Not so 'sailing' related but I got this in an email this afternoon:
<br>
<br>Pacifist Lesson
<br>
<br>What to do if you happen upon a peace rally by naive hemp-shirt-wearing
<br>college kids, to teach them why force is sometimes needed:
<br>
<br>1) Approach student talking about “peace” and saying there should be, “no
<br>retaliation.”
<br>
<br>2) Engage in brief conversation, ask if military force is appropriate.
<br>
<br>3) When he says “No,” ask, “Why not?”
<br>
<br>4) Wait until he says something to the effect of, “Because that would just
<br>cause more innocent deaths, which would be awful and we should not cause
<br>more violence.” Or “America has brought it on itself, given its imperialist
<br>actions and has angered the people of...”
<br>
<br>5) When he’s in mid sentence, punch him in the face as hard as you can.
<br>
<br>6) When he gets back up to punch you, point out that it would be a mistake
<br>and contrary to his values to strike you, because that would, “be awful and
<br>he should not cause more violence.” In addition, tell him that his “actions
<br>angered you and that he brought it on himself.”
<br>
<br>7) Wait until he agrees that he has pledged not to commit additional
<br>violence and that the reason you punched him was mostly his fault.
<br>
<br>8) Punch him in the face again, harder this time.
<br>
<br>Repeat steps 5 through 8 until they understand that sometimes it is
<br>necessary to punch back.
<br><br><br>[color:blue][b]Jake
<br>[color:blue][b]Nacra 5.2 (2112)
<br>[color:blue][b]Hobie 18 (???)

What this woman doesn't understand is that by her very freedom to stand up and criticize our country, she proves my salient point:
<br>That we have in the past, and stand ready in the future, to fight and die for her right to abuse us. By our 200 year old example, we have set the standard on this planet for tolerance of diverse viewpoints. Most of the countries she names in this article would execute her for her remarks, some for merely displaying her face, one for shouting in public.
<br>And BTW, the (American) Munroe Doctrine is mostly responsible for the independance of her country and its neighbors.
<br>
<br>Bray on.
<br>
<br>***********************
<br>
<br>
<br>Feminist's anti-U.S. speech causes uproar
<br>Hedy Fry jeered by opposition for sitting silent
<br>
<br>Peter O'Neil
<br>Vancouver Sun
<br>Tuesday, October 02, 2001
<br>
<br>OTTAWA -- A B.C. feminist told a cheering audience here that the United States government is more threatening to the world than international terrorism.
<br>
<br>Sunera Thobani received several standing ovations from about 500 delegates attending the Women's Resistance Conference on Monday.
<br>
<br>Her comments caused a political uproar, with opposition MPs condemning Secretary of State Hedy Fry for sitting silently as Thobani spoke. MPs called on the government to fire Fry, charging that she should have immediately condemned Thobani's statements.
<br>
<br>"Today in the world the United States is the most dangerous and the most powerful global force unleashing horrific levels of violence," said Thobani, a women's studies professor at the University of British Columbia and former head of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women.
<br>
<br>"From Chile to El Salvador to Nicaragua to Iraq, the path of U.S. foreign policy is soaked in blood."
<br>
<br>Thobani said she empathizes with the human suffering following the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania that left more than 6,000 people dead or missing. "But do we feel any pain for the victims of U.S. aggression?"
<br>
<br>In an interview with The Vancouver Sun Monday night, Thobani said her comments were directed at George Bush, not the American people.
<br>
<br>"I made a 40-minute speech. I provided a contest for those comments. I was basically advocating an end to war," she said.
<br>
<br>"If America wants to lead this war, then I'm against American foreign policy."
<br>
<br>In her speech, Thobani also ridiculed any suggestion that the U.S. would be advancing women's rights by ousting Afghanistan's Taliban regime, which has forbidden women from working, attending school, or showing their faces in public.
<br>
<br>"It's really interesting to hear this talk about saving Afghani women," she said. "Those of us who have been colonized know what this saving means."
<br>
<br>The Tanzanian-born Thobani became the first non-white president of the NAC in 1993, a position she held until 1996.
<br>
<br>As the outspoken leader of the NAC, Thobani created much controversy when she said in 1995 that only white, middle-class women had benefited from the feminist movement.
<br>
<br>Monday she said women will never be emancipated until the U.S. and the West stop dominating the world.
<br>
<br>"The West for 500 years has believed that it could slaughter people into submission and it has not been able to do so. And it will not be able to so this time, either."
<br>
<br>After Thobani's speech, opposition MPs said Fry, the Chretien government's secretary of state for multiculturalism and the status of women, who also delivered a speech at the conference and was on the podium while Thobani spoke, should have sent an immediate message that the speech went too far.
<br>
<br>"She should apologize to Canadians and our American cousins for not condemning these comments and walking out on this insulting and inflammatory speech," said Chuck Strahl, deputy leader of the Tory-Democratic Representative coalition.
<br>
<br>New Democratic Party leader Alexa McDonough, whose party was once a close ally of NAC's, said Fry should have offered "an unequivocal rejection of the kind of cheap sloganeering, of the excessive rhetoric.
<br>
<br>"This is a time to be building tolerance, to be building bridges, not to create greater divisions," McDonough said.
<br>
<br>Fry defended freedom of speech within Canada, but said she didn't applaud and immediately left the event after Thobani spoke.
<br>
<br>"I condemn that speech," the Vancouver Centre MP told jeering opposition MPs.
<br>
<br>"I thought the speech that was made by the expert of NAC to be incitement."
<br>
<br>Opposition MPs said Fry, who wrongly portrayed Prince George as a haven for cross-burning racists earlier this year, has made one too many blunders and must be fired.
<br>
<br>"The history of this minister is not a very happy one and I think it is time for a change," said Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day.
<br>
<br>McDonough said Fry doesn't have the credibility to travel across Canada and speak publicly against intolerance.
<br>
<br><br><br>

