I thought I'd post this - it's an article written by one of my relatives, who is a former member of the 82nd Airborne and a veteran of both Viet Nam and the Gulf War.

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"In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."    ~Aeschylus. 
A plea for a sane and sound response to terrorism: 



I think we all need to be very, very careful about how we proceed with the matter of 'retribution' for the terrorist bombings of September 11th. 



War is not something civilized people should use just to make themselves temporarily feel better.  It's a last resort. It's been said that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Sometimes violence is absolutely necessary and unavoidable, but it always needs to be exercised with the utmost care. Lets try hard not to end up trading our grief for guilt, as we go down this road together. We all need to think this over and consider the implications, as well as the possible options. 



Let me also say this, right up front, since I'm sure my views may lead some to think otherwise: I am not exactly a "raving pacifist", by any means. I'm a former US Army Ranger and paratrooper with 23 years in uniform. I volunteered to go to Viet Nam when I was 18, and I left the service, more than two decades later, after serving as an M1A1 Abrams tank commander in Desert Storm. 



I've seen war; too much of it, in fact. It is not something I would gladly wish upon anyone. No one hates war more than the soldier. And I've been to the middle east and met many, many fine Muslims, while a soldier. 



Many people have responded to this posting already and a few have said to me "I know you're scared you might have to go fight again."  Well, I'm not scared, exactly, tho anybody who's seen the face of war surely knows fear, that I assure you. 



I'll always go anywhere my country tells me to go, if called yet again, and I'll always perform my duty to the best of my ability, at the cost of my own life, if it comes to that; please don't ever doubt that for a single second. I'm not saying "no response", I'm just saying "a carefully considered response". 



I'm just asking that if it should ever come to that (war), that I have the carefully considered and well thought out will of all the American people behind me. That's all. Freedom has a definite price, and I know that quite well.  Citizenship requires our individual participation. All of us. That means educating yourself, debating and discussing with your fellow citizens, as we're doing here now, and weighing ideals, issues and options, as well as taking action. 



The point of this posting was not to scare anybody, but to restate the obvious realities that we all live with every day, and have been living with for a long time; and to simply ask my fellow Americans to pause and think for a moment before we decide our individual and collective position on these rapidly developing events. 



To the young citizens out there reading this, please hear me, and know: we will ALWAYS protect you, to the very best of our collective abilities (and those are indeed substantial) in this fine nation you're so fortunate to live in. You are our lifeblood, and our future, and our hope. Be aware - not afraid. We'll get through this okay. 



When I was in Jump School (military parachute training for you civilians) a crusty old sarge told us, the night before our very first parachute jump: 



"Fear is natural. Fear is a normal human survival mechanism. But there are really only two types of people in this world: those that can control their fears, and those who allow their fears to control them; and each of us must decide for ourselves which type we will be..." 



I thought that those were very wise words then, and I still do. My intent is not to scare you, just ask you to really think and make intelligent, informed decisions. 



If my own small personal sacrifices might earn me just a few moments of your time, then I beg you; please consider some of the thoughts below, as you think about what we should do now. Try to consider all of the many, many factors at work here, if you will. 



If it was Osama bin Laden (and that's really NOT even sure yet) behind this, what do you know about him, or his beliefs? He was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to a wealthy family. He is a Muslim; a follower of the Prophet Mohammed, the founder of the Islamic faith.  When I served in Desert Storm we used Saudi Arabia - as Saudi guests - to launch our attack into Iraq. 



Saudi Arabia is an ally of ours. Many Islamic countries are our friends, and they are walking a tightrope right now in their declared support of us on the matter of this terrorist attack.. They must be careful not to incite the radicals on their own soil. That would not help them or us. 



Islam is the second largest monotheistic religion on this planet. It encompasses more than a billion people in scores of countries all over the world; it's not just one, or even a dozen countries, by any means. 



We certainly do NOT want to go to war with an entire global religious entity, nor should we feel that we NEED to.  But if we slip up badly now, in our haste, over how we respond to this whole mess, we may very well find ourselves doing exactly that. 



Here are a few interesting demographics to highlight my point, and my source: 



There are 2,015 million Christians in the entire world, or 33% of the world population, and that number is dropping, not growing. 



There are 1,215 million Muslims in the entire world, or 20% of the world population, and that number is growing, not dropping. 



(Source: http://www.religioustolerance.org/worldrel.htm ) 



Understand this, also: 99.999% of the Islamic peoples in this world don't hate us at all. They are, in my experience, a very peaceful and deeply religious, tolerant and respectful people. 



But they do have a few "mad dogs" in their ranks, just as the Christian religion does, or any other. One of these madmen is Osama bin Laden. But he's not your classic fool - and we should never be so foolish as to think that; the man has shown himself to be a consummate political chess player, and an astute strategist (not to mention the fact he's rich; worth more than $200 million, US, personally and that's not exactly chump change), and he has a carefully considered plan that he's been very busy carrying out for some time now. 



