Michael Scheuer, the CIA’s expert on the Middle East at the time of the 9/11 attacks, put his finger right on the real reasons for the 9/11 attack. It had nothing at all to do with their supposed hatred for our freedoms. That makes no sense at all. After all, the Arab world is working very hard to establish those same freedoms in that part of the world.

Scheuer says the real reasons for the hatred many radical Muslims have for America are reasons that make a lot more sense.

1. US support for Israel that keeps Palestinians in the thrall of Israel.
2. US and other Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula.
3. US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
4. US support for Russia, India and China against their Muslim militants.
5. US pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low.
6. US support for apostate, corrupt and tyrannical Muslim governments.

This reasoning helps us understand their point of view. Scheuer tried his very best to make these points with the nation’s leadership but they were not ready to listen to reason. They wanted revenge.

We could probably justify the attack on Afghanistan since it was a stronghold of al Qaeda terrorists. But the fiasco of invading Iraq to find “weapons of mass destruction” which never existed was indefensible. We should have got into Afghanistan and got out of this war before all support and sympathy for us in the Arab world eroded.

I have to ask myself, if another nation came to the US and attacked us and invaded us and occupied our country for ten years, would I be an insurgent? Probably many of us would.

Many of the youth of Islam, who were only children when the 9/11 attack occurred, are now becoming bitter with us. They have lost many of their family through drone attacks on citizens and the “collateral damage” inflicted by our soldiers.

There has to be a better response than war to the world’s problems. Neither Islam nor Christianity can justify violence as a just response. We have to work harder to work with one another to reach consensus to the problems of the world. War is not the answer.