Kim C said:

I ask again: if Churchill thinks that 9/11 was retaliation for crimes against Iraq, does he therefore believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11; and consequently, that the war against Iraq is just?

Of course I can't answer for Churchill, what he might believe, and his logic in doing so.

But it's important to remember that the concept of the nation-state (such as Iraq, Egypt, etc.) is not nearly as important in the mind of many of these people as it is in Western thinking. These nation-states are artificial creations, by and large arbitrarily created by the English after WW-1, without regard to anything like natural geographic boundaries, variations in culture, or the like. Many, many Arabs think rather in terms of Pan-Arabism, that all of the Arabic-speaking Muslims are the relevant nation. Thus, by their thinking, an attack on Iraq is an attack on "us", whether they are Egyptians, Afghans, Qataaris, or whatever.

As an aside, Iran is a different matter. The Iranians are neither Arabs nor Arabic speaking. Iran has a real cultural and historical nationhood going back to ancient times, as Persia, and speak their own historical language, Farsi, so it is a true nation-state.

Dave Oesterreich