[Drolefille]

I don't really feel like I"m stuck in a corner, so whatever.

I don't know the answers to that. I was 17 when 9/11 occured. And though I feel like I'm rather well informed, I was certainly not an expert in US Foreign Policy then, or now.

Take a step back from this and look at it from a psychological or philosophical point of view. All actions are the result of an accumulation of causes. People don't just wake up one day to become a suicide bomber... there's a reason why. Maybe they lost their parents, maybe they were put in a conservative school, maybe their own livelihood was threatened.

Whether we like it or not, the US contributed to those causes.

Said bomber is still responsible for the choice he made to become a suicide bomber. Since we cannot control his choice directly, and we find being blown up to be bad, then it may be in our best interest to determine and adjust our contribution to the "causes" in his life.

We can also look back and say, yeah, what we did may have influenced him, but our other options would have put us worse off.