Restoring American Influence and Security through Service, Education, and Exchange

December 1, 2008

Standing before a special joint session of the United States Congress on September 20th shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks on America, President George W. Bush posed the following seminal question of America’s post 9-11 experience: “Why do they hate us?” Why do terrorists, inspired by a perversion of Islam, seek to kill Americans on a massive scale? Why is America the principal target of radical Islamic vitriol? It was a wake-up call for most Americans—a moment of shock and a question: how could this be? And while debate on these questions persists, unfortunately in focusing on why terrorists hate us, we have missed a far larger and perhaps consequential question: why more and more people around the world hate—or at least look less and less favorably on—America? Because they do.