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

Sat Sep 15 19:52:42 UTC 2001

This is utterly irrelevant even if it were true.  If you want to
argue that we *deserved* to have 5000 killed because we are an
evil nation and that we should simply accept future attacks as just
punishments, go ahead and offer yourself up in sacrificial atonement.
The sane rest of us will be concerned with the survival of ourselves,
our families, our nation and our civilization.

The rise of Hitler was arguably caused in large part by the overly
vicious punishment of Germany at Versailles.  Did that change,
in any way whatsoever, how we had to, and eventually did, react?

I continue to hope for leadership from the decent majority of Islam
to take action to purge the indecent minority.  The war is not against
all Islam or even against fundamentalist Islam, but against terrorist
Islam, and indeed against all terrorism.  It must be prosecuted, whether
by Islam itself or by the rest of the world.  A purely defensive strategy
has seldom succeeded in human history.

Barney Wolff

On Sat, Sep 15, 2001 at 09:56:26AM -0500, measl at mfn.org wrote:
> 
> The crusaders could never have come to power if we had acted like HUMAN
> BEINGS.  Or even less, if we had just practiced what we preached.