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i'm up and running around the web this morning, so i stopped by for my daily read. it's difficult to find holes in your reasoning. i agree that bush has done a good job of staying away from validating bin laden's conjecture that this is a crusade. i never bought the assertion that we're after muslim's because they're muslim. our enemies just happen to be muslim. that fact does not make the war religious any more than our efforts against communism and fascism have been. good points and good morning.

I don’t agree that we are giving bin Laden “moral harbor” by recognizing the underlying blind religious passion driving the Islamic terrorist foot soldiers who are fighting against the United States. Rather, I think it such recognition is a pragmatic decision to “know thine enemy”. There is a huge difference between seeking to understand the motivations of the enemy and granting legitimacy to their aspirations. Irregardless of the true aims of the leadership of Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizational leadership, we must recognize what drives the ordinary man to join with them and commit acts of barbary up to and including suicide in the commission of those acts. Without that recognition, how can we hope to change hearts and minds to ultimately ensure a lasting peace? From the Time link: ”What the secular West fails to understand is that in fighting religious fanaticism the issue--for the fanatic--is not grievance but ascendancy. What must be decided is not who is right and wrong--one can never appease the grievances of the religious fanatic--but whose God is greater. After Afghanistan there can be no doubt. In the land of jihad, the fall of the Taliban and the flight of al-Qaeda are testimony to the god that failed.” Well, hummm. I hope that writer is correct. I hope that the religious fanatics see that their god has failed, and given some economic stimulus, can become good world citizens. But somehow I doubt it. I think those grievances will fester and putrify, while locked in a “containment box” of US making, until once again atrocity breaks out and all hell breaks loose in the world. While I agree that for those of us in the United States, this war is about defending our innocents and protecting our way of life rather than about religion, I think it’s necessary for us to examine and try to understand the underlying root causes of the hatred of our enemies. Without that understanding to guide adjustments in our national policies, I fear we are doomed to repeat the events of September 11th over and over again. Ignoring the religious fervor of our enemies seems to me to be a horrible mistake.

Hey, Gina. Glad to see you survived the holidays. "I don’t agree that we are giving bin Laden 'moral harbor' by recognizing the underlying blind religious passion driving the Islamic terrorist foot soldiers who are fighting against the United States [...] There is a huge difference between seeking to understand the motivations of the enemy and granting legitimacy to their aspirations." There is indeed a huge difference, and that's my point. It was OK to recognize that Doh was motivated by the belief there was a flying saucer behind a comet, and his followers killed themselves to join the Mothership. It is another thing entirely to validate that belief. I believe when you say this is a religious war, you are validating the insanity bin Laden spreads in the name of "religion," little different than validating Doh's insanity. In both cases, they found followers who "believed." I refuse to certify such madness by saying, "yep, you're right, Osama, it's the West against Muslims." It turns America into a fundamentalist recruiter's wet dream. We will end up self-perpetuating this "jihad" if we start talking like Crusaders. "....we must recognize what drives the ordinary man to join with them and commit acts of barbary up to and including suicide in the commission of those acts." This is true. We must recognize they are drawn to a false prophet, who redirects their oppression and poverty (all non-religious in cause) towards US. That economic engine I was talking about. It's one thing to understand they are being duped by religious hoo-haa, but calling it a religious war validates the hoo-hah! As if to say, "yep, that's a just cause, and we will battle you on it." It is an unjust cause that revels in the deaths of innocents, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. How can anyone say that's religious, and we must fight it in the name of God? There is no God who has anything to do with this travesty. To me, it therefore borders on sacrilege to call this a religious war. Regarding the quote from Time, that passage disturbed me the first time I read it : "What must be decided is not who is right and wrong--one can never appease the grievances of the religious fanatic--but whose God is greater." Now there's some real Crusader talk for you. Our God is better. Your God lost. Nanner nanner. Sacrilege. "While I agree that for those of us in the United States, this war is about defending our innocents and protecting our way of life rather than about religion, I think it’s necessary for us to examine and try to understand the underlying root causes of the hatred of our enemies." I'm with you on that. But when examined, if the causation is false (all infidels must die, the US is the Great Satan, etc.), then so is the basis. It's fine to realize these people are motivated by fundamentalist fervor, but when you say this is religious war, you not only validate that extremist fervor, you risk increasing it in others. This is not unlike getting into a fight with the classic nutcase who thinks he's Napolean. You don't fight him like he is Napolean. You publicly point out the inconsistencies in his belief's (Napolean's been dead for almost 200 years), deplore his actions, and treat him like the insane person he is. "Ignoring the religious fervor of our enemies seems to me to be a horrible mistake." I'm not ignoring it. I recognize it for what it is: a manufactured motivation that the US Armed Forces have proven false. I'm not gonna argue with them.

Taking a hard, if uncomfortable, look at the so-called religious roots of militant Islam is, I think, a quite fruitful endeavor in our search for understanding not only what drives Islamist terrorists toward evil but what emotional and philosophical forces continue to inflame those drives that are daily transformed into consequential action. You may be interested in hearing some thoughts on this perspective from the premiere Islamic commentator on the scene today: Daniel Pipes I certainly understand your concern that this struggle not be defined in terms that are so broad that they mistakenly conflate the underlying misconstrual of the function of religion in human affairs that seems to have taken hold in Islamic nations with its more proper station as a guiding force that leads to harmony, goodness and understanding. But as a necessarily human institution, any religion that cannot gracefully bear the scrutiny of honest skeptics must remain suspect. The faith of any man, however pure in its emergence, risks at all times becoming subject to the coarse and barbaric inclinations that lay hidden within the man and if the active pursuit of that faith is proved abhorrent to humanity by producing actual violence against others then it must be contained until a better sense of it can be found, if at all.