Bob Morris links me over to this article by Patrick Seale on the roots of terrorism.

One strong possibility is that the “enemy” is not just a terrorist network but a broad, militant, grassroots rebellion against American military and political interventions in the Arab and Muslim world, against Western arrogance, racism and bullying.
For decades now, but especially under the Bush administration, America’s triumphalism, its contempt for the views and interests of others, its boastful displays of military power, its refusal to recognize and address the “roots of terror,” its apparent indifference to international law, its economic supremacy all these have created a worldwide backlash which has put Americans at risk in many countries. History suggests that any power which dominates others will inevitably create violent opposition to it. If this is true, then what we are witnessing is nothing less than an anti-imperialist movement of the 21st century.
Although often expressed in Islamic terms, the movement of rebellion is essentially political. It aims to liberate the Arab and Muslim world from the suffocating embrace of the West and above all from American neo-imperialism and its Zionist handmaiden. Future historians might well judge Osama bin Laden, for example, not as the outrageous pariah he now seems, but as only the latest in a long line of Islamic activists who include such well-known figures of the past as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Hassan al-Banna, Said Qutb, Musa Sadr, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and even Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Many separate streams feed the river of rebellion. There is no doubt that the epidemic of anti-American sentiment raging from Morocco to Indonesia is fed by American support for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. This is the main spring of the rebellion. But there are many others. Israel’s repeated aggressions against Lebanon, as well as its 22-year occupation of the South supported by the US have bred an army of bitter opponents. The 12-year sanctions against Iraq the worst inflicted on any country in history have mobilized opinion powerfully against America and Britain, as has the obsessive threat of war against Baghdad repeated almost every time Bush or Prime Minister Tony Blair open their mouths.
Quite apart from its irresponsibility, there is something incomprehensible and irrational about America’s fixation with Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction. As the distinguished American columnist William Pfaff wrote the other day, “There is, to the best of specialist opinion, no scenario by which the American public is threatened by nuclear, biological or chemical weapons of Iraqi origin.” In other words, there is no credible Iraqi threat to the United States. Why then is America making more enemies for itself? Is it because hard-line Zionists, anxious to ensure Israel”s regional supremacy, have captured American foreign policy? The well-founded suspicion that this is the case is yet another source of anti-US rage.

Well, while I see the world pretty damn differently from this author, I do agree that the actors are part of a more diffuse set of organizations than we are assuming, and that simply decapitating these organizations will not make the problems go away.
He and I part company here: Where to place the responsibility for resolving these issues? While I think that the US and the West have to reach out, it’s equally clear to me that the other side…the Muslim and developing world’s responsible actors…need to reach out as well. Why?
Because if there is no one on the other end of the phone, we in the West will do what it takes to protect ourselves.
I commented earlier:

I don’t want to be a part of a society that eradicated another culture; I don’t want to commit genocide.
I don’t want to be put in a position where genocide is either a reasonable option, or where my fellow citizens are so enraged that they are willing to commit it, and my opposition will be washed away in a tide of rage.
I want a calm, prosperous Middle East, and believe that the Palestinian Arabs who have been royally screwed by everyone…by the Europeans and Americans who established Israel without planning or compensation; by their leaders who have led them into several suicidal wars; by the leaders of the other Arab states who use them as cheap labor, exploit them economically, and exploit them politically…deserve decent lives.
They won’t get them following the path they are on.

Neither will the ‘enraged’ Arabs, who will simply add to the world’s toll of sorrow until we get tired enough of paying it.
That’s a sad truth.