[Maurice R. Kelly]

On Aug 13, Scott Williams wrote:

>
> "Do you think anyone is interested in reading garbage like that? If you hate someone, mail him, not the list."  ---- Jussi

I fully stand behind Jussi on this. As far as I'm concerned, you just
dropped to the lowest level possible in my book - by concluding an
argument with "fuck you." I listened to a lot of your arguments earlier in
the thread, and was impressed with your reasoning, until now.

I respect the fact that many lost their lives in the terrorist attacks
which occured in the United States on September the 11th, 2001. But what
I'd really like to see is people move on from it.

Yes, it was an attrocity, but I find myself repulsed by the morbid way in
which these attacks were referred to as simply 9/11, or September 11th. I
think it's symptomatic of a nation who don't want to move on - and what
worries me is that the attrocity will be used as justification for a lot
more things than the invasion of Afghanistan.

I live in Northern Ireland. I'm 24 years old. Almost my entire life I've
lived with the threat, and the results of terrorism. Whilst we've never
had an attrocity on the scale of the attacks we're discussing in this
thread, Northern Ireland has seen it's fair share of attocity (as has
mainland Britain.) One life, or three thousand lives. It's always a
tragedy.

Maybe it's sad, but whilst I have seen much tragedy in my life, the thing
that amazes me the most about my country (right or wrong, eh?) is that
fact that we move on. We don't forget. We still refer to the events
(Bloody Sunday, the Omagh Bombing, the Remembrance Sunday Bombing to name
but a small few) but we don't become overly fixated with it.

I don't believe that the US had it coming. In fact, while the US was the
point of attack, I believe the target was the world itself. The US is such
a dominant culture, that it is the logical figurehead to strike at. There
is no better way to demoralize people than to take away their leader -
because let's face it, in many respects, the US drives the rest of the
world, and where they go, we go too.

I certainly feel bad for those people who died, and the people they
left behind. But it really is time the entire world fought back. Not
by invading other countries or any military means, but by bouncing back -
not getting lost in grief. Those attacks demoralized much of the world.
The economy was bad enough before the attacks, and I feel it is worse now.
Looks like the "mission" of those terrorists was successful.

I think it's time America held it's head up higher and overcame this. It's
time to stop the military action, and show the rest of the world that it
is still strong.

Sorry to have gone on so long. Thanks.

-- 
Maurice R. Kelly
mkelly@deadheart.org.uk