PEELING IT TO THE CORE AND DECLARING PEACE

Although history is one of our greatest teachers, and though mastering it affords us the opportunity to keep it from repeating itself, I think that history in the final analysis is like the onion. The more you peel off layers looking for truth, the more layers of former illusion you will discover. Finally, it seems, as you peel down the layers of history or science to discover the core of “truth” within, the cores turn out to be alive and growing, and as such, are incapable of exact measurement or analysis.

In our life time, for example, the Jews have been victims of the holocaust of WWII and a myriad of other travails and persecutions. Peel the onion of their history down to their origins (their own Genesis/Exodus/Leviticus accounts) and it appears the original tribes of Israel were among the world’s first genocidal peoples, who, under the license and directive of their “God”, entered into lands occupied by others whom they serially and systematically slaughtered on their holy trek to secure and dominate the real estate promised them by their God in a special covenant which excluded all but them.

Displaced and homeless Jews persecuted in Europe displaced—and rendered homeless–as much as 85 percent of the resident Islamic population of the region which became the State of Israel in 1948, a state formed by an ad-hoc caucus in which none of the displaced Islamic residents had a single delegate.

The citizens of the United States were liberators and saviors of Europeans in 1945, but two hundred years before were “insurgents” who murdered the agents and soldiers of the ruler to whom they had sworn fealty. During the two centuries  before that, they invaded , murdered, imprisoned or otherwise displaced scores of native American cultures, all in the names and sakes of their primarily Christian cultures and creeds.

Bin Laden is a C.I.A. ally, trainee and protégé in America’s covert alliance with Afghani insurgents in 1982 and the heart of Evil’s Axis when he remains allied with those same insurgents as they turn their war-frenzied gaze from the retreating  Russian infidels  to the incoming infidels…those increasingly-militant allies of Israel…you guessed it…oil-drilling, sheik-hand-holding, wealth and resource-seizing America. Us.

Saddam is American’s ally and oil-bargaining buddy in 1980 and our arch enemy in ‘93, and moreso (allegedly) in 2003.

The “peeled onion” point: Read history long enough and there are no consistently “good” or “evil” entities among the several nations and peoples contending with one another. The “liberator” of today is the aggressor of tomorrow. 

The United States built its seminal wealth by stealing assets of aboriginal cultures and subsequently developing those assets and resources by the use of slave labor. At the end of this growth process, and the civil war to humanize and anneal it,  America became strong enough to act as liberator of the free world, and twice within a single century. With that success came the recognition, the gratitude and indebtedness of the rest of the world, and with it the power no other nation had to this point in time ever attained. The question yet unanswered by history’s perennially-peeling onion is… Will America’s near absolute power wind up corrupting America absolutely?

Every nation — like every individual human–when viewed chronologically (through significant time in their historic “lives”) is a patchwork quilt. There are some pretty and “good” patches, and some ineptly-sewn, sloppy and even ragged patches. The moral of the American movie (“The Making of an American Quilt”, starring Wynonna Ryder) was quite beautiful: Let’s judge each other as we do our communally-sewn patchwork quilts—not on the basis of any individual patch, but on the basis of whether, taking it as a whole, on a cold and dreary winter’s night when we wrap it about our shoulders…does it keep us warm?

Saint Francis of Assisi put it poignantly when he confessed there was no way he could ever have come to be viewed as “saintly” had he not first lived as one of the world’s most reprehensible sinners.

If America in this Middle Eastern conflict, or more broadly, in its apparently increasing determination to condemn and wage war on Islamic peoples for the criminal acts of some of their radical fundamentalists,  has gone astray as a peace-loving nation, America as a nation is not necessarily lost.  American and all peoples and nations are better viewed in the contexts of the sum of their historically mosaic parts. It’s not only what we’ve done that will define us in the future, but rather what we do today and hereafter. The American Quilt, like the onion, continues to grow even as I write.

The point I was hopefully leading up to here is this: Some time, somewhere along the karmic-patchwork progression of history we’ve got to get off the wagon of cause and effect, climb down from the pulpit of “who threw the stone first” and simply draw a line in the sand and say this: “It doesn’t matter who threw the stone first. There will be no more stones thrown. From this point on, there will be no preemptive aggression. Men may defend their lives, but they will defend with the use of force only after every means of international diplomacy and peaceful resolution has been exhausted. They will be intolerant of nothing but intolerance and untruth. They will cease justifying aggression in the present with the aggression of their opponents in the past.”

