The Ironic Hammer When What You Believe Conflicts with What Is

Victor Davis Hanson noted this horridly sad piece of irony:

Saudi nationals Hamza al-Ghamdi (who helped crash Flight 175 into the South Tower of the World Trade Center) and Wail al-Shehri (who joined Mohammed Atta on Flight 11 to topple the North Tower) mostly voiced anger over Western violence against Muslims in Chechnya and Bosnia (as well as citing furor about Kashmir and the Philippines).

Never mind that the U.S., almost alone among Western countries, criticized Russian tactics in Grozny, and bombed a European Christian country for several weeks to save Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo.

...There is no doubt who al-Ghamdi and al-Shehri were — or what they were planning to do. Yet polls since 9/11 consistently reveal that most Muslims in the Middle East do not believe that al-Qaida, much less any Arab Muslims at all, carried out the attacks. Instead, Israel or the CIA is blamed.

Like the young men who flew the planes, it's not the reality of the situation that matters. It's what they believed. Just like Americans who pass on untruths about 9/11, even when they saw all the evidence, because they believe the current adminstration, any minute now, is going to throw off its veneer of being good and civilized and speaking for the virtue of democratic freedom, and declare a dictatorship that would make Stalin look like Gandhi, and so would have been ruthless enough to do just that nightmare thing, sacrifice innocent people to be able to start a war of conquest.

Even with a very clear level of documentation available, with lots and lots of evidence, some realities are just too distant for some people's belief systems.

So 2000+ people die in America because some young man was mad at Russian policy in Chechnya?

So people are fighting at home tooth and nail in a way that will hurt the country's ability to keep secure?

Reality bites, no matter what one believes. 9/11 didn't do a thing to help the people of Chechnya's struggle.

Fighting in a way that emboldens one's enemies won't help on the home front either. IMHO.