What, if anything, are you doing to remember 9-11?

[stitics]

I apologize if this topic has been posted before, but I don't have enough time to look at the moment.

I am sitting right outside the tent I have spent the last four days in, listening to the radio's revisit to the heroes and victims of September 11, 2001, and I started wondering...what are the world's people doing in rememberance of this horrible occasion? Here at the field site (training for the upcoming rotation to Afghanistan) we shut down all the generators, laptops, etc, had a little prayer, and a moment of silence at 0900. There is also going to ba a memorial service held this afternoon at one of the dining facilities.

[qmrq]

I'm doing ... nothing. Hmm.

[Jason Dunn]

When I woke up this morning, I spent some time thinking about the tragedy that happened two years ago. I then spent some time thinking about the senseless slaughter of lives in Isreal and Palestine, and wondering why we're such animals. Thinking about what's going on in the middle east is so depressing - killing, killing, and more killing.

I then pondered doing a front page post on remembering 9/11, then I remember what has happened every other time we've done anything remotely political, the people who live in the US get patriotic (which I don't mind at all), and the people in other parts of the world get offended at that patriotism...which results in an ugly discussion thread that we end up locking. :|

[Janak Parekh]

I've gotta say, I didn't actually do much different than what I do every day. That is, working in Manhattan, it's extraordinarily hard to forget 9/11 on any day, and I feel very lucky on a daily basis to be alive and have the opportunities I have. Just this morning, as I was taking the subway, there were announcements of a police investigation at 96th St. station. It's all around us, more some days than other, but virtually omnipresent on a nearly daily basis.

--janak

[slothdog]

9/11's different for me. See, two years ago today I was in the intensive care unit of a children's hospital, watching over my nearly five month old son, who was unconscious and breathing only with the help of a ventilator. Three days later he died. I never got to see him sit up or crawl. I never got to hear him talk. I was fortunate enough to hear his heart-melting laugh, and he laughed often. He will always be remembered. He has a memorial page (http://www.slothradio.com/fam/MemDominic.html) as well.

:(

[dh]

9/11's different for me. See, two years ago today I was in the intensive care unit of a children's hospital, watching over my nearly five month old son, who was unconscious and breathing only with the help of a ventilator. Three days later he died. I never got to see him sit up or crawl. I never got to hear him talk. I was fortunate enough to hear his heart-melting laugh, and he laughed often. He will always be remembered. He has a memorial page (http://www.slothradio.com/fam/MemDominic.html) as well.

:(
I can see why you have a rather different perspective on this time of the year. It's a nice memorial page for your son, I'm sure you will always have good memories of the short time you were all together. Things like that are so tough!
David

[Janak Parekh]

slothdog, :cry: It always puts things in perspective.

--janak

[Jereboam]

9/11's different for me. See, two years ago today I was in the intensive care unit of a children's hospital, watching over my nearly five month old son, who was unconscious and breathing only with the help of a ventilator. Three days later he died. I never got to see him sit up or crawl. I never got to hear him talk. I was fortunate enough to hear his heart-melting laugh, and he laughed often. He will always be remembered. He has a memorial page (http://www.slothradio.com/fam/MemDominic.html) as well.

:(

Being a father myself, I have some inkling of how you must feel. My daughter's now almost three, and losing her would bring the world crashing down. I have seen the results of missed diagnosis in a friend's little girl, when several doctors failed to spot meningitis, preferring to call it flu.

I've gotta say, I didn't actually do much different than what I do every day. That is, working in Manhattan, it's extraordinarily hard to forget 9/11 on any day, and I feel very lucky on a daily basis to be alive and have the opportunities I have. Just this morning, as I was taking the subway, there were announcements of a police investigation at 96th St. station. It's all around us, more some days than other, but virtually omnipresent on a nearly daily basis.


I was going to say something else here, not directed at any one person but of a more general nature, but I won't, as Jason said it would most probably result in having the thread locked. I'm all for a reasoned debate, but another day. Not today.

Let it suffice to say that I hope everyone's thoughts go out to ALL people who have suffered through the actions of terrorists, now and in the past, in all corners of the world.

