Two years ago President Bush said “Bring them on”, but we still haven’t asked where the terrorists are coming from.

That’s a real insult to the 1500 American dead and many more Iraqis who have been sacrificed to the cause since then. President Bush’s heroic myth of Iraqi liberation ignores the question, speaking as if the terrorists are just some band of criminals and losers. Our great free press mentions almost nothing about it except maybe that some of them are Suni and some come from abroad.

The terrorists themselves don’t say, perhaps just too enraged to speak. Even the New Yorker Magazine, usually so reliable in detailing the hidden places in the world where everything comes from has completely missed the chance to just go and find out.

Where do they come from then? It’s kind of general, but the available evidence is that they’re from a fairly open multi-national community of people willing to sacrifice their sons to the cause of protesting the US.

They apparently live by a distorted common myth about the world themselves, an open interest group to be found spread, apparently, throughout all Muslim society. I base this on the clear facts that 1) they come from Muslim communities all over 2) they’re clearly in touch 3) the more we kill them the more there are and 4) terrorism is an extremist form of protest, not a play for power.

If this is the case the only way to win the war on terror militarily is by silencing its source community, genocide. Some people might hate enough to do that, but there are also obvious drawbacks given how its community is intermingled in open societies around the world. To kill it we have to kill nearly everyone. Wouldn’t it be better to find out how to address its community myth and relieve their animosity towards us, so they stop sending their sons to kill and be killed in protest?

Relieving other people’s fears about you means dealing with people who hold you in contempt. It is tough unpleasant business requiring great creativity and emotional support. It seems we have a choice between that or endless killing.