We must unite in a cease fire. And finally, if the source or seeds of the problems of aggression are centered or being fostered within the walls of religious institutions and ideologies, then that is where the peace effort must be focused and exerted. If a Jihad exists within Islam which advocates the taking of innocent lives, then the Jihad must by some means be extinguished. If a plan is underway within the walls of either Judaism or Christianity (or both in conjunction) to fulfill putative Biblical prophesies of Armageddon’s end-time wars in order to either lay the way for the second coming of a prophet or procure by force land reportedly promised to Jews and/or Christians of which they are not presently and legally seized, then the plans for actively ordaining such prophesies must by some means be extinguished.

We will not solve the problems causing wars by assigning unreal causes (religious prophesy) for those wars. If a cow is trampling an innocent child, that cow needs to be restrained, albeit sacred or sacrificial. If there are Jihads or undeclared wars of Zionist ambition (or either Armageddon or  Rapture fulfillment) underway, then those responsible must be approached, counseled and dealt with.

But to whom do we turn  for such a change? Will it be our politicians who dare to “meddle” with the onion’s core (theological/theocratic) problems within Islam, Christianity and Judaism that may be the prime movers or at least co-efficient causes of the conflict in Middle East?  If in fact anti-Western Jihad and anti-Islamic Zionist sermons are being preached in the Mosques, Maddrasses, Churches and Synagogues of our world, will our politicians be willing or able to initiate any meaningful change, given the historically inveterate jealousies and  divisions between clerical and secular powers within diverse cultures? Tony Blair’s efforts in this regard in Great Britain following the terrorist bombings of the subways have thus far backfired and been condemned by Islam as failed efforts on the part of a  secular infidel to pervert the interests of Islam for the benefit of the Satanic U.S./G.B. coalition.

But it is clearly the subversion of fundamentalists of the several faiths by the demagogic secular leaders of presently warring cultures that has led us into this war with terrorism.  Bin Laden is essentially a secular power-mongering demagogue and opportunist who became a successful terrorist by perverting Islam and manipulating impressionable, depressed and devout fundamentalist Islamic followers to become tools for his secular agenda, and as such to perform as self-sacrificial “I.C.B.M”’s (intercontinental ballistic Muslims) against the West.  It is widely believed in the non-Western world that the Bush leadership has harnessed, through similar Machiavellian stealth, the fundamentalist Christians of America to falsely perceive (and thus elect and support) him as a “Christian warrior” in spite of the fact that the same oxymoronic  posture was first assumed by Adolph Hitler in 1938.

Given the efforts on the parts of secular (political) leaders of both sides of the terrorist struggle to exploit their respectively-faithful fundamentalist supporters and activists, it is naïve to look to politicians to institute or mediate any détente or  separate accord of peace among the religious leaders of their respective constituencies and/or armed holy warriors.

I say, therefore, it is the responsibility of our religious leaders, quite independently of our politicians, military personnel and secular leaders, to assume the responsibility. It is their clear and present duty to weave and take up the banner and find a way to unite with one another, collaborate with one another, cooperate with one another and declare peace with one other. Innocent people are dying in Iraq, England and around the world. Thousands perished on American soil on 9/11.  This killing violates shared tenets of Christianity, Judaism and Islam alike. The leaders of all faiths have independently agreed and declared as much, but they have not yet done so together, in pro-active concert with one another. They have all espoused peace from pulpits ensconced in secure and separate quarters within the militarily-gated communities of their secular kings, ayatollas, presidents, prime ministers and  their respective nation states.

Bin Laden’s version of Islam is false and itself a perversion and sin against Islam. The great majority of Islam’s clerical authority has openly and formally condemned terrorism carried out in the name of Islam.  Our attack on Iraq was a violation of Christian and Jewish Commandment and is clearly the antithesis of Christ’s clear teaching;  but where—anywhere—from the Vatican to the Church of England to the Southern Baptist Convention–is there any righteous Christian condemnation of Americas aggression?  Where in the Christian faith, in the entire institutional “Body of Christ” is there evidence of anything but endorsement and complicity in America’s admittedly preemptive aggression in the Middle Eastern Holy Land of Christians, Jews and Islam?

