Thanksgiving 2001

Smartmom has written a moving piece about the first Thanksgiving after 9/11, well up to her usual high standard. It started me thinking, which as any Republican will tell you is a dangerous thing.

In particular it started me thinking about living in New York in the year 4 AWTC. The eyes-closed-full-speed-ahead attitude of the American government is bad news for the American people (especially those who lives in large cities) because it practically guarantees that there will be more attacks, and it's clear that these will not occur in the so-called Heartland. The red-staters have it easy: They can call for vengeance and wrath and a new Crusade, secure in the knowledge that they will not suffer. Their lives will continue to be cud-chewingly pleasant, they will never walk in sticky white ash or smell burning flesh in the street.

The history of the last fifty years in the Middle East should be proof enough that you cannot stop terrorism by attacking terrorists (or for that matter the last four thousand years in the Middle East, or the Greeks and the Turks, or the English and the Irish, or Vietnam, or the current state of Iraq). There must be a better way to deal with this situation; there could hardly be a worse one than repeating Vietnam.

"An eye for an eye means we all go blind." © Sam Brown