Market Farming

["Jill Taylor Bussiere" <jdt AT itol.com>]

Jay,
    I understand what you are saying - but yet, there is more to it than
that.  First, we must ask, "Why has this abominable thing happened?" and
"Why are so many Arab nations so angry at us?"

Clearly, the action last Tuesday is abominable no matter why it was done.
There is no just cause for it.  But if one looks at the situation in the
Arab nations, one can see where such desparation  comes from.

We can not end terrorism against us by dropping bombs and inflicting more
destruction on Arab countries.  That in fact, plays into the desires of
those who would love nothing more than to see a "Holy War" - this includes
some fanatic Muslims as well as fanatic Christians - fanatics on both sides
of the ocean are hoping and pushing for this.

Whomever are responsible must be brought to trial - preferably by the United
Nations or the World Court.  In fact, if the US (for once) agrees to such a
trial, the intelligence personnel of many nations would be available to us
to find those connected with this event, and to bring them to trial.  This
would be helpful, because the event of last week also made evident that
there are currently weaknesses in our FBI and CIA.  We could use the help.

After and while we are finding the guilty parties, we need to refrain from
bombing innocent civilians and children - it is as abominable for the US to
bomb innocent civilians as it is for terrorists.

We also need to change our policies towards the MidEast so that people are
not tempted to join terrorist organizations in order to have any sort of
power.  We need to encourage democracies rather than support dictators, and
we need to expect compliance to UN and World Court regulations and rulings
equally, and submit to them ourselves.  We need to stop training terrorists
in the region to meet our own short term goals.  We need to develop
alternative energy at home so that we are not dependent on foreign oil, and
therefore willing to start wars to "get our oil".

In short, we need to behave very differently than we have in the past.  We
need to stop being the perpetrators of violence in the region, stop
destroying water supplies for whole countries, stop selling weapons to some
Arab nations to be used on other Arab nations.

War has been tried again and again - and if it worked, that would be one
thing, but if you follow the history of even the most recent war - the Gulf
War - you can see that it was not won, and that we are still bombing almost
every day in Iraq's air space (illegally), just to mention one thing.

Here is an excerpt from an article from Common Dreams:

    Some protesters bring a special moral force to their argument. Judy
Keane,
    whose husband, Richard, was killed in the World Trade Center during last
    week's attacks, spoke out against military retaliation during a prayer
vigil
    that she helped organize near her home in Wethersfield, Conn., Sunday
    evening. The event drew more than 5,000 people.

    "The World Trade Center [attack] was in retaliation for something else,
and
    that was the retaliation for something else," she said in a telephone
    interview yesterday. "Are we going to continue this in perpetuity? We
have
    to say at some point, okay, let's find another way of doing this."
from Common Dreams at http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0920-01.htm

                                            Respectfully,
                                                        Jill