A summary response, since I kept getting a pile of similiar email and my fingers are starting to whimp out on me ;-) Jerry Hill wrote: [..]

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Do you guys really believe these people really know what they're celebrating?

I do think they know what they are celebrating. Do you think otherwise? Why?

See below for further response and explanation of my rationale where I quote Greg Barwis.

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All I asked is that you consider a slightly different point of view and try to look beyond the grief and pain as hard as it may be. Red haze isn't what gets us anywhere..

This is certainly not evident from your first message. You asked a straight-forward,

Well, I was asking a rhethoric question. Something that was intended to stimulate thought. I'm copying this back to the list to illustrate. The attached email is in response to Greg Mirsky <gmirsky@axiowave.com> asking me what I meant. There's more below the reply to Greg Mirsky. <snippetysnap> Mind you, none of this is an excuse or apology, it is simply the realization based on past experiences in my life. These people are born and raised in an environment nothing like ours. An environment where terror is a daily part of their life. Imagine your neighborhood grocery store, your neighbor's car, your kid's school, you wife's bus on its way to work, you place of work being blown up on a regular basis because you effectively life in a hot guerilla war zone. All media you're being fed is not free. It is strongly biased. There's no free access to "the truth" -- whatever that may be. Your school, government, religion, media tell you one view of the world. Your education is mediocre at best. Mind you this has been going on for decades if not centuries. How easy do you think it would be to skew your opinion? A very similiar thing happened in Eastern Germany. When the wall came down, it was quite obvious that even though the brunt of education, financial resources, access to information, free enterprise etc etc hit immediately and with tremendous force... it was estimated it would take 2-3 generations at an absolute minimum for the socialist propaganda, the social hatred, the lack of broad education to take hold and for people truely to become "normal" in the view of the western world. This brunt of "freedom" hasn't hit in the middle east. It is a very much closed society. Demagogues are common place and you hear exactly what you want to hear. Just like during the Cold War, the U.S. told its citizens that the USSR is truely and thoroughly evil, the USSR told its citizens that the U.S. is truely and thoroughly evil. Guess what, they both believed it and the abominations during the Cold War were caused by this total and utter distortion of reality. If you go through history, you'll find this over and over and over again. Does that make it any more right that these people are celebrating the death of another human being? No, but in a society where violent death is common place, where demagogues reign the view of the individual may border the surreal. So, in other words, these people have no clue what they're really celebrating, what it means to the rest of the world and what the true impact of their actions is. Nor do they have any idea that this stuff isn't normal in the rest of the world. So, do they have any level of understanding? Sure. Do I understand where they're coming from? Not likely. We need to think outside the box to solve this and cannot view everything just from our point of view. We need to understand the view of the people we're dealing with. Even if they appear like animals to you and me. So, we need to take this with a grain of salt. Just like we shouldn't call the people committing these atrocious attacks "madmen", "crazy", "stupid". They are none of those things. These were well planned, apparently well executed attacks and they knew full well what they did, why they did it and what impact it was going to have. It was well calculated and not accidental collateral damage. I think that unless we view things with differentiation, where there are shades of grey instead of black and white -- or where there isn't just good or evil -- and appropriately classify the threat, the event and the resolution.. we won't make a real difference in the world. I'm not saying you should feel sorry for these people. Please don't. But, we perhaps need to just register the fact that these people do and try to understand why so that we may begin to find ways to resolve this utterly terrifying situation where people feel compelled to attack thousands of people. Or, why do they view what we view as innocent people as guilty and vice versa. Unless we can reconcile this one way or another, this will not go away. Case and point, the U.S. does bear responsibility for what's happening in Afghanistan, in Iraq etc. Russia does as well. And the same can be said for many other places in the Middle East and the rest of the world. They were all battlegrounds of the Cold War, and we've been reaping the consequences ever since. And unless we recognize this, we won't solve this terrific challenge But, that's just my point of view." -- And Greg Barwis <gbarwis@ncaustin.com> replies (quoted, not entire response): " although I still feel that they know perfectly well in their own worldview what it is that they're celebrating. I don't think that _they_ think they're celebrating the deaths of thousands of innocents; I think _they_ think they're celebrating a terrible blow to the "great satan." Because of their radically different worldview, as you discuss, I believe they'recelebrating this in the more abstract sense..." And I'd like to add to that the following: I don't disagree at all that they know perfectly well what they're celebrating. Their view and ours is just very different. And we have to recognize this if we hope to have a chance in making any difference at all in this "all out war against terrorism" that various leaders around the world would appear to be insinuating. I'm not saying you personally need to understand each and every one of the, perhaps in your/our perspective, warped views. Just as their view of the world suffers varying degrees of distortion, some quite serve in my mind, the view from this part of the world (U.S.) is distorted as well for entirely different reasons. -- Somebody else asked what non-U.S./English-speaking news outlets. I use... http://www.spiegel.de/ http://www.n-tv.de/ (albeit somewhat affiliated with CNN, sometimes offers a unique view) http://www.abendblatt.de/ http://www.handelsblatt.de/ For those who don't speak German well enough to understand the original, Babelfish @ www.altavista.com does a decent job on some of the articles. Sometimes it doesn't. I also occasionally peruse some of the media outlets down under (Sydney Herald etc) for alternate views and commentary. On subjects that are important to me, I typically seek several points of view in my attempt to build a picture. Looking outside the U.S. is very valuable. Cheers, Chris