[Sca-cooks] [Fwd: Fw: [gdh] hm!]

[Elaine Koogler]

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
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This is one of the most reasoned responses I've read to the tragedy and
how we should respond.  I hope it makes you stop and think as much as it
did me.....

Kiri
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From: "Rosine" <rosine at sybercom.net>
To: "Rowanwald" <rowanwald at sybercom.net>, "Ted Eisenstein" <Alban at socket.net>,
    "Zackory Pattee" <patteezackory at hotmail.com>,
    "Shawn Pattee" <azreal at shinra.org>,
    "Mark Bowers" <aleksandr at theoutlands.org>, <jouster at juno.com>,
    "Judy Smith \(Grafin Judith the Wonderful\)" <JLSmith at SCDAH.STATE.SC.US>,
    "ALAN M FELDMAN" <argentv at prodigy.net>,
    "Aaron Thomas" <jat_janus at hotmail.com>, "Terrill Heaps" <stcath at chena.net>,
    "Ric & Joanne Loll" <rnjloll at cableone.net>, <mathaeus at juno.com>,
    <dukeanton at hotmail.com>
Cc: "Glenn" <Taughmor at aol.com>, "Eric Holmes" <dr_esq at bellsouth.net>,
    "Elaine Koogler" <ekoogler at chesapeake.net>,
    "Bonnie Hindle" <alesiaglfyn at juno.com>,
    "Barbara Bishop" <countessbrigit at hotmail.com>,
    "Anthony J. Bryant" <ajbryant at indiana.edu>
Subject: Fw: [gdh] hm!
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 02:17:20 -0400

From: Ken Burnside
Subject: Nature of the Conflict

    I am firmly of the opinion that we will want and need every willing
back, every strong hand in friendship, every erg and dyne of support we can
get. This is not a conflict that calls for a measured, careful response.
This is a conflict that calls for an overwhelming, careful response, and an
continued commitment.
   The enemy has billed this as a war of cultural annihilation. Either they
remove us, or we will remove them. They have defined the goals of the
conflict. The enemy is just as vulnerable to these objectives as we are.
More so, in fact. The enemy builds his force on ignorance, on the Big Lie.
The enemy's greatest fear is that the prosperity of the West will seduce the
generation after this one. That the memories of old blood feuds will fade
when presented with McDonald's and computers and cheap cell phones. Every
call they make to recruit is against the decadence of the West destroying
their way of life.
   After we punish the enemy with bombs, with bullets, we must salt the soil
that the twisted tree of intolerance and fanaticism takes root in. We must
change the hearts and minds of the young.
   We salt them with small computers. With internet access. With a telephone
in every village. With juvenile novels and encyclopedias translated into
Arabic. With teachers who speak their language, and who teach them to use
these tools to answer questions for themselves. Yes, some of those teachers
will be killed. They are soldiers in this war as much as anyone who takes on
a beret or a gun, and we can make martyrs of them for the world. No tyrant
can long survive with an informed and educated populace.
   The organizations they declaim as the mouthpieces of the US shall be USED
as the mouthpieces of the west. We tell their children that there is a life
beyond substistence farming and blood feuds. We tell their wives and
daughters that there is a life where they are valued as individuals and
people in their own right, not as chattel.
   We give them the tools of bilateral communication, rather than unilateral
indoctrination. We give them the internet. We declare a great work, of
making sure that every corner of this globe has access to fast internet
access. Not just the US. Not just Europe. The world.
   They will see pornography sites. They will also see sites discussing
engineering, and simple improvements to agriculture. The curiousity of
children will be piqued, and their questions answered. With each question
asked, and each answer given, we slowly wean them away from the culture of
intolerance.
   They'll be able to ask questions without censure or censoring, and get
answers they might not otherwise have.
   I would sooner carpet bomb with game boys and Pokemon, and an Arabic
translation of Monopoly, than FAEs and nuclear explosives. The adults are
beyond our reach. The young MUST be reached so that 20 years from now, the
thought of piloting a captured airliner into an office building full if
innocent bystanders meets with universal horror.
   I fear, in the haste for vengeance, that the nature of this conflict will
be forgotten. Make no bones about it -- this is a culture war. It can only
end with a declaration on the order of Cartago Delendo Est.
   We cannot win this war with bombs or bullets, although we can accelerate
its prosecution by those means. We can only win this war through a
generational conflict; we must win the war in the hearts and minds of the
children growing up in the Middle East now. Winning that longer war will be
costlier and less immediately gratifying than cluster bombs and Fuel Air
Explosives, and "killing the bastards and everyone that helped them."
   It can, however, be a profitable war.
   If you are an author, or someone who creates media, contact your
publisher about translating your works into Arabic. Someone in the DoD is in
charge of outbound propaganda; we should find who that person is, and give
them the munitions to win this war.
   Bin-Ladin has declared this a culture war. Let's show him what a culture
war TRULY looks like. Let's send in Shakespeare. And Heinlein. And Harlequin
Romances, Pokemon and The Simpsons.


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