The followers of Christ, Mohammed and Islam all have a common  progenitor and patriarch.  His name was Abraham. Although they have different names for Him, they worship a common God, because they all agree there is but the One.

Mark Twain once said (ironically in retrospect),  “Everybody talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.”  Amazingly enough we now have. No one disputes global warming presently exists.  There’s apparently nothing humans can’t accomplish with their God-given inventiveness and collective ingenuity.

By the same space-age token, there was once a time one might have safely and sanely said, “let’s not worry about history, because earthly life and history will go on…like an onion, which–even while one is peeling it–may continue to grow.” But since Einstein and our ability to harness—and unharness—the atom, it appears there is definitely a way people can today stunt and potentially terminate the growth of all life on their planet, including that precious onion of man’s historic progress hidden in his larder, carefully wrapped up in possibly the finest patchwork quilt in the universe. 

But—before that happens–I propose an international summit  for the negotiation and drafting  of a united Global Declaration of Peace by the clerical leaders of Christianity, Islam, Judaism and all the other religions of world.  We know where our Captains of War are today. But where are our Princes of Peace?  What are they waiting for? I hope and pray it’s not simply Armegeddon and/or the Rapture. If and/or when God might intend those events to occur, He certainly has not appointed any of  us to engineer  or pro-actively pursue them.

Come forth, Billy and Franklin Graham– your pulpit was not built, nor does it belong, in the White House. Come forth Benedict XVI; the Vatican is no longer Papal puppet to any throne. Come forth Rabbis and Imans;  Come clerical  descendants of Isaac and Ishmael– your Sharons and sheiks have no final sway in what you must do and say.

You—all of you—hold…and manipulate…the theological needles and threads of sermons being woven in the patchwork quilts of your pulpits…not Bush, not bin Laden,  not Sharon, and not any of the secular leaders of this world.

With those “theological needles and threads”, what practical stitching must be accomplished—as a practical minimum—by these brave  clerics of our revolutionarily new world order of peace?  Without attempting to cite the plentitude of peaceful statutes and verses within the Old and New Testaments and  Koran, the necessary ingredients are…elementary:

Declaring Peace:

Practical Patch Sewing at the Onion’s Core

(I.C.P.  Axioms, Corollaries and Addenda)

The  Intercontinental Congress of Peace  (I.C.P.)  will be assembled for the pre-declared purpose of adopting and integrating into its Interfaith Declaration of Interdependence and Peace (I.D.O.I.A.P.),  inter alia, both a pledge to maintain and abide in peace, and a definition and joint condemnation and universal clerical prohibition of “terrorism” as hereinafter defined, all according to the following axiom, corollaries and addenda: 

A X I O M : TERRORISM IS ANATHEMA and refers to: one human’s  intentionally injuring or killing another human except in self defense.

F i r s t     C o r o l l a r y :  Attacks on either military personnel or civilian populations are never justified as “self defense” unless those personnel or populations are at the same time themselves actively engaged in the process of committing terrorism. Accordingly, all pre-emptive injurious attacks on human beings constitute terrorism, and this includes attacks on non-human targets that injure humans in the process.

S e c o n d   C o r o l l a r y:  The attacker is deemed to have intended the natural consequences of his acts. If a skyscraper 120 stories high is attacked and destroyed  after the attacker has inspected and found vacant every room and closet therein save one which was inadvertently overlooked, he is a terrorist if a single human in the unfound closet is injured.

T h i r d    C o r o l l a r y :  Before the conclusion  of the Intercontinental Congress of Peace, an Interfaith Declaration of Interdependence and Peace should be signed by all Clerics in attendance, who immediately upon adjournment will return to their places of religious worship and spiritual communion and preach and disseminate by all means conceivable and available the sermons and resolutions that peace has been declared and shall thereafter be invariably the required behavior of all members of the various religions with permanent excommunications from their respective  bodies of all who thereafter violate the collective, Interfaith Declaration of Interdependence and Peace.

