I understand/feel/share the emotion - at least initially.
  Reminds me of the quote that says if you're not a liberal
  in college you don't have a heart, and if you're not a conservative
  when you grow up you don't have a brain.
  Bush is doing and going about things the right way, as right as
  can be.  A talk radio guy the other day couldn't understand feeding
  the Afghans - it's rewarding the terrorists.  It is not.  It is feeding
  starving victims that suffer under the same terrorists.  It must be
  established that we care about the people.  We do not care for
  terrorists.  Most of those people are not terrorists, and they hate
  them more than we do.
  When, what's that Oriental girl's name on The View?  Lisa Ling?
  When she was in Afghanistan a few years ago - invited
  by the Taliban - she got around not having to wear the women's garb
  by disguising herself as a boy.  Still, she was not allowed to talk, and
  once she laughed and her guide was heavily reprimanded.  Here's the
  rub - people came up and whispered stuff to her about how horrible
  things are there.  Some were caught doing this and were beaten.  These
  people risked their lives to try and get a message out to people with
  hearts - so we could know about these monsters.  Goes back to what
  that other guy wrote: Taliban - Nazis, bin Laden - Hitler,
  Afghan people - Jews in concentration camps.
  We aren't, or I hope not, going to bomb innocent people.  That could
  turn the Muslim world against us, whereas, I think most back us at this
  point.
  And dey is a lots-a people!
  Bush is doing the right thing - showing we care about the people.
  I think he's also going to "I've got a job to do and I'm going to do it."
  We'll see some fireworks.
  And who knows what else will happen here?
  The one government official said, "We may catch them nine times out
  of ten - " something to the effect other things will probably happen.
  I don't think our forces will stop till bin Laden meets Allah.
  Winning against Russia gave them the confidence to try and pull this off.
  They actually think they can win (and what is winning, anyway?) and
  I saw the girls on TV laughing that "you'll never catch him."  They think
  Allah protects him.
  But one last point.  Out of all the things pulled off on this planet - only
  the
  US unleashed the power of nuclear weapons.  As right as we feel about
  this - and I wrote about this about two years ago on the list - do you,
  or can you imagine how other countries view us - in that respect?
  It did send a message, and as they say in the President's state
  "Don't mess with Texas," people should know not to mess with the US.
  But they feel god is on their side.  But, as the President said in his
  speech,
  "They have determined their fate."
There is one article about the Press keeping us paranoid. Terrorism
  everywhere!  And then what the Press hasn't told us - Putin's speech
  in Germany around Sept. 25th.
  He said it's a similar plea to what Reagan made to the former Soviet
  Union:
  "You haven't heard about it in the U.S. press, but during the week of
  Sept. 25, Russian President Vladimir Putin presented an offer to the
  West
  which, if accepted, provides the basis for upsetting the geographical
  scenario
  now threatening the outbreak of religious and world war.  The quality of
  Putin's
  offer holds the same potential as that made by U.S. President Ronald
  Reagan
  in 1983, when he offered the Soviet Union the chance to participate in
  the
  Strategic Defense Initiative, as a means of shifting away from the
  "balance
  of terror" into an era of cooperation on defense.
     Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov's refusal of the 1983 offer,
  led to the destruction of the Soviet Union.  It is today up to the
  leadership
  of the United States to decide whether it will make a similar error,
  which
  would lead to worse consequences, or seize the opportunity at hand.
     The guts of the offer came in Putin's historic address to the German
  Parliament, in which he declared that the "Cold War is over," and that
  an abandonment of its false axioms was essential to defeating the
  barbarism represented by the Sept. 11 assault on the United States."

  A translation of the entire speech is on the Russian President's
  website.
  What is this about?
Jeffrey Goldberg is a staff writer for the New Yorker and he was on Fresh Air on
  NPR.
  Some of the things I remember from the interview.  He spent a lot of time in the
  Middle East and is writing a book about it.

