Amos - I read that article by the Indian author, Arundhati Roy, and I'd say it's about the most realistic analysis of the situation I've seen yet.

"American people ought to know that it is not them but their government's policies that are so hated" (in much of the third world population)

And it is not their democratic freedoms that draw attack upon them, but the lack of those freedoms and the lack of even a decent level of existence in the third world that do so. Terrorism is driven by feelings of despair and inequality and powerlessness. Those who cannot afford to arm and maintain effective conventional forces capable of fighting a superpower or a regional power will resort to cheaper and more covert methods of attack...as the Irish did again and again against the British Empire...as the Palestinians do against Israel...or pick any number of other examples throughout world history.

Only one thing can end these struggles...and that one thing is NOT "victory". (Victory is temporary, and is the conceit of the short-sighted.)

That one thing is equality. If you treat people in the world with equality, then you end their despair. Equality means starting all people off with a reasonably equal chance in life no matter where or among whom they happen to have been born. That involves food, housing, education, transportation, medicine, trade, political and social freedoms...the whole ball of wax.

No one has even attempted to do that yet on a worldwide scale, because our world is still functioning kind of like the Wild West did, the USA being the biggest "ranch" at the moment, with the most guns.

It would require a completely different economic and political theory than our present dominant ones in order to do so. (i.e. to do things in order to achieve the best social result for all people concerned, rather than in order to make the biggest short term profit for a few who are already doing very well indeed...at the expense of the rest).

We are still, in fact, living by survival of the fittest (meaning...the richest and most well armed nations and individuals). That is a gangster/robber baron philosophy. It's a philosophy worthy of animals in nature (who are innocent), but not worthy of human beings (who know too much to be innocent).

Genuine spiritual communities are marked by the fact that all members share equally on a material level. Our whole world population ought to attempt to do the same.

But that is a concept so large and so revolutionary that our leaders have not had either the will or the guts to take it on yet, although they might pretend they believe in equality when they make speeches.

They don't. They believe in victory. They intend to achieve peace through force and through fear, rather than to achieve equality through sharing. And most of their citizenry will back them up on that.

Gandhi believed in equality, and he got shot by one who believed merely in victory. Had more opened their hearts and listened to what Gandhi was offering them, India would not have been partitioned, and a great many lives would have been saved. Equality is always possible, but it's not easy. It takes greater courage than war and far greater powers of vision.

- LH