Most all of the victims of 9/11 were popularly unknown before 9/11 -- or even 4 years after -- to most all besides their families, friends and colleagues. Face-/name-recognition would generally be very low -- especially internationally -- for the victims of 9/11.

I would not refer to the 9/11 victims individually as "highest profile targets".

It's a difference nonetheless and an important one -- especially if one has any SERIOUS interest in counter-terrorism and not peddling dangerous fictions that provide false comfort and clouds clear thinking. Clear thinking is needed to confront trouble(s) or we end up finding ourselves in messes born of foreign adventures.

Talk about mixing fact with fiction. Fact: They (at least some of them )acted at the behest of OBL. Fiction: Al-Qaeda is "a fundamentalist Islam group seeking to topple the impure West". (Simply not true.)

Al-Qaeda -- contrary to popular misperception -- is not a fundamentalist Islamic group seeking to "topple the West". It would not even be accurately characterized as a fundamentalist Islamic (or even Sunni) group given their objectives, targets, means or even religion relationships.

Al-Qaeda is better described as a chauvinistic Arabo-Islamist counterimperialistic/anti-statist movement which uses terrorism and other forms of violence globally to attempt to achieve certain objectives to eradicate that which they perceive to be persistent colonial legacies.

OBL & Co. certainly have no interest in toppling Sweden's king/PM and forcefully converting christian Swedes to Islam; and they have no interest in "purifying" "the impure" in Iceland or Bolivia.

Yes, at least in name they were muslims and not born in the US. (That said, M. Atta apparently held a grievance against being born and raised in what he perceived as a US colony.) But that fact's relevance is akin to saying that Nazis were Christians and Hitler was born in Austria. A fact with similar relevance: whether muslims vis-a-vis 9/11 or christians vis-a-vis Nazi atrocities.

"We"? That doesn't speak for me.

"Much of the world's terrorism .... has for decades now been perpetrated by Muslims"? Well, it depends on how you define "much". If you define "much" as equating to "even a minority of the world's terrorism acts", then yes. Otherwise, it's an assertion that is misleading and incorrect.

For decades, the plurality/majority of terrorist attacks in the Americas -- all of the Americas -- have been perpetrated by individuals who were neither Middle Eastern nor muslim. And, for decades, for Europe, the majority of terrorist attacks have been perpetrated by individuals who were neither muslim nor Middle Eastern. (Of course, "we" don't care about all the world's victims of terrorism -- especially when "we" don't identify with "them". )

The "Islamofascism" you refer to was the offspring of our government's own beastly acts too. "We" gave it birth, nurtured it, encouraged it, and held its hand so that it may kill. And what did the US government want it to do? To kill muslims -- especially Shias (Iran) -- and communists and socialists who were in our way. Not surprisingly, it just ended up being a Frankenstein that neither we Americans, the Saudis nor the Pakistanis could reign in. And most of OBL & Co's victims -- even inclusive of 9/11 -- have been muslims, including fundamentalist muslims.

Can you count the terrorist attacks "in the West" not perpetrated by those identified as muslims? Can you name terrorist attacks not perpetrated by those identified as muslims "in the West"?

Think of some; it's not that hard. (The number of terrorist attacks perpetrated by those identified as muslims or "Middle Eastern" in "the West" -- save EASTERN Europe -- is far more finite than the number of terrorist attacks perpetrated by non-muslims/non-Middle Eastern males "in the West" these past few decades.)

Wanted: An advocacy for RACIST/TRIBALIST profiling.

For Sale:

Transaction complete.