I am sure there are many reasons but I would tend to listen attentively to,and read carefully what,those persons and groups who claimed they were responsible said. I will just state the first two complaints they iterated. They claimed that the United States imposed their 1)morals and 2)values on them in any and all treaties,agreements,pacts,contracts and responses to requests for assistance.
A case in point regarding morals would be the response for medical assistance in the camps that were set up for refugees in the Kosovar dispute. It was said that before they could have access to antibiotics,they were sent contraceptives and birth control pills to distribute,this in accordance with some Women's Reproductive Rights agreements that had to be signed as a condition of medical support.
Regards values,they stated our materialistic,consumer driven mentality undergirded those same pacts,agreements,contracts and etc..
I recall when Iraq was down at the Kuwait border,discussions about how the Anglo/American establishment elites after WWI had divided up countries in the mideast. Iraq was left without access to water because Kuwait was "created" giving the English,who "crowned" members of a family sympathetic to them a big advantage.
For a short while,immediately prior to Desert Storm,our leaders must have forgotten who owned what and that English money was in the Kuwait banks. I say this because it is well documented that Saddam had asked April Glaspie if the U.S. would mind if they went down to the border to resolve some problems they were having down there. I had heard that Kuwait had been tunneling under the border in order to pipe Iraq's oil into Kuwait. Glaspie said she had talked to her superior and it would be no problem. At that point somebody must have remembered that English money was in Kuwait banks and then all hell broke loose.
As an old Human Resource manager,I am convinced that rules must be fair,clear and doable and anything less is going to create a lot of difficulties. As I said before,we are a group or groups of imperfect humans living in a world we didn't make and we need to pursue the truth,to do less is to invite trouble. I think we too often invite trouble.
Q: Do you think the struggle between the West and the Muslim world is in any way a reaction to the Crusades?
No. That may seem a strange answer when you consider that Osama bin Laden and other Islamists often refer to Americans as "Crusaders." It's important to remember, though, that during the Middle Ages -- really up until the late 16th century -- the superpower of the Western world was Islam. Muslim civilizations were wealthy, sophisticated and immensely powerful. The West was backward and relatively weak. It is noteworthy that with the exception of the First Crusade virtually every other Crusade launched by the West -- and there were hundreds -- was unsuccessful. The Crusades may have slowed Muslim expansionism, but they in no way stopped it.
Muslim empires would continue to expand into Christian territories, conquering the Balkans, much of Eastern Europe and even the greatest Christian city in the world, Constantinople. From the Muslim perspective the Crusades were not worth noticing. If you had asked someone in the Muslim world about the Crusades in the 18th century he or she would have known nothing about them. They were important to Europeans because they were massive efforts that failed. However, during the 19th century, when Europeans began conquering and colonizing Middle Eastern countries, many historians -- in particular nationalist or royalist French writers -- began to cast the Crusades as Europe's first attempt to bring the fruits of Western civilization to the backward Muslim world. In other words, the Crusades were morphed into imperialist wars.
Those histories were taught in the colonial schools and became the accepted view in the Middle East and beyond. In the 20th century, imperialism was discredited. Islamists and some Arab nationalists then seized on the colonial construction of the Crusades, claiming that the West was responsible for their woes because they had preyed on Muslims ever since the Crusades. It is often said that people in the Middle East have long memories; it is true. But in the case of the Crusades, they have a recovered memory: one that was manufactured for them by their European conquerors.
Q: Are there any similarities between the Crusades and the war against terror today?
Aside from the fact that soldiers in both wars want to serve something greater than themselves that they hold dear and long to return home when it is over, I see no other similarities between the medieval Crusades and the war against terror. Motivations in a post-Enlightenment secular society are very different from those in the medieval world.
Do you also counsel battered women that they need to figure out how they are making their husbands mad?