Denis wrote on another discussion group; "Unconventional war is a war of reaction, unless you want to kill the good and the bad all together. That option has been refused, so far, but it maybe gaining advocates."

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Killing the good with the bad is gaining advocates? Surely you jest? Maybe not! There may be some who say a good Arab is a dead Arab. Frustration of losing a war makes the losers desperate.

I hope the new working group, headed by James Baker, charged with assessing the Iraq situation and making recommendations for change, will not recommend killing the "good" with the "bad". The bad people do not think they are bad, and many of the "good" people do not think so either.

What would that make us if we start killing "good" people? Suppose we kill half the Muslims in the world, five hundred million, plus or minus a few million, just to show we mean business? Will that stop terror? No. As Ray Kurzweil http://www.kurzweilai.net/index.html?flash=1 said on C-Span about asymmetric warfare, "In the future it will only take one terrorist to do extreme damage". That one terrorist would just as likely come from our own ranks after seeing us kill millions of innocent people. Ted Kaczynski was the Unabomber, a lone terrorists who operated for 15 years before being caught. Certainly there would be plenty of terrorists from the descendents of the "good" Muslims we killed. There would also be terrorists from the Hindus, and atheists in Canada, Europe, and Russia. There might even be a few Catholics from Mexico who hate us and simply slip across the border and do damage against our soft targets. Everyone, not just Muslims, would hate us, and we would play the victim and ask, "Why do they hate us? We kill good people to promote democracy and freedom."

How many moderate and liberal Muslims would we kill in our attempt to eliminate terrorist? Those are the people who want a better life, like all humans want to be loved and have a family and a home to gather with their children and grandchildren. Not all Muslims believe in a religion of violence. These are the ones we should be recruiting, not killing.

As new generations of Muslims are born they will want ipods, cell phones, and computers. Women will want the birth control pill and the right to vote. Muslim women will want to be the next Nancy Pelosi.

The internet and technology, like technology of the past, will be the force that will change the Muslim culture more than the force of the largest military the world has ever known. We will not eliminate terrorists acts and remain free at the same time. We should plan, prepare, and anticipate more terrorist acts. There will be copycat terrorist acts by angry American citizens seeking a spot on TV and Youtube. There are too many soft targets for terrorists. There will be more terrorist attacks because we have made too many enemies with our foreign policy.

We should have 'turned' John Walker Lindh into a spy. Instead we jailed him. Bad choice. Revenge and public relations won over pragmatism.

There was a Maoist terror group in Peru called Shining Path. The Peruvian government finally decided the best way to defeat the group was through intelligence. Trying to kill all the members of the terrorist group failed.

Chris Hedges' book, War is the Force That Gives Us Meaning, may apply to a few sociopaths who love war so much they are willing to kill the innocents. There are more people though who find a meaning in life from family, creating art, building instead of destroying, and exploring distant stars.

Power is to be feared. The person wielding the power is to be feared and obeyed, but never respected. Good people wielding power become corrupted. Most people wielding power believe they are good, no matter which side they are on.

Bilbo Baggins

Bilbo Baggins writes from his hobbit hole in Hobbiton, CA