They're not just mad at us ... they're afraid.

Read THIS.

"to those on the political Left across much of the world — their politics mindlessly thick with resentment of America and animus towards Bush — nothing can be said or demonstrated that will make them concede that the joy of freedom across Iraq is real." ... Salim Mansur

A history lesson ...

A Bedouin state of mind

Centuries ago, two great religious scholars understood the irrationality and evil that fuels today's terrorists. Perhaps better than we do. Salim Mansur - August 14, 2006 [Salim Mansur also writes for the Toronto Sun, the NRO. Well worth the read.]

[...]

Since the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, the Arab-Muslim world and Islam have dominated news. The western effort for a better understanding of Islam as faith and culture has been driven after 9/11 by the practical necessity of containing and defeating terrorism increasingly, if not entirely, associated with Muslims.

During the 1990s, Algeria--a case study of a society besieged by Arab-Muslim terrorists--was turned into a killing field by radical Islamists preaching jihad (holy war) as an article of faith, to be fought indiscriminately against those Muslims viewed as corrupt and non-believers in Islam. The Algerian government, dominated by the military, responded to Islamist jihad with a ruthless campaign to crush terrorism, which it did. But the scar of that savage decade's killings is visible everywhere in today's Algeria, and the recovery will be haltingly slow and painful.

But why did Algeria plunge into terrorism? The explanations contemporary experts seek are in the mix of socioeconomic and political factors. What is missing, or barely touched upon, is the nature of man who indulges in terrorism or justifies it. This is where the writings of St. Augustine and Ibn Khaldun shed greater light on terrorism causes than any recent writings of experts in the subject.

Man, St. Augustine wrote, "is a great abyss," and "the moods and attractions of his heart far outnumber the hairs of his head." If there is evil in him, it is because he is insufficient in goodness, for evil "does not exist of itself." "True holiness," or goodness, "is an interior disposition," an inward awakening to the reality of where God resides in the heart of man. A man awakened to his inner reality could do no evil--for instance, be a terrorist--since, filled with goodness, there would be no evil in him.

[...]

Ibn Khaldun wrote of Islam as a civilizing force among Arabs of the desert, the Bedouins. But Bedouins are "a savage nation, fully accustomed to savagery and the things that cause it . . . Such a natural disposition is the negation and antithesis of civilization."

Bedouin, if we abstract from Ibn Khaldun's sociology, is a state of mind. Islamists, as modern-day Bedouins, are unable or unwilling to fathom the workings of modern civilization, to accept its rationality as a means of changing their situation, trapped in the vortex of pre-modern backwardness. They have chosen instead to make war upon it.

In Algeria, Islamists engaged themselves in a conflict of self-destruction. They were driven to this by their nature reflecting the abyss within themselves. Elsewhere, for instance in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan or the Palestinian territories, Muslim terrorists wage war on their opponents, indicating their incapacity to engage with the modern world rationally and in keeping with universal rules, rather than denying them by insisting on their savage disposition to oppose civilization.

From a great distance of time, the two North African sages speak to us wisely about understanding why men are seized with evil intent and do harm. Even as we must resist and defeat the evil of Muslim terrorism in our midst, we must remain reminded of St. Augustine's admonition to act with love of mankind and hatred of sins lest we are consumed by that against which we fight.

Case in point ...
Refer: here, here and here.

The minimum achieved in Iraq and in Afghanistan, with its consequences reverberating through a region that has remained stuck in varying degrees of unfreedom, should remain irreversible and even grow stronger given the commitments already made by America and its Coalition partners in the war on terror. President Bush may not accomplish all that we would hope, given the local conditions in Iraq and the highly polarized nature of contemporary American politics, yet that which he has already achieved will be a lasting contribution to the cause of freedom in general.

— Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada.
cross posted