Shadowboxing With the Devil
David Morris
fqmorris at hotmail.com
Tue Sep 18 13:44:09 CDT 2001
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-091801scheer.column?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcomment%2Dopinions
September 18, 2001
Robert Scheer:
Destined to Shadowbox With the Devil
What is unfathomable to us is the depth of the terrorists' hate. From what
has been revealed of their lives, these are the very people who should have
been won over to modernity. They came from the oil-rich nations of the
Mideast that the U.S. protected during the Cold War and they were
welcomed-nay, courtedby our finest schools and business institutions.
Yet how easily their wrath against the old Soviet Union after its invasion
of Afghanistan was turned to even fiercer anti-Americanism. More intense
even than their hostility toward Israel.
>From what we can tell about Bin Laden's followers, these are not people who
would settle for the redrawing of national boundaries, even generously, so
as to create a Palestinian state, or to expel the Russians from Chechnya.
No, unfortunately they are driven by what to them appears clearly a higher
purpose, to overturn the international modernization of the 20th century. In
the name of God no less.
In that respect, even Saddam Hussein is their enemy, someone they have
called a "bad Muslim" because he has essentially presided over a secular
state.
The same was true of the last shah of Iran, derided by the religious
fanatics who overthrew him as anti-religious because he was attempting to
build a modern cosmopolitan society.
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