Terrorists are dangerous and we are making more of them day by day (just like abusive parents make rebellious teens). I don’t believe it would help to ignore them and wish they’d go away. I don’t believe it would help to give them anything and everything they ask for.

While we are vigilant to prevent them from attacking us, we could, though, wonder why an otherwise powerless group would strike out so desperately at the country holding most of the world’s power (and the ability to pound them to dust). We could wonder what is so important to them that they risk annihilation.

I imagine that what drives them is something like, “We’re afraid that we’re losing something precious to us and we don’t have any legitimate power to stop the loss, so we’re going to take desperate measures.” Instead of making the absurdly simplistic assumption that they hate us because we are free, we should be wondering what it is that we’re doing in the world to contribute to their desperation. I suspect that they see the ways our culture diverges from the values that define fundamentalist Islam (sexual license, immodest dress, alcohol & drugs, secularism etc.) and fear that democracy and a free market will bring those same values to them and that their faith will become irrelevant. In any case, I fear that as long as we keep hitting them, without any avenue for finding out what’s really driving them, we’re in for more of the same. Dialogue isn’t capitulation.