An open letter to Terrorists


Well, you hit the World Trade Center, but you missed America. You hit the Pentagon, but you missed America. You used helpless American bodies, to take out other American bodies, but like a poor marksman, you STILL missed America.

Why? Because of something you guys will never understand. America isn't about a building or two, not about financial centers, not about military centers, America isn't about a place, America isn't even about a bunch of bodies.

America is about an IDEA. An idea, that you can go someplace where you can earn as much as you can figure out how to, live for the most part, like you envisioned living, and pursue Happiness. (No guarantees that you'll reach it, but you can sure try!)

Go ahead and whine your terrorist whine, and chant your terrorist litany: "If you cannot see my point, then feel my pain." This concept is alien to Americans. We live in a country where we don't have to see your point. But you're free to have one. We don't have to listen to your speech. But you're free to say one. Don't know where you got the strange idea that everyone has to agree with you.

There's a spirit that tends to take over people who come to this country, looking for opportunity, looking for liberty, looking for freedom. Even if they misuse it. You guys seem to be incapable of understanding that we don't live in America, America lives in US! American Spirit is what it's called. And killing a few thousand of us, or a few million
of us, won't change it. Most of the time, it's a pretty happy-go-lucky kind of Spirit. Until we're crossed in a cowardly manner, then it becomes an entirely different kind of Spirit. Wait until you see what we do with that Spirit, this time. Sleep tight, if you can. We're coming.

Author Unknown
jeffloistarca
Terrorists:

You have no clue what is truly great about the USA.
If you understood this greatness,
You would not dare attack us.
You would admire us.
You would be in awe of us.
You do not understand us.

In the USA, we are tolerant. This tollerance allows people to voice dissenting views about ANYTHING in this country. These dissenting views make us GREAT. I know you cannot grasp this notion. If you did, you would not be trying to terrorize us. We are a country where any view can be expressed and violence does not ensue. Look at our last Presidential election... Many other countries would have been in civil war. Us Americans, were tollerant. We were cool, calm, and collective. We sorted it out the best we could. And not one person was killed in the process.

Why does dissenting oppinion make America great? Think about this... Is life always black and white? Do you reason out ideas in your head? Or do you only hear one voice? People who only hear one voice are insane. Rational thought is done by considering all options. This is the same with Nations. Nations where no dissenting view is tolerated are not nearly as strong as nations that have open dissention. The conflict between Majority opinion and Minority opinion makes the USA the greatest nation on the planet.

By bombing us you have achieved something pretty scary. You have united us in ways I have never seen. However, there is still some dissent here (as there should be) for as stated before dissent makes the USA stronger. However, you have penetrated through our tolerance and tapped into a lot of repressed hostility that most Americans have in being so tolerant. Just because we are tolerant does not mean we do not harbor secret hostility within us. You only need to drive our roadways to see some of this anger surfacing on a day to day basis.

Basically, you have given us a good justifiable reason for Americans to go to war. We have not had a reason so convincing since WWII. Ask youself what happened in WWII? Was your cause helped by that war?

But of coarse, you do not care. You only hear one voice. There is no dissent in your life to make you rational. You think this is some sort of religious war. You think we have invaded your sacred soild by positioning troups in Saudi Arabia. Never did you consider that if we had let Iraq roll over Kuwait they may have rolled over the rest of the countries in the regios causing vast global instability.

My last comment is this... Terrorists, you only hear one voice, put on your Nike shoes and sweat suits, drink the purple cool aide, you have arisen a sleeping giant who's military is itching to test out it's latest toys. You have united the American people in such a way that most would do military service to fight against you. Even our women.

So go ahead, drink the purple cool aide.

It will be much better than the fate that awaits you.

Tok
Craig, even though I'm Canadian this tradgedy has certainly effected me. I drove by the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa yesterday; I was overwhelmed with the notes, flowers, etc. adorning the fence around the embassy. I travel extensively in the U.S. and have always enjoyed my time in your country. Throughout my 20-year career in semiconductors I've ended up with quite a few American friends, from Raleigh to San Diego and all points inbetween. I stumbled across this, and thought it really captured the spirit of the people. Don't let the bastards get you down....and yes, payback is a bitch. ATB, Jeff
right on Jeff, well put. That being said, once the anger is contained and some time is taken to think, we must realize that we don't understand our middle east and far east advesaries either. The terrorists are just an unrational responce to the frustrations that a lot of people may have with us. We should take some time to see things from other's point of view, as alien as it may be. If we aviod making the masses of the word angry through ignorant actions they will see the good in america and terrorists will lose their support. I initially felt that kicking some arab butt was the order of the day. Now I personally fear a war with the islamic nation, as much as i think they deserve it, not because i think we would loose rather because of the potential for an infinite stream of terroist actions in this country. We can't kill them all. The only way to completely prevent terrosim in this country is to sacrifice the freedoms that make it such a great place. If we do that they have won. A friend of mine had an interesting idea....send them food. That would mess with their minds. peace
It would be truly sad for this to turn into WW3.

It very well may. And if it does so be it.

We have tolerated other countries policies of hating us. People who think we are Satan. People who burn our flag. People who are working hard to develop biological and nuclear weapons.

All it takes is for a country who hates us to develop or obtain a nuclear device. They smuggle the device into the US. Detonate it in a major city. What then folks? What do we do? What sort of investigation will there be? Not much evidence is left after a nuclear explosion. There will be no way of telling who did it to us. With no evidence, we will be in quite a delimna. A biological attack would yield more evidence... but could be potentially more devistating to human life.

All I have to say is that I am really scared. At least during the Cold War, we did not have USSR spies doing suicide bombing missions on us. We knew who the enemy was and how they would attack. And Russia had some very cool and sane leaders. It really never occurred to us that they would smuggle in a nuclear device. We seemd to live by a Treaty called the Geneva Convention which layed out some sort of rules of war.

Today, we are dealing with people who will suicide themselves for their cause. This takes total conviction. They hate the US so much (and are brainwashed by their religion) that they will suicide themselves to hurt us. If they are willing to do this on such a grand scale like we saw last week, I think the US is justified in going to war with any country that effectively hates us and/or harbors/supports terrorists. If we wait for these countries/organizations to develop weapons of mass destruction, we will all perish in WW3.

Consider again... Washington gets nuked. What do we do? Do we then nuke/goto war with these countries? What do we do?
Do we cave in to whatever demands these terrorist want?

Folks, the only reason Israel has not gone on a full all out war with these guys is that it is a very small country and to decisively win it would have to use nuclear devices. And where would that get them? They would be nuking their neighbors.

We on the other hand, have the capability to fight a two front war. Given the choice of having say 5+ million innocent Americans die in a nuclear attack by terrorist, and say 200,000+ of our trained military personel die in a war to eliminate countries that support terrorists and {and to wipe out} their nuclear capabilities... I think the choice is clear.

If there is no conventional war now... Our future may hold a vast nuclear one ahead. One that may kill us all. Do we want to take this chance?

I give you one last scenario. Suppose a country like Iraq does develop a nuclear device. And we know they are working on it. Iraq then sends a picture and detailed schematics of the bomb to the Pentagon with some demands. What do we do? Countries that hate us and do not participate in the Geneva Convention, should be reguarded as terrorists states. We cannot put up with this madness.

I hate to be negative. I wish we could develop a foreign policy that could get every country to like us. But some terrorists just killed over 5,000 innocent Americans last week. We have tolerated terrorists suicide bombing our friends in Israel for far too long. They just did it to us on a far grander scale. And it hurts. They achieved their desired goal, and it is quite upsetting.

Nuff said.

Peace (I hope)

Tok