American Prospect, The: It's what we do: the administration says the terrorists hate us for who we are. But that isn't what the terrorists say--or what the record shows.

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It's what we do: the administration says the terrorists hate us for who we are. But that isn't what the terrorists say--or what the record shows.

Eland, Ivan

GEORGE W. BUSH, IN HIS GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR, has specifically avoided the clash of civilizations hypothesis, holding that the United States is not waging a war against the religion of Islam. However, the president has backed into the hypothesis by saying that terrorists "hate us because we are free." The president, that is, has essentially made the argument that they hate America for "what it is." We are not, Bush once said, "facing a set of grievances that can be soothed or addressed." After September 11, this argument proved extremely seductive to ...