Woke up this morning and it was a few moments before I remembered about all this. It's as if we're holding our breath, waiting to see what happens next, and knowing it won't be anything good.

"Not all Muslims are good Muslims". And not all Christians are good Christians, and not all Jews are good Jews, and so what? "The only good Injun..."?

I can't see that the mindset of the people who did this terrible thing is all that different and alien. It seems to be made up of two components which are all too readily available..

The first component is the willingness to kill. A conviction that vengeance in the face of terrible injustice is just, and that, once it is war, any way of striking at the enemy is permissible - we've seen that expressed in these threads, time and time again. And even those who reject it have no difficulty in understanding it.

And the second components is a willingness to die for what we believe in.And is there anything unfamiliar about that in any of our cultures. Hunger strikers in Ireland - "Remember the Alamo" - Masada. What's so different?

And what's the big difference between "Jihad" and "Crusade"? (And I'm sure that there's an equivalent term in other cultures).

This isn't something alien and strange and incomprehensible. It's not Space Invaders. It's people with the same kind of motives as the rest of us and capable of doing appalling things, and of justifying them to ourselves.