J

[Duncan]

I then pondered doing a front page post on remembering 9/11, then I remember what has happened every other time we've done anything remotely political, the people who live in the US get patriotic (which I don't mind at all), and the people in other parts of the world get offended at that patriotism...which results in an ugly discussion thread that we end up locking. :|

I don't think it's the patriotism that causes the problems Jason. It's some of the the uglier forms, and also the more simplistic, jingoistic 'my country is superior and everone should be like us' forms, that can upset. Most nations have their own variety of this however - and perhaps we outside the US gave less leeway to an expected outpouring of genuine US patriotism, even if a 'very' small part of it was distasteful, than we should. I'm not sure we in the UK would have been any 'better' (difficult to decide the right word there!) if it had happened to the City of London.

You know - I've been quite touched this year by two things. One - people have remembered the losses of 9/11 in more simple, less ostentatious ways this year (some friends of mine who lost someone in the WTC got very upset with the continual repeating of images and film of the events last year - I don't know what US TV has been like this year but in the UK the networks have been much more low key and struck a better balance. Two - people have started to ask the difficult questions that for a time were almost impossible after the original tragedy. For a time I remember it being almost impossible to ask in what ways the West helped to cause the hatred from parts of the Islamic world without being accused of justifying the terrorism itself. I think that is one of the more encouraging things that two years passage of time has allowed... people are coming to grips with a more complex world and starting to ask what new ways we should develop to deal with this and prevent people from feeling that their only hope is to flock to the banners of people like Bin Laden...

It's also 'good' to be reminded by slothdog that intensely personal tragedies happen everyday to people - and it helps us to never forget that 9/11 was not one event but a collection of thousands of personally tragedies - and hopefully many stories of hope...

Also worth remembering that the extraordinary coming together of post 9/11, and the amazing altruism shown, has sadly not diminished the casual cruelties that many still endure as a consequence of the tragedy. I spent today doing some advocacy work that I volunteer to do for disadvantaged groups (nothing to do with the day - just random chance that it was 9/11). Among them (a case I touched on only briefly) was a women who lost her husband in 9/11 (he was, would you believe, only due to be in the US for three weeks...) and whose insurance company has yet to pay out after two years - on legal technicalities...! :(

Just one little final thought. A friend (who works for a Christian aid agency) sent me an e-mail a couple of days ago pointing out that last year 37 separate terrorist events (and the resultant loss of life) were commemorated just in the UK and NI - and somewhere in the region of 150+ within Israel and other parts of the Middle East and Africa. Worldwide estmated loss of life through terrorist acts in 2002 alone (excluding wars and small scale conflicts) was in the region of 250 times the total loss of life in the WTC crash. Even though these are only estimates it provides some pretty staggering food for thought at just how many 'New Yorks' have been dealing with their own burdens of loss throughout the past year and how little we have moved to stopping people from feeling they need/have the right to commit terrorist acts...

[Janak Parekh]

I was going to say something else here, not directed at any one person but of a more general nature, but I won't, as Jason said it would most probably result in having the thread locked. I'm all for a reasoned debate, but another day. Not today.
Well, in advance, my sincere apologies if I sounded arrogant in that comment. It was not intentional, and I hope you didn't read it that way. I'm not trying to put my experiences above everyone else's. Feel free to PM me if you want to express anything.

Two - people have started to ask the difficult questions that for a time were almost impossible after the original tragedy.
Excellent point. It's also noteworthy that the average American knows a lot more about world affairs than they did two years ago. (Still not nearly enough, but one step at a time.)

--janak

[Jereboam]

Well, in advance, my sincere apologies if I sounded arrogant in that comment. It was not intentional, and I hope you didn't read it that way. I'm not trying to put my experiences above everyone else's. Feel free to PM me if you want to express anything.


No, no - not at all, no apology required at all...it's just I didn't want to turn the thread what some people might construe as some kind of anti-US thing, which has happened most other places I have tried to discuss it rationally.

In any case Duncan seems to have expressed most of what I wanted to say in a much more delicate manner that I could probably have managed myself. It just seems sometimes that so much of our collective attention is drawn to certain high-profile events, that other, no less tragic, acts of terrorism are ignored, or even worse, unheard of - if you like, they are not "CNN-worthy". It seems unfortunate that in a world with global telecommunications that so much slips underneath our attention radar.

