Who would the enemy be?

To make war on Islam would precisely reflect the terrorists' stated aim: to wage holy war. Declaring war on terrorism is closer to what needs to be done, but it's like declaring war on anarchism. There is no real authority, only a bunch of chief henchmen and their toadies. We wind up fighting a way of thinking and a pattern of behavior. Perhaps we need to start training attack cats, for such adversaries resemble the things cats chase. ;)

Better to pursue the guilty, prevent future occurrences through more imaginative approaches to security, and preclude the appeal of terrorism by fostering the relentless spread of freedom of thought, freedom from fear and freedom from want. We might try to support those ideas abroad as much as we do at home.

Sudan's score on the Christian Question is still below Germany's on the Jewish Question. Lutheranism (until the later introduction of a form of Teutonic polytheism) was considered the religion of choice in Hitler's Germany, but I never once heard anyone suggest that the Lutheran Church was the driving force behind Nazi atrocities. Neither is the massacre of People of the Book to be considered indicative of the teachings of Islam. The motivations are political and economic; the propaganda is religious.

The recent genocide in the Balkans had Christians killing Moslems. Hindus and Sikhs still engage in a three-way grudge match against Moslems in the Indian subcontinent. Nigeria has been a factional tribal mess for decades. (I remember Biafra; you probably do too.) The Afrikaaners are Christian, and look what they did for years. We need look no further than our own history for examples of Christian slave-traders and genocide (physical and cultural) conducted on the original population of this continent, and our southern counterpart, in the name of Christian civilization. And let's not forget the Irish.

These are not really issues of religion. These are savageries committed using religion as a justification for cruel political and economic domination of one group of people by another. It's been going on forever. We are noticing this incarnation because, after all these years of religious peace, albeit a fractious, squabbling one, the US has suffered a serious blow from the fanatics of a particular faith.

The kamikaze pilots were not so different from these people, except they were Shinto and aiming at aircraft carriers.

Regards--
Mary Anne