by James Glaser
December 5, 2002

I was listening to our President on the radio today and heard him say that the terrorists "hate our freedom." He has been saying that ever since the attack of September 11th and the rest of the world including the "terrorists" have said, "that isn't it George."

Osama bin Laden has said that we were attacked because of our backing of Israel and also because we have our troops on the Muslim Holy Ground of Saudi Arabia, the country where Mecca is. Mecca is the most Holy Site of the Muslim faith.

Later on reports have come to America from reported terrorists that say they also don't like that we support dictators that subjugate their people. I think these reports pretty well tell America why Terrorists have attacked us. Most people understand this. It is true that almost all Americans condemn the attacks as acts of murder, but most of us understand why they attacked us.

Where we have the problem is understanding how this hate of America welled so quickly without our government knowing anything about it. Well now we are finding out that we did know about this hate and there were many early warnings. One strong one was the first attack several years ago on the World Trade Center.

In August 2001, before this last attack on America, George Bush was briefed by the CIA about new attacks, but that briefing was so secret that George refuses to even let us know now, what he was told back then. George is still in the "Fairy Land" of "they hate our freedom." He will stick with that even though he sounds like a fool repeating it over and over again.

Many Americans know that if we continue to support Israel, then we will have to face the fact that we will continue to have a large portion of the worlds population hate us and some of those that hate will sacrifice their lives to take some of us with them.

We as citizens have to debate this question. "Do we feel that Israel is so important to us, that we will suffer new attacks?" "Is it that important to us, to keep Troops in Saudi Arabia?" I don't know the answers to those questions. We as a Nation have to start talking about why billions of people hate us. It isn't the "freedom" thing.

Other people in this world have some real problems with the way we are doing some things. Our Government and Media have been keeping this from us and that has cost the lives of three thousand Americans and who knows how many thousands of Afghans. Now George Bush wants so very much to start killing more people in Iraq.

The killing of more Iraqis will not end terrorism and until we start admitting that there are real reasons for terrorism other than our freedom, we will not even be on the road to ending that terrorism. It doesn't matter if we think those reasons for that terrorism are false, the terrorists are willing to die for them. That is a pretty powerful reason for America to start talking seriously to the Muslim world.

We are the most powerful nation on this planet, but military power can not stop people from hating us.