Why do they hate us?

[Bradford DeLong]

>At 10:21 PM 02/27/2002 -0500, you wrote re "Why do they hate us?"
>>[Oh, wait, it's insensitive to ask this question. Someone call and tell
>>CNN.]
>
>Not insensitive but....Well it's a kind of "When did you stop 
>hitting your wife?" kind of question, or it's becoming that anyway.
>
>I find it interesting at any rate that this question (Why do they 
>hate us?) is being raised in such a way as to make Americans 
>paranoid and to justify whatever measures the current regime wants 
>to take to curb civil liberties and repress any form of dissent. 
>Because the way they pursue this question, they are asserting 1) 
>that others hate us and 2) that others have no valid reason to feel 
>this way,

Well, only 18% of the Gallup poll's Arab world sample believes that 
the World Trade Center atrocity was committed by Muslims from the 
Middle East, and that 60+% thinks it was committed by somebody 
else--which I think means "the Jews". This would seem to be evidence 
that some version of (1) and (2) may in fact be true...

Brad DeLong