It's actually part of the problem. We're facing an enemy that has a HUGE culture of violence and we've already moved away from that to a sizable degree.

Our old lynch mobs from the pre-1930 period are the equivalent of the US flag burning, gun toting, shouting mindless mobs found in the Middle East. The days when you gathered the kids to go and watch a hangin' are over in the US.

They aren't over in other parts of the world.

In an ideal world everyone would achieve enlightenment simultaneously. Everyone would be a conscientious objector, and all wars and violence would cease overnight.

Such is not the case, however. We have centuries of disparity in cultural development and despite those guilt-laden, self-indulgent folks who attempt to make amends for lives of inequity by claiming the primitives are somehow more wholesome, pure and noble than the westerners - such is not the case and the nations in the Middle East, South America and Southeast Asia offer mute testimony to the asininity of such an assumption.

And it is not just money. You can throw money at a barbarian and they will live like Saddam - washing the daily blood off their hands in 24k gold plated French sinks. The assumption that all are men are equal is again proven false. Instead we discover what this nation's founders knew - that the masses are not to be trusted and that a republic keeps mob rule and the uneducated, unwashed masses, from making the important decisions.

The culture of violence is the problem. As long as it is exists all over the world, we need to maintain a percentage of our population at a level comparable to our enemies. This is fairly easy to do when you have a nation of several hundred million people.

At the same time we are faced with evaluating our core beliefs. How do we reconcile our humanitarian spirit with a need to neutralize our enemies who seek our destruction? How do we preserve our progress while simultaneously preserving western civilization from the savages who prefer if everyone joined them in living in the dark ages?

It's tough.

I am a very calm, peaceful person. And yet I realize the needs and the moral dilemmas that are raised by these now imbalanced conflicts.

It was far easier to kill our enemies back in the 1940s. It was easier to win. With our technology and weaponry we could, today, easily turn centers of resistance into fireballs. But we do not and so now the battles last longer to spare lives. Folks like Don have to wait almost 5 years for several thousand US casualties. In the old days he could have that number in a few weeks. The media has much more time to exploit and use propaganda in a drawn out conflict. We saw such in Vietnam and we should have known the media would try it again, as generating dissension, for them, generates revenue.

Now we have to task our engineers and scientists for NEW weapons. We need weapons that integrate our new, elevated understandings with our needs to defend ourselves and immobilize any attacker. We need to openly discuss these things and put together minds that can create a new Marshall Plan for Iraq and a new Middle Eastern policy that employs more comprehensive immobilization and containment of our enemies.

No easy answers, but the culture of violence is the world's primary problem.