Monday, September 17, 2001

A Synergic Response

Economist Wayne Perg proposes a win-win response to our present world crisis.

"I create true human and economic satisfaction not by consuming ever more, but rather by working together with others to create things and services, sharing them with others and appreciating them. The object of economic activity is not to "get more for less," it is to "do more with less."

"When we apply the correct object of economic activity to a massive investment in renewable energy sources, we will see this investment not as a cost, but rather as a gain that will produce satisfying jobs and economic growth while protecting our priceless environment. And we can at the same time take a major step toward disarming Islamic Terrorism, a true win-win."

Read the full Article

My View as an Afghan-American

Mir Tamim Ansary is a noted author of books on native Americans, and Afghanistan. The following is from a letter he posted on the internet yesterday.

"Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. I think that when people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" many of them are thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. They are thinking about overcoming moral qualms about killing innocent people. But it's the belly to die not kill that's actually on the table. Americans will die in a land war to get Bin Laden. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that, folks. To get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. The invasion approach is a flirtation with global war between Islam and the West.

And that is Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants and why he did this thing. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. At the moment, of course, "Islam" as such does not exist. There are Muslims and there are Muslim countries, but no such political entity as Islam. Bin Laden believes that if he can get a war started, he can constitute this entity and he'd be running it. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the West wreaks a holocaust in Muslim lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong about winning, in the end the west would probably overcome--whatever that would mean in such a war; but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden yes, but anyone else?"

Read the full Article