Friends:

Here is a pair of points of view, both American. They seem 
to represent points near each end of the spectrum of opinions 
flying around the net this week. One is from a columnist, and 
one is from a health practitioner. Both people are well known. 

The first, from Mr. Reed, while clearly damaged by a fear of anything 
soft, has the sort of clarity that comes from a willful disregard 
for nuance and complexity, or for that matter any internal experience. 
He evidences the mindset of a classic soldier. He does offer some good
points, but, gender issues aside, I find his sense of solution
superficial. 

The second, from Mr. Chopak, while seemingly designed to drive the 
Reeds of the world ballistic, has the sort of depth that comes from 
a relentless courage in the face of ambiguity and murkiness in both 
social and internal realms.  He challenges us to actually fix the 
underlying global problem.  How novel!

What kind of courage will we forge for this new age?

In engagement,
Rhodes Hileman

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{ POV 1: }

From: Fred Reed
The Price Of Pansyhood

A few unorganized thoughts regarding the events in New York:

(1) We lost. Our moral posturing about our degradation is merely
  embarrassing. We have been made fools of, expertly and calculatedly, in
  the greatest military defeat the country has suffered since we fled from
  Viet Nam. The Moslem world is laughing and dancing in the streets. The
  rest of the earth, while often sympathetic, sees us as the weak and
  helpless nation that we are.

  The casualty figures aren't in, but 10,000 dead seems reasonable, and we
  wring our hands and speak of grief therapy.

  We lost.

  (2) We cannot stop it from happening again. Thousands of aircraft
  constantly use O'Hare, a few minutes flying time from the Sears Tower.

  (3) Our politicians and talking heads speak of "a cowardly act of
  terrorism." It was neither cowardly nor, I think, terrorism. Hijacking
  an aircraft and driving it into a building isn't cowardly. Would you do
  it? It requires great courage and dedication -- which our enemies have,
  and we do not. One may mince words, but to me the attack looked like an
  act of war. Not having bombing craft of their own, they used ours. When
  we bombed Hanoi and Hamburg, was that terrorism?

  (4) The attack was beautifully conceived and executed. These guys are
  good. They were clearly looking to inflict the maximum humiliation on
  the United States, in the most visible way possible, and they did. The
  sight of those two towers collapsing will leave nobody's mind. If we do
  nothing of importance in return, and it is my guess that we won't, the
  entire earth will see that we are a nation of epicenes. Silly 
  cruise-missile attacks on Afghanistan will just heighten the indignity.

  (5) In watching the coverage, I was struck by the tone of passive
  acquiescence. Not once, in hours of listening, did I hear anyone
  express anger. No one said, coldly but in deadly seriousness, "People
  are going to die for this, a whole lot of people." There was talk of
  tracking down bin Laden and bringing him to justice. "Terrorism experts"
  spoke of months of investigation to find who was responsible, which
  means we will do nothing. Blonde bimbos babbled of coping strategies and
  counseling and how our children needed support. There was no talk of
  retaliation.

  (6) The Israelis, when hit, hit back. They hit back hard. But Israel is
  run by men. We are run by women. Perhaps two-thirds of the newscasters
  were blonde drones who spoke of the attack over and over as a tragedy,
  as though it had been an unusually bad storm -- unfortunate, but
  inevitable, and now we must get on with our lives. The experts and
  politicians, nominally male, were effeminate and soft little things.
  When a feminized society runs up against male enemies -- and bin Laden,
  whatever else he is, is a man -- it loses. We have.

  (7) We haven't conceded that the Moslem world is our enemy, nor that we
  are at war. We see each defeat and humiliation in isolation, as a
  unique incident unrelated to anything else. The 241 Marines killed by
  the truck bomb in Beirut, the extended humiliation of the hostages taken
  by Iran, the war with Iraq, the bombing of the Cole, the destruction of
  the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the devastation of the Starke, the
  Saudi barracks, the dropping of airliner after airliner -- these we see
  as anecdotes, like pileups of cars on a snowy road. They see these
  things as war. We face an enemy more intelligent than we are.

  (8) We think we are a superpower. Actually we are not, except in the
  useless sense of having nuclear weapons. We could win an air war with
  almost anyone, yes, or a naval war in mid-Pacific. Few Americans
  realize how small our forces are today, how demoralized and weakened by
  social experimentation. If we had to fight a ground war in terrain with
  cover, a war in which we would take casualties, we would lose.

  (9) I have heard some grrr-woofwoofery about how we should invade
  Afghanistan and teach those ragheads a lesson. Has anyone noticed where
  Afghanistan is? How would we get there? Across Pakistan, a Moslem
  country? Or through India? Do we suppose Iran would give us overflight
  rights to bomb another Moslem country? Or will our supply lines go
  across Russia through Turkmenistan? Do we imagine that we have the
  airlift or sealift? What effect do we think bombing might have on
  Afghanistan, a country that is essentially rubble to begin with?

  We backed out of Somalia, a Moslem country, when a couple of GIs got
  killed and dragged through the streets on TV. Afghans are not pansies.
  They whipped the Russians. Our sensitive and socially-conscious troops
  would curl up in balls.

