The "sophisticated intellectuals" always laugh at Bush's "you're either with us, or against us" stance on terror. But isn't that exactly the same attitude expressed by the Islamo-fanatics? You're either Muslim, or you're not. And if not, your options are to convert, get killed, or live as a "slave". These same "intellectuals" are also always telling us to "look for the root causes" and to "understand why they hate us so much". That, again, seems self explanatory to me - they hate us, because we are not like them. Period. And hey, guess what - true moderate Muslims, in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, have mainly good things to say about the US. Sure, there are problems with the reconstruction. Sure, there are screw-ups that have been made, and I'm sure more will follow. But most Muslims just want to live their life peacefully, practice their religion, and support their families. Why, then, do the extremists and their demands carry the day?

The big bottom line is that this is NOT new behavior for Muslim "extremists".

One of the reasons given for the current "hatred" of the US is the Crusades. You know, big angry mean Christians slaughtering peace loving Muslims for a bit of sport. At least that's what Osama and much of the media and terrorist apologists like CAIR would have you believe. But guess what - you need to reverse the roles of the Christians and the Muslims in this little affair to get the true order of things. Don't believe me? Well, do you believe someone who studies the middle ages for a living?

So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of that out. But much can already be said with certainty. For starters, the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression�an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands.

Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity�and for that matter any other non-Muslim religion�has no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state under Muslim rule. But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must be destroyed and their lands conquered. When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders for the next thousand years.

Via LGF.

Oh, yeah - the question. Do Christians get a "right of retrun" to Syria, Palestine, and Egypt? I mean, if Palestinians can claim a right of return based on Israel's land acquisitions during defensive wars, should displaced Christians from these regions have a right of return for land lost in an offensive war, even if the claim is 1,000 years old (or ESPECIALLY if the claim is 1,000 years old)?