Human Worth revisited

[Quotable "reduced" image here]

I think quite a bit about which quote to post first in each of these DoubleQuotes, generally wanting to close with the more forceful and unexpected twist, but also happy to open with the more surprising opening (the hook, as writers call it). Sometimes those two preferences agree with one another, sometimes they are in conflict -- and maybe you the reader's sense of which would be which might be different from mine, because the zing you get from the resonance between them may not be the same zing I get.

What's the striking contrast, what's the relevant parallelism here?

I can see thes etwo quotes as expressing a contrast between the US paying compensation to unfortunate victims of war, and the Saudis (and Saddam, back then) paying the families of deceased terrorists (victims and killers, respectively).

I can also see them as offering a parallel between the Palestinian suicide bomber who may sign up partly for the payment his family will receive, and the enraged Iraqi who has come to "await compensation from God to kill all of you in Iraq" in response to the death of his family -- two valuations of human life, each of which drives people to take up arms in the Islamist cause.

But what strikes me most clearly here is one simple sentence, spoken in shock: a question. Neither the Americans nor Saddam and the Saudis come out of these events with the logic of their respective civilizations intact, it seems to me, and I am far from endorsing the man's decision "to kill all of you" -- but that single, appalled, first question of his rings true for me as a question we might all want to ask:

Is this the logic of your civilization?