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Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Why do They Hate Us, Indeed?

I've always loathed the self-flagellating impulse of our Left after 9/11 to earnestly seek the answer to the question "Why do they (Islamists) hate us?"

Here's why some Pakistani jihadi fanboys hate us:

Even though Pakistani officials now acknowledge that Faisal Shahzad received support from the Pakistani Taliban, some of the country's leading cable news commentators aren't buying it. The real culprit, they say, is the U.S. government.

Following the failed Times Square bomb plot, Islamabad-based reporter Adam Ellick reports in the New York Times today that "people here in Pakistan held an entirely different view of the same event."

Ellick's video, which accompanies a print story by reporter Sabrina Tavernise, features several of Pakistan's most prominent pundits declaring on television that the U.S. likely staged the bomb plot as a pretext for invading their country. "In most of the world, these conspiracies are the stuff of fringe," Ellick reports. "But in Pakistan, they make for mainstream television."

Whatever we do--or don't do--is reason for some to hate us--or at least suspect us of evil intent. There's really nothing we can do about it. So stop trying to adjust our behavior to reduce the reasons our enemies and detractors use to justify hating us and killing us--or use to just quietly understanding why the jihadis hate us and kill us.

Wage war relentlessly and kill our enemies. That may not reduce the number of nutballs who see our hand in every plumbing problem they have, but it will get them to just shut the ef up and leave us alone. In the end, that's all I care about. They can have their bizarre conspiracy theories as far as I'm concerned, and wallow in their poverty and self-pity that flows from that kind of thinking. Just don't kill us over them.

UPDATE: Thanks to The Unreligious Right for the link.

UPDATE: Why do they hate us? No, the question is why do they hate?

Leaders of Pakistan's minority Ahmadi sect demanded better government protection Saturday as they buried many of the 93 sect members killed by Islamist militants at two of the group's mosques.

The request could test the government's willingness to take on hard-line Islamists whose influence is behind decades of state-sanctioned discrimination against the Ahmadis in the Sunni Muslim-majority country.

The attacks occurred minutes apart Friday in two neighborhoods in the eastern city of Lahore. Two teams of gunmen, including some in suicide vests, stormed the mosques and sprayed bullets at worshippers while holding off police.

Killing other Moslems. And invading mosques to do so, no less. Or do you wish to take a stab at what the Ahmadis did to make the jihadis angry?

At what point do the Nuanced Americans among us conclude that it isn't our fault that Islamists hate us and too many Moslems can at least see their point even if they don't support killing us?