F o u r t h   C o r o l l a r y : An invariably integral portion of each sermon will be recitations and  avowals that the Clerics of all the religions assembled at the I.C.P. were responsible for the united adoption of the Declaration of Interdependence and Peace, and as such, that both they and their faithful following are perpetually entitled to all other faith’s according to both them and their partners in faith: peace, love, friendship, truth, respect, and inclusion in prayers.

F i f t h   C o r o l l a r y : All clerical leaders who have attended the I.C.P. and signed the I.D.O.I.A.P. have walked the walk. It is thereafter mandatory that each of them, for the rest of their lives continue to both walk the walk and talk the talk of peace.  Part of that duty may involve acts of civil disobedience in instances where secular leaders thereafter commit acts of terrorism or attempt to induce others to perform acts of terrorism.

A d d e n d u m: Consonant with its letter and spirit, it is recalled and noted that America’s first and foremost collective resolution, its July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence, was itself an act of civil disobedience.  It is suggested that that which at the time was deemed moral and just for the sake of taxes and equal sway in British Parliament, is as well, if not clearly more compellingly founded (by the declaring consensus) upon the will and recorded commandments of infinitely higher authorities and allegiances.

You do not need the blessing, authority or permission of any politician or statesman in your midst. If declaring and waging wars and defending their peoples in wars is their primary focus and duty, declaring peace is yours. You do not need the protection of their warriors.  Buddha did not seek the permission or protection of the warring lords in his homeland. Gandhi did not seek refuge. Martin Luther King stepped to the front of the many lines he drew in the deserts of bigotry and hatred. Moses and Mohammed heeded only a single voice, which was certainly not secular.  Jesus Christ made of His life and blood a sermon of peace, and rendered none of it to Caesar.

It is your sermons—united in peace– that will save us from this war…not their swords.

Which of you will hear and heed this call to come forth and enlist as representatives of your faith and as pilgrims of peace and  attend the world’s first Intercontinental Congress for Peace? Which will sojourn to Switzerland and subscribe to the world’s first Interfaith Declaration of Interdependence and Peace?

Which  of you will come forward (and to Switzerland)  in response to this challenge and call and be first to call the rest to a summit of peace among a coalition of clerics in the world? Which of you will become signatories of the world’s first Declaration of Peace?

War is the only enemy.

Dusty Schoch

High Point, NC

August 15,2005

Terrorism: Inheriting the Winds

Assigning Blame for the Attack on America on America*

The Plaintive Rantings of a Southern American Writer/Lawyer/Environmentalist

(*not a misprint)

Let’s not forget that while the patriotic old men of Congress are getting “involved “ in their jingoistic process of calculating the strategy and cost of declaring and waging war, it’s our sons and daughters , our committed warriors, who’ll be paying the price. Our soldiers are like the bacon in Jr. Johnson’s (race car driver) terse parable on the difference between “involved” and “committed”: He was having breakfast one morning with a friend (Bill France) who was trying to persuade Junior to keep racing , but Junior had gotten to the stage where age and discretion were overtaking his hunger for valor and fame and said: “For instance, you’re eating bacon and eggs this morning. Think about this: That chicken was involved, but that hog was committed. I’m involved in racing , but I’m not committed.” I’ve always suspected that if the ones who declared the wars were bound to wage them, there’d be substantially fewer wars.

I’m not, mind you, suggesting we shouldn’t go for the head(s) of the terrorist snake(s) -whoever they are – and separate them from their bodies with all musterable haste. Not having done so in the case of Saddam Hussein may well account for why we are in the situation we find ourselves today. I am suggesting , however, that those involved in the declaration of war should first (1) study and decide (understand) both how and why we were attacked, not just by whom, (2) determine the best way to establish peace and not simply win a fight or destroy an enemy, (3) decide how best to accomplish (2) with minimal risk to our committed warriors , and (4) accomplish (1) through (3) with deliberation , discretion and, where called-for , stealth ( without telling CNN in advance every detail in our attack stratagem ) and without bankrupting our already teetering economy.

