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911

© Laurence B. Winn

On September 11, this generation of Americans learned what profound evil exists in the world. The result is an almost irreconcilable grief, and grief is a process they say.

First, there's denial. One can hardly believe that the US taxpayer gives $300 billion a year for national defense only to have American bulwarks breached by a collection of yahoos from the backside of the world wielding box knives.

Well, never mind. Paranoia has set in, also a form of denial. Maybe the people who are supposed to predict and prevent these things did know. Maybe they let it happen. Maybe they needed the emotional environment, the rage, the patriotic fervor caused by these murderous suicide runs on the American homeland to make acceptable the thing they think they must do.

Then there's anger.

The weapon used by the destroyers of New York's World Trade Center was not a collection of box knives really. Even the airplanes were incidental. Their weapons were knowledge and mobility - both purchased with money from oil.

And the terrorists enjoyed an advantage Americans have (mostly) denied themselves in past wars, "police actions", "conflicts", "campaigns" and "crusades". Outside of the Occident, certainly in Muslim countries, there is no such concept as "noncombatant". We have hobbled ourselves by a Medieval chivalric notion of war-fighting. Our enemies do appreciate it, and think of us as very nice dead people.

That may have changed. By noon Eastern Daylight Time on September 11, a significant number of Americans had already decided who the enemy was and were ready to employ the nuclear option. Here's a plan: Small nuclear weapons like the one called "Davy Crockett" emit more prompt radiation in the form of neutrons than thermal energy. You can stand a few hundred yards from one, it is said, and suffer no consequences except an immediately fatal dose of radiation. Damage to infrastructure is comparatively minor. Therefore, in order to deprive an Islamic jihad of its means of support, let us detonate a spread of these over the oil fields of the Middle East and move in immediately with repair crews and troops to secure the area. In this plan, we would need to simultaneously incinerate all defensive and suspected covert nuclear or biological warfare facilities everywhere in the Arab world. We would then await evidence of what further action needs to be taken against our attackers.

And finally, acceptance...

As has been pointed out previously (see "We are Borg, Mentats, Empaths ..."), tolerance is a frontier virtue. We may have to acknowledge that America can no longer afford it. Even if it can, the one thing that tolerance should certainly not tolerate is bigotry that kills.

The copyright of the article 911 in Frontier Theory is owned by Laurence B. Winn . Permission to republish 911 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.