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

Fri Sep 14 20:38:47 UTC 2001

Randy, I have to ask, how should we have conducted ourselves so that
Bin Laden and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad would not hate us and kill us?
A moment's thought will conclude that it is our existence and beliefs,
not our conduct, that they hate.

To quote (approximately) the great pragmatic philosopher Lazarus Long,
the only things to do with an enemy are make a friend of him or kill
him.  Leaving him alive and still an enemy is foolish.

In the long run Islam will have to purge itself of its Crusaders, just
as other religions largely have.  The war is not against Islam but
against a set of murderous fanatics, and it would be foolish indeed
NOT to hate them.

Barney Wolff

On Fri, Sep 14, 2001 at 01:00:51PM -0400, Randy Bush wrote:
> 
> and the hardest part is doing so without being bullies ourselves.  and we
> should be sensitive about this as we are not _perceived_ as having done
> well in this respect for the last half century.  and this latter seems to
> be a factor in the mess we find ourselves today.