In the UK, for example, we have been dealing with terrorism for decades if not longer, yet today you could be forgiven for thinking that terrorism started on the 11th of September and that the very word was coined to refer to that one event.

This is sensitive stuff that drives most Americans berserk, hence my reluctance to discuss it here...

Excellent point. It's also noteworthy that the average American knows a lot more about world affairs than they did two years ago. (Still not nearly enough, but one step at a time.)


It's a tragedy in itself that something like this had to happen before the US as a people truly sat up and took notice of the world about them. But as you say, things are improving...let's hope that they continue to do so.

J

[Janak Parekh]

In the UK, for example, we have been dealing with terrorism for decades if not longer, yet today you could be forgiven for thinking that terrorism started on the 11th of September and that the very word was coined to refer to that one event.
Understood. I only cited what I did because that's my firsthand experience. We're finally learning what the rest of the world has experienced for many years -- the US, being on the other side of the pond, historically had a perception that the rest of the world, and its problems, was "over the sea" -- this stemmed from the fact that, in the 19th century, it was a huge cost to travel between continents and there was indeed a huge physical separation. The world is now growing smaller, sometimes painfully. :(

It's a tragedy in itself that something like this had to happen before the US as a people truly sat up and took notice of the world about them. But as you say, things are improving...let's hope that they continue to do so.
That's the only "hope" I can derive. However, we (as a global populace) taking an awfully long way to "improve", aren't we? Well... at least the Internet is slowly having a connecting effect -- I get a much better perspective on news today then I ever did in the past (Google News (http://news.google.com) rocks!)

--janak

[Jereboam]

One day, perhaps, we'll get there. But I still despair - I only have to remember what happened in Yugoslavia, on our very doorstep, and the illusion than humankind has any humanity goes out the window. And we, with our military might and enormous budgets, stood by and let it happen, only doing something when our noble politicians decided there was some domestic capital in doing it. We Europeans have had our black times too.

J

[Duncan]

Someone once said: 'Love your enemies'. Whatever you think of the man in question he was in a country where the populace had been conquered, abused and subjugated by a brutal occupying force who were taxing them to death and creating a climate where people were resorting to one of the earliest recorded forms of terrorism against the oppressor which led, in time, to the utter annhiliation of the land in question, the scattering of the peoples, and centuries of unrest that continue to today.

Now. 'Love your enemies'. Curious notion. What if we, for once, went against all our human instincts and tried it - for the first time in human history? History is one long cycle of one side avenging itself against the wrongs committed by the other side, who then do vice versa. There IS only one way to break the cycle. Someone, somewhere has to have the courage, and ability to sacrifice, to say: I will not take revenge, I will do the unexpected. I will show my enemy love and friendship - and the cycle will have a chance to stop.

Do I believe this will happen? No. It is all too human to want revenge for our suffering. But there are small scale examples of this happening and succeeding. Small communities where the wronged parties did the unexpected and broke the cycle...

I just wanted to point out that someone gave a solution, the only possible (and yet hardest of all to do) solution a very long time ago and it would just be nice to believe that one day we will be able to try it as a human race...

[Kati Compton]

Someone, somewhere has to have the courage, and ability to sacrifice, to say: I will not take revenge, I will do the unexpected. I will show my enemy love and friendship - and the cycle will have a chance to stop.
I think there are those people here and there -- the main problem (I think) is that you'd need EVERYONE to do it, not just one person, in order for it to actually work. Plus, sometimes the person you're not seeking revenge against might hurt you again even if you don't seek revenge. It's a nice idea - but I don't see it happening. Basically because no one is perfect, and the more people involved, the more likely there is to be at least one person that can't follow this ideal.

[Fishie]

Wrote this email last year:
One minute of silence.

A year ago in the afternoon(6 houre timedifference with NY)I saw the events wich we are sadly all too familiar with unfold on live TV right before my eyes.
Smoke billowing from one of the towers and a reporter trying to make sense of it all, mere minutes later a second plane hitting the other tower with pinpoint precision immediatly ending all speculation as to what was happening, later cemented in by a third plane that had hit the capitol.
This was an attack, something I had feared would happen for years yet something I had hoped would never happen.
Sadly it was happening.