Yes – we are, in the larger picture, as Michael Moore (TV’s “Roger & Me”, in a widely-circulated “ e-article”) and others have suggested , responsible for what has happened. I can abhor, deplore and dream of launching vengeful war against the “doers” of the disastrous deeds and still confess that I’m in part, a very substantial part, responsible. Moore cites some of the reasons. We are in a sense inheriting the winds of wars we’ve allowed our politicians to wage on our collective behalf. The Arab terrorists are as berserk as they are hypocritical … sure; there’s never been a “true” religion preaching war, at least one sanctioning the slaughter of innocent and non-military people. But . . . just how true is what I just said? You may have bought it for a moment, but just look at the current edition of the Old Testament – the archive of our moral history and our modern morality. It’s the foundation of the Zionist conviction that there are in fact good enough reasons to wage wars of holy conversion and acquisition. Does capital-g God really have “chosen ones”? And, are they (the chosen ones) really just a few of us? Both the Muslim Koran and Judeo/Christian Bible say yes, yes.

The Arabs are righteously enraged over America’s being allied with the religious group (The Nation of Israel) with whom they have been feuding since Abraham’s progeny split similarly-semitic siblings into warring tribes. Stop just for a minute and think about walking a mile in their sandals – What if Mexicans all of a sudden declared they were going to retake and migrate into Texas because their god had told them it was their promised land and they should never have given it up.(Yeah, I know it looks like that’s already happening, but stay with me here…) And what if, while you and I are down there defending the land of the Alamo with our six-guns and bowie knives, a flock of Apache-type attack helicopters armed with smart rockets and Vulcan machine guns appears out of nowhere and rips us and our bowie knives to smithereens? And suppose further that we discover that these helicopters were given to the Mexicans by their allies, the Nation of Columbia, and we call up Columbia and ask them for some helicopters and they say “sorry, we no understand Ingles…”. How long would we tolerate having the Mexicans ripping us apart with the Columbian war machines before we decide to pay the Columbians a little visit? George W is presently hinting that he’s going to declare war against Afghanistan if it turns out they harbored Bin Laden – that is gave him a place to sleep and maybe preach to those future pilots of America. What would George W be threatening to do if it turned out Afghanistan gave Bin Laden the planes he used to take out the New York towers? Now take a second look at the way some Palestinians look at us.

How zealous a warrior would the U.S. have been in our “desert storm” if that storm had not put our oil supplies in harm’s way? Answer that while considering all the post-soviet Euro-Asian conflicts (and here we’re talking atrocities and wars of ethnic extinction) we have either stayed the hell away from or insulated ourselves from via our comfortable nest in NATO.

No, I’m not saying the U.S. should be punished or that any one or nation has the right to attack any one of us. I’m simply saying the West, to the rest of a backward and impoverished world – especially those countries Moore mentioned (Chile, Vietnam, Gaza, Salvador , etc.) is damned ugly. I think Moore’s cannons were a little loose with his juxtaposing the Twin Towers’ toppling with Bush’s recent bull-in-the-china-shop blunders abroad regarding Kyoto, nuclear defense, etc . . . as it’s more than obvious that the terrorists’ plans to infarct America’s heart ante-dated Bush’s idiotic actions by long months (or years).

No – Bush (I wince to concede) is not to blame for New York’s suffering. America itself, in significant part, is. We more than any other nation are responsible for the big picture problems of global warming , with our coal-powered industry and our wasteful , power-hungry society ; by our driving our gas-guzzling SUV’s to the polls to vote for any cretin who’ll guarantee us that, to keep those SUV’s and AC’s roaring, he’ll sacrifice our last sacred frontiers of natural life – and anything else, albeit Communist or Arab, that stands in the way of our manifest , capitalistic destiny.

If we (simply and no more) follow the second Bush crusade into the desert to ferret out and destroy the enemy, and call the job done when we get Afghanistan to spit up Bin Laden, then we’ll learn the French history lesson – “Plus ca change, plus la meme chose “ … (What goes around keeps coming around). The big – B I G PICTURE history is painting for us now is one of near perfect symmetry (I did not say “justice” or “Morality”). Our 911 event was, in effect, one of the end results of our own reckless and heedless consumption and environmental exploitation – rearing up, coming around and biting us on our back side (or rather piercing our heart – the “ground zero” of our capitalistic core).

