From the second I saw this thread, I started a mental countdown to see how long it was going to take someone to bring politics into the mix .Too funny!
As much as Bush probably enjoys being elevated to a stature in which he is cast as the cause for everything on the planet including the earth's gravitational pull... surely his inclusion in this thread is a stretch. Additionally, Bin Laden/Al Qaeda and similar groups were at it long before Bush was President. For that matter, 9-11's origination and planning took place predominantly during the Clinton administration. He certainly wasn't the cause and neither was Bush.
To link back to the thread's topic, calling Bush or any US politician the cause for extremist terrorist groups actions is the same problem we have going with the youth in our country. The world over, we (humans) have collectively become apoligists and spend more time trying to explain away and rationalize things like terrorism instead of calling a duck a duck. When a school kid is a disruptive problem-child, those around him/her spend all their cycles developing excuses for the behavior or better yet, my personal favorite: coming up with 'conditions' to diagnose them with that explains away their actions. ADD, ADDHD are good examples of this. I do believe they exist in rare cases. However, at some point... we have to accept that some kids are hyper and some are lazy.... deal with it and stop knee-jerk diagnosis'. Don't give every child that doesn't pay attention a perpetual crutch and Rx slip to fall back on. I was a hyper kid and my brother even more so, never did my family accept it as an excuse and neither did my school. Then again, this was prior to the shiekness of overdiagnosing such 'conditions'. In today's classrooms, both my brother and I would have been sucking down adarol by the 4th grade. For the rest of their lives, many of these diagnosed kids get to operate under lowered expectations and attend special classes with much easier requirments. The sad part is most of these kids have so much potential that will never be realized. About 5 years ago I took a year off from the business world and taught in my local school system under long-term substitute engagements. This particular school district, Northern Farifax County, is one of the best public school systems in the nation. I had assigments with GT-type classes, standard, and a special class for all the 'condition' diagnosed kids(90% being ADD/ADDHD). The difference between these groups was amazing and very eye opening. In offline conversations with these students, it was obvious that there was very little aptitude difference between the gifted students and the 'special' students. However, the difference between the acceptable behavior for the different groups was astounding. These kids (teens actually 14-17yrs old) have systematically had excuses handed to them for their entire school lives and freely use them whenever possible. Even worse, the parents embrace the excuse train as well thus reinforcing the child's metaphorical crutch. Unfortunately, the post-academic/real world couldn't give two hoots about these excuses and many of these kids receive a rude awakening once their academic years are completed.
God is for those who have not the strength within themselves to live in a just fashion. Not saying this is a bad thing either. Whatever works for one trying to make sense/meaning of their life. In my opinion only 
I caught one of our neighborhood kids walking into our house, and snooping around our bedroom! He was only 8 yrs old! He also goes around and unties dogs, or opens kennels for fun. I am arming my kids with paintball guns this summer, they will know what to do if he comes near my NSX :wink:
