Bad Karma and 9/11
There is often a basic problem when trying to debate geo politics. You have one side that seems to be ruled by emotion or at least believes in "spiritual forces". You have the other side that seems to be ruled by logic and believes in direct causes and effects.
The two don't mingle too well in debates. And nothing brings that up into sharper contrast than the debate about "root causes" of 9/11.
For instance, some try to argue that the United States "provoked" 9/11. Brought it onto itself. But how? When you try to nail down these reasons you end up with what essentially can be described as an accumulation of bad karma. In their mind, the US did enough little things to build up the bad karma that triggered 9/11. I'm sorry but that's ridiculous.
Let's cut to the chase:
On September 11, 2001 19 Hijackers, mostly from Saudi Arabia hijacked 4 civilian airliners. Their goal was to take their hijacked planes and ram them into 3 buildings. One was the World Trade Center, the world's largest civilian building that could house up to 200,000 people at any given time. A virtual city. The other two were buildings in Washington DC (the Pentagon was struck and we don't know for sure what the other target was because that plane went down).
So what were the root causes? What specifically were they? Those of us who have followed this have heard the investigative reports. That essentially Osama Bin Laden, leader of Al Queda, was angry with Saudi Arabia. US troops were located in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War. His hope was that their attacks on US interests and now on the US itself would motivate the United States to pull out of the Middle East so that Al Queda would be free to try to overthrow the "corrupt" Saudi regime and install a true Islamic based one.
Shortly after the attack, Bin Laden expanded that to talk about the Palestinians and Iraqi's but that was a hollow charge since he had never shown interest in those causes before.
But the American haters through the world and the United States itself weren't content with that. Such reasons were obviously far too weak to justify such massive carnage, particularly of innocents. Hence we have the "Why do they hate you" idiocy that some on the left gush out without thinking. To them, everything from US actions in Central America to the US not helping enough to rebuild Afghanistan after the Soviets were ejected to CIA stuff to the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 all added up together and it was time for some galactic justice to be dished out.
To the American haters, it never occurred to them that hey, you know what, the US may not be perfect but it's not a monster. And in fact, there are some true monsters out there such as Osama Bin Laden who would, if they had the means, exterminate billions. In fact, the more people have learned about Al Queda, the more they discover that they are essentially the "Klan of the Koran", basically the KKK equivalent for Muslims. A bunch of small minded, spoiled wealthy people whose personal bigotry is so vast that there is no evil they aren't willing to commit on those who are sub-human (such as Americans).
Most American haters I've bumped into on-line have only a very partial grasp on world history. It's essentially bits and pieces of propaganda. The "bad" things the United States does tends to get publicized. You don't hear, nearly as much, the stoning of women or other horrific acts that occur routinely in the Islamic world.
Regardless though, I can't see how any rational thinking person could possibly believe in some sort of universal karma for nation states. That a government over a period of decades could build up bad karma and just mysteriously be punished for it. After all, there weren't any Japanese, Vietnamese, German, or Costa Rican terrorists on 9/11.