-thanks for the posts -
<br>
<br>-We can only hope that when the next terrorist attack occurs ,--like the plan uncovered to spray anthrax from a crop duster,--that it-isn't over one of their meetings .--
<br> -
<br>--In the article below ,-interview with Haq , who states a million people have been killed in Afganistan by the Taliban ,most likely including his wife and children .
<br> -A figurehead like this man could potentially rally the vast majority of Afgan people to eliminate the Taliban who obviously have greated an end to their own fate by helping export terrorism ,-and condemnation not only from nations around the world ,but millions against them in their held territories and evan own military regime .
<br>
<br>--article by Woodward -with Haq-
<br>
<br> -A commander of the Kabul front, he led his Mujahideen fighters in the first attacks on the Soviet-held capital.
<br>Today, at age 43, he is a big man with a gray beard and 16 war wounds, including a missing foot, blown off by a Soviet land mine.
<br>
<br>"I stepped on it because I was in the frontline," he said. "There was this tremendous explosion, no pain, and I didn't know what had happened until I saw my boot flying through the air with my leg in it."
<br>
<br>Preparing to Fight
<br>
<br>Now, more than a decade into retirement, Haq is preparing for another fight.
<br>
<br>Last week, after seeing the attacks in New York and Washington, he returned to Pakistan from self-exile in Dubai to gather his former, fellow commanders against the Taliban whom he says he now despises.
<br>
<br>"They don't give people rights," he said. "There's no human rights, there's no job, there's no food, there's no medicine, there's no activity and the only people that have rights is Talib."
<br>
<br>Rallying Defectors
<br>
<br>To defeat the Taliban, he says he has recruited tribal elders inside Afghanistan who are willing to fight with him, even some commanders in the Taliban army, he says, have promised to defect.
<br>
<br>Because he is Pashtun, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, he thinks most fighters will come over to his side instead of the Northern Alliance, which is dominated by ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks.
<br>
<br>"There are many people or commanders who are fighting with the Taliban not because they like the Taliban [but] because they are afraid of the Northern Alliance taking over," he says. "If they see another alternative coming then they will have no reason to stay fighting with the Taliban."
<br>
<br>Plan to Establish Democracy
<br>
<br>Haq's plan is to capture Kabul first with just a few thousand troops. He says he and his fellow commanders have weapons buried in the mountains inside Afghanistan that they can access quickly.
<br>
<br>Once Kabul is in his hands, he says he will bring in Afghanistan's former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah and convene a loya jirga, a traditional Afghan council, to lay the groundwork for a new, democratic government.
<br>
<br>He does not want a monarchy.
<br>
<br>"I think in the present situation, the people in Afghanistan would like to see him as somebody who unites the nation, who brings the country together as a fatherly figure and have a loya jirga and decide right there what the people want," Haq said. "Most Afghan people probably don't want to go back to have royalty and kings and things; they want to move forward and have a democratic type of system."
<br>
<br>Haq is not alone in his desire to remove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan.
<br>
<br>Pakistan's border cities seem to be filled with former fighters hoping to return to fight with or against the Taliban.
<br>
<br>Haq is the best-known former commander to emerge yet and he has the blessing of the exiled king.
<br>
<br>The biggest obstacle Haq says would be an American attack.
<br>
<br>"If they just go bomb, kill, shoot these people that have nothing to do with that, this will make many people upset," he said. "And you will create thousands of bin Ladens. My advice to the U.S. government is let the Afghans to do it."
<br>
<br>Personal Battle
<br>
<br>For Haq the fight is partly personal.
<br>
<br>Two years ago while he was working to create a more moderate government in Afghanistan, professional assassins climbed over the wall around his house and killed his wife and 11-year-old son. The police never caught the killers.
<br>
<br>"Only one thing I can say; it was done through professional people because they cut off the electricity," he said. "They cut off the telephone systems and they went in within a few minutes, and they fired this silencer or used silencer weapons, and the way it was done it was through very professional people."
<br>
<br>Although he will not speculate on who sent the assassins, a 1999 U.S. State Department report suggests it was probably the Taliban, as part of a widespread campaign to silence dissident voices.
<br>
<br>"My wife and my son are probably one of the one million, one-and-half-million people who died in this country. Whatever I do, of course I care, I love my family, but more than anything my country and my people are important because if I make my country safe, everybody will be safe."
<br>
<br>Haq admits he was much more comfortable living far from Afghanistan with his children in Dubai.
<br>
<br>"But psychologically something was missing," he said. He dreams of the day he takes back Kabul again.
<br>
<br>The last time he did that the country erupted into war. This time he says it will be different.
<br> <br><br>

