James Trory
High five.

I'm sorry for that, but some of the people on RASSM need to wake up and smell what's cooking. I've been reading what you people have been writing, and I can't bear it any longer. America has trained terrorists, supplied middle eastern countries with weapons, funded terrorist organisations, and has conveniently ignored global terrorism. Please realise that.

When was the last time anyone here stopped to mourn for dead British civilians killed by IRA bombs? Huh? Don't get me wrong, I am saddened by the WTC and Pentagon attacks, but I am from a country (Britain) that has fallen pray to terrorism a thousand times, and it doesn't get any sweeter. It greatly upsets me that the people of America only become concerned with tragedies of this nature because it happened on home soil.

All of a sudden there's American flags everywhere (I live in America now, so I am seeing this first hand), movies are being cancelled because their content may been seen as uncaring, people are becoming overly sensitive and patriotic about the entire subject.

Many politicians and newscasters have described this event as an "attack on American freedom". Hell no! It is not.

You may not like them right now, but talk to the people of a country like Afghanistan about freedom. They'll tell you a thing or two.

And what kind of patriotism involves persecuting people of Arabic race who were born in the USA? How very noble.

Answer me this; what about the hundreds of thousands of people in the last twenty years that have been fatal victims of terrorism? What about them? Ever put a flag up for them? Every sung a song for them?

What happened to wanting to flatten Ireland because they were responsible for hundreds of bombings? Do we get payback on them?

Global terrorism has been an issue for decades, but because it's never affected America, America has chosen to ignore it. As usual, it's had it's ass kicked into gear by a horrendous event, and now the national feeling is that world terrorism has to be wiped out.

Bullshit. I know what America will do. It'll find whoever attacked the WTC, flatten the shit out of them, and then go back to ignoring the problem, leaving NATO to sort out what America started.

Airports within five to ten years will go back to having poor, unacceptable security because of cost cutting measures. No one is in this for the long haul, and make no mistake about that. George W is out to kick some ass, and that is all. Hell, he has to prove that fixing the vote was worth it, so he wants blood. He does not want to end terrorism. He is an intelligent man, believe it or not, and here's the reason why he's not even going to try to end it.

Because you can't.

Terrorism in many ways is an act of desperation. When diplomacy fails, you bring in the arsenal. Terrorists are beyond talking to. Using deadly force to make themselves heard is what they do. And here's the deal: the hardest army to fight is the one that'll die, no matter what, to honour its cause. This is not even about fighting fire with fire. You cannot fight this kind of enemy. Not unless you have people willing to literally hand their lives over. Which people from the West are not willing to do. They value their lives too much.

May I also remind those of you once again, who keep insisting that the A-bomb was a tool of war and cannot be compared to this event, that hundreds of thousands more than at the WTC disaster died that day in 1945. And that hundreds of thousands more suffered miserable lives afterwards. And that each of those hundreds of thousands of people that died and suffered had families elsewhere who also suffered. Please, you can't brush aside human life like that.

You can't just say "well that was different". James King in particular, *you* cannot claim that Japanese civilians bombed in 1945 were not technically civilians because they were members of a country that had gone to war with America, and had broken the codes of war. They had no control over the attack on Pearl Harbour or their country's involvement in the war, *or* their treatment of POWs. War is on a government scale, and you know it. Turn it on its flip side and you'll see that as far as Japanese civilians were concerned, America was the enemy. In any case, you cannot, EVER, justify civilian casualties on such a massive scale. Ever.

In conclusion, all I'm saying here is please don't go jumping on this insane, spiralling bandwagon of patriotism. Remember the fact that people in other countries have suffered similar fates. The unfortuante employees and visitors to the WTC that day join a very long, long list of victims that should all be mourned collectively. Maybe this event does serve as a turning point in the globel fight against terrorism, because now America has finally been made aware of the fact that it exists.

It's just unfortunate that thousands of people in NYC had to die to prove it. But that's the sad thing about our governments nowadays, and to some degree the people that they rule over. It takes one massive blow to the brain before it registers. And then we all get our titties in a twist and miss entirely the big picture that's been staring us in the face for thirty years.