Understanding Terrorism

BooMan has written to reasoned response to one of the latest salvos in the War on the NYTimes being waged by RabidRight. This time it's Michael Barone in an article with the gripping title: The New York Times at War With America. BooMan begins:

Michael Barone is not a stupid, uninformed man. I know. My brother used to work with him at the U.S. News & World Report. So there is no innocent explanation for why he would write something so patently false and so obtusely misleading as the following. It's pure disinformation. Every single word of it is dishonest.

Why do they hate us? No, I'm not talking about Islamofascist terrorists. We know why they hate us: because we have freedom of speech and freedom of religion, because we refuse to treat women as second-class citizens, because we do not kill homosexuals, because we are a free society.

No, the "they" I'm referring to are the editors of The New York Times. And do they hate us? Well, that may be stretching it. But at the least they have gotten into the habit of acting in reckless disregard of our safety.

BooMan then goes on to show, using Osama BinLaden's own words, why "they hate us" and:

Damn!! Nothing in there about hating our freedoms. Rather, he just noted our eagerness to destroy Iraq, and to fragment the other regional powers into 'paper statelets', powerless to destroy Israel.

[...]

In short, his critique of the Saudis was that they were corrupt, that they misallocated funds (especially on defense), that they set the price of oil with more regard to American desires than the benefit of the Saudi people, that they did not respect religious freedom (within the context of Islam), that they cracked down on academics, and that they used the media to spread disinformation.

This doesn't sound like the critique of a man that has a total disregard for the merits of liberty. It sounds like a man that sees the Saudis as corrupt and the American role in the Middle East as one that is inimical to the liberty of Muslims.

[...]

When we invaded Iraq we made bid-Laden's 1998 fatwa look less like the ravings of a lunatic than a modern day Les Propheties. Perhaps nothing could have lent bin-Laden more credibility than to have been proven right about America's intention to conquer and occupy and (in effect) destroy Iraq. And, it is the refusal of the neo-conservatives to be honest about why Islamists are targetting U.S. civilians that has led, more than anything else, to the total collapse of American credibility on the international stage.

The Islamists are not angry about the freedoms that Americans enjoy. They are perfectly content to let us go on enjoying them. But, they are not content to go on living under oppression in their own countries. Yes, if they gained power they would replace the current oppression with a new and different kind of oppression. But, at least it would not be bought and paid for by the American taxpayer.

Michael Barone knows these facts. He's a very smart man. But he doesn't get paid to tell the truth. He gets paid to brainwash right-wingers into thinking the fate of American liberty is on the line. It's not. Islamists will leave us alone the moment we leave them alone. And if we have good reasons not to leave them alone (and we do), then this fight will go on. It's a real fight, but it isn't an existential threat. It ain't armageddon, and it ain't a war on the tactic of terrorism. Tell America the truth.