Quote:
Originally posted by J.J.:
OK, brilliant minds of the great escape, here is a realpolitik Q for you.
What happens if the taliban just hand over usama yermama binlauden? They say, oh, gee, you're right, he's just a nasty guy, do what you want.
How many would stop there, instead of prosecuting the war to it's ultimate end years from now, with the additional attacks and casualties? How do you kill the hydra? WE all know you have to kill the body, that the heads will pop up as fast as you wack them. Have any of you heard people talking like that? I am especially interested in the street talk of other places besides the U.S.
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One of the ways we can get rid of the hydra, is to join together to mitigate, and eventually do away with, the causes of terrorism. It would require a completely different way of being in the world for all of us. A rethinking of the way we interact with each other, and countries like to us and unlike us throughout the world. Compassion, and a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood are prerequisites. Instead of personal self interest, we would need to make a radical shift to enlightened self interest - i.e. what is good for the world we live in, is good for us.
The old paradigms are worn out, they are breaking down irrevocably, as witness the chaos and disaster the world over. Our climate is beginning to go haywire, (natural disaster rates are increasing fast), the poor are getting poorer whilst the rich get richer (a cliche, but it is TRUE, I have the figures to prove it), the global economy is looking less than healthy, (even before last Tuesday), our old people are going to far outweigh the ability of our financial system to support them very soon now, there is huge worry about the need for more young people, at the same time, our world population is exploding, and there is huge worry about the planet's ability to support the 9 billion people that are expected by 2030, our oil and gas reserves are finite...but our energy needs are not. They grow with our rapidly expanding population, and that population's increasing need for energy (and all the other natural resources that we are fast running out of.)
Refugees are fleeing in terror from hateful and unjust regimes all over the world. There are more of them every day. So many of our children all over the globe are starving, they are mutilated, they are dying, they are working for unjust employers for tiny amounts of money. Ever greater numbers of women and children, and men, are selling their bodies for just enough money to stay alive. And whilst these things are taking place, we are selling arms, we in the West, to countries all over the globe, helping injustice continue. There is misery throughout the world, a lot of it here in the West, where there are poor, many of them, some of them living in third world conditions.
How far does this have to go before we realise that we cannot go on like this? The paradigm HAS to change, if the future is not to be too dreadful to contemplate. For much of the world, it already is. I am crying as I write this, the combined weight of it all is tearing at my heart. I cannot breathe....
For New York, as for the rest, my tears flow. And yet I can find it in me, (and I so hesitate to say this for fear it will come over as callous or uncaring, which I am not!), I can find it in me to wonder if this wasn't the loudest, more jarring, most painful wakeup call that the West has seen for a very long time.
I pray to the divine within all of us that we will hear and respond to it.
(Please see the post I just put up entitled 'I wanted to share this with you', for some more thoughts (not mine) on this.)
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