Ocrober 9, 2001: An al-Qaida spokesman repeated Osama Bin Laden's Sunday calls for all Muslims to fight the U.S., and his praise for the World Trade Center and Pentagon hijackers and then threatened more of the same by stating, "The Americans must know that the storm of airplanes will not stop, and there are thousands of young people who look forward to death like the Americans look forward to living."

I think this makes a good case for handling the force problem first and the belief or dialogue problem second.

I also think that the approach of the West to the issues of Palestine, Israel and other Middle Eastern countries has been completely bungled. Originally this was bungled by the post WW_I leaders of the Zionist movement (the movement for establishing a homeland for Jewish people) AND equally bungled by the inept leaders of the English government from Balfour on down. The operation of the British Mandate over what was then post-Ottoman Palestine was a fuckup in the grandest tradition of British foolishness, and that is not an anti-British statement. The only one who understood the ground truth who came before the League of Nations was T.E. Lawrence (the fabled Lawrence of Arabia)and he was ignored. This is the legacy of that stupidity. FWIW.

Regards,

A.