[Griff]

I think I used this paraphrase from Joe Sobran (maybe) here before. They don't hate us for our virtues, they hate us for our vices. I had the misfortune of reading Blowback : The Costs and Consequences of American Empire by Chalmers Johnson a couple months before 9/11, so I find myself unable to participate in the righteous indignation sweeping our country. He explains quite clearly why we are hated and why an event of this type was inevitable. Our values are not reflected in our foreign policy.


We have soldiers in well over 100 foreign countries, we have armed and protected regimes whose policies are anti-thetical to American values, we play with economies, we enforce sanctions on Iraq that kill civilians... Islamic fundementalists do hate us for treating women as equals but as tw will be happy to explain there are reasons why people join extremist organizations.

"Killing people, citizen at that, is not a discussion topic." The thing is, even though we are the biggest dog, this sentiment applies to us as well. There are a couple pretty good threads here on this but among the regulars here this discussion has been done... at length..... so we're probably a little burned out on it.