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I understand the Saudis have been named because fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.

You know, Saudi Arabia has a lot of poverty also. Regardless about what you hear about the viceroy and people being rich, et cetera.

But Saudi Arabia is surprising in a lot of ways. Like any place, or any people, it relentlessly defies easy categorization.

A large part of the problem, is that young people are being born into the world and growing up without much hope. And so, they become murderers, they become suicide bombers.

By the breaking in of enraged merciless armies, flourishing countries have been laid waste, great numbers of people have perished in a short time, and many more have been pressed with poverty and grief.

Saudi Arabia was, until just a few years ago, probably one of the most safe countries on earth. And now the paper is daily full of activities and shootouts between Islamists who supported Osama bin Laden and the government there.

Certainly, poverty and economic decline have a lot to do with the so-called rage of Islam. You've got all these young men in countries which are economically in bad shape. The idea that they might be able to make a good living and get married and have a family, a decent life, seems very remote to a lot of people in a lot of the world.

Most dramatically, and perhaps least noticed, is the violence inside Saudi Arabia itself.

The world is lousy with Arab princes. And if we could have got Osama bin Laden, and saved at some point down the road 3,000 American lives, a few less Arab princes would have been OK in my book.

Suicidal violence is not the exclusive property of the Muslim world. Suicide bombings were a tactic of nationalist struggles in 19th-century Europe and Russia, the far east during the second world war and the Vietnam war, and in modern Sri Lanka.