It's raining in Munich

And so I give you this post of a video map of the Middle East, visualizing what empires have controlled that territory since early recorded history. If you ever wonder what makes the Middle East such a complicated mess of political, religious and social struggle, look no further than this 90 second map.

Tip 'o the hat to shadoweyes.

Terrorists hate America(n policy)

Courtesy of skemono, a way to shed the propaganda that terrorists simply "hate America."

Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser to President Carter, carries this analysis to address the question that obsesses us as a nation: What truly motivates the "terrorists," the insurgents, the suicide bombers, all those people who apparently hate us for one reason or another?

The commonly accepted knowledge in the administration and in the Pentagon is that this is a religious war, that these men blow themselves up for God. Not at all, says Brzezinski: "These are political questions. They may seen religious, but in reality they are directly related to our policies. Look at who they are against: the U.S., the Brits, the Israelis. We are seen as the new British colonialists, just as in Vietnam we were seen as the continuation of French colonialism..."

...The study of 300 suicide bombers made by professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago found that virtually none of them was religiously inspired; they were communists, socialists, Muslim Brothers, Arab nationalists, but above all, they were inspired by Western occupation and dominance of their lands.

In other words, suicide bombers are attacking the United States - its civilians on 9/11 and its soldiers in Iraq - because of our political support for Israel, our invasion of Iraq, and other political behavior. And unlike religious fanaticism, there are non-military solutions to politically-motivated killing - such as leaving Iraq.

For more on Pape's groundbreaking work, see his article in the American Political Science Review (pdf). The table on page 6 is very revealing.

Racial profiling by name

Is there really anything more we can do to alienate otherwise friendly Arabs? We already have few enough friends in the Arab world. And even though there may only be 200,000 Arabs living in the United States, each one serves as an ambassador of American ideas to their relatives back home.

So it probably doesn't do us any favors to have Western Union, citing Treasury Department policy, prohibiting money transfers to people with Arab-sounding names. Here's just a few reasons why this is dumb:

• We punish innocent people with Arab names
  
• As a result, we further erode Arab opinion of the United States
  
• We don't actually prevent terrorist money transfers, because there are alternative money-transfer services.

I'm just glad there weren't any Irish terrorists involved in 9/11.