an attractive woman in my neighbourhood was assaulted and raped a while ago. every one felt sorry and outraged. after a while, people started to say that she dressed provocativly and acted like a tramp and she deserved what she got.
<br> that is what is happening here. people are comming along and saying that the u.s. deserved what it got on the 11th. what a crock. it does not matter what the u.s. has done, what has happened is wrong and those who did it must be brought to justice.<br><br>

Good point, BC,
<br>
<br>My wife liked it, too. <br><br>

it is the same idea.
<br> i hope you guys go in to whereever these, and all, terrorists are and kick their butts. but the right butts and that is going to be the hard thing. it is easy to go after people in a uniform, but these ***** could be the guy at the 7-11 or driving cab or ..... any one. that is the scary part. good luck and god ( your, mine, his or her) bless.
<br> bc<br><br>

i am a pacifist, and if i got punched in the face i would call the police and have the thug who hit me arrested for assault. violence is an infantile response to misunderstanding.<br><br>marsh hawk

The perpetrators deserve punishment. Errors will cost too much. This war must be fought more with inteligence resources then with arms.
<br>
<br>Why? Because there is one BIG difference between hitting someone in the face and terrorism - > you can usually see who is hitting your face.
<br>
<br>Now following a different line of thought:
<br>In the suggested "lesson", if you hit the guy's face and instead of calling the police, he bombs your entire neighborhood, the lesson will revert and you will be forced to accept a good 'pacifist' reason - > not escalating.
<br>
<br>Conclusions:
<br>1-Pacifism certainly does not 'feel' apropriate, retaliation does 'feel' apropriate and it is difficult to escape from emotional decisions in this kind of situation.
<br>2-You can drive others into highly emotional reactions.
<br>3-All this does not mean that emotional reactions, even when so difficult to avoid, are the right ones.<br><br>Luiz

i am not quite a pasifist but i abhor violence. unfortunatly, when all else has failed, it is the only response. these guys are not your normal thugs. they have guns and bombs and all kinds of krap to make life horrible. they MUST be stopped.<br><br>

uuhh....O.K. - but who are the "police" we are supposed to call given the event in N.Y.?
<br>
<br>In the scale of things, this is the top of the political / government food chain. There are no "police". There's no higher authority to come arrest the terrorists.<br><br>[color:blue][b]Jake
<br>[color:blue][b]Nacra 5.2 (2112)
<br>[color:blue][b]Hobie 18 (???)

