[Saxon]

Gritsucker,

To reply to your core points, you point to a waste of tax payers’ money. It seems to me that you are going to spend 40 billion on this project one way or another. If my way will stop the terrorism and leave a nation with schools, hospitals and good will to the US, is it a bigger waste of money that 40 billion of bombs and an angry state of ten year olds waiting to grow up and avenge daddy?

Geoschmo has some good points, the Marshal Plan worked for many reasons, not just straight cash. However, the essence of the project was “Ok Germany, you made a big mess of things, now we are going to fix it up for you and foot the bill.” This “Carebear approach” has as a result, the US gaining widespread respect from the Germans of that generation and a nice, stable, healthy ally in Central Europe. Compare that to, as I said earlier, the response of the German nation to the punishment of the Versailles Treaty.

Both you and I have advocated for the violent removal of the leadership of terrorist Groups, but I am presenting an idea of what we should do to the rest of the people, so that we don’t have another terrorist attack in ten or twenty years. You are right, the US should do something to make the world a better place. However, you need to be a bit careful how you do it.

Right now, the US is in a frenzy. I am a sub-contractor to State Department and the email I get from them shows a government jumping at slammed doors and fearing it’s own shadow. Everyone wants vengeance. I hear you. So does the rest of the world. But, how you do it is going to have a big impact on how we look at you afterwards. You say you have the right to retaliate and I will not argue with you. What I will say is that you also have an obligation, as a member of the community of nations, to check in and listen to the rest of the world. And you have an obligation to try and make it a better world, not just one that leads to more terrorists later.

To put my colours on my sleeve, I have a dead friend, a Kenyan, who died in the Nairobi Embassy bombing in 98. When I visit her husband and talk to the teenage kids, I remember their mom. I also have a friend who can’t walk straight due to that bomb, a wall fell on him, crushing his leg. A lady I don’t get along with, but who I have to talk to on the phone every day, was blinded by the bomb, but was put back together in a US military hospital in Germany. The vacuum caused by the bomb sucked all the glass out of her monitor and into her face. I remember that when I see the glasses she wears now. I can, and do, intimately share the pain of those who have lost friends and family in New York. I have lived with the results of Bin Laden’s handiwork for over two years now and want to see him dead.

So take a couple of steps back and have a look at what I am talking about. I am looking for a long term solution which hits at some of the root causes of terrorism. I have also put it in a way which, I hope, didn’t offend too many people, even if they disagreed with it. As such, I am taken aback that you have to refer to it as a “****ed up idea.” Don’t like it? That is ok. Just try and say it in a decent way, as we both have the right to hold our views.