Thank you for such a reasonable post - and to the many others I have read on this list the past couple of days. I myself am too much of a hot head and always react poorly to pain. Only when my pain my more manageable does my reason come back to me. A crisis likes this can bring out the best or the worst in people, and I know myself, that my initial reactions usually bring out the worst in myself. We can all be forgiven for our initial reactions. When cooler heads prevail, may our country's leaders, news media and people react in a way that does not continue to degrade humanity. Carol Beigel Quote from Bill Ballard: >Nothing like a hateful act to bring out a hateful response. Actually, >in the long view of it, this is a historical tide of power. Whoever >the perpetrators are, they have skillfully used our strength (besides >an unstoppable economy, a high-speed transportation infra structure) to their own advantage. This is not a new kind of war, although its effectiveness has been sharpened to surgical grade. The French didn't win in Indochina, we didn't either. Nor have the British in Northern Ireland. The Israelis are getting ground down by their unending state of war. Humanity has never won these wars of the indigenous against their invaders, because war is the wrong response. The conflict between the fundamentalists and the civil, prosperous industrialized countries resembles, on a smaller scale, crime seeping into an upscale neighborhood. Crime is simply a means of rapidly transferring wealth. The good people of the town bring to bear on the police constabulary to "git tuff" on crime. The police quite effectively oblige, at the cost of even hungrier and more resentful criminal outcasts. The fundamentalist extremists of course have God on their side (~don't we all). If we have anything to fear it's far more than an individual Bin Laden, it's the possibility of all the outcasts in the world (the narco-trafficers, the islamic extremists, the IRA, the Indonesians) forming their own network and dividing up the world. Instead, the US should lead in the defense of moral and civil behavior among nations. The revulsion against this brutal and barbaric attack is global, and ready to move. But in doing so, this country should be an example of moral and civil behavior. Our own instant focus on Bin Laden is misplaced; most non-western nations see it as the same old same old. Where were we during the butchery of Bosnia, East Timor or Rwanda. Our focus on Bin Laden also removes a fundamental stone in our legal system, the presumption of innocence. What we need now is the kind of quiet intelligence work that the Israelis have gotten so good at, not the commotion of a cowboy. What's more, our indictments of the individuals and countries need to be flawless. So, in its response to this outrage the US needs to perform well, if we are to get anything near the coalition we had going into the Gulf War. But if we see it is a war, we'll never win. The advanced nations are too vulnerable because of technological infrastructures built on political stability (like tall buildings which can ordinarily count on not being run into by airplanes). Instead we must steadfastly insist on a civilized response to this, one which serves as an example of the rewards of political stability for the people and governments among whom these terrorists live. It's a hard sell, and I can see why this country might prefer to shoot bullets at these people rather than tell them how they'll benefit from a peaceful world. If anyone uses the word war, they use it for their own emotional purposes, not because it is a long-term winning strategy. But oh God, what horrific destruction, and murder of people. Those twin towers went down quicker than the Titanic, and crushing with it what I hear is the daily number of people, 40-50K. End of sermon. Bill Ballard RPT NH Chapter, P.T.G.
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