Steven Den Beste is the captain of the starship USS Clueless, an essay, rather than link, oriented blog. I read his stuff regularly. Lately he's written some good stuff on open-source software, religion, and like almost all bloggers nowadays, world politics. His stuff is well thought out, and carefully crafted.

Today's entry addresses the question, or more accurately, the accusation, that the 9/11 attacks on the US were the fruit somehow of our foriegn policy. It's one of those essays I wish I'd written. Go read the whole thing. But since I know many of you will not, here's a taste: The extremists wish a return to the glory of Islamic dominance of the world, because it is what God told them would happen. And every year that passes makes this seem less and less likely, as the Islamic nations fall further and further behind the west in nearly every way that can be measured. 600 years ago, Islam was a great and glorious culture, but 600 years ago there was no humanist, liberal democracy combined with capitalism and science. Now those things exist, and no nation combines them better than we in America; and in every possible way that can be objectively measured, secular liberal democracy and capitalism and science are kicking Islamic culture's ass. They're being buried, and we don't even seem to be doing it deliberately. We are so much more powerful, and our culture so much more vital and vibrant, that we don't even notice theirs.

They call us devils, because they truly see us as evil. We are the embodiment of the forces fighting against God and Islam, and we're winning. We win in terms of economic might; in terms of military power; in all forms of temporal power in fact. And we're winning the fight for minds and souls; our ideas are infecting the Arabs even in Holy Saudi Arabia, the very core of Islam, home of the two Mosques. We profane their faith just by breathing.

Stuff like this is the reason why he's on my blogroll.