The following houres and days for me personaly were horrible and at moments it was verry difficult to go on.
Feelings of fear, anger and saddnes filled my hart.
The next three days I spend mostly on the phone in often failed attempts to contact friends of mine who lived or worked in or around Manhattan and in talking with my manny American friends from around the country.
Two sleeples nights, a 250$ phonebill, two gallon´s of coffee and a splitting headache later I finnaly received email from the last person for who´s life I feared.
Once that happened I finnaly managed a good nights rest but after waking up again reality hit me and I was confronted both online and ofline with a barrage of hatred and misinformation.

These went from claims I was a terrorist supporter to even death threats aimed towards me in moments of anger.
I didnt mind too much, these persons just like me were personnaly suffering from the events and theyre way of dealing with it at that moment was to vent and look for scapegoats, I dealt with the events the only way I have known how.
Defending my vieuws and trying to make others see that the calls for revenge and blaming me or others like me was in fact the same sort of reasoning those puppets manipulated by a crminal mastermind used to justify theyre actions, actions wich are unjustifiable no matter wich way you look at it.
Blaming an entire race or religion becouse of the actions of a few is what got us in this mess in the first place, its what got this world in the state its in, with that in mind how can ANNYONE claim it to be a solution?

I mean its not like we dont have manny recent examples to draw upon for proof that blind vengeance is not the way to go and in fact was the exact reasoning Osama and his cronies used to justify theyre actions.
From the treatment of Germany by the other West European countries after WW1 wich created the climate and breedingground within Germany where fascism could thrive thus leading to the rise of Hitler, to the massacres called for by a Belgian Catholic priest between Hutu´s and Tutsi´s in Africa that left a million people death a few years ago and manny milions more inbetween those in various conflicts around the world the examples of what NOT to do are there and plain to see for everyone who simply takes the effort to see em.

Dehumanisation and putting the blame on those you know and dehumanise is a verry dangerous tactic and once it is used by those claiming to do good the lines get blurred and whatever good intentions one might have had are lost.
After all its much easier to justify so called colateral dammage or sometimes even outright execution of people iff you see them as inhuman *******s instead of people who might feel the same feelings you do and share youre dreams, ideals and fears.
Its easier saying hey we bombard and have sanctions against Iraq becouse Iraq is evil and wants to destroy us then it is to say Iraq has a military dictator who sadly we( Europe and the US ) put in his seat after wich he brought death and destruction to his own people, we have brought that evil upon the innocent Iraqi people who used to enjoy a great quality of life so we should do the honorouble thing and correct this grave historical mistake we have commited against the innocent people of Iraq.
Nope its much easier keeping sanctions in place and calling the aproximatly 1.2 million deaths it caused colateral damage.

The things I just brushed upon sadly happen al around the world, from the Arab worlds dehumanisation of Israel and America to the dehumanisation of the Arab world by Israel and America.
The dehumanisation is greatest in times of crisis and sadly thats exactly why its so dangerous.
An American girl shortly after the attack on the twin towers asked me why people hated the US, I gave her a link to the following two stories: http://www.globalexchange.org/campa...dent091201.html ( by Robert Fisk The Independent a London based newspaper, The awesome cruelty of doomed people 9/12 2k1)
and http://www.globalexchange.org/septe...lobe091601.html ( where an Egyptian waiter asks Chris Toensing from The Boston Globe why Americans hate them )
The links are not the original links that I send her, when I did a search forthese two articles this website had em both while the original links were hidden behind a payservice in order to see them, they are the original content tough.
Another American girl told me she hated being an American and she would like nothing more then to leave the US and live her life in Canada, Europe or Japan.
I told her that she too was making the same mistake by hating the country she was born in, hating an entire nation, race, religion or whatever is wrong period.

