I’ve heard it said that you cannot speak to a terrorist, there is no negotiating with a madman. But was not Osama Bin Laden, the poster boy for all that is terror, once the CIA’s comrade in arms in the 1980s when he was fighting the Russians for us in Afghanistan? We surely were negotiating and speaking with him then. Did he just ‘lose his mind’ at some point, or was he pushed over the edge? It is said that during the 10 year embargo on Iraq between the years of 1991 and 2001 over a million Iraqi children died from lack of food and medical supplies due to the sanctions on Iraq, the US’ punishment to Saddam for invading Kuwait. The rumour is that Osama, witnessing these senseless deaths of innocents, wanted to strike back at those he once aligned himself with. Whether this is true or not, seeing the strikes on Taliban sites in Northern Pakistan these last weeks it seems quite possible that we are not getting rid of the enemy one by one, but we are rather defining their hatred and resolve to continue their quest to rid the world of modernism. Pakistan military with the help of US money and unmanned drones strikes the Taliban… a few days later a number of people blow themselves up in Pakistani markets… now it’s time to drop some more bombs on their heads.

When reading a headline that states -

“A local official told CNN the missile attack killed the nephew and son-in-law of Mawlanna Faqir Mohammed, the Taliban commander in Bajaur. Mohammed, himself, appears to have escaped the assault.”

I wonder… do we pat ourselves on the back in the war room and say, “There… now there are two more dead terrorists, now all we have to do is get the other 10,000 terrorists and this mess will be cleaned up once and for all!”. Are we really that naive to not see that revenge is a losing enterprise? Both their revenge and our revenge indeed kills some of those we despise, but the ‘cancer of anger’ grows like a wild fire, for are we not all justified from our own points of view? The planes knocking down the World Trade Centers on 9/11 may have seemed like, at least at that time, a great success for those who wished to strike back at America’s meddling in the Middle East, but the byproduct of that horrible day was the US military occupying Afghanistan and Iraq for near a decade now… and perhaps forever. Revenge by the radical muslim fundamentalists that day can hardly be viewed as a success in their hindsight. Now we drop missiles and kill Taliban leaders, or their family members in the mountains of Northern Pakistan. Dropping bombs on the same crazy Taliban organization that was being flown to Texas for years to negotiate a pipeline through Afghanistan. (another case of ‘use to be able to talk to them, but can’t anymore’). In time this will insure the friends and relatives of those who survive those we have erased with our modern weapons will want to exact revenge… and the cycle begins again.

If in time we do not heal this karmic circle of the age old method of an eye for an eye, we may be in for a surprise. When every country has finally achieved acquiring nuclear weapons, and one could bet this day is surely coming, whether it be above board or clandestine… what will revenge look like then?

Patriotism in all it’s forms is exciting, chest pounding, noisy, fun stuff. But if we don’t adopt ‘Humanism’ over our passion for borders and religious superiority, then perhaps soon all of our pretty flags will be nothing more than tattered, torn, burning remembrances of how us humans were too proud to survive.

I’ve heard it said that you cannot speak to a terrorist, there is no negotiating with a madman. But was not Osama Bin Laden, the poster boy for all that is terror, once the CIA’s comrade in arms in the 1980s when he was fighting the Russians for us in Afghanistan? We surely were negotiating and speaking with him then. Did he just ‘lose his mind’ at some point, or was he pushed over the edge? It is said that during the 10 year embargo on Iraq between the years of 1991 and 2001 over a million Iraqi children died from lack of food and medical supplies due to the sanctions on Iraq, the US’ punishment to Saddam for invading Kuwait. The rumour is that Osama, witnessing these senseless deaths of innocents, wanted to strike back at those he once aligned himself with. Whether this is true or not, seeing the strikes on Taliban sites in Northern Pakistan these last weeks it seems quite possible that we are not getting rid of the enemy one by one, but we are rather defining their hatred and resolve to continue their quest to rid the world of modernism. Pakistan military with the help of US money and unmanned drones strikes the Taliban… a few days later a number of people blow themselves up in Pakistani markets… now it’s time to drop some more bombs on their heads.

When reading a headline that states -

“A local official told CNN the missile attack killed the nephew and son-in-law of Mawlanna Faqir Mohammed, the Taliban commander in Bajaur. Mohammed, himself, appears to have escaped the assault.”

I wonder… do we pat ourselves on the back in the war room and say, “There… now there are two more dead terrorists, now all we have to do is get the other 10,000 terrorists and this mess will be cleaned up once and for all!”. Are we really that naive to not see that revenge is a losing enterprise? Both their revenge and our revenge indeed kills some of those we despise, but the ‘cancer of anger’ grows like a wild fire, for are we not all justified from our own points of view? The planes knocking down the World Trade Centers on 9/11 may have seemed like, at least at that time, a great success for those who wished to strike back at America’s meddling in the Middle East, but the byproduct of that horrible day was the US military occupying Afghanistan and Iraq for near a decade now… and perhaps forever. Revenge by the radical muslim fundamentalists that day can hardly be viewed as a success in their hindsight. Now we drop missiles and kill Taliban leaders, or their family members in the mountains of Northern Pakistan. Dropping bombs on the same crazy Taliban organization that was being flown to Texas for years to negotiate a pipeline through Afghanistan. (another case of ‘use to be able to talk to them, but can’t anymore’). In time this will insure the friends and relatives of those who survive those we have erased with our modern weapons will want to exact revenge… and the cycle begins again.

If in time we do not heal this karmic circle of the age old method of an eye for an eye, we may be in for a surprise. When every country has finally achieved acquiring nuclear weapons, and one could bet this day is surely coming, whether it be above board or clandestine… what will revenge look like then?

Patriotism in all it’s forms is exciting, chest pounding, noisy, fun stuff. But if we don’t adopt ‘Humanism’ over our passion for borders and religious superiority, then perhaps soon all of our pretty flags will be nothing more than tattered, torn, burning remembrances of how us humans were too proud to survive.