Shanghai Yummy

I read in another blog, and have heard voiced elsewhere, that the terrorists only want to see Americans (or whoever they're up against) die. That there is no negotiating with terrorists, that they are all just crazed madmen and women who want to kill.

Is this true? I doubt it. Yes, I agree that it takes a certain level of insanity, or at least dischord with reality, to believe that killing other people is a justifiable act (I believe this to be true in all cases, but this is a topic for another entry). However, I would like to propose that terrorists are not simply after the deaths of Americans, that there is a greater purpose to their actions. In other words, they believe that by acting the way they do they can affect a greater outcome.

The fundamental issue I am getting at is that we are treating the symptoms rather than tackling the underlying causes of the problem.

At their core, the terrorists want to kill people because they believe doing so will, in the long run, achieve their political goal. bin Laden's stated political goal, which I'm not sure most Americans know, is more or less to have the United States out of the Middle East. But why?

They wouldn't want us to leave if we were being all nice and fair would they? It's hard to organize a group of people to hate another without them having some perceived injustice done to them. The reason why every government in the Middle East aside from Israel only halfheartedly believes in helping America in the "War on Terror" is because they only halfheartedly believe that helping us will ever benefit them in any way. In fact, I'd argue most of them only help us enough so that they don't get labeled with the terrorists and can ride this thing out.

But again... why is this so?

I don't have the answer. But I'm thinking about it. I wish others would think about it more. It distrubs me that we react to terrorist attacks with such myopic vision. I really do feel like we are spending gargantuan amounts of money on building walls around our fort, while our foundation sinks below us because we don't realize we built the thing on a bog. One day, the bog is going to swallow us whole, including all the grand walls and everyone inside.

All I want is for us to start looking at the greater picture. To think. It begins with you, and my hope is that it will go all the way to the top.

PGP Signed Entry