By God, what a cheerful thread. Ugh.

Troll - I wish I had a neat and simple solution as to how we should proceed. I don't. I am simply observing the usual process of reaction and counter-reaction that fuels war and hatred and commenting on it.

I do have theoretical world-wide solutions which would solve all the existing problems...but believe me, there is NO CHANCE that the forces running this society would even consider them at this point! Not a hope in hell. I think there would have to be a level of destruction never seen before on this planet before those solutions would be given serious consideration, and maybe not even then.

Like I said before, they do not believe in equality, they believe in victory. And they do not believe in unity, they believe in division. And most of their citizenry believes likewise...so people tend to get the governments they deserve, often as not.

People in general are still not ready for a genuinely enlightened approach to society on this planet.

But...we have been inching in that direction by small degrees, century after century...so in the long run I remain hopeful.

The long run is a very long run indeed, I'm afraid, and our ability to produce weapons of mass destruction has unfortunately outstripped our ability to achieve human unity most of the time.

If I was Bush, I would tone down the grandiose rhetoric some, and proceed very cautiously and judiciously before pusuing a military conflict with anyone. Once a war starts, it takes on a momentum of its own which tends to eclipse the original reasons which led to the decision...and it usually sows the seeds of further conflict.

The terrorists were willing to wait 5 years or more to put their plans into action. Americans should also be willing to employ patience and careful judgement before rushing into some unfortunate act of war.

In regards to Bush, he's shown better judgement so far than I frankly would have expected him to.

- LH