10 Years Later: Daddy, Why Did Osama Bin Laden Hate Us and Want Us Dead?

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, my daughter was 3 years old.

As we watched the buildings collapse, I began to weep, regretting that I had brought her into a world so cruel, dangerous, and unstable.

But, just as quickly as tears came to my eyes, another voice came to me saying, "You did not bring your child into the world to have riches and fun. She is here to do good and, possibly, hopefully, to make the world a better place."

And, I resolved to make that my goal as well. I thought to myself, what can I do to help? I decided that I could write and tell people about the evil that would attempt to destroy the American way of life. And that I have done since 9/11. 

Now, 10 years later, my daughter is 13 and she is a fully conscious human being with own Free Will. She is no longer a child.

So, last night as we watched stories of 9/11 on TV, I believe it was really the first time she ever saw the attacks as more than the spectacle of buildings falling. It was the first time she ever fully realized that the attacks were committed by people who hate us. It was the first time she ever realized that we, our Family, we Americans, are the people who are hated, and that these attacks were committed upon her way of life and during her lifetime, and that, for all intents and purposes, it could have been her.

So, when she asked me, Daddy, why did Osama Bin Laden hate us and want us dead?", I wanted to give her the best answer I could, an answer which would go beyond my own hatred for Bin Laden and his people, an answer which would not be born of my own personal anger, but would, instead, be reasonable and cogent.

I opened my mouth and found the words would not come. I babbled something about Bin Laden being irrational, that he was angry about Spain and Kosovo, that he hates Jews, that he is motivated by the Koran. She asked me if he was crazy. I told her, "No. He was evil, like Hitler." This answer seemed to satisfy her.

But, this morning, I find that, while it is true, this answer does not satisfy me.

And, it dawns on me that the best way to explain the hatred and evil of Jihad is not to dwell on their "grievances". Because, who really cares about the petty and insane resentments of people who could still be angry about "the Iberian Peninsula" hundreds of years later?

Simply put, the best way to explain Bin Laden and every Sharia-promoting Jihadist Muslim in the world is this:

They want their way of life to be our way of life. 

That's it.

They want to spread Sharia law. They want to stone homosexuals and apostates to death. They want to make women the property of men. And, they want to kill any Infidel who would get in their way.

These things are true of Osama Bin Laden, and they are true of any person who would wage Jihad against us.

And these things are completely unacceptable to us. There is no compromise possible, because what they want is evil and inhumane.

And, because they will stop at nothing to ensure that their way of life becomes our way of life, because they are willing to do anything they can, to kill as many of us as they can, we must, in return, resolve that we will do anything we have to do to stop them.

Their way of life will not become our way of life.

Instead, eventually our way of life will become their way of life. As Ronald Reagan said of the Cold War, we must say of the War Against Jihad;

We win, they lose.

Their way of life will be destroyed, dried up, and turned to dust. And our way of life will grow, swell, and wind through the waters of the world.