given the scenerio I stated above, what would you do if there were no police to call?<br><br>[color:blue][b]Jake
<br>[color:blue][b]Nacra 5.2 (2112)
<br>[color:blue][b]Hobie 18 (???)

Wouter<br><br>

Wouter<br><br>

That is a very good question!
<br>
<br>First a "formal" response:
<br>
<br>The UN, the international justice court in the Netherlands (it has another name I can’t remember), the NATO and many other international organizations are there to be activated exactly in these cases.
<br>
<br>This is exactly what the US government correctly did, and received full support - but international news barely reach the internal US scenario right now.
<br>
<br>It is important to understand here that there are international treaties, regulations and laws of many kinds and for many different purposes. I am not a lawyer, but I understand that all of them are above countries' constitutions and laws. (at least that is what a lawyer told me)
<br>
<br>The "community of nations" stands over each individual nation and (at least theoretically) is the police of nations.
<br>
<br>The US is not the world police and shall never accept this role - especially in self-defense. The problem with even looking like doing that is exactly the same of a policeman doing justice with its own hands, etc. etc.
<br>
<br>Now my opinion:
<br>
<br>That formal answer is the way things are supposed to be organized in the world, but the described system is a lot more conceptual then practical. It is far from being perfect and individual nations are frequently "granted" the "rights" to engage in war as a means of self defense (as is this case) or defending "global interests". In the end the real interests are frequently economic and "justice" merely a negotiation tool.
<br>
<br>The problem here is the same as with any democracy: the majority decides. There is no guaranty that the majority is right and the minority wrong. One person may be right and the whole world wrong. Just as an example: it happens every time a human being discovers something new that contradicts a general belief in any area.
<br>
<br>So what is the problem with democracy inside a country or between countries? The problem is the inherent assumption that human beings know what they are doing and are voting to the "best" and "right" side. None of us is perfect and sometimes we all act "wrong" or "bad" - individually, collectively or as countries.
<br>
<br>Am I against democracy? NO! It is the best system found to date. But it still has weak points and hopefully we will perfect it.
<br>
<br>Am I against the described system? NO! But it is definitely not an adequate "police" or "justice" system.
<br>
<br>Still, following the rules and the system makes a very good public statement of the fact that the US is right and terrorists wrong. This is one more thing to differentiate from each other. Violence alone would make such distinction much more difficult – and who would benefit from that?
<br>
<br>Just my opinion.<br><br>Luiz

Luiz,
<br>
<br>Other name for the interational court of justice is "The Peace Palace" (If I remember it correctly)
<br>
<br>Is anyone noticing the latest trend in the developments. Here in the EU attention is focussing on the Saudi connection. This was inspired by the fact that apparently 14 of the 19 hijackers were Saudies (in origin) and that were training themself in the USA. They took fighting lessons. Now why would they do that when they were in a Bin Laden camp ? Taking these lessns would only increase "discovery change".
<br>
<br>Ofcourse this is a theories (with quite a few good arguments) but is never the less very remarkable that Saudi Arabia seemed to have been the best recruiting ground for these WTC groups. This is forgotten in the picture or maybe it is made to be forgotten. Saudi Arabia is the only country in that region after Israel were the west hasa foothold.
<br>
<br>Wouter
<br><br><br>

