic radicals (also anyone who refers to the 80s mujahadeen as the "Taliban" loses the internet.)
Bosnia - Not Islamist radicals. Or even observant Muslims for the most part.
Kosovo - Pretty awful people (as anyone familiar with how Albanian drug rings and human traffickers operate), but hardly Islamist radicals, or once again, even observant Muslims.
Libya - Very small percentage of rebel forces were Islamic radicals, and current government replacing Gaddafi does not consist of Islamists.
Syria - Once again, only small percentage of rebels are Islamists.

[Sbane]

So we can invade them later.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

So we can invade them later.

...that doesn't even make sense. The only Muslim countries the US invaded in modern times were Afghanistan and Iraq, the latter which was under a secular government. So the only such example is Afghanistan, were the Islamists were not major players until after the US ceased involvement (the Taliban didn't even exist until 1994.)

Considering how dumb and overall awful both Reagan and Bush's foreign policies were it's best to at least make sense when attacking them.

[Lief 🗽]

This thread is dumb and bad and Snowstalker should feel sad for what he has done.

[Beet]

In addition to what BRTD said, couple points.

1) the US hearts Saudi Arabia. In Afghanistan and Iraq 1 we were definitely allied with them. In Syria we are. In Libya they backed us too. Their biggest strategic competitor in the region is Iran. The Saudis tend to back religious, Sunni, and anti Ba'ath forces. The reason for the US Saudi alliance is simply oil. We are their market, they are our supplier.

2) The secular forces in the region often tend to be more violent. All the Ba'ath dictatorships were heavily anti democratic. The secular Turks kept using the military to fight the Islamists. The Afghanistan cluster was initiated by a communist coup then invasion. The seculars in Algeria suppressed the Islamic election victory bloodily. Gadhafi was a violent autocrat. Assad is hard steel. The Egyptian military is more violent than the Muslim brotherhood. All of pre 1977 Arab Israeli wars were started by left wing governments, whether from the Israeli or Arab side. Oh yes let's not forget the bloody Iran Iraq war started by Iraq. How many we're killed in that one?

Our whole view of this is warped by 9/11. Overall, religious fundamentalists haven't killed all that many people in conparison; I mean, if this were a competition the would be like the 2009 Detriot Lions. Assad is already responsible for more deaths than al Qaeda in its whole history. The supposed demonic Iran and its Hezbollah ally have hardly killed anyone in comparison.

Why are the secularists so violent? Well for some reason secular ideology in the middle east tends to attract the military officers and the power hungry. Even in the Iranian revolution the military was the last institution in the country that was holding out against Khomeini until mid February 1979. Heck even the Shah had already fled the country and the military was still holding out!

The Islamists in the other hand you see their main presence is in the mosques and madrassas and charities. The civilian institutions. They ate not as much about obtaining power- even Khomeini had to do a major revolution in thinking from the ayatollahs traditional abeyance.

[Beet]

I mean, the dilemma of the Egyptian liberals was instructive. Obviously they were very anti regime, anti violence. But they had nowhere to turn to- nothing institutional of their own. They had to choose between the Brotherhood and the military, it makes sense from that angle why they failed. It's too fragile a balance. It would be nice if the left could co opt religion and build civilian institutions through Islam with tolerant and democratic values that still remain Islamic and are not some import from the West...

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

PNAC needs a 3rd Pearl Harbor.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

PNAC needs a 3rd Pearl Harbor.

This also doesn't make sense as it borders on 9/11 "truth"erism, and refers to an essentially defunct organization (PNAC) and there's no neoconservative influence on the current administration*. It's not 2003 anymore.

*Being hawkish and being a neoconservative are not the same thing, McCain and Lindsey Graham for example are not neoconservatives by any meaningful definition of the word even if their foreign policy views are horrible and default to warmongering. "Neoconservative" is actually a very narrow term in who it refers to, the co-opting of it by some liberals to mean "Anyone more hawkish than me" or by paleoconservatives and libertarians to essentially mean "anyone I disagree with" is a grammatical atrocity. There isn't even really anyone in elected office who could accurately be called a neoconservative, the closest person to one was Joe Lieberman, but he's no longer in elected office either.

[opebo]

Because of an idiotic preference for 'democracy' and other nonsensical ideas instead of good authoritarian autocratic rule. 

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Syria - Once again, only small percentage of rebels are Islamists.

Lulz.

[Lief 🗽]

Syria - Once again, only small percentage of rebels are Islamists.

Lulz.

Yeah facts are hilarious.

[free my dawg]

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend." ~ Sagesawx

don't sageshame

bro do u even sage

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

PNAC needs a 3rd Pearl Harbor.

This also doesn't make sense as it borders on 9/11 "truth"erism, and refers to an essentially defunct organization (PNAC) and there's no neoconservative influence on the current administration*. It's not 2003 anymore.

