I do understand the fine line any discussion like this must walk. To suggest that there could be a better way might be taken by a partisan as implying that their boy failed. But bear in mind that "better" doesn't imply that what went before is bad. It could be quite good, and better just means to make it more so.

And therin lies a philosophical question, one which might be said to charateristically divide conservatives and liberals. In the past I've talked about liberal and conservative personalities gravitating to different ideologies as the meaningful way to distinguish the two, and I return to that thought now.

To generalize, liberals don't assume anything is yet perfect; life is a process, and at any given point we've achieved a certain level of perfection, but more will always remain. No matter how good we've done so far, there's more to be done. Change is thus generally perceived to be, on balance, a good thing.

Conservatives seem to think that human perfection is possible, that we can be done and rest and on our laurels. A further implication is that we can devolve from perfection (fall from grace), thus leading to the characteristically-conservative pining for the good old days. Change is often perceived as dangerous, because it could as likely be negative as positive.

When translated into the realm of politics and patriotism, these two world views manifest in conflict. Conservatives take suggestions that America could be improved as criticism of America, and somehow disloyal. As if to speak aloud some flaw would make it so, and detract from the perfection of America. To a conservative, defending the status quo is equivalent to defending America. Liberals see it differently, and tend to define loyalty to America as an obligation to keep on improving the place. The process of improvement necessarily begins with identifying something as needing improvement, so conservatives perceive liberals as constantly criticizing America.

The metaphor of the half-full/half-empty glass seems made to describe the difference between liberals and conservatives.

So the difficulty I see in trying to have a dispassionate discussion begins with a difference of opinion over whether there's even anything to discuss. I sense this in your reluctance to get dragged in to the discussion, and responses that, though their passion varies a lot, have in common a tendency to argue for minimizing change, that is, there's really not much room to do anything differently than it's already being done.

I tend to phrase questions, therefore, in a somewhat liberal way, but I don't see any alternative. To phrase questions in the conservative manner seems, to me, to be a non sequiter, since it tends to deny the existence of the question. I'm in a bind here, Tom. If you accept that there might be room to discuss these things, but my way of asking questions makes you uncomfortable, how would you initiate a review of American foreign and national security policy? Where is the common ground that would make a discussion both interesting and vibrant?

Nevertheless, I'll try to work with what you gave me.

That maybe Osama is making lists to justify himself and to spout propaganda, not to describe real grievances.

Here you're trying to loop back around to the "they're jes' plain crazy!" hypothesis. If we apply Occam's Razor, you're implying an extra level of indirection, and that the existence of the manifesto is a mystery, since insanity would be a sufficient explanation; while I'm saying, simply look directly at the words and don't tie ourselve in knots trying to explain away their existence. My approach is more logically parsimonious. Plus, it's useful: If "they're jes' plain crazy!", there's no point in discussing anything, the situation's essentially hopeless (i.e., we're fighting aliens beyond our comprehension and thus we're dangerously handicapped in our ability to oppose them). I'd rather arbitrarily decide to be optimistic and take the chance that I might find something, if I just bother to look.

In other words, you might be right, but, forgive me for saying so, so what? There's no energy down that path. I can't accept "shut up and pray that the government knows what it's doing".

Osama and those like him want you enslaved, or dead.

Whether this is actually true depends entirely on whether you write them off as merely crazy. This is one instance of a generic conservative explanation. It's applied broadly to most opponents, always hanging out there as if it materialized in thin air with no prior chain of events leading to it. Liberals want to destroy America for unspecified reasons. Communist dictators are communist dictators merely because they get their jollies oppressing people. Or the related category of circular psuedo-explanations: Sinners sin because they choose to sin, poor people choose to be poor, criminals break the law in order to break the law, and on and on.

Among the things we know about Osama bin Laden is the fact that he was born in Saudi Arabia and as a young man partook of the Arab nationalist and Islamist philosophies that view America and Europe's involvement today in the Middle East as just the latest manifestation of Crusaderism. As a Saudi he focused that notion on his own country, and saw the American presence and ties there as evidence to justify his beliefs. That's sufficient to say, without having to go into the specifics, that there in fact exists some sort of intellectual framework, whether right or wrong, which has informed bin Laden's thinking. He most assuredly didn't wake up one morning and say to himself, "hey, I think I'll become a terrorist and go out and kill a bunch of people...cool!". There is a frame of reference for all his actions and those of his cohorts. Understanding it leads to a better ability to predict their actions: Their intellectual framework constrains them from doing some things, encourages them to do others. Knowing that lets us better quantify risk and better allocate resources to fight them. We don't have to maintain a profligately-expensive 360-degree watch in all axes for a threat that could come from anywere; instead, we can define some directions as more vulnerable than others and watch those more intently.

To illustrate, I noted elsewhere that the targets of 9/11 have symbolic significance. Recognizing the meaning lets us predict that high-profile symbols of economic, military, and political power are more vulnerable than the fabric of ordinary day-to-day life in America. Major cities are at greater risk, and within those cities visible monuments to American values are at highest risk. Conversely, most of rural and smalltown America is at little risk. In terms of tactics, they may see ideas floated (on our side out of our fears) about things like poisoning the water or food supplies as not particularly supportive of their agenda, and probably counterproductive. Within their religious frame of reference, they get points for vanquishing the strong, not slaughtering the weak. 9/11's significance in the Arab world isn't the 3,000 killed, it's the symbols of power destroyed.

As far as oil goes:

If American wasn't "sucking the oil out," what would be happening to it? It's not like oil wells just spout cash. SOMEBODY has to buy it. If it wasn't us, it would be China, or Europe. Are the Saudis and others going to sell it to themselves? Leaving it in the ground leaves the Arab world where it came in: living in tents.

Yes on many levels. Oil is currently expensive because the entire world is competing to suckle at the Middle Eastern oil teat. An American boycott wouldn't have the power to entirely dry up their cash flow, but with demand cut by more than half, you can be sure that the price of ME oil will drop like a stone. A boycott would have an intermediate effect short of total economic destruction.

And on the final point, I've said before that a boycott would be a damn good way to remind those people that we haven't been stealing the oil, we've been buying it (plus or minus some arm-twisting and bribery). Of course, now we're getting into another of ObL's complaints, our support of corrupt regimes in the ME, and their sticky-fingered tendency to hog the proceeds of oil sales. But a boycott would at least put pressure on those regimes to steal less, or face an uprising of starving subjects.

Oil is the key to so much in the Middle East. "Follow the oil", says Deep Well.