  He was interviewing journalists from Egypt about the latest events.
  I won't even mention the stupid theories they put forth.
  He said to them, there's a theory that the Nazis got together with
  the Mossad to do this.  And they agreed that was very possible.
  So that's how much out of their tree these otherwise apparently
  highly intelligent people are.
  While traveling in the Middle East, Jeffrey saw black rings on trees.
  He asked the driver why all these trees were like wreathed in black rings.
  This is a culture that hates everything.  The rings are cassette tape.
  When they catch someone listening to music, they are killed,
  if my memory serves me - and the tape is unraveled around
  the tree as a reminder to the rest.
  Repressing sexual drive - all fundamentalist religions do this was Jeffrey's
  statement, and he went into that a little.
  The students in the classroom he was visiting informed him that
  in America - you're "allowed" to date men and women at the same time.
  (That's what they are told, and that's just one of their twisted views
  of the United States.  In other words he and his partner were ready to
   have sex with everyone in the room.
  They knew Jeffrey was Jewish - pretty hard to hide Goldberg.

  Muslim hospitality - he was their guest, and they will treat a guest
  well.  They were fascinated to see an American Jew and gladly asked questions.
  When he asked them, "Who would die for Isama bin Laden?"
  Every hand went up.  When he asked if bin Laden should have
  nuclear weapons they all cheered.  But you're always going to have
  some swagger with teenagers...

  One teacher putting down Jews - didn't know Jeffrey was Jewish and
  Jeffrey informed him and we very apologetic and said, "We're all created
  in God's image," and it was actually encouraging.  And it shows the America
  idea that you can't put down your enemy in his presence, or in other words,
  if you get to know your enemy he'll become your friend.

  Terrorism is a tactic, not an ideology.
  They are clearer about their goals.  How do you fight a tactic?
  "All religions are the same" goes the saying but these people have different
  definitions of love.
  And a superiority of the their beliefs and the inferiority of ours.
  The West wants to live.  Islam wants to die.
  That was said it other ways.  The West wants to live for its belief, Islam wants
  to die for theirs.
  Brainwashed in this school.  No wonder they're willing to die.  Many of their
  leaders come
  from this school.  The brainwashing works.  Besides not knowing any truth about
  Americans
  they don't even know any truth about other factions of Islam.
  100's of boys would volunteer to go to the front, essentially going to
  their death.  They volunteered willingly.  It's an honor for them.

Thank you for the feedback.  I am willing to accept LaRouche leads
  a political cult.  And that he is a type of Hubbard idiot.  I find his
  writing intriguing, but skewed.
  Watching the magazine shows at night, I see hope in the Taliban
  being overturned.
  But when I saw the military fellow tell Barbara Walters there was
  no validity to the "Gulf War Syndrome," I began to worry again.
  I realize there are things they can't say because of national security.
  But I also remembered what is written in Lies Deception and Truth
  by Ann Weiss:
   " ...Nor have U.S. leaders hesitated to lie to their own
  people in time of war.  The World War I "atrocity"
  stories were circulated here, too.  Twenty-five years later,
  in the midst of World War II, American officials per-
  petrated a different type of deception on the country.
  Government spokespeople urged citizens to organize
  drives to collect scrap metal and turn it in to centers
  set up for the purpose.  Ostensibly, the metal was needed
  for new tanks, jeeps and weapons, but in truth, U.S.
  Manufacturers had little use for the stuff.  The "need"
  for scrap was fabricated by government officials aware
  of their responsibility to spur patriotic fervor and to
  make the American people feel they were contributing
  to the war effort."
  And thusly, I think everything we see on TV, even in this online
  information age, is suspect.  But, hopefully, they have taken steps
  for the means to the end.  Like when Bush said some Congressmen
  leaked stuff they should not.  As much as I want answers and to
  know that we're "in the lead" and "winning the war," I would
  rather I be in the dark - while they go about doing the business
  of securing our security for real.  The World Trade Towers were
  meant to come down in 1993.  The fellow who planted the
  $20,000 bomb meant for it to topple into the second tower, and
  then into another building resulting in, what he hoped, the loss
  of a quarter of a million American lives.  He almost succeeded.
  So our wake up call of Sept 11th would have had a different date.
  These people have been committed and thwarted for many years.
  You could even say we're lucky.
  Did you see the show earlier tonight about terrorist public enemy
  number 1?  The one official said that terrorism has never moved
  a country to change its policy, but this man did.  He got us out of
  Beruit.  If I recall, the final straw was the airliner hijacked for
  16 days - where they tortured and killed a Navy Seal, throwing
  his lifeless body to the ground from the plane.  Remember those
  films?  This terrorist got us to change our policies and leave Beruit.
  He has met with bin Laden.  He's been in the background for the last
  20 years.  Bin Laden is more like a celebrity, and if you watch CNN's
  portrayal of bin Laden, perhaps you could see him on the next
  Hollywood Squares.   "I'll take bin Laden to block..."
  Why does CNN give this murderer a forum as if he were the President
  or Tony Blaire?!
  (At least the networks have now agreed not to air these type of things)
  And that lady, what's her name - once an "item" with Peter Jennings,
  why is she listened to so much.  What's her nation, and most importantly,
  ideologies of origin?
These are not all the words.  I know I missed some
  - but here is most of it.  He was on Letterman last week,
  probably Friday night:

