Ever since September 12, 2001, America-haters have been saying that we need to address the root causes for anti-American terrorism. If we just made some adjustments in policy - negotiate an equitable settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, close some military bases in Saudi Arabia - then al would be forgiven. They argued when Bush said that they hate our freedom. Surely they are reasonable people who are justly outraged with America's policies, especially Bush's.

A couple of recent events brought up how different we really are.

First Abu Musab al-Zarqawi denounced democracy. This is no surprise. The Islamic terrorists want the world to be ruled by a theocracy like the Taliban. The idea of letting people choose their own destiny is against everything that al-Zarqawi and bin Laden believe in.

The other event is the publication of a book saying that prisoners at Guantanamo were broken by being exposed to women in miniskirts and thongs. Images of half-naked women are common in our culture. Women in miniskirts can be seen on any college campus (at least in the Summer). But these men's religion makes them so afraid of women's bodies that this becomes an interrogation technique. Think about it. It is legal in the US (or at least Ohio) for a woman to walk around in nothing but a thong but these prisoners react like Dracula to a cross. What if they saw a girl wearing this prom dress?

It isn't government policies that separates us. It is out entire culture. We live in a liberal, permissive culture and we export it. American values travel the world through movies and TV. We could close all of our military bases in the Arabian peninsula but our corporations still run the world.

And there is no compromise possible on Israel, either. They don't want the Palestinians to have a homeland, they want the Jews dead.

Now Ted Kennedy is pushing for a troop pull-out from Iraq starting immediately and to be completed by the end of the year. I thought that liberals were supposed to be the compassionate ones but Kennedy and the other anti-war crowd don't care what happens to Iraq.

The militant Islamists hate us and they see retreat as weakness. We will not win anyone over by pulling out of Iraq before it is stabilized.