by James Glaser
August 13, 2002

Right after the September 11th terrorist attack, President Bush said that terrorists hated America, because they were jealous of our freedom and wealth. Give me a break would you. Osama bin Laden is a multimillionaire whose family had ties to the Bush family business interests. He has the freedom to do whatever he wants.

I know it is hard for those in Washington to admit, but terrorists do have some gripes with the good old USA and they have nothing to do with our freedom nor our wealth. Most likely a lot of the terrorists that plan and make the decisions, have a lot more money and more freedom because of that money, than the average American.

One can compare those that went to the American South, to struggle for civil rights, with the September 11 terrorists. Many were from wealthy Northern White families, they took time from college, headed south, and tried to get freedom for oppressed blacks and wake up those State and Federal Government officials that were oppressing them.. Well Mohammed Atta and some of the other terrorists were from wealthy upper middle class Arab families, they had college educations, and I am sure in their minds, their sick act of mass suicide, was meant to help poor Palestinians against a US Federal Government that was oppressing them through the Israeli Government.

There was another reason, that time on the TV show 60 Minutes, that goes out even to Arab countries, where Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, said that 500,000 dead Iraqi children were "worth it to enforce the resolutions." Those were United Nations Security Council resolutions that have put a terrible economic siege on, not only Saddam Hussein, but more importantly on the people of Iraq. Albright never argued that it was Saddam's fault, but took tacit responsibility for those children's death.

Those terrorists knew that America was vigorously enforcing the resolution on Iraq, but at the same time, America was stopping anyone from trying to enforce more than 60 UN Security Council resolutions that had been imposed on Israel.

America's Media really has dropped the ball in any reporting that could be called balanced on the Middle East. There have been polls done in the Arab countries however and the findings are that Arabs do not hate our country nor our people. No, Arabs hate American Foreign policy.

The only media coverage coming out of the Middle East is showing the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Then we switch to hear how the Bush Administration is "slamming" the Palinistians and praising Israel for defending themselves against suicide bombers. No where is there ever a count, which would show about four Palestinians killed for every Israeli.

Palestinians are no different than Americans and each time more of their people are killed by Israel it only drives them to more bombings because that is the only weapon they have. Point of fact, is that in two years of this round of fighting, far less Israeli civilians have been killed, than the amount of civilians that America has killed in Afghanistan in 10 months. But our media doesn't keep count there either.

It really doesn't matter why those terrorists of September attacked us, because they are dead. What we have to do now is try and understand if new rounds of attacks will take place and WHY. Ask yourself what it would take to get you to commit a suicide attack. Would jealousy or envy of another country's good fortune do it? I think not. It would take crimes against you, your nation, or maybe your "people."

If we as a nation continue to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children, like in Iraq or we continue to supply the weapons that other nations use to oppress their people, then we might as well get ready for attacks from people that have no other weapon, other than suicide and creativity to get at us.