  Ambassador: It's a pleasure to be here Dave, uh Ted...(Copple)
  (ha, ha, ha)
  Dave: What were your responsibilities as a US Ambassador to the UN?
  Ambassador:  Mainly to eat a lot.  You eat for your country.
  The job, aside from this enormous amount of entertaining you do,
  is to represent the US at the UN - right now it's a terribly critical
  job
  right in the middle of this crisis.
  It's right across town but it's a totally different universe over there.

  You do all the things that come in front of it Iraq, Bosnia, terrorism..

  Despite all the problems we have with the UN we really need it,
  other than the NATO countries which are supporting us completely
  the other countries want to legitimize the action, so the day after
  the disaster on September 11th, the UN passed resolutions authorizing
  the use of force all means necessary to respond that meant a lot to
  countries like Pakistan.  Then a few days later they passed a very
  strong resolution instructing all the UN members to take action
  against terrorists - they went much farther than they ever had before.
  Refugees is big problem, at least two million at the Pakistan border.
  If they aren't taken care of first there's a humanitarian disaster and
  in addition to that, it will destabilize Pakistan which is our new best
  friend.
  Secondly what's going to happen in Pakistan after the Taliban in
  Afghanistan is overthrown - one thing I can assure you Dave, the Taliban

  will be overthrown (applause) I share your audiences sentiment
  but it needs to be said very clearly, three things: getting rid of the
  Taliban
  doesn't mean you get Osama bin Laden.  Secondly getting rid of both
  Osama and the Taliban doesn't guarantee that you wrap up the
  network which exists in Hamburg in Germany, it exists within ten miles
  of where
  we're sitting now.  There's people, and I'm sorry to say
  in New Jersey and elsewhere - by the way, I like your suggestion of
  enlisting the mob to go after them, the UN would go along with that...
  The third plight the most critical one is this 0- in 1989 after the
  (?) regime, who were then called freedom fighters with America's
  support, got rid of the Soviet Union.
  The international community, including, I regret to say included our
  country,
  turned our back on Afghanistan - a vacuum was created and it was filled
  by these terrible people the Taliban who invited Osama bin Laden,
  who had fought there, against the Russians, to come back and help them.
  When the Taliban is overthrown, which will be soon - who is going to
  fill.  The US should not overlook this - this is where the UN is going
  to
  play a key role.
  Dave:
   This is kind of an apprehension maybe just born of ignorance on my
  part that the Muslim world, at large, doesn't fully understand or has
  not
  been educated properly that this is not retaliation against them,
  generally,
   that this is not to them for them about them - this about eradicating a

  cancer that is  plaguing everyone. Now, do they know that?  How do they
  feel
  about us generally - is there a way to make this more of a mutual
  understanding?
  Ambassador:
  There are (?) Muslims around the world Including 7 million, more or
  less,
  in the United States - first of all we have to remember not all Arabs
  are
  Muslims and not all  Muslims are Arabs.  We have large numbers of
  Arab-American communities in the US in Detroit, Boston and elsewhere,
  which are Christians.
  Most important thing of all about this drama
  we're now in the middle of is that the Moslem world recognize there's
   is a war on TERROR and not on Islam.
  If you can't do that, in the long we're going to end up with a
  tremendous
  struggle between Islam and the West. It is the most difficult thing.

