I agree and disagree with the article.
First, if Bush was too black-and-white with his "with us or against us" speech, this column is almost too black-and-white in the other extreme.
I'm dead sure there are those in the Middle East who dislike our government, but like Americans and American products*, as the article points out. But I still firmly believe there are a large number who DO hate the West - and more specifically, Americans - for our debauchery lifestyle, pluralism, and social liberalism. We are the secular heathens, in their eyes.
Wahhabism is being taught in Madrasses throughout the Middle East, a radical form of Islam that support the sexist, homophobic, iron fist of Sharia Law. I'm sure a sermon inside one of these madrasses isn't just a light discussion about how us Americans are nice people but the US government is the culprit. My sense is that it's 1000x times more vitriolic than that, and that we - as private individuals - are lumped in the same hedonistic category as "non believing infidels".
Also, if Bush is criticized too often for linking Saddam to Al Qaeda, I cringe when articles equalize Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan was necessary, as it was a sanctuary of main rats nest of anti-American terrorism and terrorist camps, funded, sponsored, and supported by the ruling Taliban. Iraq, on the other hand, was a blip on the radar screen, with Saddam barely interested in mixing it up with the US. Therefore, how should we have handled Afghanistan? Politely ask them to stop training zealots to bomb American (and Spanish, and Israeli, and Indonesian, and African) cities?
* - I find it interesting when I hear how peoples all over the world often say that they love Americans and American products, but dislike our government. Raises the question of why anti-capitalists believe it is free trade, and not the big government decision-making, that drive people to hate Westerners.
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