But this talk about "esthetics" confuses me. It's not even a word.
The word "encyclopędia" can be spelled in two different ways if you don't have the "ę" ligature on your keyboard. It can be spelled "encyclopaedia", or it can be spelled "encyclopedia". Most people spell it the second way. Similarly, ftus can be spelled foetus, or it can be spelled fetus. As well, ęsthetics can be spelled either aesthetics or esthetics.
You and many terrorists make the same collectivist mistake: putting people into groups and justifying atrocities against innocent people who you consider to be in the same group as guilty people. It is barbaric when terrorists do it. It is barbaric when you do it.
The problem with many Muslims is that they fail to differentiate between residents of the US and the government of the US. But that's also the problem with many non-Muslims as well.
This deserves a careful and intelligent reply. I am going to try and provide one.
Living in France or Poland in 1939, or Britain in 1940, or America in 1941, I wouldn't have the luxury of dealing with the people of Germany as individuals. If I have the might of a modern industrial state, comparable in power to the one I live in, bearing down on my own nation to take its land and enslave its people, I will have to resist by the means which are available to me that have a chance of working.
Weighing Dresden against Belsen, and Nagasaki against Nanking, it's hard for me to see criticism of the monstrous things the Allies did do in World War II as more than nit-picking. It was a fight for anything even remotely resembling freedom on this planet.
If all al-Qaeda had done was lump American civilians together with the American government... I would hardly have a complaint against them. The movie Red Dawn illustrated (not, of course, in detail: as popular entertainment, it was cleaned up, as it were) that if Americans faced an occupation by the Soviet Union, they would put up a fight that could teach Hamas or al-Qaeda some lessons.
Instead of "whose ox is gored", though, I ask the question "who started it". If Israel or the United States had decided one fine morning that they hated Muslims, and were going to steal their land and kill them off... with no opportunity for the Muslims to avoid this fate by choosing peace... armed resistance would be justified.
Lebanon was once a French colony, and Egypt and Palestine were British colonies. I suppose it could be said that we started it, unless you go back to before the Crusades. Neither Zimbabwe nor India nor Fiji has yet embarked on a project to wipe Britain off the face of the Earth, though: most people recognize that colonialism is something that's going to happen when Great Powers are contending with each other for survival... and lands at a far lower level of technology and military competence have resources that are useful in that struggle. It is beyond being redressed by force.
If we put British colonial control of Palestine outside the picture, which may be unfair, the picture of the Middle East conflict painted by what you may feel is the propaganda of the mainstream media is not really a false one.
Did it begin with a big Jewish army going through a swath of the Middle East, taking any land it could grab, even though the group it was taking land from had been peaceful before?
No. Instead, what we had was:
Jews bought land in Palestine. They were peaceful. Fanatics egged on some Muslims to commit massacres against them.
The U.N. partitioned Palestine. The Jews were only given the parts they were living on. This partition was intended to let the Jews keep any people bent on violence out of the places where they lived. The surrounding Arab nations descended on the new state of Israel to drive it into the sea.
Israel just barely managed to defend itself successfully, because the initial 1947 borders were hard to defend. As its neighbors had tried to destroy it, despite its having been peaceful, and as the Arabs of Palestine had largely run away, having been urged by Arab propaganda to get out of the way of the invading armies, Israel took control of all of Palestine. Arabs still living there were free to continue to practice their Muslim faith, they had the rights of citizens, and the additional privilege of being exempt from military service. In 1967, Egypt built up its military to the point where it could strike a devastating blow against Israel in a surprise attack - it did this through buying weapons from the Soviet Union and the Eastern European nations it had enslaved.
The pattern is obvious to me. Time after time, the Jews offer the choice to their neighbors of living side by side in peace. Their neighbors don't give Israel that choice - they attack them for the effrontery of being Jews who don't want to be ruled over and bullied by Muslims. (And I mean bullied - I'm sure you've seen the words "Shari'a" and "dhimmi" raised in debates on the Middle East conflict.)
One side wants to live in peace, but gets attacked. The other side commits aggression - and, as a result, suffers losses of territory - but it never seems to learn its lesson, and cut its losses, and start being peaceful.
And now, with 9/11, militant Islam has decided to involve the United States. Which happens to have a vast nuclear arsenal. Americans don't like it when their loved ones are suddenly killed by violent people. Like anyone else, they have very little patience with such things. And they have the power to do something about it.
People who are the victims of aggression may fight back.
People who created their own problems by aggression and obstinacy, and then continue to dig themselves in deeper by attacking a vastly superior power... are not only doing something wrong, but something stupid. The vast majority of the world's one billion Muslims aren't terrorists, but many of them - or, to be honest, many of their governments - are likely to be asked, in one way or another, whether they're going to cooperate in helping the Western World avoid further terrorist attacks, or choose the really stupid path of making things harder for us, and easier for those who are waging war against Israel and the United States.
Now, if someone had decided to use military force against the United States to end segregation, the shoe could easily have been on the other foot. The United States is lucky that its mistakes weren't punished by history the way.
The Islamic world isn't going to be attacked by the United States because we want to steal their oil or their land, no matter what they do or don't do. They have a choice. It's definitely not perfect - the Palestinians can't depose Fatah and Hamas with their bare hands, and few Muslim nations have democratic governments. The governments that survive have had to be pretty tough and nasty with those who try to depose them - and the very date of 9/11 reminds us that it isn't just "bad" regimes like that of Saddam Hussein that are tough and nasty this way, but also "good" regimes like that of Jordan's King Hussein - Black September.
All the tough nasty guerilla movements out there seem to be Muslim extremist ones, like Boko Haram or al-Shabaab.
So those who would join our side don't seem to have a faction with guns they can rally to, except where the government is already "moderate" or "pro-Western".
One could say that this isn't World War II, and 9/11 was but a pinprick on a national scale - so we have no excuse for war. Well, America isn't fighting a war, yet, except in Afghanistan - where the government refused to extradite Osama bin Laden - and in Iraq - which invaded Kuwait, was defeated, and then didn't abide by the treaties that ended the war, because it obstructed UN weapons inspectors.
Yes, this situation has a great potential for expanding into a war between the U.S. and a big chunk of the Islamic world, but if it does, it seems clear to me who will have started it - and it won't have been the U.S..