Fwd: [blah] [brians at wired.com: [heroictimes at hotmail.com: ]]

[Normen Nomesco]

>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