The good news is, I actually value your position, and would defend your right to express it.
<br>
<br>Great power must be wed to great conscience, for the mighty to be more than mere bullies.
<br>
<br>You, you pacifists, are our 'conscience' in this thing. We're *supposed* to healthily debate this - - since Plato, serious thinkers have recognized that the dialogue, or 'dialectic' as his first translations into English called it, is the most effective tool for bringing to light all aspects of a problem under consideration.
<br>
<br>So you matter. You're wrong on this one, but it matters that you speak up.
<br>
<br>Please ask yourself, does your logic arise to defend your pre-existing beliefs, or do your beliefs arise, newborn, out of carefully examined logical analysis?
<br>
<br>One clue, if you were of pacifist inclination before this event, it's likely your beliefs preceeded your latest logical constructions.
<br>
<br>Definition: "Rationalization - - a system of logical or rhetorical arguments designed for the express purpose of justifying preexisting beliefs or desires."
<br>
<br>The bad news is, you're wrong on this one.
<br>
<br>What "police" should America call? The 'sovereign' nation of Afghanistan has abdicated responsibility for the actions of Osama. The UN has done nothing in the past. We called NATO; fat lot of 'protection' we're getting there.
<br>
<br>In this case, the "police" are non-exixtent, have conflicts-of-interest, or don't much care to get involved.
<br>
<br>Wouter, what about my 'mugging' analogy? Aren't you allowed to struggle with your attacker while yelling for help? And if help is slow in coming, are you not allowed to continue to struggle? And if your attacker vows, convincingly, (let's say, he's attacked you 3 times before) to attack you again, then what? Must you allow him to wander off into the crowd, while he plans his next attack?
<br>
<br>Are you never justified in ending this threat to your person?
<br>
<br>Didn't we try ignoring him over the Cole? Didn't we try a slap on the wrist oveer the Embassy bombings? Yup, your plan worked brilliantly.
<br>
<br>Our "police" have let us down, so hey, we're going to do the job ourselves, while submitting our actions, as transparently as operational security allows, to judgement and scrutiny. From the UN< to the 'free speech' of a bunch of er... ahem ... citizens like yourself, our neighbors and citizens must do the duty ascertaining the existance of proper restraint, just cause, compelling evidence etc etc.
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>Ed Norris<br><br>

