[Brabuster67]

Yes we have and continue to endure much pain from this whole tragic affair.  For those of us born after WW2, this is the first taste of collective suffering on a large scale.  Well yes if you belong to that 10% of the world's popoulation that inhabit the prosperous western world.  For the remainder the loss of a mere 5000 souls is but a drop in the ocean.  So please as your contemplate spare a thought for the millions of impoverished people around the globe who die every year from preventable cause and who do not have the financial might of the the world's most wealthy nation to help the children and families of loved ones lost.

On a final point let us point that George W is circumspect in ploting revenge - remember that violence begets violence which is exactly what the terrorists are trying to achieve.

[Brabuster67]

An thought provoking and educational perspective from an Afghan American:

I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age". Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing innocent people; people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done."

And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing.

I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York. I agree that something must be done about those monsters.

But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country.

Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban.
We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that.

New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide. Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time

So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West.

And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants. That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the west wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong, in the end the west would win, whatever that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?

This is heavy stuff.  Like Chelsea's huge fake tits, which are the best.

[BillN]

From the "better late than never" department:

I put this together last week.  If you are not on a high speed network you should download the file and then play it.  You will need Real Player.  I hope you enjoy it.

BillN
http://video.gatech.edu:8080/ramgen/BillNaivar/GodBless.rm

[Trace]

The gentleman caught between two worlds has a very good, very sobering, very disturbing point.

One of my classmates at {name removed} asked me if I would be able to walk a mutual friend to her car from the school building - because this woman, kind, smart, devout, wears traditional garb that makes her a target.  We're worried about her being able to get to her car without harm coming to her.

And on the other hand, I could name a dozen people who were there - STANDING ON GROUND ZERO - when the attacks took place.  One person so traumatized by seeing the falling bodies hitting the pavement like so much overripe fruit that she may never be able to go to the city again.  Another who was caught in the wave as the Towers collapsed.

And then I heard about protestors in Washington, unveiling the old chant: "one, two, three, four, we don't want your {unintelligible} war!"

Do I want a war?  Cripes, if I could have lived my whole life without seeing this country in another war, I would have loved it.  But every day I come back from school, I look out my passenger-side window and see a hole in the financial district.  Friends traumatized.  A co-worker whose nephew was on 102 when the first strike hit - couldn't go down so he went up to 110 - and was caught in the collapse.

They found his body in the first few days.  His grandmother keeled over at his funeral and died shortly thereafter.

One, two, three, four, I don't want this freakin' war.  But I don't want to be marked for murder the rest of my life just for being an American, either.

I don't see that I've got a choice anymore.

One thing I think: the Taliban, al-Qaeda, the other groups that take murder of unsuspecting innocents and turn it into a holy cause, wherever they may be - we have to show them for the monsters they are.  By a lot of interpretations of Islam, they've perverted the teachings of the Koran, defiled their religion.

We, as civilized people across the world, have to make sure that when the dividing line is drawn, Islam the religion is on the same side as all the other groups that united in horror.  The monsters must be isolated, spiritually, financially, politically, and in any other way that can be done, from the rest of the world.

Then - there's no choice in the matter, not anymore - they've got to be wiped from the face of the Earth.  One way or another.

And then comes the hardest part: we must all, every one of us, be vigilant from now to the end of time, to prevent the sort of injustices that can give rise to such insane hatred and give it such horrific power.

Of course, all this is just my opinion.

Trace

[**DONOTDELETE**]

An intelligent, well informed opinion at that. Enough said.

Marie

[Noble Sword]

Here! Here!