Templar (a revealing nom d’ascii, BTW), killing them merely pushes the problem downstream. Until we address the systemic causes of jihadism, we’ll get nowhere, and dehumanize ourselves in the process.
Cowalker: exactly. As (Lt. Col.) Dave Grossman demonstrates in his wonderful book, On Killing, the only way you can get normal (i.e. non-sociopathic) people to kill other human beings to to train them not to think of them as human.
BTW, I recommend highly Walter Wink’s treatment of systemic violence (what he calls the “Domination System”) in The Powers That Be, where he points out that the longest-lasting myth in human history, which informs both our politics and our entertainment, is the very myth of redemptive violence that you saw in those cartoons. We’re not a Christian nation, but we are trinitarian: unfortunately, the trinity we worship with our actions comprises Tiamat, Marduk, and Moloch: chaos, creative violence, and child sacrifice.
