Agreed — and not just “counter-productive”, but wrong.

However — those whose first impulse on viewing another Islamist atrocity is to announce their own fear over their commute to work should be told to find a backbone; those whose first impulse is to use it as merely another excuse for Bush-whacking should be told to find a sense of priority; and those whose first impulse is to blame the victim should be told to find a moral compass.

I really don’t mean this to sound glib, but I think such overwhelming fear at this point suggests that it might be good to consider moving or go to therapy. I don’t blame you for worrying about the dangers of where you live, but it sounds like what you’re experiencing is pretty bad to me. I have friends and relatives in Brooklyn and Spanish Harlem who go to Manhattan all the time and they don’t talk like this.

I think it is really counter-productive to label all those who disagree with the war in Iraq as cowards, traitors, “with the enemy”, etc.

Then you are on the same sheet of music as the Bush administration and the neocon theorists.

Conventional war is one relation possible only between nation states. Transnational terror acts carried out by essentially stateless persons (though supported by nations at seperations excruciatingly constructed to prevent conventional war as an option on the part of the targets of terror) have become the chosen strategy of groups that are the logical result of the failure of Islamic fundamentalism to compete with or coexist inside of societies based on secular government.

I say that Saudi Arabia is a work in progress; at this time they are vigorously attacking domestic terror elements that directly threaten them – and may possibly find themselves forced to widen their efforts in the future as democratization begins to work in neighboring countries that will remember who supported them, and who gave sanctuary and aid to those who tried to sabotage their effort.

Syria is the nation poised to lose most first from a successful Iraq; after the bombings and shootings stop, they are in no position to provide baksheesh as the Saudis are.

On how much time I devote to preperations for a terror attack here:

I go armed with a cellphone loaded with most of my local, state, and federal contact numbers. We have a police scanner, but anecdotal evidence from law enforcement friends is that encryption will be activated should the balloon truly go up in this area.

I carry trauma first aid kits in both our family vehicles. I won’t bore you with my first aid credentials or history of practical app; my kids are CPR and Red Cross trained to the level you might see in any Eagle Scout.

We have a rally plan, with options, should a terror attack or natural disaster occur when the family is seperated. Everyone has cell phones, of course, and our go bags contain sideband FM radios that can reach several miles, in case cell service is down.

I’m one of those wild eyed concealed carry permit holders, too. I don’t carry everywhere or every day, but have the option of doing so. I add a long gun to our travel kit if we are going on extended trips. These measures are primarily anti-crime. The chances of being directly involved in a tactical confrontation with terrorists are negligible in the extreme. My planning is predicated to responding and recovering, not preventing or confronting.

The enemy killed thousands of your neighbors and our fellow citizens in 2001. They killed my best friend in 1983. We both have our own ways of dealing with the loss, and that’s just fine by me.

If you think the strategy of democratization (which only became a published option after the “imminent threat” theory went “poof”), then you haven’t been looking hard enough. Why did it take *years* after 9-11 for the Bush administration to start cracking down on financial institutions that help terrorist organizations? Why are over 100 chemical plants near populations of more thatn a million people still unprotected?

If I learned anything from 9-11, it is that conventional war is no longer going to cut it, we have to be smarter than that.

But let’s assume for a moment that democratization is a viable option. Before the invasion of Iraq, Saudi Arabia produced more Al-Quaed terrorists (I can think of 16 off-hand) than Iraq ever did. They probably still are. So if democratization is so important to stop Al-Qaeda, why did Iraq get the invasion and the Saudis get jawboned by Condoleezza Rice?

You know, it’s really serendipitous that you ask about my commute.

I’m currently the site surveyor for a hugeous golf course/estate home development being built between Park City and Kamas, Utah. I leave my house in Orem at 0600 every morning and tool the fifty miles up to the project via Provo Canyon.

The road crosses Deer Creek Dam, an earth berm structure that stores about 80% of our drinking water, fifteen miles up the canyon.

Last night we were tooling west for home along the canyon road amongst the RV’s, construction vehicles, and other weekend headstarters when we passed a commercial sized white van parked in the breakdown strip dead center in the middle of damn, on the eastbound side. The breakdown strip is only about seven or eight feet wide there, so his wheels were resting on the white line of the traffic lanes.

It’s an old dam, and the road on top is currently slated for improvements. There are signs on both ends prohibiting any stopping or standing…

The driver (I assume) was sitting on the guard rail, just looking at his feet. Now we were moving by at about forty miles per, and I had to devote attention to oncoming traffic that tended to creep over on our side of the line, but I did notice a couple of things.

It was a largish van, like one of the new Peterbilt express rigs. There were no decals. The windows in front were darkly tinted and the rear body was just panels – no windows at all.

The driver looked pretty dejected. No phone in his hand; he may possibly have been regretting the disruption of his schedule. Maybe he had intended to take his kids out to a movie and wasn’t going to make it.

He was hispanic, or possibly Indian…maybe mideastern? White shirt, black trousers, wavy, neatly barbered hair and a rather striking beard…

Or maybe he was making his peace in his final seconds before he completed his mission?

I pulled off to the shoulder immediately after I got off the dam on the downstream side. While I was working through 911 to get the Summit County Sheriff on the line I asked my partner to call my wife’s cell.

She works at a nice business park at the mouth of Provo Canyon, you see…

The sheriff answered my call and said they had units on the way to check out the truck, and that the state CT agencies were in the loop as well. He asked if I could verify the license plate number they had been given and if the driver was still sitting on the rail.

A unit rolled up to the van while we were talking, and the deputy seemed pretty relaxed about the whole thing. The driver produced I.D. and then opened the back of the truck.

Looked like office supplies from where we sat. So we went home.

Brooklyn is not the only place where people think about terror every day.

I’m sure the Greeks putting out to sea felt nervous about the Persians, and the Poles probably got the willies listening to Nazi radio until they woke up under the Swastika, too.

We must defeat these people. Not make peace with them. And I support the strategy of democratization in the abscence of any other viable, published, alternative.

You guys are just avoiding my point. How do you get to work out in Kansas and Utah every morning? I live in Brooklyn and believe me *every* morning when I cross that bridge in a crowded subway car I think about the possibility of an attack that they suffered in London yesterday.

Yet you guys tell me I’m supposed to feel safer because we are “injecting representative democracy” and building schools in Iraq. And just the other day some politican said something like “As a result of our invasion, Islamic terrorists from all over the world are flocking to Iraq to be killed.”

Please.

Do me a favor, when it happens again in NY, spare us your heartfelt sentiments and moments of silence. That is, if you think we are even worthy, since most of us here voted democratic and oppose the war, and so according to you that makes us “pitching in for the enemy.” Talk about disgusting comments.

A pack of wild moslems kills at least forty in a series of coordinated subway attacks in London. Surprised? Not at all. I’ve been saying all along that the enemy is islam, that it knows no borders, no compromise, no value for life, and has three fundamental, worldwide objectives:

Jihad, Dhimmitude & Sharia Law.

One cannot expect to defeat such a foe with diplomacy, reasoning or appeasement. We win by force or we lose by force. I’m afraid we must make the “war on terror” be redubbed the “war on islam.”

And please: don’t give me the “few bad apples” speech. I have heard about enough of the bogus
“religion of peace” crap, thank you.