Sometimes it takes a tragedy of this magnitude to truly appreciate what our effect on the world has been throughout history. Not everyone is oblivious to the kindness we have showered upon the other nations of this world. To those who would burn our flag, and cheer our grief, I have a bit of advice, watch yourselves.

These are several of the articles circulating through the chain e-mails. As much as I despise the whole concept of mass forwarding, I figured that they deserved a spot where they can all be read and appreciated. It's a very hard time for all of us, but there are those that can still keep a cool head and look the problem in the eye.


TRIBUTE TO THE UNITED STATES

This, from a Canadian newspaper, no less, is worth sharing.
America: The Good Neighbor.

Widespread but only partial news coverage was given
recently to a remarkable editorial broadcast from
Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television
commentator. What follows is the full text of his
trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional
Record:

"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the
Americans as the most generous and possibly the least
appreciated people on all the earth.
Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and
Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the
Americans who poured in billions of dollars and
forgave other billions in debts. None of these
countries is today paying even the interest on its
remaining debts to the United States.
When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it
was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward
was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of
Paris. I was there. I saw it.
When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United
States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59
American communities were flattened by tornadoes.
Nobody helped.
The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped
billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now
newspapers in those countries are writing about the
decadent, warmongering Americans.
I'd like to see just one of those countries that is
gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar
build its own airplane. Does any other country in the
world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the
Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why
don't they fly them? Why do all the International
lines except Russia fly American Planes?
Why does no other land on earth even consider putting
a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese
technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German
technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about
American technocracy, and you find men on the moon -
not once, but several times and safely home again.
You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs
right in the store window for everybody to look at.
Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded.
They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless
they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American
dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here.
When the railways of France, Germany and India were
breaking down through age, it was the Americans who
rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the
New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an
old caboose. Both are still broke.
I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to
the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me
even one time when someone else raced to the Americans
in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even
during the San Francisco earthquake.
Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one
Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get
kicked around. They will come out of this thing with
their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled
to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating
over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one
of those."

 Stand proud, America!


 I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done." And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing. I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York. I agree that something must be done about those monsters. But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country. Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban. We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that. New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide. Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time. So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West. And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants. That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the west wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong, in the end the west would win, whatever that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?



ABOARD FLIGHT 564
Peter Hannaford
-----------------------------------------------------------
As it was at most U.S. airports, last Saturday was the first
near-normal day at Denver International since the terrorist
attacks. On United's Flight 564 the door had just been
locked and the plane was about to pull out of the gate when
the captain came on the public address system.

"I want to thank you brave folks for coming out today. We
don't have any new instructions from the federal government,
so from now on we're on our own."

The passengers listened in total silence.

He explained that airport security measures had pretty much
solved the problem of firearms being carried aboard, but not
weapons of the type the terrorists apparently used, plastic
knives or those fashioned from wood or ceramics.

"Sometimes a potential hijacker will announce that he has a
bomb. There are no bombs on this aircraft and if someone
were to get up and make that claim, don't believe him.

"If someone were to stand up,brandish something such as a
plastic knife and say 'This is a hijacking' or words to that
effect here is what you should do: Every one of you should
stand up and immediately throw things at that person -
pillows, books, magazines, eyeglasses, shoes -anything that
will throw him off balance and distract his attention. If he
has a confederate or two, do the same with them. Most
important: get a blanket over him, then wrestle him to floor
and keep him there. We'll land the plane at the nearest
airport and the authorities will take it from there."

"Remember, there will be one of him and maybe a few
confederates, but there are 200 of you. You can overwhelm
them.

"The Declaration of Independence says 'We, the people...' and
that's just what it is when we're up in the air: we, the
people, vs. would-be terrorists. I don't think we are going
to have any such problem today or tomorrow or for a while,
but some time down the road, it is going to happen again and
I want you to know what to do.

"Now, since we're a family for the next few hours, I'll ask
you to turn to the folks next to you, introduce yourself,
tell them a little about yourself and ask them to do the
same."

