Oh, Their demands have always been clear; withdrawal from Saudi Arabia and the Middle East and cessation of any other activities which oppose Islamist activities including abandonment of Israel. Given the long history of treating Muslims as second class people who must be somehow controlled, in their eyes they are simply responding to Western aggression.
We and the British (and French, even the Dutch) have a long history of opposing Islamic fundamentalism by various sorts of interventions and support of Secular Arab authority. And probably a good thing too, though with baleful long term implications.
I believe they would say that the long sustained pattern of interventionism was unlawful. That said, most nations who waged aggressive war or theatened it during the 20th century put forth similar rationalizations.
Fred
From: "Daniel P.B.Smith" dpbsmith@verizon.net Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 12:53:34 -0500 To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Definition of terrorism
Something that I don't recall seeing recently in the arguments about whether or not 9/11 was terrorism is this. Since we in the United States were, in fact, terrorized, we are inclined to see it as a terrorist act. The question is, what specific actions was Osama bin Laden trying to intimidate or coerce us into taking? I'm not very clear on this. Now, suppose the psychological message was aimed _at Arabs_ and was "Al-Qaeda is big, strong, courageous, and capable of attacking the United States with impunity. Join us." If this was the nature of the act, then, by the dictionary definition, would it constitute terrorism?