Maybe if we stop invading their countries they won't be so mad at us. What an idea!

Political, not religious, issues are motivating terrorists:

Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser to President Carter, carries this analysis to address the question that obsesses us as a nation: What truly motivates the "terrorists," the insurgents, the suicide bombers, all those people who apparently hate us for one reason or another?

The commonly accepted knowledge in the administration and in the Pentagon is that this is a religious war, that these men blow themselves up for God. Not at all, says Brzezinski: "These are political questions. They may seen religious, but in reality they are directly related to our policies. Look at who they are against: the U.S., the Brits, the Israelis. We are seen as the new British colonialists, just as in Vietnam we were seen as the continuation of French colonialism."

Actually, all the investigations into who the terrorists are and what inspires them are clear about the fact that their primary inspiration is not religious, but political. The study of 300 suicide bombers made by professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago found that virtually none of them was religiously inspired; they were communists, socialists, Muslim Brothers, Arab nationalists, but above all, they were inspired by Western occupation and dominance of their lands.

Last week, at a meeting at the New America Foundation, CNN's seasoned terrorist specialist, Peter Bergen, impatiently told a group of us after someone brought up the old question of Islamic madrassah schools inspiring terrorists: "Of all the terrorists that I have known, almost none were from the madrassahs. If they were educated, they were usually from Western universities; they were engineers ..."

But all those racists like Naomi Ragen keep insisting that Islam is to blame!