[Christopher] Hitchens thesis is that the various attacks we have seen spanning more than a decade are NOT attempts to destroy Western countries or their economies. They are instead very elaborate works of theater, public relations stunts, in effect. Hitchens claims we are witnessing a Civil War for control of the Islamic world, and the radical Fundy element of that religion is blowing US up to get its opinion poll numbers up, to attract supporters, and to prove how important and relevant they are to their fellow Muslims. In short, attacking the West is a means to an end, and not an end in itself.Though there are many different groups involved in the attacks, they are of one mind; the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Iranian Revolutionaries, the twits in Algeria several years ago; they all have a common goal: establishment of Islamic theocracies in all the Muslim countries of the Middle east, institution of Sharia (Koranic) Law in place of secular legal systems, and the expulsion of all "infidels" (Westerners) from those countries. That's the near-term goal; longer term, they want to impose similar governments outside the Middle East in countries where the populations are predominantly Islamic, such as Indonesia and places in Africa. It is only after that happens that they will directly confront and try to defeat the US and her Allies, if ever.
So the attacks we are seeing today are, as I said previously, essentially works of political theater; like the Bower Bird, the Islamic radical Fundies are putting on a show solely to impress someone -- the bird is trying to impress a female into having sex with him, the lunatic Islamic Fundies are trying to impress their fellow Muslims to gain enough support so they can start overthrowing governments in Muslim Middle eastern countries and start setting up Taliban-like systems. We in the West are just the ripe juicy targets which play so well on Al Jeezera TV when wounded.
All the talk about our foreign policy being the "cause" of the attacks is therefore convenient excuse-making. The truth is if we did NOT support Israel, they'd still find a pretext for attacking us. We are the biggest target in the world, and we make the biggest splash in Islamic cable/satellite TV when we get sucker-punched.
The real truth is the radical Fundy Muslims hate our guts because we are "infidels." Even worse, we have a culture that is everything theirs is not. We have enormous economic success; but for the historical quirk of crude oil being under their sand dunes, the Arabic world would be selling us dates and pistachio nuts. We have technological achievements and innovations, they haven't produced anything worthy of note since the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. We have a system that (at least in theory) prizes individual liberty and which leaves matters of faith to the individual; they have system in which the individual is subservient to the good of Islam and which cannot tolerate any faith (even lack of faith) other than it's own. We have the best schools of higher learning in the world, they have Madrasas were little children are compelled to memorize a single book, and read no other, and where hatred is inculcated like multiplication tables are memorized. We encourage innovation and change, they enforce and celebrate stasis (as most all fundies are wont to do) as a matter of religious orthodoxy.
If this view is accurate, then we had better start recognizing what we are really up against, and get serious about this. Changing a few foreign policies isn't going to stop the bombings. The only real hope is for the Moderate Muslims to get off their fat butt and start fighting for the heart and sole of the Islamic World and defeat the pernicious perverted ideology of these radical Fundies who have usurped the Prophet's name and words for their own power grab. The fate of much of the world hangs in the balance. And as long as the fundies continue their acts of political theater, we in the West will never be safe, and the the authoritarians here will use it as an excuse to diminish MY liberty, which it the only one that matters to me.
As you have suggested, the element missing in the Islamic experience is something akin to the Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment in the West. Intellectual sleepwalking for a thousand years isn't a pretty sight, as our Dark Ages amply testify.