My hope, perhaps unrealistic, is with the role China could potentially play as a stabilizing force, provided they see the opportunity and are prepared to seize it. If they are really paying close attention to the Middle East, and if they perhaps have a better insight into the culture and the paradigm(s) that inform both the Mid-East and central Asia than does the USA, they have the potential to provide a major counterbalance to the West, especially the USA, and to do it in a way that is not completely 'cold war confrontational.' Russia does not quite have the strength, the subtlety or the stability itself to do that. It can be a stumbling block for the USA, but no more than that. China truly does have the capacity to 'stop the bully' that our government has become in the world.

    Maybe I just can't face that the unthinkable is about to happen, and that my country will have been a major, if not the primary, source of such a world disaster.

    And in the meantime, what do we say to our young sons and daughters, and how can we do what we can to protect ourselves from the potential holocaust to come. How do we face the real potential that the destruction that we have fostered on the everday lives of people elsewhere in the world may be about to be visited upon us.

    All I really understand or care about is the currency of everyday lives.

Janie