[427TJ]

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BUT if we would slaugher each and every one of their children, wives, mothers, father, and sisters and everyone else related to them. We would get their attention.

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Remember in the movie "The Godfather" where young Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) is walking through a village in Sicily with his bodyguards? He sees only a few women and children hurredly doing their daily tasks and asks, "Where are all the men?" One of the bodyguards answers, "They have all been killed in the vendettas." That's how the Sicilian Mafia operated, they had to kill all the men in order to feel secure against retribution. In another "Godfather" scene Vito (Robert DeNiro), the head of the Corleone family, takes his family back to Sicily. While he's there he pays a visit to the old Mafia Don who had killed Vito's father. Years earlier, the Don had then summoned young Vito and his mother to be killed so as to keep them from taking revenge on the old Don someday. The Don killed Vito's mother but Vito escaped death that day by running away and had come back as a man to avenge his mother's brutal killing. He pays his respects to the old Don and then pulls out a large knife and guts him. Vito says to the Don as he's cutting him open, "This is for my mother." That's why we can't possibly kill all of them and hope it will end. Nobody ever forgets.

The Israeli-Palestinian (Jews vs. Arabs) conflict has been going on for basically 2000 years. Just as we say, "Never forget 9/11," they say, "Never forget" things that happened 2000 years ago and in every generation since. That's just what humans do. We never forget wrongdoing, unfair treatment, brutal killings, and on and on.

Hell, both Republicans and Democrats say, "Never forget the 2000 election!"

One very important thing worth understanding is what America means to the people of every other country on earth. It is our moral example---that America stands for things that the rest of the world wants for itself. Not just big cars and air conditioned homes, but what symbols like the Constitution and the Statue of Liberty stand for. Yes, freedom is part of it, but it is religious freedom, freedom from tyranny and opression, freedom to think and talk and travel without fear of repraisal, freedom to read what we want, free and open elections, freedom of the press, and the list goes on.

Of course, we know there are problems with some of those freedoms and how we percieve them, but I think you get my drift.

What will probably be the outcome of the post-9/11 world is that America will continue to lose credibility in the Muslim world. I know that we invaded Iraq to plant the seeds of Democracy, but just as in farm crops, sometimes the soil just is not fertile and the seeds can't flourish and grow. Maybe Democracy can take hold in the Middle East, but I doubt it. There's a lot of pissed-off young men over there (insurgents, etc.) and as Pantera said, they see death as the road to Eternal Paradise. That's why I said that we will have to kill almost all of them, a-la the Sicilian Mafia's example, if we are to prevail.

Let's say we kill 90% of all Muslims on earth. What will other countries then think? "We're next!" is what they'll think. We have to respond to terrorists. We have to kill them, more of them than us, LOTS more of them. But it won't stop terrorism. It may subside for a few years, or perhaps decades, but it will always be a tactic against a larger, more powerful force.

"The War on Terror" is really a poor choice of words. It works as a sound bite on the evening news but its true meaning can never be achieved---how do we know when we've won? Terrorism may subside and politicians may declare "victory," but there will still be snakes out there in the grass and we just can't kill all of them. Just look at "The War on Drugs." How's that war going? Our police, FBI, DEA and other law-enforcement agencies fight the good fight day after day, year after year, decade after decade, and you can still get any illegal drug you want just a short drive (or walk) from your home. Or, just ask your teenage kid to get some at their school. Remember the mid-80s song "Smuggler's Blues" by Glen Frey? One line goes, "You ask any DEA man, he'll tell you there's nothing we can do." This isn't to say that we need to stop fighting. On the contrary, we need to keep on fighting and fighting and fighting, knowing, however, that such wars are probably forever ongoing.

Bin Laden has said that this latest chapter in the great jihad may take "100 years." He preaches that time is on their side. They don't have elections every four years either. The upside is that bin Laden's words and actions have brought America together (for the most part). The downside is that bin Laden's words and actions have brought the Muslim world together (for the most part) as well.

I'm home sick with a cold all week, kids are in school, wife's working, and that's why I have so much time to talk about this stuff. I'd much rather listen to Charlie outline the differences between a '69 Camaro Z/28 with power disc brakes vs. a JL8 car's setup. That's MUCH more interesting.

Okay Charlie, on that note, lead us back from the abyss and into the garage.