We are humans and as such sadly we seem to be unable to learn from the mistakes of oure forefathers and we seem to be destined to make the same mistakes over and over again.
We have to tough, we have to so we as humans as people of this planet can survive.
We have to look within ourselves as much as we look to others and make sure the breeding grounds of hatred get eliminated not only to ensure oure own survival but the survival of oure neighbours as well and oure neighbours neighbours and theyre neighbours and so on.
Like I said history is rife with examples, Hitlers rise to power becouse the UKs and France´s insistence on humiliating the German people after WW1 thus providing Hitler the opportunity to blame the jews and give hope to the easily impressed by saying they were part of a superior race.
The insane show of might between Russia and the US that went on for decades and claimed manny other countries as victims cought in the crossfire and breeded hatred between the two countries and manny others for decades.
The creation of Israel and the current conflict with the Palestines and within the Arab world and the occupied teritories.
The war between Iraq and Iran in the 80s.
The tensions between India and Pakistan.
Sadly I could go on and on and on.

Sigh ill end it here, this became way longer and politicised then I had intended it to be, it started out with me trying to tell you people what 9/11 had meant and means to me and look what I ended up saying.
My apologies for that.

So what will I do to honour this grim anniversary then?
Ill keep a minute of silence and pray for the souls of the innocent victims that fell that day in a city and country that are verry dear to me, for them and for all innocent victims of terror, be it by way of terrorism, sanctions, war, hunger etcetera worldwide.

PS I visited Ground Zero late May.
It had a greater effect on me then I tought it would, I couldnt control my emotions and while praying for those who had lost theyre lives my tears flowed freely.
Im happy it did, im happy that after 31 years on this planet I still have the ability to have these feelings towards others and that despite the sorry state this world is in that it has not managed to make me lose the ability to feel for this world and its inhabitants regardles of who or what they might be perceived as by others.

Regards Ali

[Jacob]

Now. 'Love your enemies'. Curious notion. What if we, for once, went against all our human instincts and tried it - for the first time in human history? History is one long cycle of one side avenging itself against the wrongs committed by the other side, who then do vice versa. There IS only one way to break the cycle. Someone, somewhere has to have the courage, and ability to sacrifice, to say: I will not take revenge, I will do the unexpected. I will show my enemy love and friendship - and the cycle will have a chance to stop.


While I agree it would be great if that worked, but in many cases when someone wants you dead - they want you dead, period. The tragedy on 9-11 didn't happen as revenge for a specific deed, it happened because they want US and western society dead.

If we sat back and didn't do anything, then they wouldn't just think "hey, well, maybe they aren't so bad!"

I'm not a big fan of revenge, but unfortunately it's not always a question of retaliation - it sometimes actually is a question of self-defense.

[Jason Dunn]

Now. 'Love your enemies'. Curious notion. What if we, for once, went against all our human instincts and tried it - for the first time in human history? History is one long cycle of one side avenging itself against the wrongs committed by the other side, who then do vice versa. There IS only one way to break the cycle. Someone, somewhere has to have the courage, and ability to sacrifice, to say: I will not take revenge, I will do the unexpected. I will show my enemy love and friendship - and the cycle will have a chance to stop.

A very profound statement Duncan, and it's one that I deeply wish we could see more of. On one level, I agree with and try to practice that daily - someone does something or says something nasty to you, and instead of doing the "normal" thing by doing the same thing back to them, you let it roll off you. Ghadi proved that passive resistance can work.

However, in a scenario where your enemy wants not to hurt or dominate you, but to destroy you utterly, can love prevail? How many of your friends could you watch die before you would raise a hand to stop it?

I do know what you mean though about the cycle of violence - I sometimes wonder what would happen in Israel/Palestine if the chain were to be broken by one side saying "You've just killed our people, but rather than do the same to you, we will do nothing instead." Would that help? Would that allow the other side to see the pointlessness of their actions? Or would it been seen as an invitation for further attacks? Love can prevail if both sides want peace, but when one side will only settle for the utter annihilation of the other, what hope is there?

Humans remain nasty, brutish creatures for the most part. A person one on one is smart, but people collectively are stupid. :(

[karen]

...I travelled from Toronto to New York City to make up for missing a speaking egagement two years ago when the borders closed and I couldn't make my committment to speak at Broadway and Liberty (one block from the WTC.)

