Hi Dave, RE: "I do not believe that "hopelessness" is the answer and neither is money."
I tend to believe the root cause is hopelessness. I may be wrong, but my impression comes from this:
An enormous fear about how humankind allowed the mass killing of innocent Jewish people, prompted me to ask a friend (whose Dad was persecuted many, many years ago and as a teen-ager he fled from Hungary and survived), I asked why people allowed innocent people to get killed. His daughter said, the people that allowed those horrible murders to happen lacked hope. Those that didn't tolerate this, had the strength to take a stand, and the courage to flee their homes. I asked what could prevent something like this from ever happening again in the world against anyone and any race/religion, and she said, never allow a country to lack hope because (she thought) the lack of hope created a situation where people allowed horrible things happen to others.
I may be wrong and my opinion isn't fixed at all, but based upon the answers to the queries I've made over my lifetime, I think hopelessness on a large scale can be a very dangerous thing for society. That's why I think it's the root cause.
I also asked an elderly lady, who survived a concentration camp she was placed in because she defended her innocent neighbors, why people would allow the mass murder of innocent people. She's long since passed away, but I'll never forget her short answer, "there was no excuse." "There is no excuse." She never gave an inch of an excuse, regardless of lack of hope or pain. She carried this philosophy on all matters, from the most severe/horrible wrongs to even minor wrongs, she never gave an excuse.
She lived a lot of pain due to her strong conviction that pain is not an excuse to hurt or do a wrong, but not everyone has this strength, which means they can be led to do horribly wrong things. This is the incredibly scary part about humandkind. This is where I tend to think an understanding that "hope" is necessary for those that don't have the type of strong personal strength that she had. When she died, my sister that was with her, holding her hand, said that even up to the end she carried both strength, courage and peacefulness.
Religion provides hope, which can be good. But I also believe there is the potential for some people who are hopeless to possibly grasp onto any extreme side of any religion in a fanatical way. So, in this regards, I tend to think, maybe naively, the underlying issue for some of the religious wars is a lack of hope. Those that don't have hope, may reach out for hope or purpose in possibly destructive ways. When people have so much going for them in life, they do not want to lose that, they prosper and have hope.
I also believe that a person that does a suicide attack into WTC/Pentagon must be hopeless because suicide is the most hopeless act that lacks strength that possibly personal conviction or religion could help give. This may be completely incorrect, but I tend to believe that terrorists pluck hopeless victims and give them some type of strength or purpose they previously lacked.
Several Jewish contacts in Israel (except one) think that the militia attacks on their country seem to be due to a group of people that do not have jobs, lack a sense of purpose, or hope. If this is correct, which I do not know if it is, this could point to hope as an issue.
Generally speaking, not specific to any hot spot, my opinion is that someone with a job has food, is treated equally regardless of race/religion/gender/etc. such as we have in the USA, and is functioning well in society, has hope, is less apt to be hopeless, less apt to be plucked into a fanatical spectrum of any religion.
RE: "give us, i.e. communists, money so that in the end we can hang them with it."
Providing jobs gives society food, hope. But I understand your point about money being misused. A country can't give money until after safeguards are in place (elimination of weapons, monitoring of money, possibly democracy, etc., I don't know). Money can be tracked and monitored. But I don't think the financial community in this country will be motivated to help those that have inflicted the absolute worst kind of horribleness onto their industry. So, that leaves only the government to really solve this problem. But I don't see anyway that help in capital dollars can be provided to undercut dependency away from terrorist leaders by enabling job creation, until the terrorist networks are identified and terrorist leaders are removed from power. The USA was attacked and it makes absolutely no sense to give money to an attacker, whomever they all may be.
The article about Egypt by Yaroslav Trofimov, that Barry posted from WSJ, depicted a lot of very loud anger at the USA. It was deeply disturbing. I had several thoughts from that article and other articles:
a) that type of anger sounds very dangerous
b) that type of anger minimizes the types of immediately cooperative solutions the USA may apply to fix this terrorism problem
c) we need a long-term foreign policy that addresses the anger that is sympotmatic
d) reduce our oil consumption, thus, dependency on that particular area of the world (old story, no solutions yet)
e) possibly question our policy about being the guest that never left, in saudi arabia, that is generating some anger
f) saudi arabia business people appear to be angry with the usa's influence in OPEC that keeps oil prices in check, which in turn reduces their profit. I tend to agree with the article that said this is where the source of funding for terrorism may be coming from, from the oil business people that don't want their oil prices restricting their porfits. But if funding for terrorism is not through the wealthy oil business people, then it must be through a country, though Bush's speach didn't give any indication of a country being involved. But the amount of money used in the attack must be on the order of a million or so (airline tickets, hotels, car rentals, say $20,000 school tuition per person), to pull something like that off. Obviously, wealthy individuals or a country is behind this.
Do we attack Afghanistan? I prefer a peaceful response and do not like the killing of innocent people at all. I do understand that if one has to decide between the killing of X versus X+K, one would select X. I tend to feel that attacking a horribly poor country like Afghanistan will simply generate more hydra terrorism ("holy war with USA"), more martyrs and encourage perceptions that the USA bullies poor countries around, but I certainly agree with and share Tony's concern over safety. Our safety is at risk. I don't see a solution here that is very peaceful, other than doing our best to locate the responsible parties through Intelligence and bring them to justice. Too bad there isn't the technology to identify a person a country is searching for.
Regards,
Amy J |
