Bill Maher raised the subject of 9/11 on last night’s show, and countered Sarah Palin’s regurgitation of “they hate us for our freedom” with his own “they hate us for our airstrikes.” And there the debate remains frozen, still, seven years later.
Although “they hate us for our freedom” is cartoonish and misleading, Islamist militants are in fact declared foes of the secular state. (And be assured, by the way, that every loyal al-Qaedist is an ardent creationist.)
Yet U.S. foreign policy does play a role in the fomenting of extremism. Any worthwhile analysis of 9/11’s “root causes” must take both elements, and more, into account. Salman Rushdie knows this — he’s brighter than Maher and all his other panelists combined — and yet he spoke the least. That’s the way the wind blows on TV.
While it contains a kernel of truth, “they hate us for our airstrikes” also fails to account for the horribly prolific slaughter of Muslims carried out by al-Qaeda and Taliban forces and their allies. The militants claim to represent Muslims; they’d like us to believe they are aggrieved by Muslim deaths. They are in fact brutal beyond belief toward Muslim populations. This still has yet to penetrate left-wing discourse about terrorism in any meaningful way.
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