[risk]

Sure she loves freedom, but ultimately she only loves it as an extension of her self love.

As an atheist, I'm uncomfortable with your doubt in Oriana's sincere love of freedom. Maybe Oriana's inconsistent sometimes, but you could be suggesting that atheists can't love freedom for the right reasons. Maybe you might argue that here at home, atheists can't be true patriots, either? I would disagree -- requiring Christianity for sincere love of liberty and country would be unamerican. Besides, it's more important what people do than why they say what they say, isn't it?

Oriana sends everyone in the west a wakeup call, not just Christians. And given the pleas for appeasement coming from the pulpit over the last few weeks in the face of Bush's force-backed diplomacy, I think many Christians need a wakeup call as much as the secular humanists: a clash of civilizations is upon us, regardless of what we believe.

By the way, I too was quite moved by our president's statement that liberty was God's gift to every human being. I took it to mean that liberty is the essence of what it means to be human, that love for freedom is universal among all of us who retain our humanity. It was powerful, and in no way made me feel less American for not being religious. What a great president he's turning out to be!

Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity. --President Bush, January 28, 2003

[Truthsearcher]

I am not saying all atheists can't love freedom for the right reasons. (By the way I am not a Christian, I am a deist.)

But I am skeptical of Orianna Fallaci's, let's not forget that she was ardently anti-US in the Vietnam War era, and she in this very article equates the Soviet's presense in Afghanistan with the US presence there today. Arguing that if the Afghans rejected the Soviet's attempt to "liberate" them, then they could reject ours as well. She is obviously a communist sympathizer if she thinks the Soviet Union has even "liberated" anyone.

Bottom line, I don't trust her. She is simply a leftist who perceives militant Islam as an greater enemy of socialism/communism than American capitalism. That's the only real difference between her and the other leftist who sees America and not Islam as the greater threat to their ideology. She may have stumbled onto some right positions, but it's for the wrong reasons.