  (10) To win against a more powerful enemy, one forces him to fight a
  kind of war for which he isn't prepared. Iraq lost the Gulf War because
  it fought exactly the kind of war in which American forces are
  unbeatable: Hussein played to his weaknesses and our strengths. The
  Vietnamese did the opposite. They defeated us by fighting a guerrilla
  war that didn't give us anything to hit. They understood us. We didn't
  understand them.

  The Moslem world is doing the same thing. Because their troops, or
  terrorists as we call them, are not sponsored by a country, we don't
  know who to hit. Note that Yasser Arafat, bin Laden, and the Taliban are
  all denying any part in the destruction of New York. At best, we might,
  with our creaky intelligence apparatus, find Laden and kill him. It's
  not worth doing: Not only would he have defeated America as nobody ever
  has, but he would then be a martyr. Face it: The Arabs are smarter than
  we are.

  (11) We are militarily weak because we have done what we usually do: If
  no enemy is immediately in sight, we cut our forces to the bone, stop
  most R&D, and focus chiefly on sensitivity training about homosexuals.
  When we need a military, we don't have one. Then we are inutterably
  surprised.

  (12) The only way we could save any dignity and respect in the world be
  to hit back so hard as to make teeth rattle around the world. A good
  approach would be to have NSA fabricate intercepts proving that Libya
  was responsible, mobilize nationally, invade, and make Libya permanently
  a US colony. Most Arab countries are militarily helpless, and that is
  the only kind our forces could defeat. Doing this, doing anything other
  than whimpering, would require that ancient military virtue known as
  "balls." Does Katie Couric have them?

  c Fred Reed 2001. All rights reserved.


  *    *    *    *    *

{ POV 2: }

From: Deepak Chopra 
The heart of terrorism:
Date Sent: 12 Sep 2001 08:05 PM

  The Deeper Wound -

  As fate would have it, I was leaving New York on a jet flight that took
  off 45 minutes before the unthinkable happened. By the time we landed
  in Detroit, chaos had broken out. When I grasped the fact that American
  security had broken down so tragically, I couldn't respond at first. My
  wife and son were also in the air on separate flights, one to Los
  Angeles, one to San Diego. My body went absolutely rigid with fear. All
  I could think about was their safety, and it took several hours before I
  found out that their flights had been diverted and both were safe.

  Strangely, when the good news came, my body still felt that it had been
  hit by a truck.  Of its own accord it seemed to feel a far greater
  trauma that reached out to the thousands who would not survive and the
  tens of thousands who would survive only to live through months and
  years of hell. And I asked myself, Why didn't I feel this way last week?
  Why didn't my body go stiff during the bombing of Iraq or Bosnia? Around
  the world my horror and worry are experienced every day. Mothers weep
  over horrendous loss, civilians are bombed mercilessly, refugees are
  ripped from any sense of home or homeland.  Why did I not feel their
  anguish enough to call a halt to it?  

  As we hear the calls for tightened American security and a fierce
  military response to terrorism, it is obvious that none of us has any
  answers.  However, we feel compelled to ask some questions.

  Everything has a cause, so we have to ask, What was the root cause
  of this evil? We must find out not superficially but at the deepest
  level. There is no doubt that such evil is alive all around the world
  and is even celebrated. Does this evil grow from the suffering and
  anguish felt by people we don't know and therefore ignore? 
  Have they lived in this condition for a long time?
  One assumes that whoever did this attack feels implacable hatred for
  America. Why were we selected to be the focus of suffering around the
  world?
  All this hatred and anguish seems to have religion at its basis. Isn't
  something terribly wrong when jihads and wars develop in the name
  of God?  Isn't God invoked with hatred in Ireland, Sri Lanka, India,
  Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, and even among the intolerant sects
  of America?  
  Can any military response make the slightest difference in the
  underlying cause? 
  Is there not a deep wound at the heart of humanity?  If there is a deep
  wound, doesn't it affect everyone?
  When generations of suffering respond with bombs, suicidal attacks, and
  biological warfare, who first developed these weapons? Who sells them?
  Who gave birth to the satanic technologies now being turned against us?

  If all of us are wounded, will revenge work? Will punishment in any form
  toward anyone solve the wound or aggravate it? Will an eye for an eye,
  a tooth for a tooth, and limb for a limb, leave us all blind, toothless
  and crippled?  

  Tribal warfare has been going on for two thousand years and has now been
  magnified globally. Can tribal warfare be brought to an end? Is patriotism 
  and nationalism even relevant anymore, or is this another form of
  tribalism?

  What are you and I as persons going to do about what is happening? 
  Can we afford to let the deeper wound fester any longer?  Everyone is
  calling this an attack on America, but is it not a rift in our collective 
  soul?  Isn't this an attack on civilization from without that is also
  from within?  

  When we have secured our safety once more and cared for the wounded,
  after the period of shock and mourning is over, it will be time for soul
  searching. I only hope that these questions are confronted with the
  deepest spiritual intent. None of us will feel safe again behind the
  shield of military might and stockpiled arsenals. There can be no safety
  until the root cause is faced. In this moment of shock I don't think
  anyone of us has the answers. It is imperative that we pray and offer
  solace and help to each other, but if you and I are having a single
  thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this
  moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.

  Love, Deepak