This Is Why They Hate Us

The same question we had 25 years ago is asked again, and the answer is the same.

Photo showing graves of some of the children killed in the bombing of a girls’ school in Iran

In the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001, Americans struggled to understand what would cause a terrorist group from halfway around the world to kill as many of us as they could. “Why do they hate us?” millions asked, genuinely puzzled that anyone could have that much of a problem with the land of the free and the home of the brave. To that question, George W. Bush had an answer: They hate us because we’re awesome.

“They hate our freedoms,” Bush said, because the things America has done couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with it. A more mature people might have been able to keep in their heads both the idea that 9/11 was an unjustifiable horror and the idea that American actions over many years in the Middle East helped produce it. But not us. “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make,” Bush said in the same speech, though he was speaking equally to Americans, especially the opposition party. “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Eight years later, when Barack Obama acknowledged that America had made some mistakes in its foreign policy over the years, Republicans screeched that he had gone on an “apology tour,” running down our flawless country to a bunch of foreigners. Even entertaining the idea that America has done things that produced anger and hatred in people elsewhere was unacceptable.

The truth, of course, is that no country in modern times has invaded, attacked, bombed, destabilized, and undermined more nations than we have. We seldom go more than a few years without a new war, or at least a vigorous bombing campaign. We’ve done it on every continent except Antarctica.

Yet because we’re the ones launching the bombs and not the ones watching them fall on our cities and our homes, we remain blissfully ignorant of what an American war looks like to those on its receiving end, to the point that we literally cannot imagine why anyone in a nation we attacked might be upset about it. We take refuge in the idea that we’re the good guys, and if there are any ill effects of our cleansing violence, everyone just has to realize that our intentions are good.

But imagine you were the parent of one of the 165 young girls killed at Shajareh Tayyebeh school in the city of Minab last week. How much would you care about whether the bomb that killed your daughter was intended to strike the school, whether it was the result of malice or a human mistake or an AI targeting system using an outdated map?

To most of us, it’s unimaginable. I can’t fathom the rage I would feel at America and its arrogance, its blithe belief that it is for the U.S. government to decide who lives and dies, which governments will be allowed to stand and which it can unseat, which buildings it will destroy no matter who winds up under the rubble. But as hard as it is for those living in the relative safety of America to grasp those emotions, it isn’t difficult to predict that they will not just disappear. If there is another 9/11 in a year or ten years or twenty years, will we once again scratch our heads in puzzlement, wondering what could have produced murderous anger at the United States?

Asked about the bombing of the girls’ school, our overcompensating Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was unconcerned. “All I can say is we’re investigating that,” Hegseth said. “We, of course, never target civilian targets, but we’re taking a look and investigating that.” In some sense, the idea that the U.S. doesn’t target civilians is true — depending on your definition of “target” and “civilian.” But when you have all those fun munitions and you’re casting about for things to blow up, the definitions begin to loosen. How about a government building next to an apartment building — would that count? We’ve already bombed thousands of targets, and we very quickly ran out of remote military bases to hit.

Anyway, Hegseth and his department will “investigate.” And what will come of that investigation? In the absolute best case scenario, someone will write a report, the upshot of which will be, “Whoops,” then deposit it in a file cabinet in the Pentagon. There will be no formal apology, no acknowledgement of the horror of 165 children being killed, no one blamed or held to account. To Americans it will be essentially meaningless, forgotten before long amid all the similar incidents. To those Iranian families, it will be the worst day of their lives, something that will echo down through generations.

But we’re the United States, and we don’t do remorse. This uniquely sadistic administration especially doesn’t do it; earlier this week the White House posted a video mixing shots of bombs falling with a scene from the video game Call of Duty.

The groyper edgelords on the White House social media team are stoked; the deaths of hundreds or thousands of Iranian civilians are nothing more than an opportunity to create some dank memes.

So yes: This is why they hate us. They hate us for our arrogance, for our ignorance, for our violence, for the indifference we pay to their lives. Can you blame them?

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