I know these days it sounds a little odd, but American governments are very fearful of European reaction. They were afraid we would be considered gunslingers.

Our relationship with Israel is another reason we're being attacked. But an American politician - whether Muslim or not - who criticizes Israel as a martyrdom operation in American politics cannot survive as an official or as a politician.

We now have some years of very reliable polling by Western firms in the Islamic world, in multiple Islamic countries. And invariably, the question that asks, "Do you view U.S. foreign policy as an attack on Islam and Muslims?" is maxed out. Whether it's Jordan or Indonesia or Egypt, you get 80,85 percent of people saying "Yes."

The war in Iraq - if Osama was a Christian - it's the Christmas present he never would have expected.

Any strong Muslim regime that threatens Israel, and we did. He said the Americans only want oil, and, of course, Iraq has the second-largest reserves. And he said that we will always replace God's law with manmade law. And finally that we intended to occupy and destroy Islamic sanctities. And I suspect that in our government, very few people knew that Iraq was the second-holiest place in Islam, after the Arabian Peninsula.

The Western world doesn't really give enough credit to the importance in history of the Soviet invasion and the subsequent war in Afghanistan. For us it was a sideshow of the Cold War. For the Islamic world it was an unprovoked infidel invasion of a Muslim country not unlike Iraq.

Until we respect bin Laden, we are going to die in numbers that are probably unnecessary.