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Re: Miami Herald

okay, so i was preparing my argument to respond to
don's first response to my response (yes i just wrote
that on purpose), but it seems others have made my
point exactly (bad kelvin, no more reading my mind),
so take kelvin's indignance and later apology and
hazel's response as well smooshed together and coupled
with the following and you've got what i was thinking:


--- Don Smith <dasmith at rotse2_physics.lsa.umich.edu>
wrote: 
> If I understand you rightly, you are writing this
> not from your own point of
> view, but echoing the view that you perceive coming
> from the culture around us,
> right?  If so, then I agree, and that is what is
> breaking my heart.  That is
> what disturbs me about Bush's "good vs. evil"
> oversimplification.  People just
> don't get up in the morning and decide to be
> terrorists.  If we insist on
> pretending that they are irrational, inhuman, and
> beyond the pale, 

how else should we view such cowardly acts, don?

we will never solve the
> *causes* of terrorism, we
> will only respond to terror with terror, further
> perpetuating the cycle of
> violence, hatred, and horror.  Unless America really
> looks at our own
> culpability in acts of terror around the world, and
> makes changes to stop it,
> this will happen again.  

okay, i agree here, we as americans have not perfected
the act of perfection, but there is a standard.  a
standard of diplomacy, of war, of disagreeing, you got
a beef, you state it for the record and fight for it,
you don't incinerate thousands of people as they sit
in their cubicles.  we do not sit idly by in return,
in an attempt to purpetuate peace, simply because
violence should not be snuffed out by another type of
violence.  they have issues:  i understand this, they
rightly have a problem with us -- what they did
however, was open a mammoth can of worms, i cannot
help but think that this is a fight they deliberately
started.  these are crazy people, but they are not
stupid, what else did they think would happen?


As long as we support
> right-wing dictators, as long as
> American-made weapons kill innocent Palestinians

yes, and i use products from china everyday, this does
not mean i support the communist regime there.  i see
your point however.

, as
> long as we train people
> like Bin Laden violence is going to come back to us.
 Sure, we do
> good things in the world,
> too, but to pretend that we've done *nothing* to
> make someone this angry at us;
> that these people were *just* crazy, evil, madmen...
> that's not going to make
> the problem go away. How much
> longer is this going to go on????

don:  these were/are crazy, evil, madmen -- how else
can you explain someone with enough hatred to warp
scripture to justify their hate and to die with a
smile for their hatred??

here is a clue for them:  the world was not happy with
us before this -- the entire western world and most of
the middle east was pretty ticked at America's stand
for Isreal (another can of worms, please let's not
open it), this action however has completely alienated
them from the civilized world -- a world that
sympathized with them on sept. 10.

> Isn't this *exactly* what they were trying to say to
> *us* by what they did last Tuesday?

no.  they did not say this to us.  they didn't say a
FREAKING thing to us.  they spent months living here,
training here, they lived ON OUR SOIL and then bombed
the sh** out of us, they are not claiming
responsibility, they were not taking a stand for what
they believe is right because they still have not told
us what it was for, they acted out terror on us plain
and simple, with no warning, no debate, no political
channels and still no explanation.

"we must have done
> something bad; God is punishing
> us".  I disagree.  I don't even think it works as a
> motif in the Old Testament.

this is what i'm saying:  there is no one group
responsible for us w/ regards to the j.f./p.t.
statements -- this is what happens when the whole of
the world is separated from god by free will:  people
get mean.

>history is written by the winners

i don't consider myself a competitive person, but if
the winners write history, sign me up to be on the
winning side -- the only other option is eventual
annihilation.  

> Especially since Jesus trumped those cards in his
> teachings, anyway.  I don't
> hear much along the lines of "love those who hate
> you" and "turn the other
> cheek" coming from my national leaders right now.

do you really think christ was talking about something
of this mammoth proportion here?  and are we
forgetting that forgiving someone does not mean they
necessarily get off scot free?  the immediate
situation needs to be dealt with in manner that says
no more -- we can't hand out water treatment plants
and fertilizer in the form of aid at this point and
expect they'll stop terrorizing the world (yes world,
not just america).  i am not however saying there
isn't room for american to live and learn, so that
once the immediate is out of the way, the future is
smoother.

kindest regards,
liesel




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