American Indian is one bit that didn't sneak into my gene pool.

Sorry about the cowboy crack. I did not mean to offend.

I was specifically speaking to the tendency around here to deliberately be frightening and reveling in anything in the news that sounds like we are going to get some revenge.

It's a good idea to scare the Taliban into giving us what we want, without loss of life (if this is possible).

It is a very bad idea to destabilize the government in Pakistan by convincing their citizens that Americans are coming to eat their (or their neighbor's) babies. It's not a good idea for Afganis to get that idea either. Or to cause harm to Indonesia's fragile democracy.

It's not a good idea to scare our potential allies into thinking we are trying to pull them along with us into a war of occupation that will last till eternity.

Or to let the rest of the world think that Americans are so arrogant that we think we are capable of dispensing infinite anything.

There are huge political ramifications that we need to keep sight of. We are ultimately going to have to live with all of the things that our actions cause. My definition of the word "cowboy" in this context means someone who doesn't worry much about what his actions will ultimately cause to happen.

I hate the idea of being unsupportive of the administration at this time, so I have kept silent about one sour note that bothered me Tuesday. But it's appropriate to bring up in this discussion:

When it was said that an attack on America was tantamount to an attack on liberty itself. That's kind of a paranoid statement. We are certainly not a Platonic ideal anything. We are just a country that got clobbered by a dastardly, cowardly (Mahr's point, notwithstanding) attack.

Ah, Jeez. You got me rambling. Sorry 'bout that.