[eclectic]

The Muslims might have misjudged America, but America has yet a long way to go to prove how wrong they are indeed.

[umgud]

Even though our governemnt may have peaceful relations with most Muslim nations, too many Muslims in those countries hate America. I've spent time in the middle east and it is my view that westerners are merely tolerated. Forget open display of Christianity. For this, there is no tolerance.

[FITZ]

Excellent article. They've overestimated themselves too. The Saudis like to believe we're soft and yet they're a country which has to import most of their labor because they don't know what it means to work.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

Millions in the Middle East are obsessed with Israel, whether they live in sight of Tel Aviv or thousands of miles away. Their fury doesn't spring solely from genuine dismay over the hundreds of Muslims Israel has killed on the West Bank; after all, Saddam Hussein butchered hundreds of thousands of Shiites, Kurds and Iranians, while few in Cairo or Damascus said a word. Syria's Hafez Assad liquidated perhaps 20,000 in sight of Israel, without a single demonstration in any Arab capital. The murder of some 100,000 Muslims in Algeria and 40,000 in Chechnya in the last decade provoked few intellectuals in the Middle East to call for a pan-Islamic protest.

The above events happened and little or nothing was said by the Muslim leaders. But notice that whenever it is suggested that the USA take military action against a Muslim state, the American Muslims immediately scream and cry about how wrong it is hurt a Muslim brother in another nations. If the American president hurts one little hair on one little head of a Muslim, he is the great satan while the Muslims themselves continue to slaughter each other like there's no tomorrow.

[Jmouse007]

8 years of Clintoon

[Utah Girl]

Ping

[EternalHope]

America has been a friend more often than not to you. But now you are on the verge of turning its people--who create, not follow, government--into an enemy: a very angry and powerful enemy that may be yours for a long, long time to come.

Extremely well said.

[Dubya]

Thanks for this post.

[Bush2000]

It's the same old, tired "the sands will run red with the blood of infidels" crap. They seem to think that it scares the Hell out of us whenever they say it. They have no idea who they're f-ing with...

[Hugin]

Excellent article.

[Mariner]

Just about sums it up......

[HockeyPop]

Victor Hanson is an American hero.

[Draco]

Thanks again, Pokey, for posting this jem. You da man! This article says what I think has bothered a lot of us. There is no self-reflection/self-analysis by the Muslim world, but a reaction of indignant anger mixed with claims of victimhood. The irony is, we in the U.S. are over-run with the opposite: worrying about Gitmo prisoners as if they were in some gulag. Mr. Pearle (sp?) never had it so good. Bumping this as a keeper.

[Pokey78]

Ping.

[McGavin999]

America has been a friend more often than not to you. But now you are on the verge of turning its people--who create, not follow, government--into an enemy: a very angry and powerful enemy that may be yours for a long, long time to come.

This is something else the Muslims don't realize about us. We are very, very slow to anger but once we do, we don't forgive easily. They have already lost our trust.

I have watched the anger grow on this board, and this board is only a small representative (even with 80,000 registered posters) of the American public. You can hear it every day, in every conversation, the American people feel betrayed by those they thought of as friends.

Oh yeah, and it's not just the Muslim world, people are pretty fed up with the europeans too.

[185JHP]

Their foul and filthy religion - Islam - is the source of most of their problems. Words have power - and when the muezzins spout that filth five times a day, it helps keep them stupid, backward and evil.

[zeaal]

BUMP

[ozzymandus]

The Blame-America RAT media has a lot to do with it.

[Faraday]

Bookmarking this baby. What an outstanding article! There are so many things to comment on. I'll just make one here.

Values and traditions--not guns, germs and steel--explain why a tiny Greece of 50,000 square miles crushed a Persia 20 times larger

This is an attack on the theory postulated by Jared Diamond in his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel--The Fates of Human Societies. Diamond maintains that differences among human societies is based on a geographical determinism. It is essentially an apologia for African backwardness. Hanson is clearly correct in arguing that it is culture which plays the principle role in forming civilizations, for good or ill.

[Demidog]

formal machinery of democratic government.

The formal machinery of a democratic government is 2 wolves and a sheep voting over what's for dinner. If "the Muslims" (nebulous and useless term) have been devoid of democracy, they should consider themselves lucky.