-^-for posterity-^-

an explosion in bali kills 180something. people running away from a nightclub with body parts missing. looks like the stage from some war film. stories of people being trapped inside as the building collapses and flames that boiled flesh. i'm sure it was on the news somewhere at home.

maybe bali doesn't strike a chord with you but it's pretty close to where i'm sitting. maybe the phillipines doesn’t' strike a chord either. that country lies to the east of me. our christian holy war against islam is fairly interesting. we seem to feel that we can irradiate "terror" (as "we" defign it) with more "terror" (as "they" defingn it). half a million children killed in sanctions on iraq. i don't think saddam suffered too much. he still holds the reigns. three thousand people die at work on a september morning. i don't think american aristocracy suffered. they still hold the reigns.

do we think we can destroy small groups of dedicated people bent or attacking western "civilization" at its core? let's look at some examples of similar groups, historically. one example would be the irish republican army. they carried out their ruthless attacks on british "civilization" and now have a country to show for it. let's look at eta in spain. they've been waging a bloody war for 35 years because they want their own homeland. they've yet to achieve that goal but the spanish authorities still suffer and eta flourishes. let's look at palestinian groups. they've been under the thumb of america/israel and before that britian since world war I. somehow they still are able to recruit people to blow themselves up in market squares. who is winning that battle? tit for tat. oh, and let's look at some revolutionary "terrorists" that carried out guerrilla attacks on an army from behind trees, from church steeples and used disease to dispel the native population. that is how america was formed.

how do you stop people from attacking innocents when you don't even know who the attackers are? how do you do it when they can slip past you at any moment with a haircut and a nice suit. how can you stop a movement when there are only 100 people involved? not with force.

with force you only create more support. if you kill the "mastermind" of a "terrorist" attack in palestine but also wound a 10 year old girl selling apples, did you achieve your goal? what if you alienated more people because of poor jane-appleseed. are we possibly going to eradicate everyone who hates america in our wild-wild-west campaign against "terror"? you think it's possible? or do you possibly believe that by killing innocents we make more people angry.

are we fighting an army that wears red coats and marches and shoots in straight lines or are we fighting an army that hides behind trees and doesn't play by “the rules”? sound familiar?

so, what's the solution. dialogue. oh, it's not petty idealism, it's possible. let's sit down and find out what's wrong and fix it. if it means sacrificing some army bases in oil rich saudi arabia, so be it. if it means giving palestinians a homeland and some autonomy, so be it.

bali is too close to me right now. i could scream i'm so frustrated by all of the suffering and all of the inconsistencies in definitions and actions. we are so blinded by nationalism it makes me want to vomit up everything i ever ate. it's all too incongruent. there is not much black and white in the world. it's all made up of beautiful grey.