And something else to consider, a comment made to me by "usagmusa". He pointed out that Osama bin Laden was probably trained by our own CIA, back in the day when we were helping them to throw the Russians out of Afghanistan. What a thought - and probably absolutely true. 



It just supports my main point: we need to be very careful in everything we do today, if we don't wish to regret it tomorrow. 



Osama bin Laden welcomes his own death at our hands. He probably prays for it. According to his religious beliefs that would guarantee him martyrdom and instant admission into heaven, as a saint (or so he believes). 



He did not attack us simply because he was angry (though he is, at our continued support of Israel) or because he thought that his little attack, as devastating as it was to us emotionally, was going to be enough to do us any irreparable harm as a nation.  He knew he'd only be hurting and killing a relatively few Americans (families; please forgive me for treating your loss in this way, I don't mean to minimize your loss, and you all have my very deepest condolences). 



He did this simply to anger us and to force us, in our rage, to attack and destroy him. He believes that our rage, and our resulting haste to destroy him, will cause us to act impulsively and carelessly in our retribution; and he may be right, from what I'm reading in the internet postings and opinions of many Americans. 



Osama believes exactly what the Holy Quuran tells him, and that is that some great Islamic leader will emerge and lead the Islamic peoples to unify and declare Jihad (Holy War) against all evil in the world. 



Remember: the Islamic peoples are scattered all over the world, and there are sub-groups within Islam. Osama's job, as he sees it, is to bring all Muslims together under one banner, one cause, one Jihad. His ultimate goal, his only goal, is Islamic unification and the mobilization of his religion, for his OWN idealistic purposes. 



We are all, sadly, his instrument and his tool in achieving that goal - and that's really all we are to him. Osama expects us to retaliate. He wants us to retaliate. His designs and plans depend on us retaliating. If we don't he's failed. If we don't do exactly as he wishes then he HAS failed, has he not? His evil, as with most evil, requires a certain amount of our own personal cooperation. 



He knows we Americans are proud, and that we are swift to righteous anger, and occasionally impulsive and perhaps even careless in our vengeance; and he's right - look at some of our past history. 



He's won the first round, so far, by penetrating our defenses and carrying out his provocative attack. 



To win the next round all that needs to happen is for us to kill a few "innocent" Muslims in our retaliation against him, and he'll be able to claim that we are no better than he is - and he'll be right.  With that he'll be able to scare many more Muslims with his rhetoric of fear, and convince many that it's only a matter of time before we try to exterminate them all, in our paranoia; and with that argument as his justification he'll call all Muslims to rise up and unite against us, in Holy Jihad. 



We must not allow ourselves to be his tool, or his instrument, no matter how hurt and angry we are right now. If we do we just might find ourselves in the middle of WW III, before we even know it. 



I truly think Osama bin Laden only has a very small following, and he may have lost as many as he gained, because of his cowardly attack and the way the world reacted to it (I keep thinking of some of the Palestinians passing out candy and celebrating in Nablus, and you know he gained a few new recruits around the world, I'm afraid).  It's hard to say what the long term effect of this may be, in that regard. But he has followers all over the world, and they are going to be very, very hard to identify and locate, and bring to justice. 



I think President Bush is wise to take his time. For one thing we need to be absolutely sure exactly who is to blame, and then we must confine our response to just those directly involved, and no others, period. American's simply cannot condone the intentional killing of innocents, and the day that becomes our national policy I, for one, will be packing my bags and looking for another place to live. 



I wish Mr. Bush would at least try to use the word "Justice" in the place of "War", though.  The very word "war" itself has an awful and terrible power all it's own. 



It also occurs to me, having served my own military from Saudi Arabian soil, that we might do well to just ask the Saudi's themselves to please bring their "mad son" to justice themselves, and spare us the trouble, and possible further loss of American life, of doing that at all. 



They certainly have good reason to - he has shamed them all (not just himself) in the eyes of the entire world, and that must be nearly unbearable for them, right now. They have the resources and the contacts within the Arab world to do a much faster job of it than we can, if you think about it. And their forms of justice are both swift and final; a fact that might actually please more Americans than seeing him spend the rest of his life in an American prison, at their expense. 



The same thing goes with Pakistan, another ardently Islamic country, which also seems quite willing to help us. 



Another argument: a few people have offered to me is: "What threat are they to us, other than these cowardly attacks on civilians here and there? They're just a primitive, backward people, anyway (raghead and camel driver are common epithets I often hear). We should just drop a NUKE on them and blow them all back into the stone age that they came from." 



This is exactly like Hitler's talk and thinking! That's called genocide, and it outraged us all when we saw it going on in the killing fields of Cambodia, Africa and the Balkans a short while ago, and many other places in the past. That's outright insanity. That's just plain EVIL, in the thin pathetic guise of patriotism. Don't these people hear themselves? Don't they think about how MUCH like terrorists they sound themselves? Apparently not. 