Understanding the fundamentalist mindset is key ,-
<br>-vision themselves like so many others before ,as being world dominant ,--the Saudi link is Biny's influence over these extremists in his homeland , a small minority .
<br>-
<br>--Saudi Arabia has been a good friend and ally to the U S .
<br> Note that bINY has been dis owned by his family -he has some 40 relatives with the same last name living in the U S ,Boston area -one Harvard law attourney that publically denounced him in the news recently .
<br>--Currently much more interested in who will defeat the Talib and take over Afghanistan ---The Northern Alliance ,--or most likely others that better represent the majority like Haq,-now trying to set alliances militarily and politiacally within the country .
<br>
<br>-this article on Biny sums your question up best --
<br>
<br>-Osama's Endgame
<br>His aims are clear--to expel the U.S. from the Islamic world and unite Muslims in one empire
<br>BY LISA BEYER
<br>
<br> Printable Version
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>1 | 2
<br>
<br>COURTESY OF AL-JAZEER/AP
<br>He's No Fool: Bin Laden, with lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri, has a well-articulated plan of action
<br>
<br>
<br>There is a word that gets attached to elusive international villains. The word is shadowy. Carlos the Jackal was shadowy. Abu Nidal was shadowy. One of the novelties of Osama bin Laden is that he is hardly shadowy at all. There is little mystery about bin Laden's life except his precise whereabouts now. For a terrorist ringleader, he has given a remarkable number of interviews. He has even played host at a press conference. Bin Laden has talked articulately about his history, his outlook, his strategy to defeat the U.S. What he hasn't told journalists he has laid out in fairly eloquent treatises. While the world was surprised by what bin Laden or his associates did on Sept. 11, it cannot be surprised by his intentions. These have been made clear for years by his many pronouncements.
<br>
<br>What's He After?
<br>Bin Laden's ambitions in the short run are plain. His first goal is to compel the U.S. to withdraw its military forces (today numbering 6,000) from his native Saudi Arabia. The presence of foreign troops in the cradle of Islam is, for him, "the latest and the greatest" of all infidel aggressions against the religion in its 14-century history. By their very presence, he believes, the U.S. forces defile the Muslim holy land. "Now infidels walk everywhere on the land where Muhammad was born and where the Koran was revealed to him," he lamented to TIME in a 1998 interview.
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<br>Graphic: The 19 hijackers
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<br>Because the U.S. troops are in Saudi Arabia at the invitation of the Saudi government, which was frightened into the move by a threat of invasion by Iraq's Saddam Hussein in 1990, the Saudi regime, says bin Laden, "is fully responsible" for their presence. Thus he has called on his countrymen to overthrow the House of Saud. Still, he has targeted his attacks not on the rulers but on the Americans, noting that "the American enemy is the main cause of the situation."
<br>
<br>To bin Laden, the U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia are the worst but not the only manifestation of U.S. ill will. Asked by CNN in 1997 whether their withdrawal would appease him, he said no. The holy war will not stop, he said, until the U.S. "desist[s] from aggressive intervention against Muslims in the whole world." Bin Laden counts as unacceptable the American military presence in other Arab states, including Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. He is offended by continued U.S. sanctions against Iraq as well as Syria, Sudan, Libya and Iran. And he objects to America's substantial support of Israel, which he considers a partner to the U.S. in a "Jewish-Crusader" conspiracy against Muslims.
<br>
<br>Bin Laden stretches his definition of American aggression further. He blames the U.S. for the killing of Bosnian Muslims by Christian Serbs because of a U.N. arms embargo against Bosnia until 1994. He even counts in this category the 1992-94 mission by U.S. troops to mostly Muslim Somalia as part of a U.N. effort to assist a famine-starved population caught between battling warlords. In bin Laden's book, the troop landing was simply a show of force by the U.S. "to scare the Muslim world, saying that it is able to do whatever it desires." He asked, "How can we believe your claims that you came to save our children in Somalia while you kill our children in all those [other] places?"--meaning Iraq, Bosnia and, through the Israelis, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.
<br>
<br>And Then What?
<br>After the infidels have been expelled from the land of Islam, bin Laden, like other Islamic radicals, foresees the overthrow of current regimes across the Muslim world and the establishment of one united government strictly enforcing Shari'a, or Islamic law. This vision harks back to the age of the caliphs, the successors to Muhammad who ruled Islam's domain from the 7th century to the 13th. What might a caliphate look like today? In bin Laden's view, it would look something like the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which he has praised as "among the keenest to fulfill [Allah's] laws." Bin Laden may imagine himself to be a potential new caliph. One of the titles he uses is "emir," which means ruler. However, he swears allegiance to (and thereby ranks himself below) the Taliban ruler, Mullah Mohammed Omar, so whatever political ambitions bin Laden may have are not yet on display.
<br>
<br>Some bin Laden watchers speculate that he particularly has his eye on Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, as they possess, respectively, 25% of all proven oil reserves and the Islamic world's only known nuclear bomb. Bin Laden has referred to the Saudi oil fields as "a large economic power essential for the soon-to-be-established Islamic state." Asked by TIME in 1998 about reports that he was trying to acquire nuclear and chemical weapons, he replied, "If I seek to acquire these weapons, I am carrying out a duty. It would be a sin for Muslims not to try to possess the weapons that would prevent the infidels from inflicting harm on Muslims."
<br>
<br>But for bin Laden, the game is not as simple as taking Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Says Daniel Benjamin, a former National Security Council staff member now writing a book on religious terror: "He is looking for a world in which Islam regains the dominant role, and naturally that would include oil and nukes. But to say it's about oil and nukes suggests it's not a metaphysical struggle, which it is for him. He thinks this is a big moral battle in which he's got Allah's sanction to attack the West." In a 1996 proclamation, bin Laden asked, "O Lord, shatter their gathering, divide them among themselves, shake the earth under their feet and give us control over them."
<br><br><br>

