Vic, I'm referring to places like Afghanistan, and Saddam Hussein's dictatorial Iraq, where human rights abuses are not limited to car bombs. These are minds who would have no compunction about torturing Olympians who did not win. These people are the self-same ones who commit horrific abuses against their fellows to further their own perverse interests, and maintain absolute authority over all.

In Afghanistan and parts of Africa, these "holy warriors" would sodomize children. They would flog women who won't hide their femininity behind a burkha. And in India, these sorts of pompous cretins, in the heat of a moral rampage, burn their wives alive if they try to leave the marital union. Even if these brutes claim sanctuary of, and sanctity by, their God, these crimes against humanity - bombs and other horrors alike - are much less about holiness and adherance to a religious code or credo than they are about possession, domination, control, and regression to a time when a select few acted in authority, and everyone else cowered. That's what they want. And as I said... these "people"... the ones who sat off the bombs in the subways and the like, are long past thinking, and knowing what they want. They're killing for what someone else wants. And sadly, fifty-plus years of woefully misguided and unsuccessful Western foreign policy has only fanned these flames.

What I am suggesting to you is that these are all forms of terrorism. The same mindset is employed as justification, whether the perpetrator is bombing a subway or beating a defenseless woman or child. Be the justification religion or some other empowering fantasy, this behavior is wrong.

I hear you and I agree with you. But I maintain that these behaviors are learned, and I believe that teaching children to think for themselves, and to favor compassion over selfishness, is a far more practicable effort than trying to return the world to the fifth century by way of violence, regardless of whether God OR man is taken as justification.

This is a very incendiary topic. Suffice it to say that I am on your side! :) :grin

And Vic... on edit... that article is VERY interesting, and would seem to support yours and my contentions, each and both! :) Thanks for that!

TC