Bin Laden may be an thoroughly psychotic and or fanatical person. But you're only returning emotional violence for emotional violence in your piece about his latest missive.

In my professional world, we argue that even psychopaths are partly reasonable, have a grain of truth and that grain of truth is like a very thin fingerhold is to a mountain climber. It's the difference that can make all the difference.

Bin Laden identifies not only with the strange, tyrannical purposes of radical Islam but also with the plight of America's victims. That's why so many Islamic moderates I talk with are not as ardently against him as we might hope. Just as Bush identified with children left behind by the educational system, Bin Laden identifies with the 500,000 children who died for lack of chlorine, which we sanctioned. Perhaps we did the right thing, but no government official has ever expressd any concern for those kids and their survivors. That's the kind of inhumanity that at least partly accounts for the fervor of the terrorists. To dismiss their feeling for our victims makes zero sense unless you believe that people can be purely psychopathic and or fanatic.

Most people do believe they can. But most of us in the social sciences disagree. We need to get this message out, the message that we need to relate to the best motivations of the terrorists and respond empathically to them. Profound expressions of respect and caring, as St. Patrick showed in transforming barbaric Ireland, are much more powerful than what we're doing.