Sorry, it must be very late. I did, like you, think that motive is irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was to curtail the innapropriate behavior. Now, however, I do see that understanding the enemy does have relevance to deciding the appropriate future actions.

I did not get this from the editorialist. In fact, he missed this same point, as I recall. All I got from him is a statement that the primary motivation guiding the Taliban, or at least Bin Laden, is to rid Muslim regions of all Western influence. Reasoning from that: he hopes to achieve the foregoing by fostering intercultural animosity (West v. Muslim), and his goal was NOT, as I had assumed, to foster recognition of or respect for the interests of dispossessed Palestinians. His, goal, if the writer is correct, is to inflame the base passions of the members of BOTH cultures.

Or at least so it seems tonight. . . .

(And assuming he was involved.)