Totally agree, but why is it OUR place to kill terrorists in the ME? Why hasn't the ME countries banned radiacl groups? Why don't they hunt them down and kill them? There has to be thousands of ME Arabs who know who the terrorists are, but do they turn them in to authorities? No, they are afraid that the authorities will be closet terrorists, they they will get visited in the night and killed.
First of all, the Middle East is not all Arab. I would like to clarify that for you and anyone else who happens to read this. Ethnically, it is a very diverse region. For example, ethnically speaking, most people who inhabit Israel and the West bank and not even Arabs, they are of Yemeni descent. The universal use of the term "Arab" was invented by the European imperial powers and its misuse continues to this day. It's ironic because the people of Gaza (including Hamas) and the Israelis share a common ethnic origin, yet they both subscribe to the imperial labels that were cast upon the region (i.e. the Gazans are "Arabs" and the Israelis are not, when in reality neither is Arab). Essentially, the war between Israel and the Gazans is a war between the same ethnicity. Not many people know this though. Ethnic Arabs descend from Osroene (a.k.a Edessa) in ancient Mesopotamia.
But I digress! (Sorry for that, it just bugs me when I see the term "Arab" misused so much.) In the context of what you said, I am to assume you mean "Arabs" as being a large portion of the Middle East, in which case I can only say that the matter is more complex than you make it out to be. Keeping in mind that the ME is diverse and most of the countries do not speak the same language, how do you propose that a regional front be made between the various peoples? The terrorist networks are multi-national, but the methods for fighting them are not. Two countries can't even agree on who the extremists are, and how to combat them. It was the U.S. "War on Terror" that tried to create a united front, but it lacked the cultural know-how to unify the cause regionally. (Plus, it doesn't help when the Western media is incredibly ignorant and racist towards the people it is claiming to help.)
First of all, the radical right-wing religious people have a right to exist in many Middle Eastern countries, just like they do in the U.S. Secondly, even though their most radical ideas include violence, their core ideas espouse Islam, and this is why the masses gravitate to them. They espouse traditions in order to gain support, but they don't necessarily gain support by espousing violence. This is why I continually emphasize that the conflicts stemming from the Middle East and even the aspects which affect the West
are not actually religious, but the radicals know religion and tradition is a common unifying theme to get more suport. It has nothing to do with Islam in reality. I frankly find it disturbing how both sides (the Middle Eastern radicals and the Western media) are so anxious to paint this as a religious war. It's not whatsoever. And finally, the actual terrorists are an even slimmer minority among the radical right. Just like you can't say every right-wing extremist in the U.S. is necessarily violent, the same goes for the right-wing extremists in the ME. So to say that the extremist right needs to be culled is inaccurate... the radical VIOLENT right needs to be culled. A person burning a U.S. flag in the street, while disturbing to Western audience, is not a terrorist; they are engaging in popular protest, which is their right. I agree they are radical, but they are not all about to strap bombs to their chests and jump at a U.S. tank.
If you're referring to the Mullahs that are in the Theocratic governments, you can't strictly brand them as terrorists either just because they have draconian social policies. The ones in Iran, for example, may be socially draconian, but their economic policy has allowed Iran to flourish. They may dictate hatred but they themselves don't carry out the terrorism.
So why don't people find the terrorists and disarm them? Why don't people anywhere hunt down the violent ones and pre-emptively remove them from society? It's the job of law enforcement and government to do that. Why should I endanger myself in confronting a terrorist just to satisfy someone else's political agenda? The vast majority in the ME are just trying to live their daily lives, they don't care for the ridiculous politics.
The people in the ME are the primary victims of terrorism, yet they do little to end it.
There are human rights groups at work in the Middle East that have been campaigning as far back as the 70's. They just don't appear in the Western media because it doesn't satisfy the Western political agenda. The Western powers have always wanted their own pieces of the Middle Eastern pie, and portraying themselves as a civilizing force is one such method of gaining public support in order to land there. You see, we too use Islam to justify war, just from a foreign perspective. In the ME there are women and children's rights groups, there are underground networks rescuing victims of rape, and there are resisters. Again, this is not what the Western media pays attention to. They need the Middle East to be the enemy to justify current campaigns.
If nukes ever get used in the ME, it will be one ME country against another. The fighting among the Sunni, shia, etc. is as stupid as the Irish catholics fighting Irish protestants.
The agitators are the ones who MUST be killed...they are very unlikely willing to change.
and NO apologizing or justifying of terrorist acts by anybody should be tolerated....
Please understand, I am not trying to justify terrorism or explain it away. I'm trying to shed light on the complexity of the matter. Surely if it were as simple as just finding the terrorists and removing them, it would have been done ages ago?
It also becomes difficult when the terrorists in the Middle East have been, in the past, mobilized by rivaling Western powers like the USSR and the U.S., by giving them expert training, weapons resources, and new strategies on networking on the global level. This is why the Taliban is difficult to defeat. It's not as simple as telling ME civilians to rise up. All of NATO can't even take out the Taliban.
Rather than send troops into Iraq, we should have just done an air/sea embargo around the countrys involved. Isolate them and let them suffer til they come to their senses....
The terrorist networks have more than sufficient know-how to get around this, and in the end it would just be a human rights calamity on our end. Starving countries of resources does not end their tyrannical regimes. The food for oil program is a perfect example of how starving Iraq did nothing to end Saddam's torturous rule.
The key to removing terrorism in the ME is not to support the leftists or the rightists, but to support the moderates. However, this has NEVER been Western foreign policy. We formerly supported the rightists in order to fight the USSR, now we are supporting the leftists who want to destroy terrorists but also combat ME tradition; this is why the U.S. is hated in many places right now. If public policy moves too quickly away from tradition (which is VERY important in many Middle Eastern nations), then the public will reject the new policy and the right wing extremists will have ammunition to gain power. It will also alienate the moderates. However, catering to the right wing also hasn't worked, clearly. The moderates are the key to the long-term survival of the Middle East, and frankly, any nation on this earth.
The West can start by stop putting puppets in power who are not moderates. That is part of the reason why the ME has so much radicalism in the governments right now.
