> It's not like a bunch of people got up and were like "We hate the West!". There's a lot of stuff involved. Not that it justifies their actions, but it's at least good to be lucid when thinking about the why.

I agree with you on that; it's unfortunate, though, that a lot of political bad actors have spot-welded "we need to understand why they're doing this" -- which is obviously true, it's much harder to defeat an enemy you don't understand -- to "it's racist to think that we have an enemy at all, never mind actually fight them effectively."