  Dave: Do you believe that's they're belief?
  Ambassador: The Muslim world is obviously divided.
  The majority of the governments accept our position.
  There are a lot of people in the streets all the way from North Africa
  to Indonesia, Moslem societies that are rioting in support of Osama
  bin Laden who are misguided, they're extremists, they either hate
  the US  or have been lied to about what happened.
  Dave: Well how do we make this message clear?
  Ambassador:
  That is the single toughest question you could have asked.
  Ted never asks questions like that... (laughter)
  The, reason I'm pausing is that I am now co-chairing a task force
  of private citizens we're going to be meeting Monday all day long
  with some Islamic experts and that's the issue we're going to talk
  about.
  President Bush was absolutely right to go to the Islamic center
  on Sixth Ave. a few days after the tragedy to say this -
  stressing that it's not a war against Islam.
  We're up against state controlled media which are profoundly perverting
  the message.  One of the things Colon Powell is doing on his trip
  is asking people to stop spreading these lies - this is not, there's no
  single bullet answer to this, Dave, we're going to have to go on and
  on and on, making the point over and over again at every level -
  programs like yours, through serious discussions, through humor
  but above all, the religious leaders, the Amans throughout the region
  have got to tell the truth.
  Dave - how do you view - how long will this take - we'll be
  successful don't you think?
  Ambassador:
  It depends on what you are defining as the problem.  If you mean getting

  rid of the Taliban that's no problem.  Terrorism has been a problem
  throughout the world for generations.  Never hit the US head on at
  this level - we had the WTC we had home grown terrorism like
  Oklahoma City and the uni-bomber.  I don't think we're going to
  wake up again in our lifetime and say, "Oh, we're free of terror."
  By the way, all the experts predicted that something very bad
  would happen whether it be anthrax or some other device.
  We've won when we've broken up the networks and
  the level of this kind of thing is down to a very low level
  meanwhile, and I stress this very highly:
  we can't change our basic way of approaching our day to day
  planning, like should I take this vacation or go to the theater?
  Matter of spending money - that's great, I'm all for what Mayor
  Guliana has been calling for, particularly in his appearance with
  you but this is more than that - if the terrorists succeed in
  making us change our normal approach to life then they have won.
  so we have to go on with our lives...
  If I could just say one more point and I mean this with tremendous
  sincerity as somebody who has watched your program through
  two networks and different time zones and when I was Ambassador
  to Germany.  If I can make a serious point, what was the point of
  this conversation?  I forgot. It is that the kind of leadership and
  programming you've put on, in the last three weeks, is in my
  view, been exactly right for the situation.
  Dave: Very flattering.  I would like to ask you one question
  can you get us some of those Diplomatic plates where you can
  park anywhere?  Because I'm constantly getting tagged.
  Ambassador: Well, you're closer to Rudi than I am.
  Dave asked if the UN was solvent and the Ambassador talked
  about money.  He said it's a deeply flawed organization, but
  without it we'd be worse off.  We make fun of the UN, but....
  Ambassador:
  One funny story, and this is actually true, in the old days,
  during the cold war the Russian Ambassador occasionally used
  to storm out of these meetings in protest against something.
  And he would be followed by all of the Soviet satellites,
  in those days Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and so on...
  So one day, true story, one day, the Soviet Ambassador got up,
  and stormed out, and 50 delegates followed him out and
  followed him around the corner and he went into the men's room....
  And that's it!
We understand Islam as much as we understand Cricket.
  That's what this author claims and goes on to say that
  the media is telling us, in so many words, that Cricket
  is just like baseball - just a different kind of bat.
  Now we know that isn't true.
  If you've got the time or the interest I've typed up
  a part of his book that I think sums it up.  I typed
  at length so that you can get a feel for this fellows
  scholarship.

