Was it because we are good and they are evil? Is it because they hate our freedom? Is it that simple?
It's amazing how many conservatives think that it is because of our (relative) freedom, and that we are hated simply because we are the "good guys".
By the same logic, the Union were the "good guys" in the Civil War - and Free Republic is full of neo-Confederates who haven't forgiven them 150 years later.
Try to change a people's way of life at gunpoint and you will be hated by the majority of those people, no matter how noble your motives. US military action should be limited to the elimination of threats to the US - which is all Ron Paul was saying.
The nation-building stuff was stupid under Clinton and it's stupid under Bush...and it would have been equally stupid in Germany and Japan had we not imposed ten-year-long military regencies on both nations and hanged anyone who didn't like it.
A brilliant statement. Absolutely stellar. Plus, to boot, Japan did not have a theocratic, life encompassing worldview which was resistant to the invaders. Germany was already Christian, we just needed to rub their noses in their sin. Iraq is different because we have a Satanic, perverse, hegemonistic life and worldview, steeped in lies and hypocrisy, and nurtured on hatred. If we went in determined to wipe THAT out, possibly we could "succeed" politically, but the price in blood would be very very high. Russia could not do it in the steppes. We do not (thank God!) have the stomach for the brutality that would be necessary to eradicate Islam from Iraq. That makes our present "mission" there endless, hopeless, and doomed to fail.