[Billthedrill]

Well, one reason among many that "they hate us" is the incessant stream of anti-American propaganda that has been drummed into much of the world's heads since the Cold War. "They" hate us largely for things as inchoate as "arrogance," which translates into "power," and that hatred translates into "envy" and "jealosy." No country's foreign policy is faultless, and certainly we've made our share of mistakes, although support of Israel is so thoughtlessly assumed to be one of those that I would enjoin the terrorists' apologists on this thread to do a little thinking themselves.

That said, the "nuke 'em all" approach is equally emotional and unthinking. We must kill the killers, but to kill street demonstrators for cheering our dead is merely to pick the final rotten fruits of five decades of relentless propaganda. These people hate us, but we do not hate them.

As for accusing the United States of having "rewritten the global financial and trading system in its own interest," that is a perfect example of the sort of vague, sinister accusation that smacks of cant more than accuracy. Does anyone, anywhere ever do otherwise? As for the deployment of troops worldwide, is it not the principal domestic accusation that we do not do so with sufficient regard to national interest?

Accusing anyone of acting in self-interest is simply silly, and is most often done out of the speaker's own sense of self-interest. The Guardian's staff here decry the lack of restraint on U.S. policies that was provided by the Soviet Union and might, in their perfervid imagination, be provided by a "system of global governance." These are the words of a putative and hopeful looter, nothing more. They decry matching violence with violence, but are answering that with a call for matching tyranny with tyranny, not, in my view, an approach likely to be much of an improvement.

What I find impossibly naive is the attitude "well, now we've punched you in the face, perhaps you'll see things more our way." Can anyone motivated by anything more than hostility and wishful thinking really imagine that the cause of the Palestinian state is advanced one millimeter by the murder of 5000 innocent Americans? Mr. Arafat knows better.

While the Guardian's "j'accuse" is old news, its timing is, to say the least, indiscreet and thoroughly offensive, and far from balancing the scales of opinion, it only serves to further polarize its audience. For evidence I offer the range of opinion in this thread.

[Architect]

What I find impossibly naive is the attitude "well, now we've punched you in the face, perhaps you'll see things more our way." Can anyone motivated by anything more than hostility and wishful thinking really imagine that the cause of the Palestinian state is advanced one millimeter by the murder of 5000 innocent Americans? Mr. Arafat knows better.

Absolutely right but this works two ways. Why is it so impossible for Americans to understand that killing a million Iraqis turns all Iraqis into implacable enemies? Or that the knee-jerk support for Isreal's slow strangulation of Palestine has the same effect on Palestinians?

Is it at all possible that the people who gave up their lives in order to attack the United States had lost family of their own? What does it take to impel someone to die for his cause? I can tell you that it takes more than "envy" or "hatred of freedom".