I personally don't really think God enters into it (being a non-believer and all) but there are a lot of people out there who do have a strong faith in God and in many cases it is their faith that helps them get through what is an awful time. There is no reason for you to play devil's advocate and blame a God I suspect you don't believe in.

Let me explain a bit more.
God (whatever form you've envisioned) is blindly invoked throughout this panel (and in the world in general).

"god given freedom"? What the heck does this mean? Are you saying that God has chosen the United States over everyone else? That seems a bit strange to me.

Seems more accurate to suggest that the apparent freedom you've attained has come through self-interest. It has come in the name of economics. U.S. foreign policies are making the world better for corporations not for god.

Secondly...Umm....wouldn't Jesus have turned the other cheek?

Wouldn't according to some of you christians, the people who jumped to their deaths be going right to hell for taking their own lives?

I'm not directing this just at Western plutocracies...the same can be said of your those who committed this act and those (including the west) who've committed acts like these throughout history.

Was the slaughter of Native Americans, god's command?

Was the bombing of Hiroshima for God?

God, whatever concept you have of him/her/it, has probably done more damage to this world than any of us care to admit or imagine.

The people who died this week will be better served by all of us re-thinking our actions and preconceptions about the world. If we do not (and I include myself because I'm as guilty as anyone) we will see more lives lost in the apparent name of god.

Bob McClure was a doctor in China during the second world war. A very religious man who was spending his days mending wounded men, women and children who had been mutilated by landmines and unexploded shells. He took a crash course in bomb defusion from some soldiers and spent his spare time finding and defusing landmines... at a time when there was a very low survival rate for that kind of work.

Ghandi, Mother Theresa, and so many more people have done beautiful and wonderful things in the name of their God. I may not share their faith but can honor what they have done and honor why they have done it.

People of both good and bad intentions feel a need to cling to God right now, as to feel comforted or justified.

Are you describing U.S. actions as well? Korea. Vietnam. Iraq. Sudan.

Let us also not forget the inactions. We talk about what the U.S. has done, but we often neglect to mention what it has not done (East Timor...because of course they were supporting Indonesia). The U.S. picks and chooses who it will protect. Usually (as we've seen with Iraq) this depends on economic interests.

What are those direct and indirect actions? Political?

What about the innocent people the U.S. has murdered? Should we just forget this Dave? Should we all of sudden forget the past?

Not one of us here accepts or condones what happened on Tuesday, but there is are historical activities that have links to this dreadful attack. TO just ignore those is absolutely foolish. That you call U.S. actions policing is absolutely ignorant and insulting to ALL victims of terrorism.

I will agree with you, AP, and say that there are many hypocrits in the world, many americans who use God's name to bless america, and then use the same name to curse the terrorists and our circumstance. That doesn't make any sense to me.

But I will say,.. don't look to the people for answers about God. People fall down everyday.

Let's invision God as an artist for a moment. God has a plan, I believe, for everybody. Your life and this world is a painting that God is still creating. God is big and so is his canvas. We are very small.
I say, how dare we stand with our nose pressed against His canvas and declare it a mess. In the end this will make sense, but right now I think we just have to trust in that. Because right now we are focusing on a very small peice of the painting.

God exists and He doesn't believe in Atheists.

I'm not justifying anything.
But if you continue to just view this as some isolated event then all the tears and flags and rhetoric will mean absolutely nothing in the end because all of these deeply felt, but essentially symbolic, gestures will mean sweet all when more people are slaughtered for no reason.