I couldn't tell my mother I was going to get on a plane from Canada to NYC after the alerts of potential Candian hijackings to the US. I was a bit concerned, but decided that if I'm going to go, I want to go doing the things I love AND that I'm not going to let those terrorists terrorize me two years later.

I stayed at the Millenium Hilton (overlooking the WTC site).

The presentation went well. The view from the 50th floor conference room was awe-inspiring: the Statue of Liberty to the south, the WTC site to the west, and the rest of Manhattan to the north.

I went back to my hotel afterwards to pick up my luggage and I cried at thought of all those bodies burning and falling on the pavement just a few floors below my room. Then I cried about the bodies that will fall in the future because we as a species are the cruelest of them all.

[Duncan]

However, in a scenario where your enemy wants not to hurt or dominate you, but to destroy you utterly, can love prevail? How many of your friends could you watch die before you would raise a hand to stop it?

Indeed. Of course the man who said it was willing to go all the way and inpspired many to do as he did. I wish I believed I had that level of courage.

The tragedy on 9-11 didn't happen as revenge for a specific deed, it happened because they want US and western society dead.

Jacob,

While utterly, utterly wrong in every way the WTC attack was revenge for past deeds - both action and inaction. Support for Bin Laden (and indeed Bin Laden's own views), no matter how warped (and, frankly, un-Islamic), doesn't come out of nowhere. The sort of love I'm thinking about would be, for example, if we in the West hadn't kept blindly taking sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict with one side over the other. Or if as well as giving Bin Laden weapons to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan we had also helped to rebuild Afghanistan afterwards - where would have his excuse to hate have come from?

Remember - no matter how much we hate the act, no matter how much it cannot be excused, no act of war or terrorism happens in isolation or simply because they felt like it.

Try an example closer to home - for all the evil of the terrorist acts carried out by certain militant black groups in the USA in the 60's - we can't pretend that we don't know where that hate came from?

I've worded the above as carefully as possible so as to make it clear that a plea for understanding why the WTC attack happened does not equal excusing it, supporting it or sympathising with it - but it will help us work to prevent more 9/11s. I hope anyway...

Remember the same man who said: 'Love your enemies' said, while in the grips of an agonising punishment for a crime he didn't commit, '...forgive them for they know not what they do...'

[Jacob]

Remember - no matter how much we hate the act, no matter how much it cannot be excused, no act of war or terrorism happens in isolation or simply because they felt like it.


Yes there is a source for their hate, but their reasoning wasn't "why did they abandon afganistan after the war with Russia" their quoted reasoning was to bring down the American "decadent" and "immoral" society.

I agree that not helping rebuild Afganistan may have contributed to the hatred that they have, I do wonder whether bin laden would have hated America anyways.

Remember the same man who said: 'Love your enemies' said, while in the grips of an agonising punishment for a crime he didn't commit, '...forgive them for they know not what they do...'

I think they do know what they did and want to do though.

I do remember that man, but I don't hold him in as high regard as some...

[Fishie]

The reasons he hated the US are manyfold and quite personal for the most.
The Bin Ladin family is personally aligned with the Bush family and Osama studied in the west when he was young and is quite well educated.
The slip into what he is now took decades, it didnt happen overnight.

[Duncan]

Remember - no matter how much we hate the act, no matter how much it cannot be excused, no act of war or terrorism happens in isolation or simply because they felt like it.


Yes there is a source for their hate, but their reasoning wasn't "why did they abandon afganistan after the war with Russia" their quoted reasoning was to bring down the American "decadent" and "immoral" society.

But it is easy to see how a belief in the latter could be fostered by the former.

Remember the same man who said: 'Love your enemies' said, while in the grips of an agonising punishment for a crime he didn't commit, '...forgive them for they know not what they do...'

I think they do know what they did and want to do though.

I do remember that man, but I don't hold him in as high regard as some...[/quote]

My favourite course at university (first degree) was wonderfully entitled 'Freedom and the Problem of Evil'. Among the things we studied were the autobiography of a reformed IRA terrorist.

