All this nonsense blaming the problem on a clash of religions...would anybody be listening to the jihadist imams if their bellies were full and their lives as comfortable as Westerners? We'd all benefit if we could figure out how to share a little better. Didn't our parents teach us as kids that it's good to share? Why are they wrong now?

Or, to quote the words of one of our nation's great Presidents, "It's the economy, stupid." Make cooperation with Western civilization pay off.

This sounds good, but doesn't take into account that many of the Muslim leadership who are paramount in supporting our destruction are wealthy themselves, or live in wealthy circumstances. Many of the leaders trying to destroy us have gotten quite wealthy trading with the West. Saudi Arabia is the core of the Wahabbi movement. Bin Laden wasn't missing any meals when he decided we all had to die. The men who hijacked those airplanes were educated, and middle-class.

It ain't the poverty. It never was. The poverty allows the leaders to generate the miserable cannon fodder and suicide bombers the wealthy leaders need. The desperate Palestinians wrap themselves in explosives. Arafat lives on and on, and is richer than shit.

For some reason, many people cannot allow themselves to realize that this is a war of civilizations. So was the Cold War, and it's ironic that I heard many of the same kind of excuses back then.

They thought that if only we did something to mollify the Soviets, stopped being "confrontational," did something to calm their fears, to somehow see things the way they wanted us to, then they wouldn't arm against us, and would peacefully coexist.

I can still find plenty of people convinced that if we had unilaterally destroyed all our nuclear arsenal, that the Soviets would have immediately followed suit and taken up gardening.