Steve,

The good thing is that it seems like we both agree with the goal in the sense of terrorists, and it is the tactics that we are disagreeing with (though maybe not as much as this thread would lead one to believe). We are closer than you think. I think the only real philosophical difference we may have is that I support the right of self determination, regardless of politics or geographical placement (I could be wrong about this as well). There is at least one person you named (Zapata) that I think you are whole hardly wrong about. He was a great man who helped Mexico break from the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz who ran one of the most unequal governments of Latin America that history would ever see. I don't see any way to say he was wrong if we hold any of the values of this country true to our heart (there would be no way of saying that Saddam was bad and Diaz was not, they are true equals in what they did and how they did it... Fulgencio Batista is also in this group). But all of this would be better in another thread where we could really lay out our philosophical beliefs about what makes a good society and when one is situated in a way to justify an armed revolution.

The thing to consider is that many times conservatives and liberal will argue about how to conduct the war on terror, and like the debates about energy, we all have the same goal in mind yet different methods to get there. The truth often rests in the middle, with a little of this and a little of that. The great thing with how this country was constructed is that it forces 535 people to get together and figure this out. When one party gets absolute control, you often find hasty decisions with bad consequences. I say this (of course) knowing that I have the right answers and if I just ruled the world, everything would be perfect (sarcasm inserted here).