What you should be asking is why Muslim men and women would feel compelled to "strap on explosives and blow themselves up". Let see. The Israeli military uses artillery, rockets, bombs, machine-guns (supplied by the U.S.) to level buildings and murder Palestinians. IDF snipers also target Palestinian children deliberately. Against those daily killings by the Israeli military, which are not reported by Israeli television and certainly not by U.S. television, there are sporadic bombings by Palestinians that get splashed across the television screen and the front page of the newspaper front page to show the world that poor innocent Israel is once again the hapless victim of evil Palestinian terrorism. If you actually cared to get the whole story, you would read Al Jazeera and other Middle Eastern publications that don't just print what Washington and Tel Aviv want them to say. If you want to get the whole story about what is happening, you would read from all sources and not just those who support American/Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. So, the questions you should be asking are:

• Why does Israel use artillery, rockets, helicopter gunships, jet fighters dropping bomblets, and heavy machine gun and cannon fire against civilians throwing rocks?
• Why does Israel harvest organs from Palestinian prisoners?
• Why do Israeli snipers target innocent children?
• Why did Israel bomb Lebanon civilians (with U.S. blessing) for almost 4 weeks, killing hundreds if not thousands of Lebanese Christians, for the killing/kidnapping of only 5 IDF soldiers?
• Why do you consider Russia's counterattack against Georgia over South Ossetia to be "disproportionate" if you believe what the Israeli military did in Lebanon was okay?
• Why does Israel, who has a historical hatred of Arabic peoples and a history of preemptive attacks on Arabs, get to have nuclear weapons while you consider Iran, who has no nuclear program or desire to use them, a mortal danger to the Western world?
• Have you actually every spoken with someone from Muslim countries and gotten their perspective on life, so you can say first-hand what and how they feel about the U.S.?

lmorovan, it's easy to sit behind your computer and applaud the outright genocide against Muslims. It's even easier to be happy to send others to die for the policies YOU support. It is easiest to ad hominem attack those who have actually done something in defense of the rights and liberties you now enjoy, just to cover for the fact that you have not made the same sacrifices. I am against genocide. I am against policies that send other people to die for the material gains of a few. I have also spent ten of my forty years in uniform, defending what I believe in. Whether I agree or disagree with the current policies of the U.S. or Israeli government, I've at least earned that right to speak my mind freely. The fact I've been personally attacked by you ad hominem for what I've earned speak more about how much you value the sacrifices that men and women have made throughout American history. The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly; 'Tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Thomas Pain, Obstacles DO YOU HAVE THE WRITE STUFF?

Am I invoking the name of God by saying that genocide is okie-dokie as long as other people are doing it in God's name and the truth is less than important that what is good for a few rich robber-barons of the U.S. military-industrial complex? Pray tell, where did I EVER say that? The truth is there were Palestinians living on that land farming and developing an infrastructure for several generations before 1948. After World War II, they were displaced by people who just stole their farms, ranches, and houses outright, invoking a spurious ancestral claim without any consideration for the FACT that the very Palestinians displaced have a CONTINUOUS blood claim to the land. You and Eggs step in and say that the Palestinians don't get to keep their ancestral land because the Jewish non-ancestors of the Israelites say so. You ignore the very real atrocities committed by the Israeli government and military against Palestinian women and children on a regular basis. You brush those atrocities aside as easily as you brush aside the genocide of innocent Arab Christians in Lebanon by Israel or of innocent Arab Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan by the U.S. government and military. Unlike you and others on your team, I am against genocide. I don't try and rationalize it away by claiming that it is sanctioned in some old book, especially when it isn't. DO YOU HAVE THE WRITE STUFF?

The book by George Orwell which most closely describes the political reality in the U.S. and Israel is 1984. Those who have the means to do so are rewriting the history books to reflect their political desires, at the expense of truth. When the masses are TOLD what to believe by constant repetition via controlled media outlets, the government, the churches, and especially the schools, it makes my job seeking the truth more and more difficult. I am often dealing with people who cannot fathom the depth of the story because they've been led to believe an alternative, untruthful, politically expedient version. DO YOU HAVE THE WRITE STUFF?