From editorial, above:

"...To me, the clash of civilizations theory that is supposed to explain the war on terror holds very little water...."

Let me get this straight, she blames the "civilized world" for taking funding away from the IMF and or direct subsidies to her country. Her own leaders use the wealth of their own countries not to help their own people, but to build armies, stealing all they can steal for themselves, and brutally repressing all who oppose them. The blame for the problems of her people can not be laid at the feet of the American or Jewish people.

I'm sure that most Moslims born and riased in the USA feel the same way as this woman.

What concerns me are nearly one billion Moslims born and raised outside the USA, and taught from birth to hate all western culture, particularly US culture.

I saw a cartoon the other day that showed that the worst retaliation we could do to the Taliban would be to threaten to send their women to college.

This woman is obviously ignoring the real nature of the Qu'ran and the barbaric semicivilization it engenders.

However, she makes an important point.

Usama bin Laden is in it for power - he is not driven by a desire for martyrdom: the great care he takes to keep his own skin intact is clear.

What he dreams of is overthrowing the Saud dynasty in Arabia. He wants to be made leader of a new Arabia by acclamation and to become a new Caliph - a supreme spiritual and military leader of Islam and successor to the Prophet.

His actions and his speeches are calculated to create political unrest throughout the Islamic world and give him an avenue to power. Once the hero of Islam gains political power in the Middle East he will launch his Great Jihad.

People have been known to make silly comparisons between Hitler and Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic. But bin Laden is truly of the Hitler school - his terrorist activities correspond neatly to the streetfighting and 1923 attempted Putsch of Hitler. They put Hitler outside the pale of polite society and even got him imprisoned - but they created a nationwide swell of support for a formerly obscure figure. Hitler called upon a great historical canvas for his activities, placing himself in the context of Charlemagne and the Wars of Liberation. Bin Laden places himself in the context of the Crusades and the Reconquista. Both are highly charismatic (unlike Hussein and Milosevic) and have a fanatical following who are considered "unbought" and "incorruptible".

Both have dreams of world conquest. We have the opportunity to utterly crush Usama now - we must pursue him to the ends of the earth and ignore the UN. The League of Nations was ineffectual against Nazism - the UN is in bed with Islam.

Doesn't the bimbo wonder why her own leaders didn't provide food and necessities to their own people? These idiot Muslims seem to believe they should lay around in their stinking cultures, allow their poor distribution of oil money and expect the Jews and Americans to do everything for them. This shows how even the US born Muslims are brainwashed by scapegoating the Jews and USA for every problem they have.

I also know firsthand the taste and smell of a despair that has been festering for years in the Muslim world. I stood outside my home in the Middle East on a day when the local government was forced by the International Monetary Fund to announce the lifting of subsidies on products like flour, butter, and oil. Even today, I recall the fear as I wondered how even my bourgeois family would make ends meet. I have seen the birth of the despair that so many are now trying to understand. It happened one day when I was 11 or 12. Not far from my school was a municipal maternity ward whose funding fell far short of its needs when international aid failed to come. A woman emerged from the building clutching a bundle wrapped in newspaper. She sank down against the wall of a market. Unwrapping her bundle, she revealed her newborn child. "The ward has no blankets," she replied in response to my terrified stare. Then she unbuttoned her blouse and lifted the now screaming child to her breast.

Looks like the local government is responsible, not the IMF or the West. If the local government had acted responsibly, they wouldn't need the IMF loans. If they allowed economic development to occur, there'd be blankets. But the local government routinely follow poor economic policies. The only successful economies are those with an extreme abundance of natural resources (oil). Why are the governments so messed up? Well, for one, many follow Islamic law, which is essentially incapable of allowing growth and productivity in a modern economy. No interest. Yes, you can't charge interest in Islamic law. If you can't charge interest, you can't really have a financial system. Without a financial system, you can't have mortgages, equipment financing, accounts receivable loans, or any of the other myriad loans that allow capital to be used effectively. So these countries wallow in poverty while the West prospers, and then they think we're exploiting them. No, you're exploiting yourselves by following a ridiculous system of laws firmly rooted in the seventh century.

The stupid brainwashed Muslims fail to notice that Israel never had oil, it was the Arab countries that were sitting on trillions of dollars of easy oil money, they could have used their extreme wealth to better their countries but failed to do so and then blame free countries with better cultures that allow middle class lifestyles for their people.

The totally corrupt cultures of these nations are what cause the pain and suffering of their people. To complain that we don't "give" enough aid to the poor is ridicules. They talk how we need to search for the "true" reason why these terrorists do what they do… Why don't they search for the "true" reason of their inability to live in a civilized society and feed themselves (besides blaming the west)…

I think it is sad that this woman, as bright as she may be, still doesn't understand the difference between us and them. It is called hard work. Somehow, it seems, in her mind everything would be better if they could just get some more aid. Here is my message to her: Try helping those starving souls make their own money. We would gladly help you when you hit a bump in the road. Stop demanding handouts. Try inventing something, making something, marketing something. If my child were starving then I would figure out how to press sand lumps into diamonds in order to feed him. I realize this is simplistic,but many people have make something out of nothing.

She is writing from a leftist feminist perspective. I can spot this garbage a mile away.

NEW YORK I am an Arab-American, a Muslim woman and a New Yorker. I was born in the United States to an Arab father and a Western mother. I grew up in the United States until the age of 7, then returned to the Arab world, where I spent my adolescence, coming back to America only to go to college. I know...............

