Extraigo de The Economist:

THROUGH the window a giant plume of smoke drifted behind a wall of tall buildings. A television in the office showed a jagged moonscape of smouldering concrete. “Just like Ground Zero, no?” said the newspaper editor drily. It was Beirut last month. The comment seemed out of place. The attack on New York's World Trade Centre, after all, came from a blue sky in a country at peace with the world. The bombing of Beirut's suburbs was instead an ugly episode in the latest of many nasty little Middle Eastern wars.

But then again, hadn't George Bush declared Israel's fight with Hizbullah to be part of his global war? And, for his part, hadn't Osama bin Laden stated that what inspired him to hit America was memories of an earlier Israeli bombardment of Beirut, in 1982? “As I looked at those destroyed towers in Lebanon,” said the al-Qaeda leader in a 2004 tape, “it occurred to me to punish the oppressors in kind by destroying towers in America, so that it would have a taste of its own medicine.”

Back in 2001 some in the Middle East shared Mr bin Laden's feeling, and showed it by cheering on September 11th. Many more disagreed, including, for example, Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the most popular Shia cleric in Lebanon. Whatever our differences with American policy, he said, the assaults that day were criminal, barbaric and a stain on Islam.

Al-Qaeda's attacks did not themselves change the Middle East, but the intervening years certainly have. The most perceptible change is that more people now share Mr bin Laden's feeling that Islam is under attack, and that America is their enemy.

In a recent sermon about the war in Lebanon, Mr Fadlallah expressed this view succinctly: “This was an American war carried out by Israel to execute arrogant American plans to establish political, economic and military hegemony over the entire region.” The same angry message echoes across the Arab and Muslim worlds. The antipathy is not merely political. An opinion poll in April, for instance, suggested that 90% of Iraqis would refuse to live next door to Americans.

Things were not meant to turn out this way. For a time, it did not seem that they would. America's swift intervention in Afghanistan, in November 2001, bothered many Muslims, if only because it evoked memories of colonial invasions. But that battle was quickly won, and most were quietly glad to see the obscurantist Taliban defeated. In subsequent years, as al-Qaeda affiliates committed terrorist outrages in several Muslim countries, from Indonesia to Morocco, public support for firm action against them swelled, and Mr bin Laden's star declined. The Bush administration's “Forward Strategy for Freedom” rattled oppressive governments across the Middle East. But, whereas some Arabs saw a sinister design in this sudden championing of democratisation, others found it a promising change from America's previous coddling of friendly dictators.
Y esto lo reconoce un semanario que no se opuso a la invasión de Iraq en su momento, sino más bien al contrario.