At the time, communism was the enemy, and the USSR was the evil empire. Nobody knew what was happening behind the "iron curtain" because the people there were not allowed to leave or communicate with the outside. We in the "west" considered this to be a basic denial of human rights, and we didn't want the communist doctrine and iron curtain to expand and swallow another country. It's not that communism is better or worse than radical islam - they are basically equally abhorrent doctrines. But communism was expansionist, while islamists like the taliban tended to be isolationists. While the taliban was busy destroying the ancient Budda site in Afghanistan, Al Quaida decided they had the right to destroy (what they considered to be) symbolic structures anywhere in the world. Trouble is they ventured a little too far outside their little patch of dirt, and now the whole world wants a piece of em.

My personal belief however, is that this whole situation is a butterfly effect. It started with something unrelated, and snowballed. That unrelated thing IMO, and to the best of my knowledge, is the hiring practices of oil companies in Saudi Arabia. Their government doesn't protect its people. The religious system has often supported people who are distressed, and that's probably why so many people there looked to bin ladin as a leader. Bin ladin had a different agenda. After all why didn't his organization stay within Saudi Arabia? Why didn't he target the very organizations that piss off so many Saudi citizens? We may never know. But he may simply have been aiming too far above the problem to solve it. Or perhaps he believed a trickle-down effect would solve the problem. It's possible it will someday. But there are people in the world who have power, who will be determined to hold onto it, who will sweep the issue aside for future generations to ponder. I believe that the people currently running the American gov't are those kind of people. And the invasion of Iraq sortof demonstrated it, even if Saddam was a despot.

When I said the Saudi government doesn't protect its citizens, I see similar trends in the west. Lots of foreign workers allowed in. Or outsourcing. I just hope the governments in Canada and the USA aren't selling us out. I'll give an example, when the former Ernie Eves government in Ontario planned to sell/privatize the public electrical utility for a fraction of the money it took taxpayers to build. They already leased Bruce nuclear to a foreign corporation (British Energy), then they deregulated the electricity market. Prices shot up, some households got $2000 monthly electricity bills. They had to put a cap on prices, but taxpayers had to pay the remainder. The guy wasn't even voted into office, he replaced the former leader of the party when he quit. Then he did all that damage in less than a year, and got voted out anyway. Irreversible too. That's the kind of shitheaded government decisions I'm talking about.