The Arab world owes us a couple of Towers. It owes Israel hundreds of citizens. It owes Australia a couple hundred too.

Alan,

You should remove the email addresses from posts. It encourages Spambots and DIScourages commenting.

Acht, weel - what can you do with spammers? You know, you do not have to provide either the email or URL address to post here. Absolutely optional.

Virtually every country has 'blood on it's hands', sadly. And virtually every country thinks it is in the right when most others think they are not.
Mainstream politics and religion have become black & white to pander to the moronic majority. Unfortunately the world is an infinite spectrum of colours. Nothing is ever as simple as right and wrong.
Compassion and compromise are our only options. Otherwise, we get death and destruction.

Gosh !

Arab culture does have a remarkable legacy, one many people seem not to be aware of, but I have a hard time equating that with owing them something. That implies a contract, or at least a tangible debt of some sort, and the people who created the legacy are long gone. Acknowledgement and gratitude is the best possible response to the legacy...and we've a long way to go to reach even that goal.

And that ignores the fact that those cultural progenitors would likely have preferred their own legacy to dominate the world rather than have the West take over. Interesting this would come up now as I'm in the process of reading Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Years of Rice and Salt," an alternate history novel in which The Black Death wipes out 99% of Europe. Consequently, western civilization and Christianity becomes, at best, a historical footnote. Interesting reading...and I suspect it'll get better as the story approaches the current day.

I fine the distinction between cultural heritage, on one hand, and, on the other, present political movement and the individual important in this context. As intellegent people we have a level of debt to those whose work and thought we rely upon. The legacy of Arab culture in the West falls into this category and is a debt payable by acknowledgement. <p>The fact of a present day political movement, violent fundamental Islamic extremism, is as independent of that cultural legacy as the acts of those who blew up the Federal building in Oklahoma has anything to do with Christ or the US constitution upon which they legitimized their actions. Both religions have traditions of organized political proslytizing, both with both symbolic and actual calls to war. Are these really cultural progenitors or have individuals usurped symbols of a great culture and twisted it for personal use? If an Imam or a radical Islamic cleric advocates violence, how does that differ from what has happened in Ireland with priests and ministers such as Paisley - other than the obvious factor of the spectacularly effective acts of evil on 9/11? Elsewhere the fatality statistics of a given day may be lower but the total count just as great and aweful.<p>I think the tyrant and the terrorist are equal in their relation to their tradition. The irony - if the acts of God can be ironic - is, of course, the events of Abram's life 3000 years ago set all this into action. Is it better to ask "what would God say?" or press a little more firmly to ask "what exactly was it were You thinking?" ?

You know, you do not have to provide either the email or URL address to post here. Absolutely optional.

As a matter of fact, notice the spamblocks most people (like me) use.