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Well, the open letter to terrorists is maybe what
seems to be a parodyof some movie. Say this with a heavy Scottish
accent: "Ya kin teek aweyare bildins, but ya kint teek awey are
freedom!" I don't know, maybeyou kill enough people, and all of a
sudden the dead people seem lessfree. The patriotism this time around
is very odd to me, since I saw it11 years ago, call it the Gulf War
Syndrome. Seems like everyone istrying to screw up the courage so as
to avoid thinking about whatactually happened. In as much as
patriotism, like religion, givespeople comfort, I'm all for it. But it
never stops there. (At the ratewe were going last week, we'd have
killed 5,000 American Arabs by year'send, one murder at a time, in the name
of patriotism.)There was a really interesting show on PBS last night,
apparentlyspecial programming these days. The religion writer for the
WashingtonPost claimed that the Islam vs. America thing is three things: (1)
Islamis trying to find its place in the modern world just now, and so
Muslimsare just feeling more religious, and this takes the form of
moreliberalism and radicalism, though the radicalism seems to be making
moreof a splash (and obviously strong religion doesn't mix with
genericAmerican secularism, which is spreading worldwide by the media), (2)
thegovernments in those countries are oppressive, and some of them tend
tobe more interested in selling oil with the West than supporting
thepeople's religion (so these people feel their own governments
areagainst them), and (3) American support for Israel, of course. So
bythis theory, you've got religious people getting hit with a
foreignculture (ours), feeling blown off by their government which sold out
tous for oil, and a competing religion propped up in a colony (Israel).
The issue, I think, is to figure out what these people want so that
theydon't go haywire. Whether the demons are real or perceived is
maybe notso important. It seems to me Iran is way out ahead of the
pack inresolving all this. (And yet Iran is maybe peculiar, being the
leastSemitic?)The other part of the show was Bill Moyers doing two
interviews, firstwith the guy who wrote what Bill called "the e-mail heard
'round theworld." That was that first message some RT'r sent
that I read onSalon. When I got it, I thought that maybe an anti-war
protestappropriate to the times would be a "human computer virus" in the
formof a letter of that sort copied and forwarded manually to the point
ofclogging the network. Well, Bill said he got that e-mail from
21people, so maybe that's exactly what happened. The interview
itselfdidn't add much to the original message, except maybe that the
guytended to admit that some his statements were bombastic, for
examplethat bin Laden is trying to start a war he expects to win. Bin
Ladenhas made such a statement, but that too was bombastic.The final
interview was with a guy from South Africa who seemed to be anIslamic
philosopher. I don't know what he REALLY is, but he couldphilosophize
faster than he could breathe, and it was all good stuff. The oddest thing
was his last statement, about how we should respond toterrorists. He
said: "You don't rape a rapist; you don't murder amurderer." Well, in
America, we're running about 50% on his moralityscale. Anyway, this
guy got across the idea of what it's like to haveyour religion crushed by
American culture, and if you're religion isbeing destroyed and you can see
that your descendants will eventuallynot follow your religion, then why not
fight back?Anyway, as far as politics, it seems that the men on the
chessboard arenot going America's way. It's possible they'll get the
terrorists byrespecting these shaky Islamic regimes. That would be the
good way. The bad way is that the military approach gets the upper hand,
theMuslims close ranks and do the Saddam Hussein rope-a-dope.
(Therope-a-dope was invented by a Muslim.) If that happens, it's more
killand be killed for everybody. The American rhetoric is very
strangethese days, if you didn't notice. Rush Limbaugh doesn't have to
complainabout the "liberal media" any more. Those folks lost some
friends atthe far end of the island, and now most of the media is just
waiting tofilm dead foreigners.<FONT face=Arial
size=2>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px">
----- Original Message -----
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black">From:
Don
Thompson
To: <A
href="mailto:realtraders@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";
title=realtraders@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>realtraders@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2001 2:04
AM
Subject: [RT] Z Spirit
This was forwarded to me its pretty
cool..
Don Thompson
An email from Charles Bennan,
18 years old.
An open letter to a
terrorist:
Well, you hit the World
Trade Center, but you missed America. You hit the <FONT
face="Courier New" size=2>Pentagon, but you missed America. You used helpless
American Bodies, to take out other
American Bodies, but like a poor marksman, you STILL missed <FONT
face="Courier New" size=2>America.
Why? Because of
something you guys will never understand. America isn't <FONT
face="Courier New" size=2>about a building or two, not about financial
centers, not about military <FONT face="Courier New"
size=2>centers, America isn't about a place, America isn't even about a bunch
of bodies. America is about
an IDEA. An idea, that you can go someplace where <FONT
face="Courier New" size=2>you can earn as much as you can figure out how to,
live for the most part, like you
envisioned living, and pursue Happiness. (No guarantees that you'll
reach it, but you can sure try!)
Go ahead and whine your
terrorist whine, and chat your terrorist litany: "If <FONT
face="Courier New" size=2>you can not see my point, then feel my pain." This
concept is alien to <FONT face="Courier New"
size=2>Americans. We live in a country where we don't have to see you
point. But you're free to have one.
We don't have to listen to your speech. But you're <FONT
face="Courier New" size=2>free to SAY one. Don't know where you got the
strange idea that everyone has to
agree with you. We don't agree with each other in this country,
almost as a matter of pride. We're a
collection of guys that don't agree, <FONT face="Courier New"
size=2>called States. We united out individual states to protect
ourselves from tyranny in the
world. Another idea, we made up on the spot. You CAN make
it up as your go, when it's your
country.
You guys seen to be
incapable of understanding that we don't live in <FONT
face="Courier New" size=2>America, America lives in US! American spirit is
what it's called. And killing
a few thousand of us, or a few million of us, won't change it.
Most of the time, it's a pretty
happy-go-lucky kind of Spirit. Until we're <FONT
face="Courier New" size=2>crossed in a cowardly manner, then it becomes an
entirely different kind<FONT
face="Courier New" size=2> of <FONT face="Courier New"
size=2>Spirit.
Wait until you see what
we do with that Spirit, this time. Sleep tight, if <FONT
face="Courier New" size=2>you can. We're coming.
Charles Brennan.
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