Word: comprehend
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...friend noted how quickly a question about one’s friends and relatives became a platitude. One needs not say more than “Is everyone...?” and the questioned would comprehend. If the question were uttered between friends, aware of a household in one of the affected states, it would most certainly be the first part of a greeting. Otherwise, perhaps it was inserted after inquiries about the summer or even at the very end of a conversation. How would you react if the person had said, “Yes, my father was killed?...
...Evil brings evil upon itself," he exulted. "This is Allah's punishment for the wrong that America has done to Muslims." It is easy for Khan to understand the mentality of the airline hijackers who unleashed their apocalyptic destruction on New York and Washington. He can comprehend how 19 educated men, despite having seen the world in all its wondrous multiplicity, can crash airliners into skyscrapers because, in his heart, Khan is one of them. Yet Khan doesn't fit the profile of a typical Muslim terrorist. He's not a vengeful Palestinian youth whose brother was gunned down...
Incomprehensible, then? Hardly. It is all too easy to comprehend, given minimal knowledge of U.S. involvement in the Arab world over the last 50years. The situation in Israel is only a small, though very visible, part of the story: our support for anti-democratic regimes among moderate Arab states (including Iran, prior to the Islamic revolution) is a largely unmentioned, though equally important part. Our support for bin Laden himself, and the fanatics now ruling Afghanistan, is another. Now dont get me wrong. The responsibility for these acts rests entirely with those who planned and performed them: that people...
...understand is not to condone, and while the attack we witnessed is undoubtedly horrible, it’s not beyond our capacity to begin to try and comprehend how a person can become so lost as to commit these unspeakable crimes. If we refuse to try and understand, if we simply deny the humanity of these terrorists, then we will never be able to have a chance at truly being able to stop them. New generations motivated by the same emotions will emerge, and while we can continue to increase our security, there’s no guarantee that...
During the walk I looked up whenever I had a view of the towers, my mind struggling to comprehend what I was seeing. I saw pieces of paper floating from the holes in the towers. They looked like confetti emerging from a giant, flaming black hole...