A step back...

In the 1960's, riots rocked American cities as African-Americans sought the civil rights they had long been denied. As Watts, Detroit, Newark, and after Martin Luther King's assassination, more than 60 other US cities burned as a result of race riots, we stopped and asked a very important question. "Why are they so angry?"

Now this may be seen as justifying actions which were completely out of line and resulted in further suffering and anguish for all involved. The fact is that the participants in these riots did go beyond the pale, but we stopped and asked "Why?" so it wouldn't happen again. As a result, America began to come to grips with its past of slavery and oppression of the descendants of those slaves freed after the Civil War. Landmark civil rights legislation was passed, and much progress has been made. We have had the occaisional setback showing that more has yet to be made. All because we never stopped asking "Why are they so angry?"

Now, let us look to the aftermath of 9/11. In the days of shock following the horror of that tragic day, we asked "Why are they so angry? Why do they hate us so much?" But the voices asking that question fell silent in a few short weeks. We no longer ask these questions to find a way to prevent such a tragedy as 9/11 from occurring again, and it will happen unless we find meaningful answers to them and act upon those answers. Instead, these questions have become nothing more than the rhetorical devices of demagogues to instill fear into our hearts and serve the ends of those same demagogic figures who utter them. They fear to seek the real answers as it will reveal 60 or more years of US and Western policies designed to keep the oil flowing from Middle-Eastern oil fields, regardless of the means used to do so...Regardless of the human toll. From propping up corrupt and repressive regimes to overthrowing legitimately elected regimes and replacing them with corrupt and oppressive puppets. It is only coincidental that these nations are Islamic.

Unwilling to truthfully and honestly find and face the answers to "Why are they so angry?", and "Why do they hate us so?", the Bush administration has only fanned the flames of hatred towards America and the West with its policies. They have helped radicalize a whole new generation of Islamic extremists, still chafing from the yoke of 19th and 20th century colonialism. With its reckless, feckless behavior in the aftermath of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, the Bush Administration has squandered the goodwill of the rest of the world towards America on that grim day and given the radicals hiding behind the cloak of their religion all the more reason to hate us. All becaus they were unwilling to seek the answers to two supremely important questions..."Why are they so angry?"..."Why do they hate us so much?".

I shudder to think of the America we would be living in today if we had stopped asking those questions in the 1960's.