Interesting article about America, as a whole, not properly dealing with the psychological scars of 9/11. Good sections:

A friend of mine recently said that he did not like the concept of the enemy and that, as far as he was concerned, all men were his brothers. But what if the man whom you wish to regard as your brother does not return your fraternal feelings of affection; what if he regards your offer as an insult to his honor? "You dare to call yourself my brother, you dog?" In which case, what do you do then? Do you respect his feelings, and accept him as your enemy? Or do you treat him as an inferior being and wave aside his protestations as if he were a four year old child -- "Now, now, Bobby, you don't really mean to say those bad things about mommy."

To insist that your enemy is not your enemy when he insists on being one is to rob him of his humanity, and to endanger your own existence -- and all for the sake of preserving an unsustainable illusion. To recognize an enemy, and to treat him as one, is not to dehumanize him -- on the contrary, it is to treat him as your equal. It is to take him seriously. It is to meet him on his own terms.

There's a quote by Longfellow on the window of our sound department, "If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."

I wonder.

The Bush administration has announced that its campaign theme will be that we are in Iraq to keep other 9/11's from happening on our soil; but how could anyone who understood the first 9/11 possibly think such a thing? If the first 9/11 was brought to us by Arab nationals living in Hamburg, acting out a fantasy, how could the occupation of Iraq have prevented it then, and how could it prevent another such event in the future?

Here is a genuine issue for the Democrats to criticize. They could point to it and say, "This shows that the Bush administration does not really yet understand the nature of the beast that we are dealing with." And yet, instead of taking on this question, they insist on beating up the President for daring to remind the American people that 9/11 ever occurred.

I favored the Iraq war not because I overreacted to the fear created by 9/11, or because I was cajoled by the Bush admins claims of WMDs, or because I think an American empire is a desirable goal, or because I think it's our duty to poke our noses in every country we don't agree with, but because I do not see another viable alternative to dealing with an Arab world who cleary cannot or does not want to deal with the fundamentalist element in their society. I'm still waiting to hear other viable options, none of which have been forwarded by the democrats (or anyone for that matter).