Reply #39: It goes much, much deeper than "they hate us for our freedom." [View All]

The rift between the West and the Islamic countries is firmly rooted in colonialism going back to 1492, when the Moors (and Jews) were kicked out of Spain. It is not about religion so much as it is about geopolitics. The US, like its colonialist forebears in Europe, has been more than ready to incite religious fervor among the poor in the Islamic world, all the better to discourage the spread of communism. The al-Qaeda and Taliban-breeding madrassas in Pakistan, according to Tariq Ali, were funded by the same flow of dollars that paid for stinger missiles and other jihad materiele in the 1980s. Our brilliant Reaganauts and PNACers have created a monster that has come back to bite us hard on the ass.