Quote:
Originally Posted by Madlib
Well, we're not blaming Americans for being directly involved in 9/11, we're blaming the foreign policies of the United States over a period of years. Such a case can be made by the fact that the CIA trained Osama and installed the Taliban to fight against the Solviets. I blame the US's attempts to 'democratize' the world through the use of cultural assimilation as a catalyst. I would never blame the people themselves for being the cause of any attack, as the people themselves had little involvement in overall policy. I don't think of Canadians as anti-american, and I don't think of this as anti-american, you can feel free to deny this as anti-american to avoid a rational discourse, but I don't like it when americans say something is anti-american to end all possible disscussion.
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Read your own original post again. Where do you go from there? I have mentioned on this forum before that I lived for many years in New England and grew up in the northeast US. I often went to Canada. I even had many positive experiences there. I had always thought of them as comparable to relatives who lived next door - we would argue as relatives do, by the connection was deeper than the argument.
Since 9/11, that is no longer the case - although I know many Canadians were gracious, generous and helpful at the time of the attack. I had a long discussion recently with a Canadian who now lives in the Netherlands but was visiting the US. We met through business, and our hour "lunch" turned into a three hour discussion about all of this. It was a fascinating talk. He reflected a lot of what I see here on the forum - that Canadians generally believe that Americans brought the attack on themselves. We disagreed strongly, but at least we talked.
What is genuinely shocking to me in all of this is the willingness of Canadians to perceive the terrorists as innocent victims - mere puppets of the Americans. This is disgraceful, and again, reflects a profound cowardice.
I would challenge you, as I do all those who absolve the terrorists of guilt, to go to NYC and tell the people of that city that the terrorists were mere victims.
Do you have the courage to stand up for your views?