People I know think “the terrorists” are not human. Dehumanization is a form of propaganda (a lie for political purposes) which can lead to genocide. Indeed, I’ve heard the genocidal comment that we should “just nuke the whole place”.
Hate is passed on purposefully and accidentally in many ways. For example, Rush Limbaugh the admitted drug addict is popular because he twists complicated reality into simple undertandable (but wrong) sound bites. Reality, however, is complicated. Iraq is a mess now because people with simple impaired judgement thought war was the answer. They acted on a fantasy “they will welcome us!” and that mistake is costing thousands, tens of thousands of human lives.
Yes, a small minority of Muslims DO have a bizzare bloodletting ceremony, yet all human beings, no matter what religion, get mad if you blow up their children.
Some vague thing like “hating our freedoms” isn’t causing the rage. The seeds of hate are specific. Example: The US recently provided cluster bombs to Israel which then used our US made bombs to kill innocent civilians. Over 100,000 unexploded US bombs will keep on killing for years.
The Bush administration, by providing weapons of mass destruction to the Middle East conflict, has endangered US national security by causing a new wave of tremendous hatred towards us. This makes some foreign peoples (who are also blinded by their own propaganda) wish to strike back at innocent people here in the USA. They WILL teach their children remaining to hate the US because US weapons killed one or more of their other relatives (41,000 to 45,000 Iraqi civilians currently). Gee, if some country started a war that resulted in 40,000 dead Americans do you think we’d love them?
“Israel asked Bush around August 10th for a speedy delivery of M-26 artillery rockets (dumb bombs). It seems the order went though and they started firing them in large numbers at Lebanon a few days later (the week of Aug 14-18th).”
So, do they hate our way of life? Our music? Our nice clothes? Or do they rather much more hate the way we kill them?