On 21 Mar 2006 at 10:52, John Lee wrote:

> Reality to me, as I told one of my daughters last night, is that
> the car bombs are being planted in Iraq and not in the USA.  And
> after 9/11, I wasn't so sure that car bombs weren't about to
> start going off in my neighborhood.  This may sound selfish, but
> who amongst us doesn't feel the same way? 

So, is one to infer from your comments that you believe that it is 
justifiable to enable ones own government to further oppress a 
people who were already oppressed and to utterly remove what little 
security of person that they had retained under those abysmal 
conditions just so that your personal, mostly baseless, fears can 
be allayed?  

Is that really the way you wish your fellow citizens or the rest of 
the world to conduct themselves towards you?  Or, do think that you 
and those that you value should be exceptional?  That this sort of 
treatment is the expected lot of that part of humanity that you 
profess nothing but indifference for, but not for that small part 
that you exalt out of no more than personal circumstance?

If one wishes to engender hatred and bring about that which you 
evidently fear most then I can think of no surer path to that end 
than the one taken by the U.S. government with respect to Iraq.  
There is a premise about civil society that is summed up thus; 
"security for some is security for none."  The United States' role 
in instigating the destruction of civil society in Iraq will, in 
the end, produce gravely negative effects in the United States.  It 
only remains to be seen what form these will take.

And it is the indifference to the sufferings of others that permits 
such things to happen.  This is all caused by human will.  There 
are no cosmic forces at play here.  There is no overarching 
historical flow that is carrying the peoples of the world in its 
current.  These are all excuses for what is, at its root, the evil 
people cause by hardening their hearts to the sufferings of others, 
usually because they listen to the seductive whispers of their 
imaginary fears rather than deal forthrightly with the cold 
realities of inequity and greed.

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