Mike, I'm not underestimating the threat of terrorism, nor am I unmindful of the havoc and grief they have caused. What I am trying to get across to you is that, with you, the terrorists have won. Other than taking people to task for not being paralyzed by fear the way you seem to be, you offer no suggestions as to what we should do, other than "Be afraid! Be very afraid!"

Just what, exactly, do you expect me or anyone else on this thread to do about terrorism? Curl up in the corner in the fetal position? No thank you! I have a life to live and I'm going to live it. Other than maintaining the same kind of alertness for my own safety and the safety of those around me that I normally do, I don't see that I can do a helluva lot to stop terrorism. But I'll be damned if I'm going to let the fact that there are terrorists in the world rule my life and dictate what I do or don't do.

And as far as hating Bush is concerned, I don't hate Bush. But I think his foreign policy (and the foreign policy this country has had for decades) is the kind of thing that breeds terrorism. If you are essentially helpless, how can you fight back against a juggernaut like the United States, that has been cozy with and supportive of dictators, tyrants, and oppressive regimes in the Middle East for generations, exploiting those countries for their natural resources and taking geopolitical advantage of these alliances wherever it suits us to do so—including supporting Saddam Hussein in anything he wanted to do until he eventually got difficult to manage?

Or Israel. It has been said that an oppressed people, when they eventually get out from under oppression and attain power, begin to take on the characteristics of those who oppressed them. It appears to me that Ariel Sharon and his cohorts (and not all Israelis agree with their policies) are not interested in the Palestinians other than regarding them as a roadblock, and simply wanting to get rid of them, or at the very least, drive them into ghettos. Not unlike the way Jews were treated for centuries. So the Palestinians fight back in the only way they can. This has little to do with religion per se. It has to do with elitism and political control.

If religious fanaticism gets into it at all, it is being used to exploit both Islamic fundamentalists who are hell-bent on jihad and Christian Millennialists who want to bring about the Battle of Armageddon and hasten the Second Coming (part of the Christian Millennialist scenario involves the restoration of the "State of Israel" before Christ returns to separate the sheep from the goats and establish the Kingdom of God). But this whole thing is not really about religion. It's about world power and who's going to wield it. And it's not totally clear to me just how much the religious aspect of this influences and reinforces the actions of George W. Bush, but it's certainly in there. Note all the "Good vs. Evil" stuff he lards his speeches with. He's not just talking about "good guys" and "bad guys" here, he's talking about Good versus Evil in the Biblical sense.

The Bush administration with its pre-emptive war policy does absolutely nothing to win a "war on terrorism." It makes it far worse. Going after terrorists with whole armies is like my above analogy of trying to ward off wasps with a baseball bat. You destroy a lot of real estate, but you don't get the wasps. You just make them that much madder! Howard Dean was right when he said that the capture of Saddam Hussein doesn't make us any safer. Even if a whole bunch of people howled like scalded cats when he said it, he was still right.

The best I can do to fight terrorism is to work to change the regime in Washington, D.C. to one that is less dedicated to aggravating the situation and breeding terrorists. Our best hope of eliminating, or at least reducing terrorism is to alleviate the causes of the anger and frustration that fuels terrorism. Because you will never—ever—stop terrorism any other way! There are a couple of Democratic candidates who understand this. So that's where I concentrate my efforts.

But in the meantime, I am not going to cower and tremble.

Don Firth