Why Do They Hate Us?

Insights from two very smart men: Victor Davis Hanson and Danesh D'Souza.
Hanson writes:

...the orchestrated outrage is predicated on two simple facts. First, there is a deep sense of inferiority in the Islamic world stemming from the fact that a supposedly once-exalted culture, in contemporary comparative terms, is failing. Rather than look inward for the causes of general impoverishment (e.g., tribalism, fundamentalism, religious intolerance, misogyny, statism, authoritarianism, anti-modernism, anti-Semitism, anti-intellectualism, etc.), it scapegoats the West in general and its powerful icon, the United States, in particular. The theme is that such decadent, godless, and blasphemous peoples do not deserve and should not enjoy such global influence and cultural supremacy while we, the morally superior of the Middle East, must grovel.

Second, radical Islamists continue to act out its crack-pot fantasies in deadly fashion because they believes it works, and that the U.S. will grants concessions, both material and psychological, at the slightest provocation — as we saw with the embarrassing apologetic communiqués, with each clarification even more embarrassing than the last. (In this regard, should we laugh or cry to watch supposedly liberal civil libertarians in the administration fall all over themselves attacking the video as much as, or more than, those who would destroy or murder any whose expression bothers them. Why have a First Amendment in the first place, if not to protect odious speech from even more odious totalitarians?)

The most vehement anti-Americans are often precisely those who have lived in the United States and the West, enjoyed its freedoms, indulged in its affluence, and have come to resent the contrast with their own homelands...

In the movie 2016: Obama's America (review here), Danesh D'Souza explains that many in those regions of the world whose ancestors experienced European colonization developed a hatred of colonialism, capitalism, and Christianity. That the United States was never a colonizer — never 'stole' their natural resources or subjugated their ancestors — is irrelevant to those who cling to their ancestors' bigotry. To them, colonialism and Western culture are synonymous and to be despised.