Why did 9/11 happen?

That was the first question I asked myself on that terrible day: "What the hell was *that* for?"

I'm not going to explore the question of "did America get what it deserved" in this post, nor am I going to look at any conspiracy theories. Nor do I think, that in asking the question, I am seeking to absolve the people behind 9/11, or justify their actions. I'm just going to assume that the official story behind 9/11 is accurate (ie that 19 Arabs, trained and funded by Osama Bin Laden and his 'Al Queda' group, hijacked the four planes with boxcutters and crashed them into NY and Washington) and ask "what was on the minds of the people behind this?" After all, you certainly can't question the *sincerity* and *commitment* of the attackers. They knew they were going to die too. What makes them so?

The standard administration response has been: "they hate us because we're so great. They hate us for our freedom, they hate us for our prosperity, they hate us because we're diverse, they hate us because we're democratic."

I always thought that way of thinking was both wrong and dangerous. Firstly, it's pretty plainly wrong. Are 19 men really ready to strap on an airplane and die (as James Fallows in the Atlantic Monthly puts it) "just to keep us from voting in the Iowa primaries?". Other Western countries are democratic too. Why aren't there terrorists bombing Canada? Or Switzerland? Or Sweden? Those countries vote too, you know! They're prosperous, they're diverse, yet they don't get bombed.

This way of thinking is also dangerous because it deflects attention away from particular *actions* of the United States, and absolves the United States of any possible need, responsibility, or ability to take the greivances of the Arab world seriously. If Al Queda wants to kill everyone in the United States unless the country turns into an Islamic theocracy, then there's obviously no grounds for negotiation or understanding. They hate us and want to kill us, so we'd better kill them first.

However, I think that is highly unlikely to be true.