comes from changing administrations every 4 to 8 years. Each new president comes into office with his own agenda and staff, so it's hard to maintain long term goals and policies. We did a pretty good job maintaining the policy of containment for communism for over 40 years. Since the end of the Cold War, it seems our policies are floundering without direction. Perhaps the "war on terrorism" will help change that. I can only hope.

Make no mistake about it, this will be an extremely difficult problem to resolve. The enemy we seek to eliminate lives in the shadows of civilization and is very difficult to track down. This won't be like former wars where we knew who the enemy was and where he lived. There probably won't be setpiece battles between armies on a battlefield unless we screw up badly.

We're facing severe cultural and religious barriers that will be hard to overcome. Giving generous humanitarian aid to the refugees could, if done properly, go a long way to undermining support for the radicals. We'd be showing concern and compassion for Moslems, directly refuting the claim that we're at war with Islam. That's why I keep mentioning working with the Green Crescent - we'll be working side by side with Islamic disaster workers helping to ease the suffering of Moslems. We'll be helping desperate people. Remember what the eventual outcome of the Berlin Airlift was - we solidified our reputation with the German people and stopped the Soviets from taking over all of Berlin. It'll take something similar to have any chance of winning this war.