DC is only nominally our capitol. Our true capitol is Capital and the corporations that have made it and the power it wields the polar star of the guidance system for space ship earth. The ironies are staggering – and sobering. We are allies of Israel because we need a stronghold and point for military maneuvering in the Middle East to insure our continued control and ability to continue our course of killing our ecosystem through recklessly burning the earth’s fossil fuels – that energy from the sun, stored magically in those glistening benzene rings in the exchanging of which our nation and those of the middle east remain perpetually , if lovelessly engaged. And we need their (Israel’s) military intelligence and infrastructure for contingencies like desert storm and whatever George W is in the process of presently pursuing.

And now come these maniacal messengers – these un-wise men from the East. Did they come to us atop Arabian stallions? Hardly. They came aboard our own ships, with Trojan stealth- each ship laden with 16,000 gallons of fossil fuel, drilled and pumped by our diamond-studded machines and steely inventiveness from the heart of the planet we are poisoning by piercing the spleen of its own body.

This same fossil fuel, with a relatively modest assist from some relatively mediocre middle-eastern minds, was injected and ignited ironically in the soft belly of the animal who effectively unearthed it and set it at large.

The irony of the ultimate utilization of fossil fuel to destroy the prime headquarters of the capitalist machine that engineered (through financing) its extraction and refinement is surpassed only by a collateral ecological irony and symmetry of mythical proportions. Environmentalists and perhaps all informed and intelligent observers of western society, especially American, would agree that the most damaging dual manifestation of our ecologically aberrant behavior is one enabled by our fossil-fuel industry – urban hypertrophy and sprawl. We centralize and concentrate our business and industry in areas which become so crowded from greedy over development that “skyscraping” mega-structures are the only remedies available (excluding long-extinct human self-restraint).

We concentrate so much population and machination in urban areas that the resulting compression and waste production make living in the places we work impossibly expensive, unhealthy and aesthetically abhorrent. So New Yorkers build two twin towers 1300 feet high to house the offices of 45,000 people, who after work, get in their SUV’s and trains and commute an average of 60 miles each way, converting in their “progress” a quarter million gallons of fuel a day into sky-smogging, lung clogging, acid-rain-making, and globe-warning greenhouse gas.

Urban sprawl – living in “the burbs” is American society’s fondest dream. And the environment’s worst nightmare. Architecturally , there may have been nothing more perfect in form and function than Manhattan’s twin towers. Ecologically there could be nothing uglier and more universally malignant than these daggers in the sky. Was the parable in Genesis 11 simply mythical , or was it perhaps prophetic? Of course there is more than a language gap dividing the people who occupied and those who destroyed the World Trade Center, but a gap in understanding and communications there certainly was, and remains between the radical Muslims and us western “infidels”.

Wasn’t the 911 event a little like the tale of Babel’s brazen tower? If there is, and I hope and pray it’s so, a kinship – if not identity – between creation (nature) and creator (God), then how could that creator not be as appalled at the arrogance and excessiveness of our late great towers as the God of the Old Testament was with the heavenly-heeped bricks of the Babylonians?
If a giant alien, with super-sensitive hearing had placed his titanic ear to the wall outside , say, 16 or so floors of either twin tower, with all the business and financial and cyber chatter of the computers and cell phones going on inside, would he have described the noise as anything but “babble” (that’s the origin of the word by the way)?

Do we understand anything about Osama Bin Laden? Do he or his followers know or understand anything about the people in the skyscrapers? In the Old Testament story, the Lord just came down and scattered the people in the building to different parts of the world, since they no longer spoke the same language. Both we and the Arab terrorists have had access to the same story, but we didn’t heed it. We all had e-mail, cell phones and FedEx to communicate with one other, but we were too busy . . . tending to business. Scattering the people apparently didn’t fix things in the wake of Babel’s story, so this time, they scattered the building.

The remarkable irony and symmetry of these events are in the choice of buildings. What all agree was the single most malevolent and heinous act of terrorism in the history of human kind (unless it was Hiroshima) amounts to the most efficacious and expeditious act of environmental remediation yet accomplished in America. I realize how quickly most would describe this observation as cruel and callous. I view it nonetheless as positive and hopeful. New York can’t unfortunately raise her fallen from the dead, but the City does have an opportunity now to change directions., to evolve.

