I have great hope that the outcome of our present conflict will be greater cooperation and better ties between the US and Russia, among many other countries. I also fear that the opposite will be true. The great lengths Bush and his cabinet are going to in order to promote international cooperation is unprecedented, in my lifetime.
Many otherwise reasonable people in the US are getting a little whacky - I can't blame them under the circumstances, but I am glad that cooler heads are prevailing for now.
Here is an excerpt from an email I received today from an old friend, ex-hippy, now Ph.D. in Economics - I remember when he had long hair and used to end his letters, "Don't forget to smash the state."
>>Detroit has the largest concentration of Muslims in North America. We have
already had several arrests of Muslims who work at our airport. And before
the attacks a local pilot school had a couple of Arabs who had their
instructor fly them over the Chrysler Building which is six miles from my
home.
I think the airport security measures are total and absolute crap. They will
inconvenience us and waste our time, and not make us one bit safer.
We should expel all foreign nationals of Muslim countries from our country.
Kick theim out of our colleges and make them return to live under their
dictatorships. They are our guests, and we just don't want them here
anymore. Bye bye. Naturalized and US born citizens can, of course, stay.
I can't believe our stupidity as a people. All Muslims are not terrorists,
but all the terrorists involved September 11 were Muslims. Can we not use
racial/religious/ethnic profiling in this case? I say we must, or many more
Americans will die.
Expelling foreign Muslims would do more to advance safety than body cavity
searches at all the airports in the country.<<
In response to my reply (not all Muslims are Arabs, not all Arabs are Muslims), he wrote:
>>Okay. Deport all foreign Muslims AND all foreign Arabs. Then we can sort out
who we want to allow back in. Tough if that means some people who are good
guys get expelled. Then we can take a close look at recently naturalized
citizens. Too bad that innocent Arabs and Muslims are inconvenienced. Let
them go home and change their governments. I am not saying kill them, just
kick the foreign ones out of this country. Some of the terrorists spent some
time in Germany where foreigners need to regularly register. THEY OBEYED THE
LAW. They obeyed our laws too, mostly. I am sure they could get off in
court. DO NOT LET THEM GO TO COURT. DEPORT THEM. Until we do something like
this, I am not flying.<< |