As ignorant and dangerous as these people are, my heart bleeds for them, too, I guess.  May God forgive you people.  Please get some professional help!  That is NOT patriotism.  You shame us, and scare us all just as much as any terrorist does!  People that talk like that are our own native terrorists, folks. 



Also consider this, if you think that ANY group, no matter their size, is somehow "inferior" to us in strategic might: Osama's friend Saddam Hussein has biological weapons; devastating biological weapons, and very likely plenty of them, and I'm sure he'll share a few tons of them (and maybe even some of his possible nuclear resources) with Osama, his favorite 'cousin', and his many secret followers, now wouldn't he? 



The next attack may come in the form of a very few men with a few containers of anthrax, disbursed from small leased planes or helicopters over several of our biggest cities on some very busy Monday morning. Half this country, or any other country anywhere in the world,  might be dead by nightfall, and the other half dying. 



Maybe these terrorists are bringing the terrible "hoof and mouth" disease epidemic the English just suffered to livestock yards here and around the world, right now; as you read this. Maybe by this time next week we'll be killing all our livestock, just as the English had to totally destroy theirs. That would hurt us pretty badly, too, wouldn't it? 



I suppose that the worst possible "worst case scenario" is simply that of a single insane person out there, somewhere, who's so utterly disenfranchised and so disgusted with the entire human race, that he (or she) would be predisposed to release one of those [theoretical?] ultimate biowarfare bugs on the whole world, if they could develop or steal one, somehow. A virus that could and would kill us all, every single one of us. 



I've read a few posts to the newsgroups over the years from people that felt that this whole planet would be much better off if the entire "cancer" of humanity itself were just eradicated entirely, and then the world could "recover" from our species desecration of the planet, and maybe some other species might even then evolve in our absence to begin a more enlightened rein. 



As crazy as it may sound, there are such people out there. There always will be. How do we detect or fight the lone madman?  The Ted Kaczynski's of this world, silently scheming in their dark, solitary isolation? We didn't label him a serial killer, we called him a domestic terrorist, and he was. 



There are many, many things that any terrorist might do to us, and we'd be powerless to stop them. We need to understand that awful reality. Not accept it; but understand it. 



The point is: what's the real value of any retaliation against any terrorist person or group, if, in killing them, you just cause a thousand more people to rise up in 'righteous' anger to take their places? 



The potential supply of madmen is endless. Simon Jenkins wrote in The Times (London) the other day "Maturity lies in learning to live, and sometimes die, with the madmen." and I think he's got a point. 



Even if we killed every terrorist now living, or every person of some entire religious group, we would still not be totally free of terrorism. 



New potential terrorists are born daily. They can be Americans, like Timothy McVeigh and the Unibomber. They can be your next door neighbor. They could even be you or me, if you get us mad enough, I suppose. 



You can't and won't destroy terrorism completely, ever. That's simply unrealistic. It's Pandora's box, all over again. Modern technology gives any individual an incredibly diverse range of resources that might be abused or misused to this end, limited only by the warped imagination of the individual. 



You can only try to reduce it to the point where you can sleep at night again, knowing you've done the best you could to make terrorism simply unnecessary. 



I'm also concerned terribly about the idea of giving "unlimited powers" to our government, to combat terrorism. We might really regret that, too, some day. It bears very careful watching. 



What's to stop the new anti terrorist police from smashing down your door because somebody with a minor grudge against you decides to report you as a terrorist, just to cause you grief? What if our anti terrorist forces just decide, on the basis of bad info or even just an innocent mistake  (like in so many drug busts gone bad) to just kill you first and ask questions later, as they'd then have every right to do? 



That's the danger of granting full carte blanc governmental powers. Think about that one long and hard, I beg of you. This has happened in other countries. That's as much a genuine risk to our democracy, in the long run,  as terrorism itself may be, in the end. 



My solution? An answer? 



Keeping your mind open, keeping informed and educated on issues, both foreign and domestic, and just trying to be a good and decent human being yourself, may be the only real long term defense any of us really has. And that may be enough. 



I have great faith in the people of this country, and of the world. We're brilliant and resilient, and we will survive. 



Yes: we have to do something. But let us be very, very careful what we do. And let us be patient for just a while, and think this through very carefully, before we do anything at all. 



Just think about it, please? 



I'm certainly no preacher, but maybe considering Matthew 38-48 might help you, as it does me: 



"You have heard that the law of Moses says, 'If an eye is injured, injure the eye of the person who did it. If a tooth gets knocked out, knock out the tooth of the person who did it.' But I say, don't resist an evil person! If you are slapped on the right cheek, turn the other, too. If you are ordered to court and your shirt is taken from you, give your coat, too. If a soldier demands that you carry his gear for a mile, carry it two miles. Give to those who ask, and don't turn away from those who want to borrow." 



"You have heard that the law of Moses says, 'Love your neighbor' and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and on the unjust, too. If you love only those who love you, what good is that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." 



P.S. I heard a clergyman say, the other day, that Vengeance is the Lord's, but Justice is ours... 



  
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-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), September 18, 2001