Suppose bin Laden is the

Suppose bin Laden is the mastermind of the recent horror. Imagine he had gone before the Afghan population a week earlier and told them of the U.S. government's responsibility for so much tragedy and mayhem around the world, particularly to Arab populations as in Iraq and Palestine. Imagine that he further told them that Americans have different values and that they cheered when bombs were rained on people in Libya and Iraq. Suppose bin Laden had proposed the bombing of U.S. civilians to force their government to change its ways. In that hypothetical event, what would we want the Afghan people to have replied?

We would want them to have told bin Laden that he was demented and possessed. We would want them to have pointed out that the fact that the U.S. government has levied massive violence against Iraq's civilians and others does not warrant attacks on U.S. civilians, and the fact of different values doesn't warrant attacks of any sort at all.

So isn't this what we ought to also want the U.S. public to say to George Bush?