B_Deserter wrote: you're being suckered in by the lies of the Bush administration and the neocons. Our interventionism in middle eastern affairs was the reason cited by Osama Bin Laden as the reason for the 9/11 attacks. The "they hate us for our freedom" slogan is overly-simplistic and just downright wrong. Jourles wrote: So a Christian, would you mind giving us your thoughts on what OBL said and how that compares to your blanket statement of, "They hate western civilization because we are not Muslims." I would like to know which radical Islamist(s) have endorsed this feeling. It shouldn't be too difficult to find such a popular quote. Sure, OBL says that he hates the US primarily because of our presence in the Middle East. Do you really think he would issue statements clearly stating his long term goals? Do you really think he would say, "If you get out of all Arab lands and totally stop offering any support to Israel (which the US will never do) we will never bother you again"? Just because Islamic extremists seldom speak of their long term goal, total world domination, does not mean that they have no such goal. They do.
Radical Islamists are a modern phenomenon, founded in Egypt by Hassan el-Banna in 1928, and given an extreme ideology by Sayyed Qutb, a man who had spent some time in the US, and had come back convinced that the West was degenerating and that the time had come for Islam to conquer the world. Qutb published his brochures stating exactly that in the 50s and early 60s, until he was executed by the Nasserist regime in 1966 because his teachings argued against the existence of Egypt. (Radical, totalitarian Islamists demand that the existing Arab national states become Islamized, governed by religious law, not by constitutions, and certainly not by democratic institutions reflecting the will of a majority. The rulers would be those who are experts in Islamic law.) Of course, Qutb declared that the Jews were a main enemy of Islam, and should be destroyed, rightly or wrongly something the US will never allow to happen. Many radical Islamists advocating eventual world conquest have followed Qutb.
Only someone who has never listened to an Islamic extremist talk for more than a few minutes could say that if we get out of the Middle East (which we can't do due to our commitments to Israel) they will leave us alone. (Try listening to some of their nuts rant on YouTube - there are plenty of them.) The aim of radical Islamists is now and always has been to conquer the world and make it Islamic.
If all US troops were withdrawn from Saudi Arabia, and Israel defeated, with its Jewish population annihilated - and these are declared Islamist aims - the main target would still remain: world conquest. The first steps toward that goal are the toppling of the existing Arab national regimes and the destruction of Israel. Then to conquer every nation on earth, either through the political conquests won by unassimilated Muslim immigrants in western lands or, if that is not possible, through Jihad.
For God's sake, do a Google search on Islam and World domination.