"John Harlow" wrote in message
...
There is no such thing as "stopping terrorism". It is a fantasy . .
. an illusion . . . an impossibility.

Finally a sensible statment. Sorry, Jay, as much as I wish it weren't so,
you could spend every dollar in the world on fighting terrorism (just like
the "drug war") and you won't wipe it out.

What you need to do is remove the fuel from the fire. Americans need to
stop thinking they know what's best for the world.

Every country in the world suffers from terrorist attacks. It is not just
America or countries that support Bush. Nor is Bush the cause of every
problem in the world. Sure, Spain might not have supported the US in Iraq.
They could have caved and supported Hussein like the cowardly French and
Germans. They would still be attacked by numerous other terrorist groups,
from Basque separatists to violent anarchists. If nobody had attacked Iraq,
we would still be attacked by Kurdish separatists seeking support for their
cause, Palestinians, Croats, American Indian separatists, political
extremists within our own borders, Iraqi agents trying to get us to do
something else, etc.

The fact is that there will always be people who oppose what we do -- no
matter what it is that we do -- and who will be willing and able to use
violence to express that opposition. Therefore there will always be
terrorists. There have always been terrorists.

Frankly, I think that opposing thugs like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden
is worth doing. I suppose we might have convinced those guys to like us more
if we had given them all our money and bent over and grabbed our ankles.
Really, though -- do you want the respect of people like that? I just don't
see the point of trying to score high on the popularity meter of
organizations and people like the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Weathermen
wing of the Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers, or
Timothy McVeigh.