Can't fault your reasonable position on this kind of thing, Amos, but try explaining it to the thousands of fiery-eyed young men in the streets of Pakistan and numerous other Islamic countries who are ready to go out and kill American soldiers...if given the opportunity.

I wouldn't want to try and explain it to them. They grew up with a different set of assumptions.

Look at it this way...in one society (a poor one, with quite limited resources) you get a guy who's willing to pilot a plane into a building or blow himself up with a bomb in a shopping mall full of people.

In another society (a rich, high-tech one) you get a professional soldier who is willing to press a button (if given the order) and incinerate a city full of people with a nuclear missile. Those who have high tech weapons of mass destruction do not need to hide bombs in their clothing or hijack civilian aircraft in order to wreak havoc on a large scale.

Both actions are insane, and indicate ignorance of a higher Truth, which is that we are all One...that one human being is intrinsically as valuable as another (i.e. "All men are created Equal"...remember who said that?)

But both actions are seen as doing one's proper and sworn "duty" by a person who cannot comprehend that we are all One.

So, pretty well everyone ends up doing, at the end of the day, what he thinks is "right", given his level of awareness.

That doesn't mean that I think that you should think what he does is right. Or that I think it's right.

But it certainly is tragic, isn't it?

Since I see how tragic it is, my solution is not to do it myself (I mean, me personally...I can't speak for other people).

And yes, there are times when a military response is pretty much unavoidable. But when will the world address the originating causes of all this conflict? Until that happens, conflict will simply go on and on, and more innocent people will die.

Everyone keeps reacting to the symptoms, but they WILL NOT treat the illness that caused the symptoms in the first place. That illness being: poverty, hugely unequal distribution of wealth and resources, hoarding of power and the benefits of power worldwide in the hands of a chosen few. Unfortunately, the financial system which runs this world has no intention of altering the status quo, because the ones who are in a position to alter it are the ones who most benefit from maintaining it.

In a town where everyone already has enough to eat, who will bother to steal a loaf of bread? Let alone kill for it?

- LH