On Thursday, 13 September 2001 09:47:30 UTC+7, Alpha Prime wrote:

I am most deeply greived. Hundreds have died, an
d doubtless many more are starving, suffocating,
and praying beneath the rubble. I'm writing this
to address some of the more "inflammatory" iss
ues that strike me as extremely dangerous if
left to simmer.

1. Domestic Repercussions:

The bottom line at this point is that we do not know
who did it. This fact notwithstanding, the government
appears to be working under the assumption that the
motive for this attack was religious. not many causes
can get a man to exterminate innocent civilians, and
even the cruelest murderer does not wish to take his
own life as well. Would anti-globalization activists
kill themselves? Would they butcher others? I don't
know, but it appears not. Of course there are many other
possibilities, but i lack space and time to consider them
here.

One thing is for sure. We -must- not jump to the
more-than-slightly-evil conclusion that this was
the act of Arabs. More hatred has been poured out
onto this group in the past 36 hours than I have
ever seen before. We can't allow out judgement to
be clouded agains them, just as we can't allow
ourselves to negate the possibility that it was,
in fact, Islamic militants who carried out the attack.

Let's not be evil to our fellow Americans, most of all
. Whatever their creed, 99.999% are just like you and
me. There has been enough Violence and Recrimination
already.

2. International (Middle Eastern) Repercussions

I'm not going to address the Afghanistan situation, for
I know little about it. However, the Palestinian angle
has been extremely disturbing and acutely close to home
for me. I have seen the way the Palestinians are treated.
It is a travesty of justice that they live in the way they do.
But that is not the fault of Israeli occupation! Naturally,
being occupied by a foreign country, however benign, is
hardly pleasant, but most of the strife appears to be internal.
"Palestine" as I am loathe to call it, has no way to support its
own population. Reliance on Israel for employment, water supply,
and other essentials would have had the effect of enriching the
Palestinian's semi-autonomous economy. However, the evil and
corrupt demagouges, who are truly responsible for this poor
and impressionable people's dangerous attacks on civilians,
really force security measures, akin to sanctions and military
action to occur. This hurts the situation worse. But we all
know that a unilateral withdrawl of the occupation from the
West Bank and Gaza would be the end of the State of Israel.
The government has no choice but to step on many toes of
the world to save innocent lives.

We would have taken out the airliners, had we the warning.
Israel stops the bloody demonstraters, before they rip
the populace to shreds, as we have seen them do.

But it is too sad to discuss these things tonight. We have to
get past the buisness of sifting through the wreckage first.
It will be a long night, and for many unfortunate victims, the last
one.
Beneath the rubble they don't know who can hear them, and we who hear
them don't know if they can be saved.

Good Night.

Alpha Prime

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)