What motivates terrorists? | Opinion | Eugene, Oregon

What motivates terrorists? | Opinion | Eugene, Oregon

We’re all going to die! We’re all going to die ... of old age, heart disease, cancer, stroke, alcohol, tobacco, cars, guns of friends or family (or suicide). You’d have to live for tens of millennia before the risk of dying at the hands of a terrorist rises to any level of statistical concern. Unless maybe you happen to live in some parts of the Middle East.

But let’s not even think about that, and instead ask ourselves: Why do they hate us so much? What could cause people to travel thousands of miles to die in a blaze of glory, in order to kill a few of us? What did we ever do to them — I mean, besides occupying their lands, overthrowing their governments and killing their people for about the past 100 years (counting England, France and now the United States), simply for the oil ­under their sand?

Then I ask myself this: If some people in another country were to weekly or daily drop bombs on my mother’s home, my brother’s home, my family’s home, my town, my city — would I be mad about that? And if my country didn’t have a modern air force that could do the same to them, what would I do? Would I travel thousands of miles to their country, to die in a blaze of glory, in order to kill a few of them?

Maybe.

JOHN DONOVAN

Eugene