* * * * * * *

The end of this remarkable speech brought sustained clapping
from the passengers. He had put the matter in perspective.
If only the passengers on those ill-fated flights last
Tuesday had been given the same talk, I thought, they might
be alive today. One group on United Flight 93, which crashed
in a Pennsylvania field, apparently rushed the hijackers in
an attempt to wrest control from them. While they perished,
they succeeded in preventing the terrorist from attacking
his intended goal, possibly the White House or the Capitol.

Procedures for dealing with hijackers were conceived in a
time when the hijackers were usually seeking the release of
jailed comrades or a large amount of money. Mass murder was
not their goal. That short talk last Saturday by the pilot
of Flight 564 should set a new standard of realism.

Every passenger should learn the simple - but potentially
life-saving - procedure he outlined. He showed his
passengers that a hijacking does not have to result in
hopelessness and terror, but victory over the perpetrators.

The Airline Pilots Association, the pilots' union, last week
dropped its opposition to stronger cockpit doors and is now
calling for retrofits. (It's opposition was based on pilot
concerns about getting out easily in emergency situations.)
The scandal of easily penetrated airport security will
result in congressional calls for a federal takeover of the
security system.

Previous efforts to reform security procedures and raise
standards have been talked to death. This time, however, no
lobbying efforts must be allowed to prevent airport security
from getting the reforms that are needed: federal operation,
rigorous training, decent pay and no foreign nationals
eligible for employment.

-----------------------------------------------------------
This article was mailed from The Washington Times



The Binch by Rob Suggs
Sometimes children's stories say it so well

The gentleman who wrote this, Rob Suggs, is a children's author and illustrator. He works a lot with the children at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. He is able to "lighten their load" through his art and story telling therapy. The children obviously are asking questions about the dire circumstances we are in. This is what he has written to further explain the situation to the children he is working with in the hospitals...adapted from a classic story "How the Grinch Stole Christmas".
The Binch By: Rob Suggs September 13, 2001

Every U down in Uville liked U.S. a lot,
But the Binch, who lived Far East of Uville, did not.
The Binch hated U.S! the whole U.S. way!
Now don't ask me why, for nobody can say,
It could be his turban was screwed on too tight.
Or the sun from the desert had beaten too bright
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.

But, Whatever the reason, his heart or his turban,
He stood facing Uville, the part that was urban.
"They're doing their business," he snarled from his perch.
"They're raising their families! They're going to church!
They're leading the world, and their empire is thriving,
I MUST keep the S's and U's from surviving!"

Tomorrow, he knew, all the U's and the S's,
Would put on their pants and their shirts and their dresses,
They'd go to their offices, playgrounds and schools,
And abide by their U and S values and rules,

And then they'd do something he liked least of all,
Every U down in U-ville, the tall and the small,
Would stand all united, each U and each S,
And they'd sing Uville's anthem, "God bless us! God bless!"
All around their Twin Towers of Uville, they'd stand,
and their voices would drown every sound in the land.

"I must stop that singing," Binch said with a smirk,
And he had an idea--an idea that might work!
The Binch stole some U airplanes in U morning hours,
And crashed them right into the Uville Twin Towers.
"They'll wake to disaster!" he snickered, so sour,
"And how can they sing when they can't find a tower?"

The Binch cocked his ear as they woke from their sleeping,
All set to enjoy their U-wailing and weeping,
Instead he heard something that started quite low,
And it built up quite slow, but it started to grow--
And the Binch heard the most unpredictable thing...
And he couldn't believe it--they started to sing!

He stared down at U-ville, not trusting his eyes,
What he saw was a shocking, disgusting surprise!
Every U down in U-ville, the tall and the small,
Was singing! Without any towers at all!
He HADN'T stopped U-Ville from singing! It sung!
For down deep in the hearts of the old and the young,
Those Twin Towers were standing, called Hope and called Pride,
And you can't smash the towers we hold deep inside.

So we circle the sites where our heroes did fall,
With a hand in each hand of the tall and the small,
And we mourn for our losses while knowing we'll cope,
For we still have inside that U-Pride and U-Hope.

For America means a bit more than tall towers,
It means more than wealth or political powers,
It's more than our enemies ever could guess,
So may God bless America! Bless us! God bless!
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