Before anyone phreaks, just remember Mr. Buchanan is *NOT* a libertarian, as far as I know that is. Remember, explaining causation is not justification.
Pat Buchanan
"Why do they hate us?"
A month after the massacres, and the ugly scenes of Arabs and Moslems cheering the wounding of America, millions are still Into the Big Muddy – again?asking the question: What did we do that they should hate us so?
Last week, the president professed himself "amazed" to "see that in some Islamic countries there is vitriolic hatred of America." "I'm amazed that there's such misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us ... like most Americans, I just can't believe [it]. Because I know how good we are."
But if they misunderstand us, do we also misunderstand them?
National Review says we are "hated ... because we are, indeed, powerful, rich, and good." Other journalists and politicians say we are hated because we are a democracy, with freedom of speech, of the press, and of worship, as though bin Laden's cave-dwellers had stumbled onto a copy of the Bill of Rights, and gone berserk.
Now, nothing can justify the atrocities of Sept. 11. Nor need we hear out unctuous plea bargains for those who murdered 5,000 of our countrymen in a crime that dwarfs the evil for which Timothy McVeigh was rightly put to death.
But after the Taliban go down and bin Laden is run to earth, America had best reflect before launching a second Cold War. We need to know why scores of millions of Arabs hate us. Why does the Islamic sea seem so hospitable to the likes of Osama? Why do crowds from the Philippines to Pakistan to Palestine riot for the Taliban? Why are all the Islamic nations so reluctant to back us?
And if we truly wish to know why they hate us, ought we not listen to them? For as the poet Robert Burns wrote, the greatest of gifts is to "see ourselves as others see us." How do the Arab and Islamic peoples see us? How do we appear in their eyes?
In the imams' indictment, here are America's alleged sins:
First, America props up puppet regimes of parasite-princes who squander the oil wealth of Arabia in the fleshpots of the West. Second, U.S. presence on Saudi soil defiles the land on which sit the holy places of Mecca and Medina. Third, we pollute their culture and countries with drugs, alcohol, abortions, blasphemous books, filthy magazines, dirty movies and hellish music that capture and corrupt their young. Fourth, we starve Iraqi children with sanctions, because Saddam defies U.N. resolutions, as we give Israel the weapons to defy the U.N., persecute Palestinians and deny them the liberty we champion.
To those who hate us, it is America that is the Evil Empire.
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