Okay, so you've got a zit on your sit. Now what do you do? Do you take a crud-encrusted scalpel and slice it off to get rid of it, but continue to wear spandex rear-gear and sit on dirty barstools (or whatever it was you did to deserve that heinous hiney decoration in the first place - which we probably don't want to know)?

Uh, no. You treat it with something formulated to take down the inflammation, and then change your behavior (and your undies) to prevent further eruptions.

Like a great festering acne of the soul, terrorism and other such violence isn't the problem and as such, can't be treated as if you can simply get rid of it by attacking it directly. It's the final, visible symptom of a deeper condition, the pimple that forms when crap, crud and pressure builds up under the surface of an area beyond the ability of the overlying structure to keep things smooth and peachy. It's your "last chance for gas" sign that a pre-existing problem has gone septic and is about to explode very publicly and very messily. And puncturing that pustule, no matter how satisfying, macho and pro-active it feels, isn't going to do anything for the situation except make it worse. With luck, you'll get off with a nasty scar that will gnarl the surrounding area into a tough and unsightly mess that will always be there to remind you of your stupidity. More likely, however, is that you'll end up with a serious infection that will sicken the entire body and may never completely heal, causing illness, unbalance and pain throughout the entire organism for a very long time.

Playing "he hit me back first," eye for an eye, and other stupid tit-for-tat games of escalating violence and hatred, while turning a blind eye to what created the eruption in the first place (or deluding yourself that it's the people, and not the situations that motivate them, that are evil and therefore free game for righteous shoots) are no more of a solution to terrorism than a dirty blade is to unsightly butt-smut.

For one thing, no matter how deluded or how enmeshed in "the dark side" a person is, no one is ever completely without good and as such deserves all the compassion we can give them to bring them back from that sorry state. Yeah, I said compassion. Compassion, love, forgiveness and all that other namby-pamby Jesus-y/Buddhist crap. Sure, it's nowhere near as much fun as a good strafing run with a fighter jet, but infinitely more effective and long-lasting. And it does have the advantage that it's the one thing they really won't ever see coming, so you can score serious points for shock and awe.

For another thing, no one (not even "those people," whoever that happens to be this month) kills, maims or destroys themselves and others without what they consider to be a damn good reason. But, like all infectious concerns, the illness or problem itself can impair and twist reason. From the point of view of a terrorist, fevered and delusional by whatever circumstance has brought them to this point, their actions are reasonable and called for by the situation at hand. You may not buy it (I certainly don't - violence is never reasonable), but you do have to accept the fact that there is a strong and unarguable reason pushing them to this action, however wrong-headed, unless all the attackers are clearly and diagnosably insane (which they clearly aren't, all personal opinions aside - most terrorist attacks are brilliantly conceived, planned and executed. No pun intended.).

To cure the disease, you must find the reason for the disease and treat the source of the infection. Do that and the pimples will go away by themselves. Attack the outbreak, and you'll just elicit greater and greater reactions - until your left with nothing to sit on but a raw and gaping wound.

Addendum: And no, despite what you've been told on talk radio and other sources of such illuminating sources, "they" don't hate us because we're rich, skinny and God's real bestest-best friends. Don't believe everything you hear and don't insult people who are dedicated enough to a cause to blow themselves and others up by diminishing and belittling their grievences and motivations.

Willful blindness and arrogant patronizing attitudes just contribute to the problem. If you can't be bothered to explore the issues beyond the readily available, pre-filtered and easy-to-digest infotainment pablum (new and improved - boiled down to an easy-to-swallow content-free paste with all those pesky lumps of complexity strained out for you!) and form a truly educated opinion based on what's really going on in the grown-up world of complicated and layered issues, please just shut up, sit down and wait for the nice lady to come by with your free peanuts and movie headphones before you really piss off the big scary guy with the bomb and take the rest of us down with you. 'kay?