Yes, and the West had conquered and colonized much of the Middle East and had a non-stop record of interfering in Middle Eastern politics due to oil interests and other interests before this recent wave of jihad began. My point is that as soon as you get into this kind of “my history was better than your history” nonsense, you just inflame passions without getting to the core of the issue, as I’ve argued in more detail here. We’re not going to solve any present-day problems by arguing about history. For that reason, I’d prefer to leave the debate about who was worse and better or whatever hundreds of years ago to professional historians and, instead, focus on the present, and in the present, it’s clear that mainstream Islam has some very problematic beliefs and practices that it engages in, and we need to deal with that. I don’t care whether or not some of those beliefs and practices are somehow “justified” by the West’s own history of interference in Muslim societies, because the bottom line, one way or the other, is that we can’t tolerate terrorism, and we’re not going to abide by shariah law in our societies. Nor, as I’ve said before, should we have to tolerate veiled women going around on our streets, which is something I’m encountering more and more often in certain majority-Muslim neighborhoods here in New York City. I’ve outlined a general strategy to deal with these issues, which involves getting us out of Muslim societies (no more nation-building, and no more bombing unless our security is directly threatened), restricting our immigration policy so that only skilled, educated people with work lined up are admitted, and taking many steps to make sure we’re forcing immigrants to assimilate into American culture. That last part is a big challenge, but I don’t see any way around it if what we want is functional societies rather than the balkanization we’re currently experiencing throughout the West.