Wouter, there you go again!
<br>
<br>More half thought out logic, coupled with more facts out of context!.
<br>
<br>1. Osama, or Usama, as the newsies are now spelling it, was thrown out of Saudi Arabia by the government, basically for rabble rousing, and his network of fundamentalists in that country remains active - - so naturally he will have recruits from there.
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<br>2. You remark... "Saudi Arabia is the only country in that region after Israel were the west has a foothold. " Yes, and? Is the lawfull government of Soudi Arabia not allowed to have relations with other soverign nations? I remind you that the Kingdom *INVITED* us to leave a garrison in place to protect them from Iraq. They also expressly required the US *NOT* to eliminate Saddam. This was for a variety of reasons, ranging from inter-monarchical respect, to a fear of the religious majority in Iraq, which might well be a worse neighbor than Saddam's Ba-ath minority.
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<br>For the record, the author ot "Osama bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War On America" who is also a MId-East expert heading the US anti-terrorism task force, points out something of interrest:
<br>In his opinion, this isn't truly about the US. Closely paraphrased, his remarks to CNN last night were:
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<br>After remarking that Osama's true goal is the destabilation and eventual overthrow of the Governments of Pakistan and Soudi Arabia by the growing Fundamentalist movement, he said,
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<br>Remember this is theatre, gruesome, horrible theatre, but theatre nonetheless. And it is more about a dialogue between Islamic people and the leaders of Soudi Arabia and Pakistan than it is about the US. When a new dimension is needed in that dialogue, they will bring about a new atrocity, and not in any direct response to US actions.
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<br>Don't you get it, guys? We lost a round of tactics on 9/11; Osama predicted, as any idiot could, precisely how America would react - - with outrage and unity, as all attacked nations do. (I Editorialized 2 weeks ago to this point, by the way, this isn't hindsight on my part) Anyone could predict our reaction, Osama's been courting it for years, gradually buiding up the outrageousness of his actions in measured increments until we did what he wanted - - terrorism is an old art in his part of the world, this kind of thinking is second nature to him.. as much as it seems arcane and mysterious to the rest of us.
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<br>So what did he hope to gain? What *STRATEGY* was furthered by Osama's *tactic* on 9/11?
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<br>Look around. Osama's stated objective is a 'united nation of Islam' Pakistan and Soudi Arabia are caught in a vise of Osama's making - - they're pressed, hard, by the West on one side to opppose Osama, and by their own sub-populations to support him.
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<br>So much for Osama's strategy, and his tactical victory.
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<br>We keep going around on the US strategy, and how that should dictate her tactics.
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<br>Our long term goal is the end of terrorism, by means consonant with the dictates of our own conscience, as personified by intellectuals, ethicists, and yes, pacifists at home and abroad.
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<br>To that end, all that we can do is to defend ourselves at home, apprehend and punish perpetrators, and treat the innocent as fairly as possible, given that the guilty hide among them.
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<br>We are, and have been for years, feeding the people ravaged by Osama's protectors, the Taliban.
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<br>Ultimately, all we can do is get the bad guys, be nice to the good guys, and as new bad guys show up, get them too.
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<br>50 years of cold war have convinced the wanna-be's that the superpowers are helpless. The paradigm shift has slipped by them - - Russia is no longer super, China is yet to become so, and anyway, China is as troubled by violent Islamic Fundamentalism as we are, to judge by yesterday's accords with the US.
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<br>As horrifying as it is to imagine, this could quite possibly end with the deaths of millions of innocent poor, whose only crime was to believe the lies of their exploiters - - and, of course, to seek to take life in payment for their poverty. (This last is a crucial distinction, usually overlooked by apologists for the misdeeds of the unfortunate. At some crucial point, some of them listen to the exhortatioins of their exploiters, and set out to harm others, and some of them remain aware of their own moral compasses. Be he man or Son of God, Jesus' message was threatening to the authorities in the MIddle east precisely for this reason: He told the poor not to revenge themselves on their oppressors, and thus rendered his converts immune to use by the usual persuasions of the mighty.)
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<br>Sooner or later, the Islamic Fundamentalists will stop viewing the West as a fire best extinguished by pouring on gasoline then jumping into it. I sincerely hope they discover that sooner, rather than later. I am horrified to be that fire, but, to use a defense as old and as irrefutable as violence itself; after all, they started it.
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<br>Some times, as seductive as it may be to want to be the 'deep thinker' who comes up with 'counter-intuitive solutions,' sometimes, it really is as simple as that.
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<br>Ed Norris<br><br>

... the article supports everything I"m saying.
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<br>Do you want to live in Osama's world, or Amerca's?
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<br>Freedom of speech, religion, assembly, the press etc, or
<br>death-for-shaving?
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<br>It's not a tough choice, for me. But maybe you lived under Soviet rule too long to value your freedom?
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<br>Ed Norris<br><br>