Gandhi...Vandree, you are a dangerous individuals. If left to your rose tinted visions, we'd all be enslaved in some way or form. Get with the program. It is attitudes like yours that allow evil to thrive. This is not about civil rights. This is about criminality and insanity. I've said it before, without education on the issues that threaten your lifestyle, your opinions do not serve you very well as you continue to display your ignorance on matters.
There are two types of terrorists. The practical and the apocalyptic. The practical terrorist may be phsycologically unbalanced, but he does not disregard the value of human life entirely. He may commit grand gestures in frustration or desperation, but he continues to see himself as the representative of an earthly agenda, not as a divine missionary. His hellish counterpart, the apocalyptic terrorist is mentally divorced from our world and it's values. The practical terrorist has dreams, but the apocalyptic is lost in a nightmare. Practical terrorists may see acts of retribution as a tactical means, but apocalyptic terrorists view themselves tools of a divine and uncomprimising retribution against unbelievers. The terrorists "martyrs" of 9/11 will forever be remembered by Islamic historians and by generations of Muslim children as heroes in the struggle for true religion and justice. This makes it all the more vital that we kill Osama Bin Laden, destroy Al-Queda and the Taliban, and any other government that would support these types of organizations. If Bin-Laden survives to thumb his nose at an "impotent superpower", he will attract legions of other Muslims support and sympathizers. He is an apocalyptic terrorist of the worst kind and his superficial agenda of deposing the Saudi government and expelling U.S. troops from the Middle East, is nothing compared to his compulsion to slaughter and destroy.
Although his vision is closer to the grimmest passages of Revelation than to anything in the Koran, Osama has been able to convince countless Muslims that his vision is of the purist and proudest Islamic form. This should be a huge warning flag to the west about the spiritual crisis in the Middle East. This battle is being fought within the realms of the emotions and soul, not of the intelligent. We face a situation that is so perverse that it is as if tens of millions of frustrated Christians decided that Kali, the Hindu Goddess of death and destruction, embodies the true teachings of Jesus Christ. One cannot have much sympathy with Osama bin Laden, whose vision of a vengeful god, thirsty for infidel blood, is utter blasphemy. Nor could any decent human being excuse the acts of terror committed by his followers, or by Palestinian suicide bombers or by any of the morally crippled youths who murder in the name of their religion. You can preach all about how Osama is someone that we should understand - how he is just misunderstood - how he is intelligent and can be reached in the interest of peace and love and harmony, but what you are only doing in the end, by giving his work legitimacy, is trolling for Al-Queda. Bin-Laden is a tool created and used by his Arab masters for people like you to sympathize with and "understand." Corruption and hypocrisy may be elements of the human condition, but Arab elites have developed them to a superhuman extreme. If they could, they would steal the air itself and charge the poor for breathing.
Preventing as many attacks as we can, killing or capturing terrorists, destroying terrorist organizations - are essential goals, but they focus on surface tumors while ignoring the cancer beneath. The security environment will improve as Osama and his most virulent supporters are killed. Eliminating terrorist operatives, masterminds and supportive dictators (Saddam) brings vital results. But we will never reduce Islamic terrorism to nuisance level unless we address the greater evil behind the deadly strikes. It is possible to recognize that the majority of the lower-rank terrorists whose lives their overlords throw away so callously have been set up psychologically by the corruption and hopelessness of their societies - and those societies have been wrecked by Arabs and other Muslims to whom we cling as partners and whom we even imagine to be our friends. For what I know about Bin-Laden and for all the blood on his hands, Osama has higher ethical standards than our Arab "friends", despite the fact that they created him.
Strange how many people hold the well intentions and actions of President Bush as evil, yet see the acts of 9/11 as an act committed by a great guy that just wants to be heard, because he had a "legitimate" reason. Some of your are just as perverted and warped as he is. I guess the Middle Eastern Cleric has you fooled too.