How can you tell if an elephant has been in your refridgerator? Look for his footprints in the Jello.

I was reminded of this joke by an article on Alternet, The Elephant in the Room. No, Alternet isn't reviving elephant jokes. It's just that neither stands up to any sort of scrutiny.

The elephant Alternet is talking about is the "real" cause for why they hate us.

The mosquitoes of terrorism were dissected and examined as carefully as biology students once did drosophila, but typing the generic DNA of terrorism proved more elusive. Worse, no attention was given to the swamp in which terrorists breed.

[...] Directly contradicting the president, a panel of the Defense Science Board gave voice to what virtually all in that ornate Senate Caucus Room knew, but were afraid to say. It named the elephants.

“Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf States.

Do they hate us for our freedom or for our policies. It's an important question. If they hate us for our freedoms then we are engaged in a war of civilizations. If they hate us for our policies, then maybe we can tweak something and all will be well between us.

So what policies enrage the Moslem world and can they be changed?

First there is Israel. This is unquestionably a sore spot. The US is Israel's strongest supporter and they receive more foreign aid than any other country.

What can be changed? Will a two-state solution fix things? No. Al Qaeda may hate Israel but they don't care a bit about Palestinians. They never gave any aid to them, either financial or manpower. At the time that 9/11 plans were beginning, a two-state solution seemed inevitable. In fact, prospects of peace and long-term stability for Israel acts as a stimulus for terrorist action. They hope that if they keep things stirred up long enough, Israel will collapse. That's why there is a new wave of bombings any time peace talks get serious.

The only thing that will make the terrorists happy is the complete destruction of Israel. That is unacceptable to a majority of the US.

Ok, we will keep supporting Israel. Maybe we can make it up to the terrorists by supporting the Arab world also? No. Israel may be at the head of the line for foreign aid but Egypt is next. This is interpreted as supporting tyrannies. This puts us in a real damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

Would it help if we overthrew a couple of those tyrannies? Say, the Taliban and Saddam? Nope. It didn't help during the Gulf War either when we freed one Arab country from another's aggression.

Maybe if we supported an Islamic uprising against a secular government? Jimmy Carter tried this in Iran in 1979. That didn't win us any friends either. A few months later they invaded the US embassy and held the staff hostage.

In 2003, President Bush did start an initiative to force reform on the Arab governments. It has not produced any noticeable results at this point. If it does then we might get somewhere with public relations.

Note - bin Laden used to out the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, the Moslem holy lands. The US presence there has been greatly reduced but this doesn't seem to have helped.

What about the freedom argument? Are there points of friction between our cultures?

Just look in the jello in the refridgerator.

First, there is the whole issue of religion. Islam is the state religion of the Arab countries plus some Asian ones and northern Africa. Other religions are, at best, tolerated. In some cases such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, they are outright outlawed.

This extends to freedom of speech. A couple of weeks ago I saw someone wearing a t-shirt with a cross in a circle with a line through it and the caption "bad religion". Had this man worn a shirt making a similar statement about Islam, he would be stoned to death in several Moslem countries. Really. We can say almost anything we want no matter how offensive. In much of the Moslem world this right does not exist and most people think that this is great.

I will not even get into the treatment of women except to point out that in the US, women have equal rights. In the Moslem world they do not, sometimes to a shocking degree.

Tying these last two points together is the murder of a Dutch film maker who was critical of Moslem treatment of women. Not only was he brutally killed but his death was tied to a plot to assassinate two members of the Dutch Parliament.

And here is the real problem with the "policies" argument - other countries are having their own problems with Islamic terrorists. I mentioned the Dutch problems. Spain changed governments and pulled out of Iraq but there was still a terrorist plot to assassinate some Spanish judges.

France has been targeted before, also. In the mid-1990s an Islamic terrorist group from Egyptian tried to hijack an airplane and crash it into the Eiffel Tower.

What is really happening really is a clash of civilizations, not militarily, but socially. The west is pressuring the Moslem world into assimilating into western society. This involves a whole new mindset. Consider the stereotypical European - cosmopolitan, agnostic, cynical , and critical of historical values. Contrast this with the Taliban or Iran.

The points of conflict are not political policies, they are pressures being exerted on the Moslem world by media and expanding western culture.

The 9/11 hijackers were all people who had spent considerable time in the west and felt alienated by it. They went to a strip show but worried that a woman might touch their dead bodies.

If they were only aggrieved by US policies then they would only have attacked the Pentagon and the White House. Instead they included a center of western commerce (which they also attacked in 1993). Yes, they hate the US government, but they hate western culture as much or more.

Bin Laden is quite happy living in caves. He wants a world where men can be arrested for trimming their beards, women have to stay inside or cover themselves, and children can be stoned for eating during the day during Ramadan. On the other hand, the west sees all of this as massive human rights violations and wants it changed.

Asia is combining their culture with western culture, producing a new culture at the expense of some ancient traditions. This is what the terrorists are fighting against. This is why there will be no simple peace.

When the progressives over at Alternet say otherwise it is because they want things to be simple. They want to believe that all of the world's problems are the result of US imperial ambitions, they want to be able to blame the US.

They want to be able to fit an elephant in their refridgerator without getting footprints in the Jello.