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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (7895)	9/14/2001 7:33:20 PM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 23153

Two points, Ray, if I may: "outfoxed" implies the terrorists did something we hadn't thought of. They didn't. They did something that is unreasonable to defend against unless we implement a much, much stricter air security program (which we will now). There is nothing stopping anyone from doing a McVeigh and sending a truck full of fertilizer bombs into downtown DC close enough to US government buildings to cause real damage. But the city can't close the streets completely, even though they know the threat is there. Second, the last thing people like Bin Laden want is the friendship and support from a western government. That undermines their extremist, absolutist ideology that dictates their world should be completely under their influence and control while the "non-them" group is expunged. Period. They thrive on conflict, disorder and inviting retribution on their own people to make the situation tenser and harder to resolve along "reasonable" western lines. Maybe we can win the hearts and minds of the masses - that won't stop extremists from mounting terrorist attacks to promote an unfriendly agenda. You have to start thinking how extremist psychos think if you want to understand where they are coming from. The Serbs killed more than 10,000 in Sarajevo including 3000 children, and more than 200,000 throughout Bosnia and Croatia. The US had spent decades and millions of dollars building goodwill with Serbs through our embassy and other missions in former Yugoslavia. Kindness won't deter extremists, only force.