>"We have listened to the folks who we agree with, and say the things we want to hear."

Yeas, but who doesn't?

It's true that OBL didn't care how much booze we drink in the West or how many women vote. And it's equally true that the claim that he attacked the West because he "hated our freedoms" is the truth dumbed down to caricature.

However, opposition to Israel, the Saudi regime, and the Western presence in Arabia, are just specific manifestations of what Al- Qaida really wants. (Even its opposition to the Russians seems based on the jihad mentality as much as on any political idealism.)

What Al-Qaida wants is a Muslim Caliphate in Eurasia and eventually everywhere. That's how they read the Koran, and they read it that way partly because they're angry, violent people - including some genuine sadists like OBL - looking for God's permission to express their own violent aggressions. The honest ones really think they're doing God's work by scourging the infidel. (You don't blow yourself up or crash into a skyscraper just because you're bored or perverse.)

There's no way to know whether Al-Qaida will wax or wane, or how often. Its declared enemies have to make whatever defensive choices they think will be most effective. And they can be wrong. That's life in the swamp.

The same principle goes for the outcome of the "Arab spring." There's no telling where it will go.

As for BP's oil deal with G, his threat to "tear it up" (if he made it) sound like a demand to renogotiate. Deals are renogotiated all the time. Why should he cut off his best customers? If oil had been the "real" issue, NATO would have attacked anyway, rebels or no rebels. Where's the evidence that an attack, with serious political risks in the Arab world, was even being planned? And if the rebels were the deciding factor, they were the deciding factor. That's good enough for me.

Complicated political events (like a NATO attack) don't stem from one or two reductionist causes like greedy capitalists *or* selfless idealism.