*Being hawkish and being a neoconservative are not the same thing, McCain and Lindsey Graham for example are not neoconservatives by any meaningful definition of the word even if their foreign policy views are horrible and default to warmongering. "Neoconservative" is actually a very narrow term in who it refers to, the co-opting of it by some liberals to mean "Anyone more hawkish than me" or by paleoconservatives and libertarians to essentially mean "anyone I disagree with" is a grammatical atrocity. There isn't even really anyone in elected office who could accurately be called a neoconservative, the closest person to one was Joe Lieberman, but he's no longer in elected office either.

What?  BRTD, first you say neoconservatism is an ideology just like Nazism and Stalinism, and now you say it only applies to a small group of people that includes Joe Lieberman but not John McCain for some reason (I can think of a reason but it doesn't go with your "discredited ideology" statement).  Could you give us your definition of neoconservatism for us so we can tell what you are talking about?

[All Along The Watchtower]

Clearly, so that sage Internet posters can complain on a discussion board.

[bedstuy]

To suggest that being "Islamic" is tantamount to being an Al Qaeda sympathizer is an uneducated, stupid opinion.  Once someone makes that leap, I can't really respect their critique of US policy.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

To suggest that being "Islamic" is tantamount to being an Al Qaeda sympathizer is an uneducated, stupid opinion.  Once someone makes that leap, I can't really respect their critique of US policy.

I assume you are attacking people who use the term "Islamic" in its real content and compare all Muslims with Al Qaida. If that is the case, then I agree 100% with you. Unless you meant Islamic as "Islamist", in which case, yes, they very well could sympathize with the theology and values behind Al Qaida, if not the group itself.

[bedstuy]

To suggest that being "Islamic" is tantamount to being an Al Qaeda sympathizer is an uneducated, stupid opinion.  Once someone makes that leap, I can't really respect their critique of US policy.

I assume you are attacking people who use the term "Islamic" in its real content and compare all Muslims with Al Qaida. If that is the case, then I agree 100% with you. Unless you meant Islamic as "Islamist", in which case, yes, they very well could sympathize with the theology and values behind Al Qaida, if not the group itself.

I think there's more middle ground than you suggest.  Almost every country in the Middle East  has a degree fusion of politics and religion.  There is a sliding scale between being the Taliban and being a secular regime.  There is also a range of aggressiveness towards the United States.  Saudi Arabia is an Islamist government that is friendly towards the US.  It's a complicated picture. 

I personally hate "Islamist" ideology.  I hope it is extinguished from the earth.  That said, if a country decides to have an Islamist government, but respects their neighbors and international law, I don't see a pressing US interest.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

To suggest that being "Islamic" is tantamount to being an Al Qaeda sympathizer is an uneducated, stupid opinion.  Once someone makes that leap, I can't really respect their critique of US policy.

I assume you are attacking people who use the term "Islamic" in its real content and compare all Muslims with Al Qaida. If that is the case, then I agree 100% with you. Unless you meant Islamic as "Islamist", in which case, yes, they very well could sympathize with the theology and values behind Al Qaida, if not the group itself.

I think there's more middle ground than you suggest.  Almost every country in the Middle East  has a degree fusion of politics and religion.  There is a sliding scale between being the Taliban and being a secular regime.  There is also a range of aggressiveness towards the United States.  Saudi Arabia is an Islamist government that is friendly towards the US.  It's a complicated picture. 

I personally hate "Islamist" ideology.  I hope it is extinguished from the earth.  That said, if a country decides to have an Islamist government, but respects their neighbors and international law, I don't see a pressing US interest.

I see what you meant, and I greatly misunderstood it the first time around. My apologies, I actually agree with you 100%.

[Hash]

Saudi Arabia is an Islamist government that is friendly towards the US.  It's a complicated picture. 

Or to confound the 'sage' simpletons like Snowstalker even further, Saudi Arabia is an ostensibly Islamist theocracy which supports the anti-Muslim Brotherhood military regime in Cairo.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

PNAC needs a 3rd Pearl Harbor.

This also doesn't make sense as it borders on 9/11 "truth"erism, and refers to an essentially defunct organization (PNAC) and there's no neoconservative influence on the current administration*. It's not 2003 anymore.

*Being hawkish and being a neoconservative are not the same thing, McCain and Lindsey Graham for example are not neoconservatives by any meaningful definition of the word even if their foreign policy views are horrible and default to warmongering. "Neoconservative" is actually a very narrow term in who it refers to, the co-opting of it by some liberals to mean "Anyone more hawkish than me" or by paleoconservatives and libertarians to essentially mean "anyone I disagree with" is a grammatical atrocity. There isn't even really anyone in elected office who could accurately be called a neoconservative, the closest person to one was Joe Lieberman, but he's no longer in elected office either.

What?  BRTD, first you say neoconservatism is an ideology just like Nazism and Stalinism, and now you say it only applies to a small group of people that includes Joe Lieberman but not John McCain for some reason (I can think of a reason but it doesn't go with your "discredited ideology" statement).  Could you give us your definition of neoconservatism for us so we can tell what you are talking about?

I'll go into detail when I have a bit more time, but here's the core thing: There are very few people who could accurately be identified as neoconservatives. It's a quite narrow term.