He and Ann Coulter can have each other.

Bin Laden is…bitterly opposed to the corrupt and repressive regimes of the region, which he regards as “un-Islamic,” including the Saudi Arabian regime, the most extreme Islamic fundamentalist regime in the world, apart from the Taliban, and a close US ally since its origins. Bin Laden despises the US for its support of these regimes. Like others in the region, he is also outraged by long-standing US support for Israel’s brutal military occupation, now in its 35th year: Washington’s decisive diplomatic, military, and economic intervention in support of the killings, the harsh and destructive siege over many years, the daily humiliation to which Palestinians are subjected, the expanding settlements designed to break the occupied territories into Bantustan-like cantons and take control of the resources, the gross violation of the Geneva Conventions, and other actions that are recognized as crimes throughout most of the world, apart from the US, which has prime responsibility for them. And like others, he contrasts Washington’s dedicated support for these crimes with the decade-long US-British assault against the civilian population of Iraq, which has devastated the society and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths while strengthening Saddam Hussein…

Now tell me again what part Simon got wrong?…

Just because you are not guilty of these viewpoints doesn’t mean they don’t exist…

I don’t know what his arguments are, but to state that neo-conservatives displayed idealism (by invading and occupying a country which never attacked us?) and the Left is “full of cynical pragmatists” who excuse mysogyny and homophobia because these traits are associated with Islam simply turns facts on their heads. Outside of straw men and nutcases, any responsible person left of center is just as angry about the 9/11 attacks as anyone else, and just as unforgiving of intolerance as anybody else. To imply otherwise is not only false but calumnious as well.