[Goetz_von_Berlichingen]

And some of us hold an even MORE serious grudge against Islam for having invaded Spain in the first place.

The Taliban mentality is set firmly in the Middle Ages. To them, the Reconquista counts as a current event.

[Andrew Byler]

I'm sure you'll join with me Goetz, in saying to Usama and his right hand man about Spain: "Leck' mich am Arsch!"

[Cicero]

People forget that the Moors conquered Spain from North Africa and drove the inhabitants into a small corner of the country in the mountains. The Reconquista was a long and bloody but hugely heroic work. Only the twisted mentality of the politically correct would say that we should give America back to the Indians but the Spaniards should be condemned for winning back their own native land from cruel and oppressive invaders.

I might add that, although I am a firm supporter of the Jews and of Israel, there were historical reasons why the Spaniards treated them harshly. In the long war to drive the Muslims from Spain, and to fend off their repeated incursions from the sea, with frequent piracy and slave-taking, the Jews often played both sides. As a result the Catholic Spaniards came to regard them as treacherous. Unfair, perhaps, but a great deal more understandable than the picture of Catholic antisemitism that is usually pushed today by our PC intellectuals.