History Lessons

(And for those WW II patriots who would scream “foul” at my passing mention of Hiroshima in the context of debating the fallout of terrorism, let me pause in passing that that venue on the way over Nagasaki towards NY and DC and mention some fairly embarrassing undeniable realities. The American patriots would contend that our dropping the holocaust bombs on Japanese civilian populations was an act morally calculated to save lives, by ending the war in the Pacific , which the Japanese were to stubborn to concede. Well, I concede some of the logic (if not the sentiment) in that line of rhetoric defending our offensive war conduct and ethics. What I would point out after that concession however is the hypocrisy in our presently “righteous rage”. The Arabs (mostly Muslim) have been at war with Israel (90 percent Hebrew) for a half century, and we have been Israel’s allies in that war for decades, and it doesn’t help the Arabs in their attitude toward us to hear that the U.S. Congress hasn’t formally declared war on the Arabs.
And while we are praising ourselves defensively for being Israel’s friends, loyal to them ‘til the end in their struggle against their savage oppressors, let’s take a second look there and apply the litmus strip for hypocritical national narcissism. America comes up hot pink. Israel is the national theocratic state of the Jews. These are the same people we watched in the late 30’s and early 40’s being politically oppressed , ultimately kidnapped and systematically murdered in Europe and Russia in numbers that 8 digits can scarcely embrace. Where were we then with our abiding love for and alliance with the Jewish people? No – we didn’t declare our staunch support for the Jewish people until they fled from Europe to the desert and we found their Zionist dream coinciding with our capitalistic one . . which I suggest would never have occurred until the Jews set up an independent state in the midst of the Arabs who control an estimated 35 Percent of the globe’s oil reserves (our virtual life’s blood). As a personal anecdotal exclamation point to end this paragraph , I’ll recall for your benefit the fact that in 1948, the year Israel declared its independent statehood, I was living in a typical American town with a population of about 60,000 (mainly Christian) souls. The town had one country club. Jews weren’t allowed.
The Arabs know we are on Israel’s side, know we furnish them deadly arms and cutting-edge military expertise and know we collaborate with them in their cause (is this starting to sound a little like Bush’s caveat to Afghanistan about those “supporting”, “harboring” or “giving aid” to our terrorist enemies being our enemies?).
So far in the middle eastern war, how many Arabs do we suppose have been killed with American military planes and other weapons? I’m no authority (at this point) but I’d wager it’s a multiple of 6000. And for historic boot, the number of Japanese civilians who ultimately died in the original “ground(s) zero” and in their ten-year wake is in excess of 600,000 souls. That’s about 100 times our recent casualties combining air passengers and tenants of our Twin Towers and Pentagon.
And for one final irony, wasn’t it amazingly naïve for New Yorkers and the American media to have adopted as their badge of red courage the moniker the American Eagle left (“ground zero”) to mark the spot it laid down the nuclear neonates it fondly named “Little Boy” and “Fat Man”? In that analogy, making New York “ground zero” likens us to Imperial Japan, and our terrorists to . . . (you got it) us. Wake up , America and smell the napalm. Where have all the flowers gone?
Before you answer, take this pop quiz (sorry, no million -dollar prize offered … only our lives depend on our ability to answer): How many wars have been fought over Palestine in the past 50 years? How many middle eastern countries have attacked and been attacked by Israel in that time? What country built the bomber and manufactured the bombs used by Israel when it unilaterally bombed Iraq over 20 years ago (remember, Saddam, Bagdad, desert storm and all that “Defense of Kuwait” thing we did a while back ?) to prevent them from building a nuclear power plant ? What’s the main religion of Kuwait now? Howabout Iraq? What would happen to America if our supply of mideastern oil was cut off? What would Americans have to do to end our dependency on Arab oil? Would Americans be willing to do any of those things? If we’d never become dependent on Arab oil, would 6,000 more Americans be living today? What are the differences in the teachings of Muhammad (the 600AD born prophet in the religion of Islam) and those of Jesus Christ? Is there any significant difference in the stories and lessons taught in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian people and those taught in the Muslim’s Koran? How many Americans could pass (with a score of 50 percent) this quiz? Two (2) percent? Maybe. I’ll tell you what the Average American knows about these issues and our Islamic enemies: babble babble babble When will (we) ever learn?)

