Concerning the recently published Crime of Terrorism article:

I liked your recent commentary. And I hope in the posturing and mania that is currently swirling, in our need, as a country, to exact retribution. We pay attention, as a nation to these words. And perhaps question the American policies, that have made us targets of terrorism. The American policies and actions, both economic and military, that have pushed many nations, no, many people to the brink.

We must remember as a nation, that the horror and shock and loss we are experiencing today, is just a shadow of the daily horror and shock so called third world countries have experienced for the last 40years at the hands of American interests. At the hands of the Word Bank, the IMF, the UN, the CIA and the American Military.

We must choose our next steps wisely, and if a "third world" faction is found to be guilty of this attack, be cognizant of the fact that from a certain viewpoint America's actions of the last 40years, our policy of dictating, demanding, and if necessary debilitating and destroying smaller countries, is nothing short of terrorism. And thus viewed, today's attrocity while horrible, while unexcusable, while self destructive, while dumb, is in some way understandable. Is human.

It's what Malcolm X called... Chickens coming home to roost. You can not strip others of value, others of hope, others of compassion, and not be devalued yourself. Objectionalized yourself. Victimized yourself.

So perhaps retaliation bombings by America, American retatliation on foreign soil of enemies unclear, more innocent men, women and children dead, while comforting to our ego, soothing to our vengeance, cooling to our wrath... is not in our best interests. Breathes more terrorism, more hatred, more martyrs.

We have lost a lot of people today. And they, this mysterious, suspected enemy, they have lost. The manner of their deaths tell us this. They gave up their lives to smite their enemy, they died going forward, such people are made out of horror. Too much horror, too much loss, and too little choices.

So for us to respond, haphazardly, brutally, indiscriminately, again while effective for our egos, is damning to our future. Because by creating more horror, we create more of the people we strive to stop. We can not win a war with people without hope. With people with nothing to lose. We can not. We can survive it, but we can not win it. Because a man without hope... is the deadliest type of man.

He is a man without fear.

Somehow America must start making less of these people and not more. And maybe it must start here, with this tragedy, this horror, this loss, and in the way we react to it. Maybe America must learn to meet the rest of the world with courage rather than brutality, and reason rather than rhetoric. We have to give our enemies hope, hope that they can be more than the slaves or the slaughtered. Hope that there is resolution without blood, and conflict without crisis.

Hope.

America has spent forty years of vaporizing hope, and the sovereign rights of other countries. Forty years of killing hope. And we are producing people both within and without our nation... school shootings, rogue cops, political prisoners, serial killers, bombings, ... who are tired of living without hope. We need, now more than ever, that hope. We need a government... of the people, not a government over the people. America keeps turning the screws on her own citizens, and throughout the world and people cannot take it. America like a bully keeps pushing people, and people are beginning to snap.

A lot of people are dead. And someone will bear the guilt. But I think to keep something like this from happening again... America must recognize and carry her portion of that guilt. Her portion of the dead.

These are the last days of Rome, and strength will not save America... only mercy will. We must be, what we are not. What we have never been. We must be... a beacon of liberty to other nations. We must care. About people, foreign and domestic. We must care. It's the only way this two hundred year old nation is going to survive.

Gary Abraham