It is important to dispense with the more facile explanations at the very outset. One popular explanation that has gained much currency in some academic circles is that the attacks represented the righteous anger of many who feel that we are uncritical supporters of squalid, undemocratic regimes in the Middle East. This argument, though superficially appealing, is deeply flawed. U.S. support for loathsome regimes in the Middle East cannot be the sole or even principal reason for these attacks. During the Cold War we supported far more repressive and cruel regimes in Latin America. How is it that many aggrieved citizens from those states did not come to blow up our cities? Surely they had more deep-seated grievances against the United States than anyone from a Middle Eastern state.

A second variant of this argument holds that it is uncritical American support for Israel that brought about this tragedy. Clearly, anti-Israeli sentiment is widespread in the Arab world. Some of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians is also deserves of universal condemnation. Nevertheless, American support for Israel has been a constant for some fifty years. Why did it take five decades for Arab anger to finally explode in this paroxysm of fury?

A final explanation suggests that the attacks reflected the anger of the world's dispossessed who are furious with America's arrogance and global reach at the end of the Cold War. There is no gainsaying the fact that various administrations the United States at the end of the Cold War have displayed a dismaying degree of hubris on a number of foreign policy issues. However, the attackers who came to the United States were neither the truly disadvantaged nor had been the principal targets of American high-handedness. Surely certain ethnic groups in the Balkans, most notably the Serbs, who had felt the wrath of American military power may have nurtured deeper and harsher grievances against the United States. Yet they did not wash up on American shores to wreak havoc.

The preliminary answers must be sought elsewhere and are threefold. First, the global spread of American popular culture in all its forms both attracts and repels many in conservative societies. To large numbers of individuals and groups in other parts of the world American popular culture is a insidious and overwhelming force. Many genuinely fear that the most cheap and tawdry elements of this culture will soon sweep across their lands and dispossess them of their own values, mores, practices and customs. Consequently, they seek to keep this seemingly insalubrious tide at bay and yet find it to be an impossible task. Such a predicament contributes to an unreasoning rage against the United States.

Second, most Arab states have ruthlessly suppressed domestic dissent. The only two permissible forms of dissent are anti-Americanism and hostility toward Israel. Consequently, these hatreds are carefully nurtured, encouraged and developed. On occasion they spill over into violence.

Third and finally, even at the cost of being accused of rank cultural insensitivity, it needs to be stated that certain strands of Islam do have millenarian, illiberal and anti-Western qualities. Political activists with their own domestic agendas can effectively manipulate these propensities for their own parochial ends. Unable to dislodge repressive regimes at home they direct their anger abroad in the guise of religious zeal and fervor.

The skeletal arguments spelled out here hardly amount to a full-blown explanation. However, they do offer the makings of a more complex explanation than the facile dollops of conventional wisdom that have been easily proffered in the wake of the terrible events of September 11.