[sauropod]

If you paint your enemies as irrational demons you fail to understand them and you put yourself in a very real position to lose.

I admit to a certain inability to view them as anything but irrational demons, especially considering what happened to Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, those 4 Blackwater employees hanging off the Fallujah bridge, etc. etc. I had a friend that bought the farm on 9/11. He had an office in the basement of the Pentagon in the section that was hit. He left behind a wife and two kids, one of whom is a "special needs" child.

I don't quite see why I have to understand them. I want to defeat them; vanquish them; destroy them utterly.

[ketsu]

I admit to a certain inability to view them as anything but irrational demons, especially considering what happened to Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, those 4 Blackwater employees hanging off the Fallujah bridge, etc. etc. I had a friend that bought the farm on 9/11. He had an office in the basement of the Pentagon in the section that was hit. He left behind a wife and two kids, one of whom is a "special needs" child.

I don't quite see why I have to understand them. I want to defeat them; vanquish them; destroy them utterly.

I respect your feelings and empathize with your loss. Please don't take my response the wrong way.

There are two ways to go at this, to get revenge or to *win*. The sad fact is that we could kill all of AQ tomorrow and people will still hate us. The terrorism cat is also out of the bag. Until we come up with an effective military *and* political solution to militant Islam we will not know peace. We can't just leave the middle east either, its resources are too important to us and to our enemies. We have to take a step back from our own emotions, no matter how just.