The World Trade Center for the most part today was archaic, even though the structure was only 29 years old. Computers and wireless communications have long ago enabled industry and business in general to decentralize, re-integrate and coordinate their collective activities in cyberspace. Contiguous walls and halls with paper trays and trails aren’t all that essential these days. Business must have some reception and conference rooms where physical objects and personalities can be touched and mingled. But the clocked-in , nine-to-five grind for all workers is just a vestigial habit in the cases of most corporate functioning, and the progressive and avante guarde are already paying their computer-equipped agents and employees to leave their SUV’s in the garage awaiting the vacations they can now take . . . back in the big and exciting city, whose sun, moon and view of heaven need no longer be eclipsed by a row of megastructures. They do their working at home, where they can breathe the fresh air that millions of similarly-enlightened citizens didn’t pollute with commuting to their employer’s urban centers.

Every machine we have created which had a purpose or tendency to exploit either the environment or the more humble creatures we share it with has wound up being turned in our direction. Russia, Red China, Pakistan and India, and probably a dozen more of our potential enemies have our E=MC sq’d creations in their arsenals. They’re working on delivery systems as I write. Think of what we’d be facing today if it had occurred to Bin Laden to have his kamikazies carry briefcase nukes aboard our four luxury airlines instead of plastic knives. Are we going to restrict our remedial plans to hunting down all terrorists and destroying them by preemptive strike? We don’t have that many C.I. Agents, and the A’s we have apparently don’t have that much I.

So, now I’ve joined Michael Moore and had my little purge. It’s been a rant I’ve needed to purge since the Arabs aborted my recent N.Y. trip (I had an appointment Wednesday, and was headed up there Tuesday morning when hell broke loose). Guess Allah spared me so I could burden other infidels with my own post-traumatic dis-ease.

In closing, let me urge us all, while we’re cheering George W and the C.I.A. on in their pursuit of the dread desert rats who converted our planes into guided missiles , and while we’re out there standing behind George W. who’s out there standing behind Colin P.and Norman S., who are out there standing behind our children who are out there standing behind the tanks, missiles and smart bombs that will be killing the people who stood behind the ones who killed us with those planes, we need to remember : (1) They were our planes. (2) Each one of them (hundreds of times a day) was toting, and burning 16,000 gallons of 200 million-year-old vegetable oil we purloined from Arabian earth to feed our ugly addiction to forty-fold the world-average quanta of consumption and creature comforts. (3) The Arabs, these terrorists, quite rationally think and righteously feel that we and they have been at war since we became openly allied with Israel, which is openly at war with them (most of the time). Accordingly, they feel just as morally justified in bombing us in New York as we felt justified in bombing Japan in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By our President’s own 911 proclamation, those who aide and abet our enemies are at war with us. (4) Behind the heroics of great warriors there is apt to be great love – of country, family, freedom and self. Behind the mask of the suicidal terrorist there is apt to be great suffering. (There’s also, I’ve recently heard, the promise that Muslim suicide/martyr-warriors get to take the people they kill (all of them) into the next world as their personal slaves – this for those of you who, as I, have wondered how terrorists incentivize Arab youth to attend flight school abroad for a year when for graduation they get a one-way ticket to oblivion. Turns out it ain’t oblivion – it’s more like Club Med al la Allah.) But the point is, the ones who killed us were not cowards, but rather a few among many zealots all willing to pay the ultimate price for their cause, all of which shows that (5) We Americans have a lot to learn about the rest of the world and its suffering – especially the suffering we may have a hand in, and finally (6) While we’re seeking and setting out to destroy the ones who carved the course of history culminating in the events of 9/11/01, we had better be prepared to spy among these villains ourselves.

Of course, this is just an opinion, and just like Michael Moore and Dennis Miller, I could be wrong. But while there a scintilla of a chance I’m right , and while George W is out there searching for the road to what he’s blithely hailing as “the first war of the Twenty-first Century” (is he promising us more?) , I’m going to be out there searching for a road less traveled. So, now, as we’re treading in the darkness down the roads of our respective and collective choices in search of fugitive Peace, I invite – and beseech you – stand behind me , your friend ,

Dusty (Robert R. Schoch, Attorney/Writer/Environmentalist,
607 Overbrook Drive, High Point N.C. 27262