With his usual and impeccable reductivism, Hitchen's boils the whole mess down to the worn, "they hate us for our freedoms" argument. Forgotten, apparently, with the arrogant flourish of his pen, is nearly 100 years of imperial oppression and slaughter byt he west, the images of Abu Ghraib and Haditha, the non-stop looting of natural and cultural treasures, the hundreds of Afghani civilians murdered in the past two weeks alone. I do agree that fundamentalist religions of any sort breed intolerance at best and madness at worstlook at Zionism and the Christian Right for a couple of illustrations a little closer to home--but it is just a little too naive--and conveniently so--to pretend that the Muslim world does not have a litany of reasons for justifiable hatred.

The U.S. servicemen and women responsible for Abu Ghraib have been tried and convicted. The Marines responsible for Haditha are on trial now, I believe. In both cases Western non Moslems are being punished by thier own government for crimes against Moslems. Thousands of Moslems are being killed by other Moslems in Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria, Sudan and elsewhere. The numbers dwarf any deaths directly attributable to Western bombs and bullets. So how is it reasonable for Moslems to feel justified in blowing up random British revelers?

but it is just a little too naive--and conveniently so--to pretend that the Muslim world does not have a litany of reasons for justifiable hatred

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let me tell you something, almost any person, and nation can find reasons for "justifiable hatred"; the question is what kind of human being you CHOOSE to be. the Moslem world has not been mistreated worse than many other people in the world, and actually had its hands in mistreating other people as well, which is true to most of humanity.

Your post reflects the inherent condescending of many people for Moslems, reflecting the view they need a special pass and must not be judged with the same standards you would apply to other people. And about Moslems who CHOOSE not to be terrorists, and fight the islamo-fascist? Are they wrong? Should they join the Jihad, since, they, in your words, “have a litany of reasons for justifiable hatred”?

My dear, you sully your already tarnished point with your own reductivism and tired arguments. A "they hate us for our freedoms" argument? Not at all. It's a "they hate us for our women" argument, and frankly its not a half bad argument for something slashed out for a quick check.

You yourself descend to a much less defensible point with the suggestion that London's innocent women are guilty, wihout trial, judge or jury, of crimes against the "Muslim world" and therefore worthy targets of "justifiable hatred". Shame on you.

This is maddening since I agree with nearly everyone, except for the invective. I think CH goes a little over the top with an agenda of defending the Iraq fiasco and with an attendant lack of clarity about what we are to do. One thing seems clear--in Iraq we opened a Pandora's box in a country that was being run by a non-Islamist. There has now been an arrest of a doctor who left Iraq a year ago and apparently imported to Great Britain features of the chaos unleashed there. So an agenda to justify Iraq seems mistaken. But it is certainly true that the backward, woman-hating and -opressing agenda of Islamic fundamentalism is very bad, dangerous, etc., and there is a problem of its appearance in Western democracies. Perhaps it can be managed as well as the Protestant fundamentalists were, but I'm not sure I count on that. I hereby acknowledge that it annoys me in the extreme to see a woman wrapped in Islamic dress. She, in my mind, is a walking gender aggression. I think the West needs to find a way to minimize this sort of thing in our civilization, within reasonable parameters provided by our commitment to liberalism. Nothing justifies random attacks on "our" women in nightclubs, or the oppression of "their" women in our societies. All that said, we must not tar the whole group with the violence, misogyny, and stupidity of the bad ones. Tough.