Yes it's off topic but who cares right now.

Fri Sep 14 17:45:12 UTC 2001

My fear is (1) that it won't be so easy to knock the enemy out & (2) that if we
rely exclusively on violence & threats of violence against people & countries,
we will intensify the enemy's hatred & create more enemies.  The goal of 
eliminating all terrorism by eliminating all terrorists is a counterproductive
chimera.  It has not worked for the Israelis & it won't work for us.  (Consider
how young most terrorists are.  How many of them remember the war of 1948?)
Bin Laden hates us partly because we had troops in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf
war.  So we are proposing (I hear) to demand that Pakistan allow us to use it
as a staging area for strikes on Afghanistan.  And Pakistan has nuclear
weapons!  One might as well walk across a newly-painted floor to touch up a
spot on the other side.  It is especially important to avoid this trap at a
time when we need every friend that we can get.  I believe that an important
part of avoiding it is to try to understand and eliminate those causes of that
hatred that it is within our power to eliminate.  Unfortunately, not all are
and never were, but some are & we need to understand what they are and work on
them.  We have suddenly gone from feeling pretty invulnerable to feeling
vulnerable in the extreme.  First it was the dot.com bubble burst.  Now this
awful thing that dwarfs the worry about losing our jobs.   We are still better
off as regards both economic & physical security & the posession of power than
the vast majority of mankind has been through all of history, and that will
continue to cause problems for us.  That and a failure to pay sufficient
respect to the sensibilities of others.  The point here is not to say shame on
us.  The point here is to say we need to be careful whom we offend.  It might
have been better to learn to live without Middle Eastern oil than to have
offended Bin Laden.  This is not to defend him or his actions.  No event that I
have lived through, including Pearl Harbor & the Cuban missle crisis, has made
me as sick at heart and frightened for the future as the attack on the Trade
towers, & I want Bin Laden & his networks found and eliminated.  But This is an
area where it is especially hard to avoid taking counteproductive action.  We
need to be cautious and understanding about the way we proceed.

David

On Fri, 14 Sep 2001, David Klindt wrote:

:Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 08:28:51 -0700 (PDT)
:From: David Klindt <dklindt at cobra.ordata.com>
:To: nanog at merit.edu
:Cc: Randy Bush <randy at psg.com>
:Subject: Re: Yes it's off topic but who cares right now.
:
:
:> so, if we did not learn enough following the french into indochina, we
:> can learn more by following the russians into afghanastan?  this does
:> not seem like a sucess path to me.
:
:> the successful part of our culture is about tolerance and learning to
:> live with folk different than we (for many values of 'we' and
:> 'different').
:
:Randy, I truly doubt you understand the idea of war and protection of our
:citizens.  The USA is not going to retaliate... It is answering a call of
:war - one that has been ongoing for many years.  Unlike the Russians going
:into Afghanistan, our even the US going into South Viet Nam (or the French
:in your example), we have the skill to go up to the street bully, knock
:him out, knock the dust off our hands and walk away. It is not like it
:needs to be 20,000 troops driving into that country.
:
:Standing back and hoping it will go away because we want to be "peaceful"
:has NOT proven to work over the last ten years.
:
:> resist the cycle of violence and hate.
:
:I agree. But this action doesn't need to be attached the words violence
:and hate.  It is better attributed to, enough is enough, and knock the
:bully out.  Truly, that simple.
:
:Best regards to you Randy,
:
:
: