I agree that one must -- repeat must -- ask the question and pursue it to a
satisfactory answer. But to ask the question is not to answer it. It seems
to me that the question can be a sort of ink blot test of what is in the
speaker's mind, what world view the speaker adopts, what grievances the
speaker holds. So, to some it is materialism and a lack of spiritual values,
to others the wrong spiritual values, to others our failures of foreign
policy, to others our successes of foreign policy, to others our support for
Israel, to others our failure to take Israel's situation seriously, to
others our failures to support human rights, to others our support of human
rights, to others our intrusion into Muslim lands to protect Kuwait and
Kosovo and Somalia, to others our failure to convincingly support Muslim
allies. In short, many are quick to observe what they find problematic and
perhaps guilt-provoking to them about America and attribute causation to the
events of September 11. I guess this is human nature. When the mind does not
have adequate data to build a smooth bridge between cause and effect, it
fills in with whatever data it has. I'm seeing this all over the place.

Thus it does not follow that because someone hates us that we have done some
specific thing, or anything in particular, wrong (although we may have). It
just means for sure that they hate us enough to do what they did. I think it
has more to do with the incredibly threatening and potential destabilizing
effects of mass culture from the developed world on traditional institutions
of social control in non-western countries than it does with any particular
act of foreign policy. No powerful Establishment relinquishes power without
a fight. Think of the bloodshed in the history of western European culture
as established powers (the tribe, the city, the church, royalty, even the
nation state) have, successively, given way to new forms of social control.
That, of course, may be (using the principle of paragraph one) more a
statement about the way I see the world than about the way al Qaeda sees the
world.

Ginny