Even France's leaders knew better than to believe that.
I'd like to point out that the jihadis hate France most recently not because France fought in Iraq (France refused to help us there in 2003-2011) but because a left-wing satire magazine, Charlie Hebdo, hurt their feelings.
Stop trying to figure out why we deserve their violent response.
Did we deserve anger over this?
Or this?
Or this?
Or this?
Or this?
Or this?
Or this?
Or this?
Was this a reason?
Good God, people, what doesn't set off jihadis?
So we are all Charlie, now, after the jihadi slaughter at the Charlie Hebdo office?
Well, even the French said we were all Americans, now, after 9/11.
Yet when we began to fight back, most of the world got over that solidarity and returned to viewing us as a threat and trying to avoid offending jihadis.
Why do they hate us, indeed. Why do we hate us?
UPDATE: And remember, we're just collateral damage--as I noted here--in what is essentially a Moslem civil war.
UPDATE: More on the civil war within Islam. There are good guys in that civil war. And we have to fight it to win it.
I think we'll all be happier when Islam reaches the stage when we can hyper-focus on Islamist "micro-aggressions."
UPDATE: More:
The 30 Years War, spurred by Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation, savaged Europe -- but it ended in 1648. Here and now in our time, the most violent and dangerous struggle of the terms of modernity is within the world's Muslim communities, and it spills out across the globe.
All the liberal talk about how this isn't a war between the West and Islam--so it isn't really a war about Islam--misses the point that this is indeed a civil war inside Islam for whose view of Islam--the death cult radicals or those who wish to live in the modern world--defines Islam. We are collateral damage.
I'd have less of a problem with those on the left saying this war on terror has nothing to do with Islam--citing President George W. Bush (!) no less for his post 9/11 statements that Islam is a religion of peace--if I thought that this was just a polite fiction to get on with killing jihadis without pushing Moslems into the arms of jihadis by making them think we are at war with Islam rather than just with jihadis who kill us.
I had no problem believing that Bush was serious about fighting jihadis--the Afghanistan campaign, Guantanamo Bay, the Philippines, Somalia, and the Iraq surge in the face of serious political opposition demonstrated that he wanted to fight and win.
But President Obama? Not so much. Leaving Iraq prematurely (although going back in is something I salute--I won't demand a confession of error to support him), seemingly abandoning Afghanistan too early for my comfort, a premature declaration of victory against al Qaeda, continuing efforts to close Guantanamo Bay, and a host of other smaller surrenders to Islamo-fascist jihadis make me more sensitive about the language the administration uses to describe our enemies.
Rather than being a polite fiction, it seems like evidence to stop fighting an enemy.
The brave Moslems who want to make Islam modern and not Medieval barbarism need our support--including military support--to make that slow change.
And the vast majority of Moslems who are decent but too worried about angering the jihadis need our support to make it safe for them to back or accept the modernists as those who define Islam.
And of course, the jihadis just need to be killed. Whether we help other Moslems do it or do it ourselves, some people just need to be killed.
One day, Ramadan will be the start of a 3-day weekend sale. Perhaps Green Friday. Then we can be said to have finally seen the jihadis lose the Islamic Civil War that rages around us.
