It was the Dalai Lama who suggested that.

As you suggested, our enemies don't hold territory, don't fight in conventional ways. And, to be honest with you, they don't do much damage in terms of national security. The WTC is a grevious loss in terms of innocent people and the enormous suffering of their families. They didn't deserve it.

And, it's not strategically or even tactically important. The US is going on. As far as national security is concerned, it's not as if we lost a carrier group. It's not as if we will be invaded. Our "way of life" won't change, except maybe as a consequence of our reactions.

A nuke would be worse, much worse. And, that WILL happen unless we find another way to fight this war, unless we find other strategies, other weapons. We won't avoid a nuke by doing what we've been doing, only harder. Cheney and Rumsfeld have said that, not completely knowing what the implications of it are.

Times have changed. To try to fight today's and tomorrows wars with yesterdays weapons will be folly. And, some people are recognizing that. Rumsfeld is trying, at least, to cancel the Crusader. Folks worry about a nuke - we'd obliterate anything doing that.

Our enemies seem to constitute themselves around ideas, fears and hates. It would not seem unreasonable to try to understand those - not agree with them, not give into them, but to understand why they believe as they do.

I can understand how some folks might be willing to die for their beliefs. Why would they be willing to die for them attacking America? They are, and it would behoove us to understand why.

I would think it's as important to understand their ideas the way we understood their battleships, fighters, artillery.

The simplistic jingoism which can be rampant is, unfortunately, too sexy, too appealing, and difficult to overcome. There are those who find it satisfying to say the enemy has lousy planes, lousy soldiers, lousy ships, and leave it at that. (They aren't the folks fighting them, by the way.)

Is there an emotional equivalent to Newton's third law, that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction? That when we bomb civilians in Kosovo, for instance, they or their friends will want to bomb us? Even if we bomb them for their own good?

Do we want to factor that into our actions?

I don't think the American political atmosphere is equipped to handle anything except the jingoism. It's the lowest common denominator, it's sexy, it's satisfying. And, it doesn't work.

I'm afraid we will expand on the Afghan experience, where now we publicize getting one or two enemy, and kill 8 or 10 innocents in the process. That's not a way to eliminate hate.

Arf