I finally figured out that there is a big boy columnist club and I am not a member. You know who I'm talking about: writers with expense accounts, research assistants and 401K plans. East Coast guys.

I suspect they meet on the Metroliner club car, zooming between television appearances in New York and Washington. Somewhere around Trenton, NJ one of them pronounces over a glass of AMTRAK chardonnay, "Terrorism is murder; understanding is complicity." They all tap it out on their Blackberry handhelds and breathe sighs of relief that next week's columns are taken care of.

At least that's what happened this week. Mortimer B. Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of U.S. News of World Report and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman must have been sharing the club car and experienced their weekly Jersey epiphany. Terrorism is murder; understanding is complicity. They both said that last week.

Zuckerman wrote in his August 1st editorial (which was plopped into my mailbox on Tuesday): "We must harden our determination not to compromise with Muslim terrorism or explain it away by any mealy-mouthed 'understanding' of it. 'Explanations' of terrorism are unforgivable. It isn't war; it's murder."

Friedman wrote on July 22nd, "After every major terrorist incident, the excuse makers come out to tell us why imperialism, Zionism, colonialism or Iraq explains why the terrorists acted. These excuse makers are just one notch less despicable than the terrorists." He cites Middle East expert Stephen P. Cohen as saying: "These terrorists are what they do," then concludes, "and what they do is murder."

They are both wrong, and to take this approach is fatal.

To treat terrorism as murder implies that a suicide bomb attack is exactly the same as a drive-by shooting or a mugging gone wrong. Catch 'em, give 'em a fair trial, then hang 'em. End of problem. By treating terrorism as nothing more or less than a crime we completely discount its political context.

Terrorist acts are driven by ideology, not by material gain, sex, anger, or revenge on a rival gang. An anti-terrorist strategy must, of course, find ways to thwart violent acts and capture its perpetrators, but that's only half of the problem. An anti-terrorist strategy must also prevent the creation of new terrorists. By focusing only on the murder and not on the motivation we are apt to exacerbate the problem by the very means chosen to defeat it.

This approach is counter to the current administration slant of engaging in a "war against violent extremism" rather than a "war on terror." White House spokesmen now maintain that terror is but a tactic; violent extremism is the root cause. Treating terrorist acts as nothing more than routine murder flies in the face of this logic.

Even more harmful is the logical sloppiness that equates explaining and understanding with agreement and complicity. It is perfectly possible to explain without excusing, to understand without condoning. One can hope to understand why a man shakes his girlfriend's crying infant to death without conceding that it's a nifty idea to murder babies. The better our understanding, the better the odds of preventing further occurances.

In the same vein, it's possible to acknowledge that the recent London bombings may have been prompted by Britain's involvement in the War in Iraq without agreeing that those bombings were justified. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, however, refuses to even listen to this theory, saying that such thinking was dangerously close to "the sort of perverted and twisted logic" used by the bombers.

I say it's imperative that we attempt to understand the perverted and twisted logic of the bombers. To understand it is not to agree with it. To understand it is not to condone it. To understand it is not making mealy-mouthed excuses. To understand it is the first step in confronting terrorism. And until we confront it we cannot contain it.

If we are so foolish as to equate understanding with complicity we will crush the free interchange of ideas that is so desperately needed to bring peace to this world of ours.

Susan Ives can be reached at suives@texas.net.