>>I do not blame the US for 9/11, that would be having disrespect for the US. OTOH, it is also very ignorant to ignore the message from your enemy. Just listen what they are saying, read between the lines and learn a lesson. This by no means tells you to give what they want, In fact, I agree that terrorism should be eliminated at all costs. But do it intelligently, rather than hanging out GI joe and burn everything to the ground. I'm not religious at all, but one thing jesus said is carved in my mind: Though shall love your enemies.
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>>I assume that you've read the newspapers about the decision to make to send dutch troops to afganistan. I don't know if you read that article about the remarks from a dutch commander about the american attitude and the consequences it has for the public opinion in those countries. I'm sure you aware what the difference is between dutch and american approaches for keeping peace. They are indeed different. Don't get me wrong, they both have their place. The american army is superious in burning something into the ground and overwhelm the enemy. However I do not have as much of a high opinion of their peacekeeping qualities, esspecially in these kind of countries. The UN-forces have much more experience in this respect.
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>A terrorist attack is like a very big scream for attention. My advice is: Ignore the so called message totally. Focus on the cruelty of the act and make clear that this is not the way to go. Make clear that there are other ways to ask for attention. If you don't do that, the cruel method will be used and used over and over again. Besides, the arguments and messages of the terrorists are ALWAYS distorted.

Again, you might reconsider what I've wrote:

"OTOH, it is also very ignorant to ignore the message from your enemy. Just listen what they are saying, read between the lines and learn a lesson. This by no means tells you to give what they want, In fact, I agree that terrorism should be eliminated at all costs. But do it intelligently, rather than hanging out GI joe and burn everything to the ground."

Ignoring the message totally, is getting you nowhere too. I'm not saying to listen directly to what the terrorists say, but intelligently poison the soil of terrorism. Terrorism is indeed a cry for attention.

Maybe you can compare it too a child crying for attention. If you don't give them attention and ignore them all the way, they will do about everything to get it, whether it is positive or negative. And believe me, I learned this lesson the hard way.

It notifies you that there is a problem: A problem that needs to be addressed in some way. Reacting in hard force is not going to do any good at all, you need to address the problem more intelligently by eleminating the seeds at the root. We see this in the palestinian conflict as well, where Hamas (after all this is where the thread is about) took a very intelligent route to power by gaining the sympathy of the palestinians by providing basic needs that were not provided by other parties (like education). Indeed we are talking about the piramid of maslov again. If the basic needs were provided by other parties with less violent intentions we would not have this converstation right now.

Walter,