Fear leads to hate, hate leads to anger…

For instant emotion, just go here: http://www.ondragonswing.com/journal/gaggle/archives/002398.html

This thread shows what happens when someone proposes a new line of thought – in this case the thoughts of one Rob Salzman (who owns and maintains AboutItAll.com). He proposes that on September 11 this year interested parties produce a Photo Blog (a photo diary) of their day, dateline 11th of September, 2003, to make it a day of “affirmation and life”. Sounds like a reasonable suggestion – a celebration of life as a tribute and rememberance to those who lost their lives due to a horrible event.

Well, one would think so.

Not so according to the folks in the above thread. They don’t wanna “get over it” (their take on Salzman’s idea), they wanna “grind them into the dirt” and “piss on the people who demand understanding”. Reading through the comments made by several authors it becomes clear that a number of them are regulars – they know each other and are quite friendly to each other, perhaps united by their strong stance on any idea that doesn’t involve militaristic force. Maybe they are just opposed to any forward thinking humanistic ideas. Or perhaps Bush Jr’s brainwashing trick he developed after a weekend of binge drinking and coke snorting at university really does work.

Ok, enough with the jokes. This group of people seems to be oblivious to any sort of solution that didn’t involve a big human grinding machine. To quote one of the comment authors: “Some minds are so set in concrete that grinding them to dust, along with the bodies that contain them, is the only way to prevent harm to self! Those who deny that plain fact are blind, deaf, and dumb, or something similar.”

Maybe that person should re-evaluate who it is that’s blind, deaf and dumb. It’s not that they’ve got the facts wrong, it’s the interpretation of the facts that are the problem. Yes, Islamic fundamentalists are behind the attack on the World Trade Centre (and a little closer to home, Bali). Yes, the people in the Middle East are mostly Muslims (note: MOSTLY). Yes, people in the Middle East aren’t exactly fond of Americans. While all this may be true but it doesn’t mean the only solution is to wipe muslims off the face of the planet.

So, you have a bunch of people who will give up their lives to pursue their beliefs. That’s a fairly strong belief, don’t you think? Isn’t anyone curious about their motivation? Give youself time to think on this. What do you believe in enough to die for?

According to Sun Tzu, a major premise in the art of war is that “…all warfare is based on deception”. He believed that “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”. He frowns upon the use of brute force, opting instead to decieve the enemy and trapping him, giving him no options but to surrender. This is in essence how the enemy is working – he is hiding, staying invisible, gathering his resources and striking at unobvious targets when we are not expecting it. We counter by blowing up huge tracts of land and cities and people, hoping we’d get a few of them along the way. Whilst we are doing this, we destroy innocent people’s homes, killing their relatives that may or may not have a hand in any terrorist attacks, and generally creating a climate where they can learn to hate the west. Hate our greed and consumerism. Hate our “freedoms”. Hate us so much that they are willing to die to kill us.

“They” hate “us” because they are told to hate “us”. “They” have been told of the evils of the “west” for as long as “they” remember, so what else would they know? Their minds are set in concrete, but that’s no reason to believe they can’t be freed from that concrete. Is it not time to show them that we are not the evil, capitalist monsters they so believe? It is certainly time for us to see that they are not the religious, intolerant terrorist they have been portrayed. We, too, have been told who to hate. We have been as blind as they have.

Now is the time to open up and accept these new ideas. Now is the time to remember that “they” are people too. The day the world is free from terrorism is the day when “they” become “us”.

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