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Source: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101031117-538977,00.html
To Hell With Sympathy
(TIME) Charles Krauthammer - It is pure fiction that the world's pro-American sentiment was either squandered after Sept. 11 or lost under the Bush administration. It never existed. Envy for America, resentment of our power, hatred of our success has been a staple for decades, but most particularly since victory in the cold war left us the only superpower. Bill Clinton was the most accommodating, sensitive, multilateralist president one can imagine, and yet we know that al-Qaeda began the planning for Sept. 11 precisely during his presidency. Bin Laden issued his Declaration of War on America in 1996 - at the height of the Clinton administration's hyperapologetic, good-citizen internationalism. Sympathy is fine. But if we "squander" it when we go to war to avenge our dead and prevent the next crop of dead, then to hell with sympathy. The search for logic in anti-Americanism is fruitless. On Sept. 11, they gave it a rest for a day. Big deal.