perfidy

Michael Totten writes about recent Islamist attacks on Buddhist monks in Thailand. (Totten linked to a post on Totally Whacked, and his post has a dead link to a story. But I found another one.) He makes this comment about the murders:

It's not because Buddhist monks are "colonialist oppressors," nor is it because Buddhists drive the engine of corporate globalization. And it's not because Thailand is a superpower that deserves to be brought to heel. Thai Buddhists don't need to ask "why do they hate us?" It's because Buddhists are "infidels." And that's that.

A commenter on that post had this to say:

Whoever thinks hatred of America and Israel in the ME is about "the Occupation" is a total idiot. It's about Jihad. This is a war that has been raging since the 7th century when the muslim hordes burst out of the Arabian peninsula and captured and converted the Christian provinces of Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Antioch, etc., invaded Persia and swept across North Africa towards my beloved Spain. Only in the 17th century were they finally stopped at the gates of Vienna itself. Osama knows what this war is about, and he's been trying to tell us. But we insist it's about U.S. "policies". What a bunch of Liberal claptrap. Why don't we take Osama and the extremists at their word? To them this is a Jihad, and has been since the 7th century. The Crusades was merely an attempt to roll them back, and they're still pissed about it. Why do you think they still call us "crusaders"? Get with the program people. This has little or nothing to do with U.S. "policies" and "oil". This is a civilizational conflict that has raged across the centuries and will continue to do so.

Our policies did not create 9/11. If bad American foreign policy were the root cause of terrorism, why have we not been plagued with sixty years of suicide attacks from the Japanese? We handled them rather roughly in the Second World War, even dropped a couple nukes on them. It is condescending to imagine that another's actions are solely determined by your own. We need to take the terrorists and their supporters at their word, and not ask why they hate us. They've told us why.