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Pen Points
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Bombing. Am I the Only One Who Objects?
I am watching a moronic President prepare his people for something that they will not be able to handle. I am having discussions with my friends, liberal friends, and I am blown away from what I hear. "We must nuke them into the stone age"..... too late, these people are in the stone age. If Bill Gates destroyed the Sears Tower, would it be right to kill everyone in Washington state? Yesterday it was Afghanistan, now CNN says that most were members of a group in Egypt. So do we bomb Egypt? They arrived in the U.S. through Canada. Do we invade Montreal? My friends say "I am willing to sacrifice some of my civil liberties for the safety of our country". I am not. I will go to the airport 3 hours earlier, but that's it. I actually feel scared. The office is covered with flags, people are singing "God bless America", I don't agree with them but I will dare not speak a word. I am as much an American as anyone else. I know that something needs to be done. Get the guy, take his money, perhaps even execute him on live TV so that the mob can get it's fill, but that's as far as I am willing to go. People tell me it's like Pearl Harbor. That's not true. It's the Gulf of Tonkin, 1965 all over again. This enemy will think nothing of stuffing explosives down their pants and walking in to PS-117. Don't people see this? The guys who did this trained for 3 years.... for a suicide mission! Americans are not that dedicated. If we do what I think we are going to do, we must be ready for truck bombs in the Winter Park Wal-mart and images of dead children on the nightly news, American children. Then what? The explosives came from Mexico, we have given up our civil rights, Mexico is next on our hit list, gun toting agents break into my house and drag my spouse off to a concentration camp. Far fetched? Germany - 1933, or better yet, America -1942. You watch, 10 years from now we will be embarrassed by what we are about to do. While others wrap themselves in the flag, I'll wrap myself in the Constitution..... I'm safer. Matthew W. Re-Thinking Our National Mindset
Over the FOUR FUCKING DAYS, the Postmaster General has gone from chuckling and assuring Postal Employees that there is no anthrax danger, to issuing a warning (yesterday) that the Postal Service can no longer assure the safety of ANY mail! He now suggests we wash our hands after opening our mail ... Does anyone ELSE around here feel it's time for a government and military overhaul??? Let's face it - our military is the best-funded and best-equipped military on the planet. But their entire structure is based on large-scale threats - a WWII or a Cold War. Those big threats no longer exist. These days, we're fighting gophers hiding in holes - very SMART and well funded gophers! And we're trying to blow them out of the ground with weapons and philosophy designed to fight the former Soviet Union. Not working! Why not restructure our military completely to effectively deal with the REAL enemies we face today? Right now, our airline security is FUNDED by the airlines themselves - they hire private security companies to scan our baggage and our bodies. Why not take the airlines out of the picture and fund/train the MILITARY to perform these functions? The sight of uniformed soldiers greeting one's arrival in U.S. airports is something our citizens are not used to, but should this not be happening? Ultimately, the military is responsible for the protection of our land, shores & airspace - why not make them the FRONT-LINE protectors, as well? To carry it a step further, shouldn't the military be acting as air-traffic controllers, effectively controlling the skies over our homes and our workplaces?
And Anthrax! Could we be any less prepared for THAT threat? The Postmaster General has gone from chuckling and assuring us there is no threat to encouraging us all to wash our hands after opening our mail!
Isn't it obvious that our way of life has been threatened and forever changed by well fewer than 50 individuals? And if thirty or forty people can push an entire nation into panic and peril, isn't it time that we re-think our national mind-set, especially in regards to security and the military? And do you think that we have the leadership in place to make this happen? And what public response do you imagine to such efforts? And - finally - do we, as a population, have the ability to bend and twist and to redefine ourselves in the face of such new dangers? For my part, I believe our president and the government & military has done the very BEST they can in the face of such threats, but I also believe that we simply don't have the systems in place to really face what amount to modern threats. And yeah, I'm worried for us, a little ...
Gary A Modest Proposal In light of the recent past and in order to honor the 1st amendment separation of church and state while still encouraging people to express their patriotism and love of country, I would like to suggest that people who desire benefices for the United States of America use the expression "Blessings on America" rather than the more common "God bless America." By using the first expression, "blessings on America," the invoker may or may not have a god in mind but it won't matter to the listener who may have a different god in mind because both citizens hope for good things to befall the US, as do those of us who do not believe that any god sits around waiting for us to invoke its goodness. Concerned Non-Religionist Citizen |
I'm out of place, perhaps out of touch. I'm torn between the need to do
what's necessary and what's right. I think I'm the only person in
America who can see what's happening now, and what will happen next. I think
that I'm the only person who thinks that bombing is wrong.
© 1997-2002 BEI