I must admit that the older I get the more possibilities and uncertainties I see. Therefore your assumption that islamic terrorism is a "blowback" reaction to US policies and oppression of the masses they created or aided seems to me a somewhat naive article of faith.
If things were as certain as the above described assumption holds, we should be swamped by terrorists from Korea, Vietnam, Latin America, and Yugoslavia avenging the unquestionable wrongdoings of the US foreign policy there. But why from the Middle East, for goddess' sake? The US policy there has been quite benign, if not good, for the most part: we saved Naser from the European wrath after he nationalized the Suez Canal, we gave Sadat the territories he lost to Israel, we helped the Afghanis to fight the Soviet invasion, we liberated Kuwait from a secularist invader, and we even saved the Muslim Kosovars from a Slavic butcher. True, we also support Israel, but by objective standards Israeli policies toward Palestinians are only moderately brutal anti-insurgency campaign, not that much worse from those used by the Britts against the IRA, and waaaay better than those used by the Indonesian, x-South African, Turkish, or Russian governments. NOt to mention that our and Western European petro-dollars are bankrolling the modernization process in many Arab/Islamic countries. Why then do those people hate us more than the Vietnamese or Latin Americans whom we really mistreated?
Again, I do not claim any special insights into the mental processes of fellow human beings, as many poundits do, but my own experience of growing up in a developing country can offer some possibilities. When backward Eastern Europe entered modernization process after falling under the Soviet sphere of influence, many old social institutions were seriously weakened or even disappeared. Religious authority was replaced with secular authority of the state, informal networks with the bureaucratic regulations and the rule of law, family with social service institutions and schools, patriarchy with employment opportunities and equal rights for women, and so on. Most people benefited from it, but some resented the change. Among them were the Catholic clergy that stood to loose a lot of power and influence. They thus embarked ona relentless propaganda campaign against "sovietization" using every available opportunity to identify USSR as a great Satan and stirr disssatisfaction with the social changes brought. Their words fell on eager ears, and many believed that the USSR was a single root cause of all possible worngs experienced throughout the Eastern Europe.
I may add that the similar process occurred in Weimar Germany after WWI. Its numerous faulth notwithstanbding, Weimar created an unprecedentedly open and egalitarian society, opening occupational and political opportunities for women, political parties, unions etc. Of course, teh guard of the old orders stood to loose from these social changes - and thus were attracted to nazism that offerred them a return to promordial germanic order, locking women back where they "belong" (Kirche, Kueche, Kinder), and above all - getting rid of the foreign elements - the international Jewery and Bolshevism - responsible for the corruption of "old values."
It is not hard to see that islamic fundamentalism could be a very simialr reaction to social changes brought to Arab countries by modernization, fomented by islamist clerics and aristocracy who stand to loose from secularism and modernism. It is a symbolic return to "ancient" roots, promissing locking women in their proper place, and most importantly getting rid of the wordly forces responsible for the changes affecting their societies. The US policy, what we did or did not do, has nothing to do with how these forces of dark reaction portray us. We have been a mere sybmbol bearer, the incarnation of the Great Satan: the international Jewery and Bolshvism/Secularism.
Of course, that puts us in a rather peculiar position. Most nations, Americans including, want to see themselves as the navel of the universe, a sovereign actor fully in charge of its own fate. We can see ourselves an excpetionally good (as the right claims) or as as excpetionally evil (as the thrid-worldist left has it) but *exceptional* in every which way, a super-agent responsible for every deed, good or evil, that happens to others. We have a hard time accpeting that we may not be as important as we think, that we are not in charge of our our fate, ler alone the fate of other nations, and oftentimes we are do not even know what we are doing or where we are going. Only those who, like myself, develop a taste for uncertaintly and ambiguity have no difficulties accepting such conculsions, and even secretly enjoy them.
To sumamrize:
1. I do not think that the US is a super evil responsible for all wrongs in other parts of the world. We did some good things, some bad things, and a very large number of ambiguous, ambivalent, uncertain and inconseqental things, or things with unintended or unanticipated consequences. We are neither supreme good nor the great satan - for the most part we are not sure what we are doing.
2. Our perception by islamic fundamentalists has little to do what we did or did not do. We are a mere symbol, a signifier, in their struggle against modernism. We are for them what international Jewery and Bolshevism were for the nazis. Nobody (except rabid right wingers, perhaps) would seriously claim that nazism was a "blowback" against misdeeds of international Jewery and Bolshevism.
3. Islamic funadmentalism has little to do with Islam - it simply uses it in the same way as it uses us, as a symbol bearer (in this case, a symbol of good).
4. Islamic fundamentalism is what nazism was in 1920s and 1930s - a rabid right wing reaction to social changes brought by modernity. It would not surprise me at all if islamic fundamentalists of the bin Laden & Co. variety were generously supported by our purported "friends" such as the Saudi monarchy, Pakistani right wing military and assorted Arab aristocracy.
4. If (4) above is true, then the islamic fundamentlaism is now where the nazis were in late 1920s - bankrolled by the landowners and industrialists and fighting the liberal Weimar. But give them more time and more respurces (supplied by secretly by anonymous ruling class supporters) they will soon graduate to 1933 and then 1939.
5. The Nazis could have been stopped, if the Left did not decide to capitualate to them and if foreign powers decided to oppose them rather than appease them (Lord Chamberlian comes to mind). Ditto for islamic fundamentalism. That means that the developed countries should support the natural enemies of islamic fascims: the moderates, liberals, social democrats, organized labor, socialists, and communists in the affected countries, and physically eliminate (to the extent possible) the islamist fascism's human and financial resource base. Indiscriminate bombing can only make things worse. I hope the leaders of this country will learn that lesson, albeit something tells me that if they do not knwo what to do, they will repeat what seem to "work" in the past. But at this point, nobody really knows, only the time will tell.
6. Western European social democracy is the best political things in exsitence ever created. I am pretty proud of it and I think we should defend it against any form of fascism or barbarism, no matter how veiled.
wojtek