Bill Stewart[SMTP:bill.stewart@pobox.com] wrote

At 02:59 PM 09/12/2001 -0400, Trei, Peter wrote:

...

I sincerely hope that the remaining perpetrators of this atrocity are found and punished, but entertain no illusions that doing so will prevent future attacks. That can only come from a shift of US government attitude from "I've got the biggest stick", to one of non-interference. Sweden and Switzerland come to mind as prosperous, modern, western nations which don't have problems with terrorism. Our country should look to such successful terrorism prevention policies as examples.

And even then, Swedish president Palme was assassinated some years ago.

Palme was proof that folks who interefere in other people's business get burned. He was far from merely a Swedish president. He lost that position in 1976, regaining it in 1982 (he was murdered in 1986). In the interim, he was an international do-gooder, meddling in the affairs of many countries. The list of possible enemies is long, including Croatian nationalists, Kurds, West German terrorist factions, and South African secret police (he was killed a week after speaking at an anti-apartheid rally). There is also a possibility that it was an internal assassination. Whoever killed him, this was an attack aimed at Palme personally, not at Swedes in general. So my point stands - very, very few people consider the Swedes or Sweden as a 'Great Satan'. The US could do worse than take a leaf from their book. Peter Trei