“So many times I passed by these locations. Why do they hate us so much?” asked Franziska Brantner, a German Green MP and former member of the European Parliament, on Twitter (about the attacks in Brussels).

Do you remember Michael Scheuer, that obsessively anti-Israel former “bin Laden desk” expert at the C.I.A., who used to declare that “they hate us [America] because of our policies in supporting Israel and propping up the Al-Saud and invading Iraq”? Or others who said that “they hate us because of our intervention in Libya”? Or still others who said “they hate us because we supported (!) Assad” or “we supported the Houthis in Yemen” or “we supported Mubarak” or “we abandoned Mubarak”? Or those who said “they hate us because ….(fill in your favorite reason here – anything at all will do, as long as you don’t mention Islam).

In a longer list of answers to “why they hate us,” Scheuer provided a half-dozen reasons:

• U.S. support for apostate, corrupt, and tyrannical Muslim governments.
• U.S. and other Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula.
• U.S. support for Israel that keeps Palestinians in the Israelis’ thrall.
• U.S. pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low.
• U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
• U.S. support for Russia, India, and China against their Muslim militants.

This implausible laundry list becomes even more comical if the “U.S.” is replaced by “Belgium,” for any of Scheuer’s reasons – i.e., there never was a Belgian “occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan,” nor Belgian “troops on the Arabian peninsula,” nor any Belgian “pressure on Arab energy producers,” and so on. And if one were to try to explain Muslim terrorist attacks outside the West, say in India or the Philippines, the inadequacy of his “reasons” becomes still more apparent — try substituting the “Philippines” or “Nigeria” for the “U.S.” and then read that list out loud.