What's so typical is her being raised Muslim. The mother went along with the father's desire to have her raised Muslim. Another little robot for Allah. 
In the West the child gets the mother's religion in a mixed marriage. But Muslims will have none of this.

Anissa, my appraisal of Bent Laden is about the same as yours.

However, these poor, wretched, desperate people, whom you're talking about, should take constructive, meaningful action to help themselves. There's plenty that they can do!

Stop blaming others and looking to others to help them.

Stop rioting, waging war and terrorism, and planning for such.

Devote their energies to education, enterprise, and prosperity.

There are many potential tourist attractions in the Middle East. This is a source of potential income.

And the oil! There's enough to make the people of the Middle East very prosperous!

So what's the problem? Obviously there are plenty of resources. The problem is the attitude of the people. And this must change if their "wretched" circumstances are to change.

In other words, the basis of their problem is their culture.

These people need a very large dose of Western culture--not less of it.

Western Civilization will solve all of the problems you describe. The problem is the attitude of the people; they're fighting the very thing they need.

And it's even worse than that. They're fighting to destroy the West and all it has to offer. They want to reduce the rest of the world to their own wretched circumstances.

As someone who knows both worlds, surely you see all this. It's obvious.

On the other hand--there is none so blind as he (or she) who will not see.

It's kinda hard to help people--or even feel sorry for them--when they insist on bringing wretchedness upon themselves--and everyone else!

So these countries wallow in poverty while the West prospers, and then they think we're exploiting them. No, you're exploiting yourselves by following a ridiculous system of laws firmly rooted in the seventh century.

And she blames us, and wants our money.

Her most despicable line was "...where despair justifies terror." She needs to learn that NOTHING justifies terror.

It's their own stupid system that makes their lives miserable.

Most Muslims may not want a world run by bin Laden, but do not have the world view necessary to effectively counter him. Just like bin Laden's broadsides, her article is full of charges against the Jewish and Western world, blaming us for their problems. If in fact the Western world is guilty of oppressing the Palestinians, starving the Iraqis, taking bread from the mouths of the middle class, and forcing women to wrap newborns in newspaper, then her peaceful approach is nonsense and bin Laden's war is more appropriate. In short, she is like a moderate Republican trying to compete with a Democrat in handouts, at a permanent disadvantage because the Democrat is always willing to promise and often deliver more.

The Muslim world can only free itself from the likes of bin Laden when they recognize that the Iraqi nation's problem is Hussein and his Baath party, that the Palestinian problem and their poverty is the result of trying to push Israel into the sea. Kuwait almost had it right just after the Gulf War ended, when it lashed out against the sacred cows of the Arab world for supporting Hussein, but Saddam Hussein was allowed to live and things returned to normal.

She is writing from a leftist feminist perspective.

She is. She would vote for Hillary Clinton (and probably did). Scratch her sentiments a little deeper and you would likely discover that she is a flaming pro-abortion socialist. She is certainly a professional victim. She and her people are responsible for none of the evil in the world. If they were only provided all their wants by a nonjudgmental nanny government, the terrorists wouldn't lash out so viciously.

If Bin Laden and others like him were really interested in their people they would have used their money to improve the lives of those people. They have not. They have spent their money on arms and training to fuel their grab for power. What has happened in Afganistan is proof of what they would do if they ever gained power.

Look at all the money that Iraq gains from their oil sales, and look at how well Saddam is living. Why hasn't that money gone to provide jobs and better ways of growing and providing food and shelter. The same with the PLA. We've given them billions in aid, yet they allow their people to live in squalor while they all live pretty well. Billions are spent on arms and the military while their people live in deplorable conditions. The people are looking at us with hatred because their own leaders have tricked them to keep them from looking closer to home.

Not far from my school was a municipal maternity ward whose funding fell far short of its needs when international aid failed to come. A woman emerged from the building clutching a bundle wrapped in newspaper. She sank down against the wall of a market. Unwrapping her bundle, she revealed her newborn child. "The ward has no blankets," she replied in response to my terrified stare. Then she unbuttoned her blouse and lifted the now screaming child to her breast.

My response to this would be to think of a way to start some sort of blanket weaving cottage industry. Believe me, any kind of fur can be spun and woven into cloth, even dog or cat hair. A few boards and some round sticks and you are in business. Maybe you can not solve the problem completely but you can put a big dent into it.

Her response? Whine.

Guess that is why she is a victim.

Cricket

We Americans can no longer turn our backs on the helplessness and desperation that is rampant in so many regions of the world.

What does she mean, "no longer"? We pour billions every year into the third world, most of which ends up in the pockets of warlords, I suspect. If we contribute anything other than money (arms, or support for a particular regime), we are the meddling Great Satan. As a result, the Third World is poorer than ever and we have nothing to show but a pile of burned flags and dead civilians.

Why is it up to this country to feed the poor of other countries? How can we possibly accomplish it if the leaders of those nations work to keep their people in poverty?

She is writing from a leftist feminist perspective. I can spot this garbage a mile away.

Change a few words and it is the same screed that laments the poverty in the ghetto and explains away riots and black hatred for whites. If only we would give more all would be peace and bliss. As you say, it is all BS.

" I stood outside my home in the Middle East on a day when the local government was forced by the International Monetary Fund to announce the lifting of subsidies on products like flour, butter, and oil. Even today, I recall the fear as I wondered how even my bourgeois family would make ends meet. "

If Middle Eastern Islamic culture is so great, why are they constantly begging from the west, hmmmm?