Of course we should understand the point of view of people who engage in inhumane acts.
We can either take a black and white neoconservative perspective, all good, or all bad...us versus them...good versus evil.......or we can take a humanistic perspective and attempt to understand the factors that lead people to act so destructively.
Some people believe that evil acts are the product of nature and not nurture. Current advancement in the field of psychology, and neurophysiology counter this primitive thinking to demonstrate that environment plays a most important role in the choices people make. People are not born evil, they become damaged to the point that they see no option but to commit evil actions.
If we assume that people are not born evil, but become that way, then understanding of how they were influenced to become evil, what mind conditioning they were subjected to to become capable of evil actions, allows us to move toward positive solutions.
This line of thinking however goes against the neoconservative Christian based totalitarian approach to life, in which evil is a power of the Devil, not a product of psychological trauma or even chemical imbalances.
Given that we have seen Christians in the past behave in most barbaric manners to support their religious zeal and Christian missions, we too have seen Christianity evolve to its current state.
Does the decrease in the barbarism seen by Christian leaders mean that there is less of the Devil at work? Or does it mean that there is evolution that comes from education, prosperity, better nutrition, secularist thought, etc.?
The middle east remains a mostly impoverished, uneducated, and survival consciousness dominated area, in which religious zealots preach a 14th century level dogma.
We can either take a "bomb them into the stone age" approach, or we can take a more evolved approach to understand how they arrive at their own ethical conclusions, and begin to act in a manner that expresses the level of evolution, humanity, compassion, and Godliness we claim to represent.
Quote from I Missed Boat:
So we should "understand" the point of view of the Sudanese Arabs and Arab descendents, who enslave the black Christians and animists in the South, those they don't slaughter (now being warned by the UN as an ethnic cleansing) anyhow? We should "understand" the view of the Hutus who slaughtered a million or so people in ethnic cleansing? Give me a break. I took "secular" ethics. I have no problem discussing Kant, Mills, and such. But we don't have to get into these types of philosophical models on ethics to have a basic grasp on the most obvious evil (those that want to kill anyone and everyone who does not agree with them, including those that don't want a fundamentalist government), and those that fight terrorist networks and soldiers who represent countries believed to be a threat (whether or not it is a threat).
By the way, it is funny you talk of "secular" ethics and "understanding," while in your double standard you mention nothing of the fact that the most intolerant and hateful people are in fact these terrorists, like Atta, who don't at all try to understand us "Americans," but rather want to kill any and every person (in the West and even in much of the relatively secular Muslum countries). And who does the most close-minded preaching, the fundamentalists who rail on Western values and insist that everyone should live their way, under strict and often oppressing rules (or else they are infidels), or as you suggest, America, whose main message preached is that nations should allow their citizens the freedom to determine individually (as much as possible) how they want to live their lives, while employing a participatory government (a democracy). It is funny that you would be so pretentious and presumptuous about what people here know about formal "ethics" classes, when you haven't even examined your own double standards. Americans try much harder than these fundamentalists to understand other people.
