The several hundred al Qaeda members, we were told, hate us because: "We're rich, we're free, we enjoy materialism, and the purveyors of terror are jealous and envious, creating the hatred that drives their cause. They despise our Christian-Judaic values and this, is the sole reason why they are willing to die for their cause." For this to be believed, one must also be convinced that the perpetrators lied to the world about why they attacked us.
The al Qaeda leaders say they hate us because:
-We support Western puppet regimes in Arab countries for commercial reasons and against the wishes of the populace of these countries.
-This partnership allows a military occupation, the most confrontational being in Saudi Arabia, that offends their sense of pride and violates their religious convictions by having a foreign military power on their holy land. We refuse to consider how we might feel if China's navy occupied the Gulf of Mexico for the purpose of protecting "their oil" and had air bases on U.S. territory.
-We show extreme bias in support of one side in the fifty-plus-year war going on in the Middle East.
The question that one day must be answered is this:
What if we had never placed our troops in Saudi Arabia and had involved ourselves in the Middle East war in an even-handed fashion. Would it have been worth it if this would have prevented the events of 9/11?
From
http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2002/cr062702.htm