This is utterly irrelevant even if it were true. If you want to argue that we *deserved* to have 5000 killed because we are an evil nation and that we should simply accept future attacks as just punishments, go ahead and offer yourself up in sacrificial atonement. The sane rest of us will be concerned with the survival of ourselves, our families, our nation and our civilization. The rise of Hitler was arguably caused in large part by the overly vicious punishment of Germany at Versailles. Did that change, in any way whatsoever, how we had to, and eventually did, react? I continue to hope for leadership from the decent majority of Islam to take action to purge the indecent minority. The war is not against all Islam or even against fundamentalist Islam, but against terrorist Islam, and indeed against all terrorism. It must be prosecuted, whether by Islam itself or by the rest of the world. A purely defensive strategy has seldom succeeded in human history. Barney Wolff On Sat, Sep 15, 2001 at 09:56:26AM -0500, measl@mfn.org wrote:
The crusaders could never have come to power if we had acted like HUMAN BEINGS. Or even less, if we had just practiced what we preached.