We were led piece by piece down the path by which one man became a terrorist. As a teenager if he had been told that one day he would deliberately attempt to bomb a schoolbus full of children and that he would coldly shoot a man through the kneecaps and make his family watch him bleed to death - simply because they were Protestant - he would have been shocked at the idea. But the path he went along was full of little compromises, small changes, simple events - such that it was only twenty years later, in prison, that he was able to take the time to notice that he had changed and now believed things to be right that once he could never have accepted. Yet he could not identify 'when' this change had happened it had been so gradual. Never assume that simply because you 'know' something on one level that you therefore know it on another.

Who knows how many small steps the terrorists who took the planes into the WTC needed to get to the point where they accepted without question that what they did was right, just, acceptable, would find them favour with God and was worth dying for?

The same with the small steps that led decent ordinary German people to stand spitting at trains with faces and hearts full of hate as they carried former friends and neighbours off to death camps as in thier eyes they transformed from human into -sub-human.

Or point to the big changes that caused the US to go from accepting slavery as normal to universal suffrage - it is hard to find them - in truth the steps have been small and still go on today.

We can do the same in our lives - I can't point to a moment when I went from being a avowed Marx reading Communist atheist to a right-of-centre, socially liberal, Bible-believing Christian - it was a process so gradual I almost didn't see it happening!

The author recounts how, in a moment of reflection, he recalled he had refused to take a gun and shoot a 16 year old boy through the head - as it had seemed wrong - mere days before he had set a bomb that threatened to kill over thirty young children... and he couldn't explain what the difference was...

Just some ruminations on what Jesus may have meant by 'they know not what they do' - and that 'good' and 'bad' actions and beliefs are harder to objectively define than we would like to think - and uncomfortable though experiment for you: Answer the question: 'Is it wrong to murder?' in such a way that no-one can find an instance in which your answer fails to work...'

Again - I offer the above as food for thought only...

[Jacob]

Well, my answer to the question "Is it wrong to murder?" is just that it is a loaded question and therefore an unfair one.

I think there are things everyone is willing to kill for, and I firmly believe that. I would have no question about killing in self-defense - is that "murder"?

The law considers killing in self-defense and in many cases the defense of others "Justifiable" - do I agree? Yes. The problem is how you judge whether the person's perception of "life or death" risk.

I think the whole reasons behind terrorism in the middle east and with al queda is very complex. The only thing I know without question is it has to stop one way or another and true peace can't be established when it is as a result of negotiations held under the threat of terrorism.

[Duncan]

Well, my answer to the question "Is it wrong to murder?" is just that it is a loaded question and therefore an unfair one.

I think there are things everyone is willing to kill for, and I firmly believe that. I would have no question about killing in self-defense - is that "murder"?

The law considers killing in self-defense and in many cases the defense of others "Justifiable" - do I agree? Yes. The problem is how you judge whether the person's perception of "life or death" risk.

Which is my point exactly. Even what seems like the very simplest of moral questions - an easy case of 'good' vs. 'bad', 'right' and 'wrong' isn't - as even the briefest of exploration can show.

So why do we see some of the most powerful men in the world treat something as complex as religio-socio-political terrorism as if it is a simple case of good guys vs. bad (and, FTR, I'm talking about those on ALL parts of the political spectrum...!).

You are right of course - it has to stop. But it won't because we are doing all the same things that cause the cycle of hate to continue. Hardly any surprise - it is difficut to persuade anyone to think outside the box and make for truly radical solutions when pretty much everyone who has ever done that, and made a success of it, has come to a sticky end...

[Janak Parekh]

So why do we see some of the most powerful men in the world treat something as complex as religio-socio-political terrorism as if it is a simple case of good guys vs. bad (and, FTR, I'm talking about those on ALL parts of the political spectrum...!).
Because most of the smartest people don't become politicians. I remember a mock election in my 9th grade world history class, and I swore I'd never participate as a candidate in an election. Alliances, dirt, etc... no sane person would want to go through it. Of course, this leads our world governments down a very sad path.

Also, politicians pander to the "average citizen", and as such wants to paint things in black and white to garner popular support. I've sometimes seriously wondered if a technocracy could work better than a democracy.

--janak