  page 9 "Covering Islam - How the Media and the Experts
  Determine How We See the Rest of the World" by
  Edward Said.
  (the introduction is 60 pages long - one to the 1997
  revised version.  One to the 1981 original, which has
  a long postscript because on January 20, 1981 the
  fifty-two Americans held prisoner in the United States
  Embassy in Iran for 444 days were released.  Remember that?
  Neither did I... well, dimly)

     Labels purporting to name very large and complex realities are
  notoriosly vague and at the same time unavoidaable.  It it is true that
  "Islam" is an imprecise and ideologically loaded label, it is also true
  that "the West" and "Chrisianity" are just as problematic.  Yet there
  is no easy way of avoiding these labels, since Muslims speak of Is-
  lam, Christians of Christianity, Westerners of the West, Jews of Ju-
  daism, and all of them about all the others in ways that seem to be
  both convincing and exact.  Instead of trying to propose ways of go-
  ing around the labels, I think it is more immediately useful to admit
  at the outset tha they exist and have long been in use as an integral
  part of cultural history rather than as objective classifications: A lit-
  tle later in this chapter I shall speak about them as interpretations
  produced for and by what I shall call communities of interpretation.
  We must therefore remember that "Islam," "the West," and even
  "Christianity" function in at least two different ways, and produce at
  least two meanings, each time they are used.  First, they perform a
  simple identifying function, as when we say Khomeini is a Muslim,
  or Pope John Paul II is a Christian.  Such statements tell us as a bare
  minimun what something is, as opposed to all other things.  On this
  level we can distinguish between an orange and an apple (as we
  might distinguish between a Muslim and a Christian) only to the
  extent that we know they are different fruits, growing on different
  trees, and so forth.
     The second function of these several labels is to produce a much
  more complex meaning.  To speak of "Islam" in the West today is to
  mean a lot of the unpleasant things I have been mentioning.  More-
  over, "Islam" is unlikely to mean anything one knows either directly
  or objectively.  The same is true of our use of "the West."  How many
  people who use the labels angrily or assertively have a solid grip on
  all aspects of the Western tradition, or on Kslamic jurisprudence, or
  on the actual languages of the Islamic world?  Very few, obviously,
  but this does not prevent people from confidently characterizing
  "Islam" and "the West," or from believing they know exactly what it
  is they are talking about.
  (my note here - in the intro he talked about one person who wrote
  about Islam and used names and told their religion and acted like
  they knew the people well.  Well, what was scary was, they were dead
  wrong on the person's faith - so how well did they really know them?
  Also - words and phrases were used of Islam - and they were so wrong,
  and they were common phrases anyone could figure out - and this person
  was putting themselves forward as really knowledgable when they weren't
  at all - how would we know?)
     For that reason, we must take the labels seriously.  To a Muslim
  who talks about "the West" or to an American who talks about "Is-
  lam," these enormous generalizations have behind them a whole
  history, enabling and disabling at the same time.  Ideological and
  shot through with powerful emotions, the labels have survived
  many experiences and have been capable of adapting to new
  events, information, and realities.  At present, "Islam," and "the
  West" have taken on a pwerful new urgency everywhere.  And we
  must note immediately that it is always the West, and not Christian-
  ity, that seems pitted against Islam.  Why?  Because the assumption is
  that whereas "the West" is greater than and has surpassed the stage
  of Christianity, its principal religion, the world of Islam - its varied
  societies, histories, and languages notwithstanding - is still mired in
  religion, primitivity, and backwardness.  Therefore, the West is mod-
  ern, greater than the sum of its parts, full of enriching contradic-
  tions and yet always "Western" in its cultural identity; the world of
  Islam, on the other hand, is no more than "Islam," reducible to a
  small number of unchanging characteristics despite the appearance
  of contradictions and experiences of variety that seem on the sur-
