<Evilness is a simplistic adolescent concept. It helps avoiding to understand why somebody could commit such a destructive act.

I'll let your first sentence stand as Exhibit A of the sort of thing I've been discussing all along.

I don't give a rat's rump if the guy trying to kill me or my family had a sad childhood, or ate too many Twinkies. I'm going to take him out if I can. If this "understanding where they come from" business was accurate, every kid with a rough childhood would end up a murderer. Every kid brought up in a ghetto, or poverty, would be a criminal. The fact that this is NOT true indicates that choice is involved somewhere along the line.

The first steps to take to try to avoid repeating it is to go much deeper into the whys and hows behind the destruction. For instance, last night I saw Moussaoui's brother on TV. He said his brother had gone to the UK (to learn english and meet other muslim communities) and was drawn into the wahabite sect. He noticed how much he changed when, one day back from the UK, he'd say that women must stay at home and not embrace a career. The Moussaoui's are sunnites which are not at all violent like the wahabites. But Zacharias had met the wrong kind of sect and it was too late to change him.

Moussaoui was going to fly an airplane full of people into a building full of people. He just didn't manage it. Assuming that he was somehow "drawn" into this and was a helpless pawn is obscene. At some point, he made a choice to be a murderer.

The New York Al-Quaeda are trying this same gag, acting as though they were bodily hauled into the terrorist training camps and forced against their will to study the killing of civilians.