Treading carefully

I don't like to dip into politics here, especially Middle East politics, about which I am more ignorant that most of my colleagues (and students). All I want to say about it is that I think it's a grave error to attribute an enemy's actions simply to their being "evil." as opposed to understanding their motivations. I know there actually are evil people out there, but hate and greed are historically much more common motivators for wars than pure evil.