  face to be as plentiful as those of the West.
  (the next two pp are about an author and a couple of his pp's are
  quoted... I'm skipping them...)
     Not only does Kifner simply ignore history and such complications
  as the admittedly limited but interesting series of paralells between
  Marxism and Islam (studied by Maxime Rodinson in a book that at-
  tempts to explain why Marxism seems to have made some inroads
  in Islamic societies over the years) but he also rests his arguments on
  a hidden comparison between "Islam" and the West, so much more
  various and uncharacterizable than simple, monolithic, totalitarian
  Islam.  The interesting thing is that Kifner can say what he says with-
  out any danger of appearing either wrong or absurd.  The main
  problem is that commentators like Kifner make the leap from Islam
  as an abstraction to a hugely complex reality without a second
  thought.
     Islam versus the West: this is the ground base for a staggeringly
  fertile set of variations.  Europe versus Islam, no less than America
  versus Islam, is a thesis that it subsumes.  But quite different con-
  crete experiences with the West as a whole play a significant role
  too.  For there is an extremely important distinction to be made be-
  tween American and European awareness of Islam.  France and En-
  gland, for example, until very recently possessed large Muslim
  empires; in both countries, and to a lesser degree in Italy and Hol-
  land, both of which had Muslim colonies too, there is a long tradi-
  tion of direct experience with the Islamic world.  In addition,
  millions of Muslims from Africa and Asia now live in metropolitan
  France and Britain.  This is reflected in a distinguished European
  academic discipline of Oreintalism, which of course existed in
  those countries with colonies as well as those (Germany, Spain, pre-
  revolutionary Russia) that either wanted them, or were close to
  Muslim territories, or were once Muslim states.  Today Russia and
  its republics have a Muslim population of over 50 million, and be-
  tween 1979 and 1988 the Soviet Union was in military occupation of
  Muslim Afghanistan.   None of these things is comparably true of the
  United States, despite a growing number of Muslims here, and
  never before have so many American written, thought, or spoken
  about Islam.
     The absence in America either of a colonial past or of a long-
  standing cultural attention to Islam makes the current obsession all
  the more peculiar, more abstarct, more secondhand.  Very few
  Americans, comparatively speaking, have actually had much to do
  with real Muslims; by comparison, in France the country's second
  religion in point of numbers si Islam, which may not be more pop-
  ular as a result, but is certainly more known.  The modern Euro-
  pean burst of interest in Islam was part of what was called "the
  Oriental renaissance," a period in the late eighteenth and early
  nineteenth centuries when French and British shcolars discovered
  "the East" anew - India, China, Japan, Egypt, Mesopotamia, the
  Holy Land.  Islam was seen, for better of for worse, as part of the
  East, sharing in its mystery, exoticism, corruptin, and latent power.
  True, Islam had been a direct military threat to Europe for centuries
  before; and true also that during the Middle Ages and early Renais-
  sance, Islam was a problem for Christian thinkers, who continued
  for hundreds of years to see it and its prophet Mohammed as the
  rankest variety of apostacy.  But at least Islam existed for many Euro-
  peans as a kind of standing religiocultural challenge, which did not
  prevent Europena imperialism from building its institutions on Is-
  lamic territory.  And however much hostility there was between Eu-
  rope and Islam, there was also direct experience, and in the case of
  poets, novelists, and scholars like Goethe, Gerard de Nerval,
  Richard Burton, Flaubert, and Louis Massignon, there was imagi-
  nation and refinement.
     Yet in spite of these figures and others like them, Islam has never
  been welcome in Europe.  Most of the great philosophers of history
  from Hegel to Spengler have regarded Islam without much enthu-
  siasm.  In a dispassionately lucid essay, "Islam and the Philosophy of
  History," Albert Hourani has discussed this strikingly constant deroga-
  tion of Islam as a system of faith.  Apart from smoe occasional inter-
  est in the odd Sufi writer or saint, European vogues for the "the wisdom
  of the East" rarely included Islamic sages or poets.  Omar Khayyam,
  Harun al-Rashid, Sinbad, Aladdin, Hajji Baba, Scheherazade, Sal-
  adin, more or less make up the entire list of Islamic figures known
  to modern educated Europeans.  Not even Carlyle could make the
  Prophet widely acceptable, and as for the substance of the faith Mo-
  hammed propagated, this has long seemed to Europeans basically
  unacceptable on Christian grounds, although precisely for that rea-
  son not uninteresting.  Toward the end of the nineteenth century, as
  Islamic nationalism in Asia and Africa increased, there was a widely
  shared view that Muslim colonies were meant to remain under Eu-
  ropean tutelage, as much because they wer profitable as because
  they were underdeveloped and in need of Western discipline.  Be
  that as it may, and despite the frequent racism and aggression di-
  rected at the Muslim world, Europeans did express a fairly ener-
  getic sense of what Islam meant to them.  Hence the representations
  of Islam - in shcolarship, art, literature, music, and public discourse-
  all across European culture, from the end of the eighteenth century
  until our own day.
     In addition, many European governments have had a policy of
  cultural and spiritual dialog with the Muslim and Arab worlds.
  This has produced a whole series of seminars, conferences, and
  translations of books that have no equivalent in the United States,
  where Islam is aminly a policy questio for the Council on Foreign
  Relations, a "threat" or military and security challenge without par-
  allel in the numerous cultures and nations with which the United
  States has relations.
     Little of this Europena concreteness is therefore to be found in
  America's experience of Islam.  Nineteenth-century Amercian con-
  tacts with Islam were very restricted; one thinks of occaisonal trav-
  elers like Mark Twain and Herman Melville, or of missionaries here
  and there, or of short-lived military expeditions to North Africa.
  Culturally there was no distinct place in America for Islam before
  World War II.  Academic experts did their work on Islam usually in
  quiet corner of schools od divinity, not in the glamorous limelight
  of Orientalism nor in the pages of leading journals.  For about a cen-
  tury there has existed a fascinating although quiet symbiosis be-
  tween American missionary families to Islamic countries and cadres
  of the foreign service and the oil companies; periodically this has
  surfaced in the form of hostile comments about State Department
  and oil-company "Arabists," who are considered to harbor an espe-
  cially virulent and anti-Semitic form of philo-Islamism. On the other
  hand, all the great figures known until about twenty years ago in the
  United States as important academic experts and the founders of
  university departments and programs on Islam have been foreign-
  born: (and he lists some names and universities...) Yet none of these men
  has had the relatice cultural pretige enjoyed by Jacques Berque in
  France and Albert Hourani in England.
  enough...

Here is the important statement.  (below) I had wanted to put a little bit of the context there.
  Focusing on that one sentence will make it clearer.
  The reason I brought it up - the point is - all this information and
  whose a fundamentalist, who feels what way, do Muslims really think
  the Taliban are crazy - all these many things, we can talk about them
  and conjecture - but what do we really know?  One says this and
  one says that and the enigma continues.  But I continue trying to find out...
  I ran into a fellow that
  was in my French class earlier this year.  He was in France around
  Sept. 22nd.  He was staying at a friend's parent's house - they only
  speak French.  Anyway, he was in Marseilles - after I told him they
  have a large Muslim population - the second most popular religion in
  the country - he said Marseilles was like being in an Arab country.
  He stayed at a cheap hotel, and they knew he was American and they
  treated him very well.  I have heard, that Arabs, or Muslims, or Middle
  Easterners (pick one) consider it a privilege to be able to serve someone.
  Jeff said, "Yes, that's what it was like..."

     ~~~That was funny?  I can't even understand it. ~~

          "a Baffling endgame in the Mideast," ex-
         cept that "Because this is the Middle East - a phrase used as an old
         punch line to a long series of anecdotes that purport to explain situ-
         ations that defy common logic.