Teribus, you need to understand what the tiny minority of crack-pot murderers are actually trying to achieve. You don't have to agree, just comprehend what their fight is about.

The 'Islamic Caliphate' is not some plan for worldwide domination (even if one or two choose to see it that way). The Caliphate, as a concept, is one government for "Muslim Lands". Where Islamic states combine to remove their national borders and operate as one authority. Even the most ardent fanatics are quite happy to let those they regard as "infidels", rot in their own lands.

Now, the last Islamic caliphate was widely though responsible for an European renaissance in art, science, culture, architecture and good governance. It was certainly Muslims that kept European civilisation going during the Christian-led post-Rome dark ages. I'm not saying any medieval system is "good" or "right", but it's pretty silly to say that the last Caliphate was all bad. Go to Cordoba in Southern Spain and get a feel for what it must have been like.

When a lot of Muslims look at how we caused, and continue to support, the Israel-Palestine problem, created and propped up with weapons (including chemical WMD's) the likes of Saddam Hussein, created and armed and supported the Sordid Arabian royal family, the Shah of Iran, left Afghanistan to the Taleban (post-USSR), propped up and supported endless regime after regime of corrupt bastards and tinpot dictators in Pakistan, is it any wonder that Muslims are - to put it mildly - feeling a little aggrieved?

Then after creating a pressure-cooker of pent-up chaos with Saddam as an Anglo-American-German "lid". We just went in - for no good reason - and blew away all the controls of state, producing the chaos that was inevitable and widely predicted. Why? Because we just didn't really care that much about the inevitable victims - ordinary Iraqis. What other explanation is there?

What troubles me most, and enrages some to the point of strapping on bombs - is the way that we have a sliding scale of the value and importance of life.

So, 50 people get murdered on the London transport system in 2005 and we spend 10's of millions of pounds on soul-searching, inquiries, accusation and blame, news and media coverage, monuments, memorial services etc etc etc. When at least as many innocent people in Iraq were being slaughetered weekly or daily in the chaos that we wrought there. Their lives passed as a footnote on the evening news or at bottom column 5 of page 37 of the newspaper.

One life murdered is one too many and the loss of any innocent life should be shocking to us - so dont' glibly come back and accuse me of saying or thinking that anyone "deserved" what they got. What I'm saying and thinking is that we need to do is to look at ourselves (as nations or groups) and try to see us as others might do. It's not always a pretty sight.

I can't tolerate the concept of "keeping score" when it comes to murder, but if some people in "the west" are asking of these terrorists, "why, how, can they do this to us, what drives them?" just stop and think how many of them we have killed either directly or by way of the proxies that we installed to do it for us?

If you ever wonder why people are driven to suicide attacks, try to work it out. What would you be prepared to die for? How bad would things have to be for you to decide that there was nothing to lose? Is there no principle or value or child or loved-one that you wouldn't give your life for? European Resistance fighters 39-45 went on suicide attacks, as did soldiers: we rightly revere their sacrifices. Maybe we have pushed rather a lot of people in various parts of the world to that breaking point?

So, Teribus, when people say, in effect, of Muslims: to hell with 'em there all the same, we have to kill 'em all. Or appear to imply that any amount of "collateral damage" is fine so long as it's them and not us: don't you think that those people sound a lot like the so-called enemy?