In his address to Congress a few days after 9/11, President George W. Bush rhetorically asked a question many Americans have had much on their minds: "Why do they hate us?" referring to the suicide hijackers. He then offered an answer: "They hate what we see right here in this chamber—a democratically elected government. ... They hate our freedoms—our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." He reiterated this point in his address to the United Nations on Nov. 10: "We face enemies that hate not our policies but our existence, the tolerance of openness and creative culture that defines us."
The president is partially right, partially wrong. He correctly points to the profundity of the hatred directed against the United States; "they hate us" because of the very nature of the United States and its grand place in the world - foreign policy, economic impact, cultural influence, and religious reach. It is not due to some transitory action on its part, such as policy toward Iraq, Saudi Arabia, or the Arab-Israeli conflict. The perpetrators do, to be sure, also object to those specific policies, but what the State Department is saying on a particular day by itself does not explain the depth of that hatred.
But it is hard to see how democracy and freedom could be the enemy's main concern. Al-Qaeda cares little about the way Americans manage their internal affairs; it has not staged assaults on Americans in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, East Africa, Washington, New York, and elsewhere, to stop Americans from self-governing themselves. It's useful to remember that the leaders of Al-Qaeda first tasted war against the Soviet Union, a state not renowned for the generous portions of either democracy or freedom, and Al-Qaeda takes great pride in its role helping to bring down the Soviet Union.
In fact, Al-Qaeda concerns itself only slightly with internal arrangements of its enemies. More broadly, the historical record includes few wars that resulted from disagreement over another country's domestic arrangements – and the few that do exist mostly date from recent years, when human rights abuses have become a casus belli, as in the case of Serbia under Slobodan Milosevic.
If it's neither the policies nor the system, why do "they" hate us? And what can be done to deal with this hostility? The answer lies in figuring out who "they" are. The Bush administration has preferred to avoid this topic, talking about "terrorists" as those these men belonged to some cult with only the most tenuous connection to Islam. This position makes for good diplomacy (it avoids the pitfalls that could threaten a coalition that many includes Muslim-majority states) but bad for analysis.
It's simple: "they" are Islamists and they hate us because we represent the major obstacle to their achieving a totalitarian vision. Indeed, they hate us for the same reasons that the fascists and communists hate us. (November 11, 2001)
Related Topics: Radical Islam, US policy
Related Articles:
receive the latest by email: subscribe to daniel pipes' free mailing list
The above text may be cited; it may also be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
